Yeast SAFSPIRIT M1

FloridaCracker

Wonder how they ferment during the 6 months that they are buried in snow?

FC

Kapea

@Smaug said: Sounds really good. So no cough syrup, medicinal thing going on then?

No cough syrup. Montmorency cherries are famously tart. The perception of sweetness comes from the bourbon side. Definitely made from deep hearts.

Kapea

@FloridaCracker said: Wonder how they ferment during the 6 months that they are buried in snow?

Wild yeast ferments are their summer regime. I hear it's pretty tough to ferment frozen mash.

DonMateo

Well guys I am back in Mendoza and just pitched my first two ferments using high quality SAF bread yeast. 12 hours in and going strong. I have to pitch two more ferments today, 200 litres each and at the end of the week I start stripping. I am doing an Irish whisky wash. The last one everyone loves so time to make a lot of it.

DonMateo

Well guys I just did the first run on using a bread yeast. This is SAF Instant success, it is called here in Argentina. Everything went really well. Great ferment, I was actively cooling down to about 25. which is tough as its about 35 outside, and the ferment finished down to 0000 so it was fully fermented out and I ran it. Anyway the distillation run was normal, but... the flavor was average. slightly funky smells, the taste was like the whiskey it should be which was an Irish, or my version which is 90% barely 5% wheat and 5% oats. But it was just kind of meh. Not very inspiring. So It looks as though I will go back to my DV10 and EC118 combination. Thanks for all the comments and good luck to the guys here who use bread yeast successfully. Maybe it will mellow out in the Barrel. I made 800l of wash so I will have about 120l of whiskey to find out with.

CothermanDistilling

try the same yeast at a couple different temps when the weather or equipment permits... you never know...

DonMateo

Maybe it was just me. Anyway I tried at least. Making whiskey is such a personal thing. I really wanted it to work. Maybe this stuff will improve in the barrel ?

Kapea

Yeast carried over into the boiler is not a good thing. Maybe a little more yeast settling time in the fermenter will improve things?

grim

Except if you are making bourbon or rye, in which case, it's the only thing.

grim

Good research on the differences between in and out.

Distribution of esters produced during sugar fermentation between the yeast cell and the medium (PDF)

grim

I think the interesting take away from Nykanen '77 is that the presence of Ethyl Laurate in the spirit is highly indicative of it being distilled on the lees.

You can use this as proxy in doing research into specific styles and even distilleries.

Peak of Ethyl Laurate? They are distilling with yeast.

grim

DonMateo

@kapea, I always doff my hat to you as you have more experience with me but in this case the taste wasnt that great. I am doing filtering through a brew bag using the same technique as I did when using EC118 and DV10 in combination and the results were just not as good. I am doing two strips tomorrow and another on Sunday so I will have a good test to see if it was just the first batch or the combination of environmental conditions and the yeast or both. My previous irish whiskey made with EC118 everyone loves. If your on a good thing stick to it I guess but for me I am not a big bread yeast fan. Other guys with more experience have a greater basis to pass judgement than me.

Kapea

Just passing along an observation I've made.
As a diminutive friend who posts here from time to time says, "The further you are from the yeast (when you distill), the better."

FloridaCracker

@Kapea said: Just passing along an observation I've made.
As a diminutive friend who posts here from time to time says, "The further you are from the yeast (when you distill), the better."

For rum I totally agree, but for whiskey I think that some yeast adds to the character. I wouldn't want a heavy yeast influence but I do my stripping run without racking off of the yeast.

FC

DonMateo

@Floridacracker and others Well I just finished stripping run number 3 or 4 and the last two were a lot better but it still tastes too much like bread for my liking. Maybe my dosage was too high. I am doing a smoked wheat wash with one using the bread yeast and another using my trusty EC118. I will strip them both and see how they are. Making whiskey really is a personal thing. I do my stripping without racking off the yeast but I do pass it through a brewback for some kind of filtrations and when I rack off the wash I do it after the grain bed has settled and there is always a lot of yeast in the grain bed, and constrained within it. Forms a nice kind of cake formation. Anyway more adventures in the world of distilling. On a related note the title transfer for my shed is finally ready so inside a week or two I will have ownership of my shed. Then I can get going with getting it fixed up and get the permits moving. Wooohooo.. I will be a bootlegger. Call me Bugs.

Sam

Thats interesting about the Ethyl Laurate, if I'm understanding this correctly it exhibits a floral/fruity characteristic.

I stripped 400L of a Semillion/Chardonnay wine which I fermented with EC1118 and stripped on the Lees (purely through a mixture of impatience and laziness). Over the last few days I have done a second run over 8 plates and the spirit has a lovely fruity profile to it, not too intense but its exactly what I was aiming for (a vodka like spirit with some characteristics of the original wine remaining).

I need to do my final run in the coming days but am really hoping this fruitiness doesn't disappear entirely. I had no idea that distilling on the lees had such an effect, I have certainly learned something new.

zymurgybob

@FloridaCracker said: For rum I totally agree, but for whiskey I think that some yeast adds to the character. I wouldn't want a heavy yeast influence but I do my stripping run without racking off of the yeast.

I think it was on SD, but a while back there was an article on compounds formed in still boilers by heat breakdown of yeast cells as having an important beneficial effect on whiskey flavor. For whatever it's worth, all of our malt whiskeys are distilled on the lees.

grim

Worst bourbons in the world are distilled on the lees.

Problem is, the best bourbons are too.

DonMateo

Well this will be my final post on this topic. So I did 4 x 200l washes and got about 160 litres out of each. At the end of the day the first stripping run was not great the next 2 were OK and the last one was OK. The final spirit run however was very nice. A bit different to my previous EC1118 washes but very respectable with a LOT of flavor. So I am a believer that it does make good whiskey but not that its better than what I was making before.

punkin

So that's the end of it?

zymurgybob

The definitive answer to the question "Dose distilling on the lees make bad whiskey?": It depends.

Kapea

@zymurgybob said: The definitive answer to the question "Dose distilling on the lees make bad whiskey?": It depends.

Definitely maybe!

Smaug

@Kapea said: Just passing along an observation I've made.
As a diminutive friend who posts here from time to time says, "The further you are from the yeast (when you distill), the better."

Clarence also commented on more than one occasion that (and I'm paraphrasing) he much preferred a "cleaner" finished product. He very likely never ventured far from center at the cutting bench was always my impression.

Kapea

The joy of being a hobbyist!

Smaug

Sure. I never cared much for "flavored" spirits when I started. I only ever wanted the the dead center too.

Things have definitely changed for me as time passed. Now I can't seem to get whiskey out of my brain. Can take or leave the "clean" spirits.

punkin

Probably why i love reposada so much.

grim

Beginning to think that the funky Jamaicans don’t even bother with cuts.

Kapea

I enjoy "flavored" spirits as much as the next guy. I don't enjoy the pain that comes with bad cuts though. Many delicious flavored spirits are made from deep hearts, doncha know mon?

punkin

Same reason i eat deep fried shit sometimes. It ain't finely balanced Thai sauce, but it's pretty damn good for a change.