Once the grain is milled, we used to lift it up to the second story of the barn so it could be dropped through a grain tube into the mash cooker downstairs.
Corn, Rye and Barley Malt are added to the cooker at precise temperatures to cook the starches into fermentable sugars.
As we follow the traditional sour mash technique, we have to add backset, which is basically a number of gallons of the spent stillage from the last stripping run.
Once the mash has adequately cooled it is transferred to the fermentation room. Our old equipment consisted of three open cypress fermenters.
The first of the Double Pot still distillations is the stripping run through the lager still. Commentary from Tom.
As the vapors begin to come over from the beer still, alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so those vapors are the first to cross into the condenser where cool waters surrounds the vapor coil and condenses it back to liquid
Fresh distillate runs through the Flow Boxes where we can check temperature and proof of the distillate.
Head on out to the Rack House where the hearts are laid to rest a spell in new charred American oak barrels!
