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Lack of Smoke Flavor in My Peated Whisky
I recently mashed and distilled a peated whisky and im not getting much peat in the product. wondering if anyway has any advice on what i did wrong?Mash x28kg Gladfield heavy peat smoke malt22 litres strike water + 15 litres spargeyeast – SafSpirit M-1OG 1.072FG 1.002 – after two weeksStripping run produced 16.8L @ 28% ABV left low wines in carboy for about two weeks before product runProduct Run, Heats cuts 5:11:
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14 Replies
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The answer might be in the “recently”, I’m not a 100% sure as to where the peat profile comes across in terms of early or late.I know the Christmas cake with whiskey comes with age, it may be there earlier and I can’t pick it All the bright notes in rum come from age IMOGive it 12 months and see how it goes ” you can pick your nose and you can pick your friends; but you can’t always wipe your friends off on your saddle” sage advice from Kinky Friedman
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About 12 months ago I made some scotch style Whisky and used gladfields heavy peated 50/50 with golden promise as the grain bill.I’m happy with how smokey it is at this stage, having said that it’s still got a couple of years left to sit in the barrel.From my own experience and what from I’ve read and been told by other distillers it’s very important to strip way down low when collecting the low wines. A lot of the smoke and other flavour comes through at that point.You also need to make wider cuts than with many other spirit types, then have to have the patience to let it barrel age.
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I do what the big boys do and recycle my peated feints. I’ve made several heavily peated single malts, but only the first batch didn’t contain feints from the previous batch.
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Made a couple of peated bourbons that turned out nice. If I remember correctly most of the Smokey goodness comes in late on the run, end of hearts and into the tails.
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Sorry for the hijack. I keep seeing ratios of different malts referenced in single malt scotch. Wouldn’t that make it not a ….single malt…? Or does single malt only mean it wasn’t blended with another distilleries whiskey?
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Single Malt means the Scotch comes from a single destillery. It does not specify how many variants of malted barley are used.
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A few pointers Stripping Go lower Option A strip in to the same container until you get next to nothing (0-2%) off the spout, you should be about 20%abv there.Option BStrip until you have about 25-28% combined collected in one vessel Strip the remainder in to a seperate vessel, add this back to the next strip.This ensures that you have captured almost all the smokiness there is.Spirit runGo lowerIf you want a lot of flavour you have to be brave.Dig deep in the tails for flavour, some tails flavour is fine, if it tastes bad don’t include it but if it’s just tailsy include it.Give it time, wood and air and you’ll have a great product in a few years.If you want to drink earlier than a few years there is a neat trick you can use, Sweetwater.How to find the Sweetwater?Go lower.Sweetwater will be appearing when the ABV is really low, way after the cloudy tails.It’ll look like water, be about 5-10% and taste like ashtray.The few times I did it I didn’t change how I was running untill I got to the Sweetwater, I ran it as a spirit run all through the tails untill I got to the Sweetwater, no ramping up of the collection rate at all.Maybe you’ll get the same result if you strip hard and fast, I don’t know.Add the Sweetwater to your normal cuts, as you will not have tailsy flavour that needs aging out it will be done quicker, in about a year.I’ve done it both ways but do it like Saltstaves now, strip low and reuse all the faints in the next run.To summarise, go lowerDon’t be a dick
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Oh well that’s easy for a home distiller. Thanks for clarifying. It still means all grains are malted barley though correct? No adjuncts or unmalted?
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Oh well that’s easy for a home distiller. Thanks for clarifying. It still means all grains are malted barley though correct? No adjuncts or unmalted?Depends where you are it seems. Heres something i found.Single malt whisky is malt whisky from a single distillery.Single malts are typically associated with single malt Scotch, though they are also produced in various other countries. Under the United Kingdom’s Scotch Whisky Regulations, a “Single Malt Scotch Whisky” must be made exclusively from malted barley (although the addition of E150A caramel colouring is allowed), must be distilled using pot stills at a single distillery, and must be aged for at least three years in oak casks of a capacity not exceeding 700 litres (150 imperial gallons; 180 US gallons).While the Scotch model is usually copied internationally, these constraints may not apply to whisky marketed as “single malt” that is produced elsewhere. For example, there is no definition of the term “single malt” in relation to whisky in the law of the United States, and some American whiskey advertised as “single malt whiskey” is produced from malted rye rather than malted barley.
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A technique I have experimented with to add smokiness:I purchased a cocktail smoker and have a number of different woodchips to make the smoke. Also have peat. It doesn’t take much material. Put a half cup of desired likker into a gallon jug. Fill the jug with dense smoke until it’s full. Cork jug and shake it hard AF until all the smoke is infused into the likker. Repeat 10xNow you have a smoke extract concentrate. 10 gallons of smoke in a 1/2 cup of extract. Test out a few drops in your nightly dram. See how much you like. Do the math and add half that to your aging likker and age it for a year or two. Maybe make up a bottle of likker and try it on a smaller scale before spiking a whole batch. Give it some time to integrate. Try doing this with 15,20,30 gallons of smoke. Mix the concentrate with water and run it on a small batch still. 1 gallon. Maybe 1 liter. The smoke seems to stick to the water. The product will be clear and smoky. Use that to proof. Experiment with it a little. Oak, Peach, Mesquite, Cherry, Peat, Plum, Apple, Cuban Cigar – lots of different profiles that you can infuse subtly in a few different ways. Cheers,jonny————i prefer my mash shaken, not stirred————
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That technique works 100% jonny, some of the best home distilled Scotch style whisky that Ive ever tried was done that way , fella from another forum who goes by the ID of “Bent Cracker ” made that. He used genuine Scottish peat for that though. Man that stuff was smokey , but O so good, that particular Whisky is what got me interested in having a go at making Scotch…..If I can ever replicate that stuff I’ll be a very happy boy.Not saying its the only way , but another way to skin that particular cat.
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Thanks very much Swedish Pride. To summarise:
- l’ll strip down until total low wines is around 20%
- I’ll run spirit run until after the cloudy clears for the ‘ashtray’ jar and add to product
- I will collect faints for next run
@jonnys_spirt I can try fixing my current product by adding smoke
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I’ve actually never collected after the cloudy, I’ve pretty much turned the still off once the cloudy product comes through so I don’t know what’s down there.
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I make 2 different styles of single malts – Highland/Lowland style without peated malt, and an Islay style with moderate peat. And I’ve also struggled with getting a decent peaty character in the Islay style. Every one I’ve made had from 7 – 20% Simpson’s peated malt, yet they don’t have much indication that it was in the mash bill. I strip until the ABV off the spout is under 5%, and for the spirit run I add my feints from the previous batch to the low wines and collect until ABV off the spout is near zero. I discard the first jar or two of heads, and a few jars of the early nasty tails, but keep everything else as feints.On my 4th peated single malt attempt (Jan 2023) I decided to collect into half-sized jars – rather than 24 12 oz jars I collected 48 6 oz jars. That last jar was under 2% ABV, but it had a ton of peat in the flavor and nothing undesirable. My keep was jars 13-33 plus jar 48, and it is developing quite nicely in a Badmo clone with a used stave head … not overpowering, but noticeable. So now I keep two jars of feints for single malts – one set for the peated versions, another for the unpeated versions.HigginsFlute buildSteamer build4 methods experimentAging proof experimentNext batch: Malt Whiskey (60 barley/30 corn/10 wheat)
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