BrnBtlFlzy

So, I've also been looking into producing a rum product, but until two months ago I had never done a sugar or sugar-byproduct fermentation before.... I found that my first ferments were just too...clean and uninteresting, which lead me down the Arroyo/high-ester rum rabbit hole. At first I was just adding back stillage to my ferments at approximately 25% of their volume, which also made very clean ferments. Luckily I live in the land of sugar, and I had some leftover agricole juice (no treatment, it started naturally fermenting within hours of picking it up from the mill) that I had pitched with Brett dregs. I've been keeping this culture of natural yeast, lacto and brett to reinoculate my stillage before I actually set up my ferments. Much like fermenting sugar I've never kept stillage before, and I don't know what best practices exist to encourage the right fatty acids to form and then to keep until I am ready for the next ferment, but here's where I am in my line of inquiry for making rum ferments more interesting based on what I've read from Arroyo and Boston Apothecary. It is a very loose regimen, and I am playing with a lot of the parameters. These experiments seem to multiply: 1) Stop your ferment so there is some sugar left in your stillage (~1.010) for your Brett to eat. 2)Pitch your bug culture into your cool stillage and let sit for a week or more before you need to set up your ferments. I have not been adjusting pH at this point even though my stillage pH sits between 2.91-3.3. I am currently in the middle of a line of experiments and I will be adjusting pH at this point in the future, however I usually see activity on the surface within a day or two. 3) Add bugged stillage to your new ferments at a 25% rate and adjust pH to 5.2. I also add a "normal" yeast at this point. This method needs serious refinement, but the results are really interesting. It's still far less funky than my goal, and it has raised more questions than it has answered (common lore is that untreated agricole juice goes sour/bad a few hours after the cane is cut, but if it's immediately fermented, how long can you keep your cane beer?). I may not be heading in the right direction, but they are all interesting unknowns.

There are lots of ratios out there, and if you haven't already looked over The Distiller's Guide to Rum I'd start there, but because there are so few rules regarding rum styles you're going to need to figure out what type of rum you want to make and what you want to make it out of. As HedgeBird mentioned above, it can depend heavily on your molasses, but there is nothing that says you have to use molasses in your process. It can also depends heavily on your cane juice or sugar source. When I first started making 1 gallon rum washes from raw sugar (no additional molasses) I used ~1.2 lbs of sugar to a gallon of water, adjusted pH to 5.2, added yeast nutrient as recommended, and 2g of DADY. It yields a very soft, if uninteresting distillate but the recipe serves as a very basic recipe no matter what your sugar source is (I've used a similar nutrient/pH profile on agricole, and also on experiments incorporating molasses, or using a different yeast).

PA Joe- Can you provide some more information about the 1800's Jamaican Sugar Plantation papers? I'm very interested, but a short Google search hasn't yielded what I think I'm looking for. Thanks!

Bluestar, do you mean that you hang your botanical load in the pot or column? Is it in the liquid, or just in contact with the vapor?

Good direction per Ned and PeteB. Some grains cause foaming more than others (amaranth foamed out of a 70% head space, quinoa also awful), but cleaning is a fact of brewing and you can always use a foam-controlling agent. I kinda like it when the fermenters overflow. Makes for an interesting distillery tour when you have oozing vessels.

As per usual out of my element on this, and I'm sure someone can/will offer a more comprehensive answer. My first thought is that such a thing can be done, that the prerequisite carbohydrates/protein would be present in a sprouted bean. That's why sprouts on the salad bar are good for you, they have a combination of things that are necessary for supporting the life of a plant. And I believe that the edamame used for tempeh undergoes a fermentation stage. I do not know what kind of optimal parameters you would need for malting/drying beans, or where to start hypothesizing about the characteristics of alcohol yeilded from such a fermentable. The best answer you will probably get is from the experience of doing it. Double the amount of beans you would soak for general eating purposes, after they have soaked over night separate half for making soup or beans and leave the rest until they have just begun to sprout. Determination of sprouting for whatever bean you chose is available online, but visual inspection probably wouldn't fail you if you just want to know if it's possible. Rinse both batches before use, eat the first ones, ferment the sprouts. It'll be win-win, or maybe win-lose. Alternatively, maybe try buying hippy flour at the store: chickpea, millet, etc. Dissolve it into hot water for half an hour and throw it into a growler with some yeast. If you get bubbling, you'll get alcohol...and if you have access to a rotovape let me know how the distillate turns out. Best of luck.

Am sure I'll get blasted for this, but although I am happy to see new start ups and the cultivation of products from a collusion of experience and modern distillation equipment/standards/techniques, I fail to see how this is a new chapter in Tennessee whiskey-making. Traditional products (though we aren't sure how to classify them), made by people that have been doing this for years, in a location where moonshine has been historically made according to their website: where exactly does "new" come into play? Popcorn Sutton brand moonshine works from a traditional recipe here in TN, and as per Lenny's quote from the website they are the sixth TN distillery making these "authentic" products (JD, GD, Pritchard's, C&M, and Sutton I'd suppose...not sure about Old Smoky). So a new chapter? Not so much. In any case I wish them all luck, and will certainly try the product if I can get my hands on some.

I make popsicles of tinctures with straws for sticks and use them as a flavoring/straw/cooling conglomeration. Kidding. I wouldn't put a popsicle in my whiskey.

There are three different brands working off of the DSP that covers our facility. One brand makes the same thing everyday, another makes an aged and unaged whiskey and a vodka, and my company is all over the place experimenting with different whiskies and moonshines. The point is that each of these companies is doing well. I don't know about long term viability for a company that only makes one product, it has to be enjoyable enough to return to or at least have fantastic marketing, and that's what makes this a hard subject to be objective about. I know I don't want to drink the same thing everyday, why would I want to make it? Am I at times frustrated with the brand that only makes one product because of their efficiency and orderly schedules? Maybe. Do I at times pull my hair because a new recipe is not cooperating and my mash is irrevocably stuck? I wouldn't admit to it. But opening up a barrel of new make? That's just all right with me. I'm with Curtis, it's all about finding the balance between keeping the doors and the horizon of your brand product open.

Have been under the same impression about fusel alcohols and methanol in fc extractions. The only real advantage seems like it would be a higher alcohol content while still maintaining the namesake of being a cider or beer, but as a marketing gimmick it might be advantageous: fractional crystallization instead of a stripping run. I don't think anyone does this on a commercial level. And in my part of the country Apple jack is synonymous with Apple pie, spiced moonshine.

In the corsair tasting room, there's a very nice drink with the pumpkin spice moonshine, and my new personal delight, dried cherries rehydrated with a smoky whiskey.

We do smoke experiments, but never with peat. Peat definitely has a historic relationship with whisky, but am more interested in woods that are accessible to me. I think m.b. Roland does corn smoked in a tobacco shed for its black dog.

Don't like dealing with corn in general, but I use a pre-ground corn with a flour like consistency. Pros: saves time in grinding, mixes in well, better gravities than when I was milling it. Cons: It's still corn. Fermenting on the grain, everything into the still, but we have an agitator.

Curious Denver, I would have thought that the juniper berries would be too pungent even for goats. I guess it would depend on how the juniper berries were added to the gin (using a separate vapor basket like Hendricks, or added directly to the distillate).

Greetings all, I have been distilling for a small distillery for a little while but just got around to joining the forum. Am excited to finally be able to post.