PeteB

Thanks Seattle Spirit, fly sparging is what I do. I just had not heard that term. I googled RIMS and HERMS and that would certainly work. I could use my heat exchanger that cools the wort, and re-plumb it with hot water instead of cold water and recirculate. I just thought of a easy way. Set up a big pot with a propane burner under it, on the tun. Pump wort into the pot and let the hot wort overflow into the sparge pipe. I am doing another mash tomorrow. My green rye malt has shoots averaging 3/4 length. I should be doing it tonight but it will have to wait till morning. I am taking samples from the malting every 12 hours and getting them analysed. I am going to start with a minimum amount of strike water at 55C (130f)--rest-- then hope to push temp to 65+ (150f) with very hot water. I do use grass seed husks which speed up the runoff a lot. These ones are very fresh, came off the harvester yesterday.

As Seattle Spirit said, heat input must approximately equal heat extracted by your worm. The volume of the still is not the main consideration. I suggest you email ADI member Joe Pawelski who has offered to help members with heat transfer calculations. In the mean time, it sounds as if you have access to 7/8 tube. One coil will probably have too much friction loss and your still will build up pressure. Suggest you come off the still with a short length of say 2 inch tube then join, I guestimate 4 of 7/8 worms for the first few feet. A couple of "T" fittings would drop 4 to 2 worms then eventually 2 to 1 worm to come out the bottom of the barrel. Joe will probably suggest the lengths of coil needed. If in practice you still get some steam out the end, make up a short length of shell and tube condenser to fit on the end. A short shell is how I fixed the steam from my still when I increased the heat input.

Because you can tig you will certanly save a lot of money if you do it yourself. Although this will depend on what value you put on your time. Think carefully about stainless instead of copper. Lots of copper is essential if you are distilling fermented wash. The wash usually contains sulphur compounds that make the spirit taste of turnips--not good. The sulphur compounds stick to copper and make a much more drinkable spirit.

Thanks Clarity and Seattle Spirits. I went fishing in the weekend hence my slow response, also you have given me quite a bit to digest. I said I use rye "meal" I really ment "grist". I had been reading a Canadian report that called it meal. In my mind meal is finer than grist. I have no easy way to increase my mash temperature other than adding extra hot water. I would rather keep it simple and start out at a strike temperature then let it drop from there. It looks as if I am starting too high and destroying much of the Beta amylase. Also the guy I got the beta glucanase from said 65C was optimum, I found a site on the net that says 45C maximum. I am getting a new container of it tomorrow and hopefully there will be instructions. Seattle Spirit asked "Are you using a lauder tun and if so are you doing a fly or batch sparge?" I have a lauter tun with a fine mesh bottom but I don't know of the terms "fly" or "batch" This topic was really about malting rye, so back on subject. Yesterday I finished harvesting one of my paddocks of rye at 4:05 pm. At 4:15 pm I stopped the truck outside my distillery snd offloaded some grain to start a malting. By 4:17 it was in the steeping tanks with grasshoppers swimming around the top. A bit of extra water and they swam off down the drain. IF fresh grain is important, then I should get a good malt. (ps. fresh rye malts well in my past experience, but oats need to be about 12 months old before they give good germination) PeteB

I imagine it varies quite a bit, but roughly how much state alcohol tax do you pay? I am not publishing the very high excise we pay in australia because it wouldn't help your cause. Good luck.

I am taking some 100% rye spirit "white rye" to some liquor outlets next week. I am putting together a list of "serving suggestions" to help with marketing. Are there any mixologists out there with some good recipes please?

Thanks for your post Seattle Spirits Firstly, ergot. If there was any ergot present then it would float to the top of the water during the steeping phase, it is very buoyant. I have seen ergot many years ago, it is black, banana shaped and about 2-3 times the length of a rye grain. From memory, its lifecycle is over 2 years in the field and is quite complicated. I cant see any way it would multiply during malting even if some didn't float out. You said "Rye is considered a noxious weed". Are you talking about RYECORN - secale cereale? Ryecorn could be called a weed if growing in the wrong place, but "noxious" never heard it called that before! Back to your question about mashing temp etc, I put water at 75c (167F) in mash tun, add rye meal and this reduces temp. to about 70c (158F),Add hot washed seed husks to aid lautering, stirr approx 1 hour. Temp now around 65c (150F). Add 20%(dry wt) ground green rye malt and beta glucanase. Stirr then leave 1 more hour before start runoff.

Can your members TIG weld copper. The TIG with pure argon needs to have fairly high power because copper draws heat away very quickly. Lead base solder is no good and neither is silver solder. Alcohol eventually eats holes in the silver solder. I built my own pot still with no problems, but would would have found it a bit more of a challenge to do anything more complicated for my first attempt. I got the copper sheets cut out on a CNC with water/grit cutting head. Grinder with cut off wheels is very slow with thick copper. A good jigsaw with a metal blade works quite well.

Thanks for the suggestions. The Enolmatic is in my price range at this stage. Hopefully I will need a $6K one in a couple of years, but for now I want to keep capital investment to a minimum. Any more options in the $400 range, or criticisms about Enolmatic will be appreciated.

It is finally finished, my first batch of rye spirit from green malt has been double (pot) distilled in my new distillery. Very different from barley malt spirit. Almost a raisin smell in the still room when the heart was coming off. At 120 proof it has a light spicey, peppery taste and a very pleasant aftertaste. No hint of the green shoots and roots that went into the mash which is a relief. My next challenge is to get the overall yield a bit better. I think I should start another topic for that. Somewhere during the next 2 weeks I will be harvesting my next rye crop with my almost antique Claas header. The grains are looking really plump this year so hopefully that will solve part of my low yield. I would still like to hear from anyone doing their own malting, especially if it is green rye. Thanks all PeteB

After 2 years of planning, growing, welding, building,plumbing,then malting, mashing,brewing and double distilling, I have finally produced my first batch of delicious rye spirit. From a ploughed field, some sheets of copper and some used cooking oil for biodiesel (plus some scrounged/borrowed vats) I now have my own distillery making a very hands on 100% rye, most of which is to go into barrels for at least 2 years. Thanks to all those on this forum who offered their advice. I will certainly have lots more questions and hopefully I can help others as well. PeteB Tasmania

Thanks Denver D.for telling me about Dr.Frank Vriesekoop. I had a long conversation with him on the phone today. He said green malt was OK to use. He also confirmed that North British distillery still uses green malt He offered to get some of my malt samples tested. He is also very keen on biodiesel. Andrew, I think you are right about too much sugar left in my spent mash. I had a load of mash on my truck to take to the pigs. When I got back the truck smelled like toffy apples. Some of the leftover wort dripped onto the muffler and got caramelised. I have been using grass seed husks. I think without them the mash would be completly "stuck". I suspect that 100% rye malt may run off quicker than 20% malted. Have you compared runoff times for rye and barley mash? I couldn't find anything on Finger Lakes web site about green malt so I sent them an email. Thanks all.

Any suggestions as to where I can buy a spirit bottler for doing small runs, probably 100 at a session, not thousands of bottles. To suit 500mL and 750 mL bottles, cork stopper types. Would need to be shipped to Australia. Thanks PeteB

Hello Jonathan, thanks for your interest and encouragement. The reason I started this thread was because I am getting a low alcohol yield. Because my malting technique was a bit "outside the square" I decided to start there. (one thing at a time) I now suspect that I might be feeding the pigs with a lot of sugar that is left in my mash. I am using a lauter screen, and because rye wort is so viscous I think too much sugar is being left behind. I am going to play with mashing / lautering technique, but if I am still losing too much sugar I might have to put mash into the still. If I do that I will need to fit an oil bath and an agitator to my still. (still is direct fired with biodiesel) Fermentation seems OK. Someone on this forum suggested diabetes test strips so I bought some, and my wash does not have diabetes, ie. no sugar left so it must have all fermented. Jonathan, you will have the same question as I do, exactly when should the sprouting be halted? At this stage for rye I am using 3/4 length acrospire. Are there any other physical or chemical indications that are easy to use? I am feeling more confident that my green malt technique is OK, but I would still like to hear from others.

Thanks for the replies Denver D. Your advice in no way offends me. Different ways of doing the same thing is all helpful information, and will eventually help me decide what method suits my situation. I am not trying to get a product that is exactly the same year after year. If that is what I wanted I would certainly buy commercially malted grain, and it would probably be barley and in this part of the world I would make a "scotch" style. But I want to be different and hopefully there are enough adventurous customers out there who will buy all my little distillery produces. Back to the green malt, it is not hammermilled, the mill would be hard to clean. I use a big meat mincer with a fine extruder plate. It is easy to dismantle to wash and dry. My unmalted grain is ground through an old set of French Buhr millstones. FYI green malting on a small scale requires no capital investment. Some 20 litre plastic buckets and a thermometer that I already have. I wash then steep the grain in the buckets then tip it on the floor on a sheet of plastic and turned and dampened as necessary. As soon as it is malted enough it all goes throught the mincer into the mash. Very little labour and very cheap. But if there is anyone out there on this big forum who can give me a scientific reason why I should not do it this way, please post. I would rather know now than thousands of litres down the track. PS. I have just finished my third wash run with my pot still and will be doing my first spirit run tomorrow. Thanks all for the discussion

Germination needs to be arrested, kilning is a common method, but a meat mincer is just as effective. Roots and shoots are removed after kiln drying, part of the reason is that a lot of them just fall off anyway, they look messy, are dusty, and cause an uneven product, and probably influence the flavour and the head of a beer. There are probably other reasons, I certainly don't know it all. There was an English distillery (I think North British) that used to use its own "green malt" so why can't I? I have a science degree (many years ago) and if I shouldn't use green malt I would like to know WHY.

Vegemite, now there's an idea! I was hoping no one would come up with with an essential reasom to kiln the malt. It is an extra step, more heat, more time, more equipment. I will get in touch with Frank, thanks for the lead.

That post went through so here is some more that might create a bit of discussion. I can't see the point in kilning the malted rye. I have read that kilning destroys some of the enzymes, but I am no expert. I use it green and grind it straight into the mash with an industrial size meat mincer as soon as I estimate the enzymes are at optimum stage. I only malt enough for each batch. I don't want to malt 100% of the mash because I am concerned that too much mashed roots and shoots might cause a taste to carry through to the spirit. Kilning malt for beer production is very important to enhance the flavour, but as far as I know the main reason to kiln whisky malt is to stop the germination at its optimum. (and sometimes to add smoke) This also stops it rotting in storage and makes it easier to transport. That is it for now, I hope I have created a bit of interest and discussion.

That bit got through so here is some more. Denver Distiller said "Maybe I'm missing something" The reason I want to malt rye myself is because I want to keep my whole operation farm based. I will try to keep it brief. I am a farmer growing my own rye. I built my copper pot still from scratch. It is direct fired with biodiesel that I make from waste cooking oil from a roadhouse next to my farm. Hot water is also biodiesel heated. My tractors forklift and truck also run on Bio. The only significant material I bring to the farm is waste oil and the only product to leave will be whiskey. Cooling water comes from my dam and the used water will irrigate the next rye crop. Brewing water is harvested from my roofs. I have a lot of farm sheds. I hope to reuse yeast when production starts running smoothly. (I have only done 3 wash runs to date) There are catch words such as "sustainable" "closed loop" "small carbon footprint" "green" "farm based" "value adding" "craft" "low food miles" (does anyone have any more suggestions??) and because of this I have caught the attention of the media (free advertising This is why I want to malt my own rye.(I won't mention the small amount of added enzymes if I am not asked)

Thanks for the above info. I will try to get some commercially malted rye to compare. I suspect it may be hard to find in Tasmania. I thought I had read somewhere that rye had a high DP, higher than barley malt. What do your "old notes" say? (I did try to send a long response but it all vanished when I tried to post so I will do it in small bits)

Thanks for your interest. 3/4 length is what I had deducted from reading about barley malt, but I was not sure if rye was the same. One distillery that malts its rye said 3/4 was far too much and would have consumed too much sugar. He used root length only as a guide! I have done a couple of small trials comparing barley malt with my rye malt and the rye was slightly better, but when I went to a production run I was disappointed with the alcohol yield. There are lots of places to go wrong but I decided to enquire about malting first. I have been adding beta glucanase for thinning wort. I am not familiat with the abbreviation "DP" ! PeteB

I want to use 20% malted rye and 80% unmalted. The question is still the same, at what visual stage should the germination be stopped? Thanks

Does anyone have any definitave information about malting rye? I would like to know at what stage of shoot and/or root growth to stop the process. There is plenty of information about malting barley, but little about rye. Barley has a husk, rye doesn't. Thanks, PeteB ps. if anyone wishes to email me directly, pbignell@itechnologies.com.au

Sorry about the slow response! I have been working away, without internet. I used an american Whiskey yeast. Fermentation appeared to have stopped after 5 days BRIX had stabilised so I ran it through my pot still (wash run) Very poor yield. Just starting another ferment now. Hope this yields better. PeteB

Thanks for the suggestions. Distilling early seems to be the easiest option. This is my first batch through my new distillery, 500 litres of wash in a 1100 L fermenter. I use a lauter tun so there are no grains in the wash. I don't have a cooling jacket on my fermenter and it is closed but not completly sealed. My previous experience has been in "scotch" style distilleries where they were run on a 7 day cycle. I have not done rye before. The fermentation took off really quickly and this morning (I am in Australia) 2.5 days later the gassing is now very slow and the temperature is dropping. Maybe it will finish in time, another 2.5 days:) This situation will probably happen again as I am an agricultural contractor and a farmer, so for the future, I will buy another tank so I can hold the wash in my coolstore.- thanks for the cooling suggestion. I am not so sure about KB's suggestion of leaving agitator running. Having studied micro biology, in theory only, this is likley to increase the breeding of an infection, but in practice maybe not. Thanks all again for your help. PeteB