Bart wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 7:17 am
a fan wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 2:47 pm
Yup. Those are the hidden costs that folks new the biz are blindsided with.....and by the time they figure it out, they're in, and its too late.
You basically have to start out with millions to get in, and even then. We got lucky, and that's as simple as it gets.
Seeing Hedge Funds tilting the market for whiskey scares the heck out of me. They DEPEND on bubbles.
Tagged you here a Fan cause I hope you will see this and answer this silly little question.
How do you determine the amount of water in a fermentation batch? I am assuming there is a sweet spot between water, dilution of ETOH and other flavors when distillation? Is it trial and error at first and when you get a flavor profile you like you stick with it?
I am not a chemist but I would think that you could always distill down to a certain percentage of ETOH even in dilute beer but in doing so are you going to loose the other flavors?
Thanks
It's a question of pounds of sugar per gallon. And in bourbon production, this means starch. Because when you mash (mix hot water with grains and malted barley), there are enzymes in malt the convert the starch into fermentable sugars.
So there's a table that tells you that I need, for example 1352 lbs of sugars (converted starch) in 1200 gallons of water to get a 13% sugar solution. The yeast will eat that 13% sugar, and make 6% alcohol by volume.
So understanding that, every distillery has different targets. Some are all about yield. So if you make a 10% abv distiller's mash instead of a 5% abv distiller's mash....you just doubled the capacity of your distillation equipment. Make sense? For some, that's important.
For others like me? I think that you get a lower quality whiskey when you do that, because you're asking your yeast to consume an awful lot of sugar in a short period of time. And when you stress yeast out, it gives off higher alcohols------alcohols that are larger than ethanol. These higher alcohols taste and smell unpleasant.
So I make a 6% abv mash, which is quite low. This creates minimal amounts of these higher alcohols, and makes a softer whiskey.
These are VERY broad strokes, and I left a ton of stuff out. But does this answer your question?