Whiskey making weather..

All this rain from Imelda reminds me of Hurricane Harvey.. I just don’t remember it being this warm and muggy. I was really bored then. Couldn’t get out to do anything and was off work for over a week so I worked on a recipe.

If memory serves, all I had in stock was Oat, Wheat, and Rye... that’s when I decided on naming that one Trinity. Trinity was different from the start.

First of all, the only water I had to use was from a rain barrel that i sat outside and literally filled it up during the first three days. Full of water from Hurricane Harvey. Secondly I didn’t mash it in a pot with a stir paddle like I would corn. Instead, I “brewed“ it like a beer using my home made HERMS rig.. Heat Exchanger Recirculating Mash System..

which consists of a boil pot With a stainless coil wound inside of it. A pump circulates wort from the Mash Tun through the heated coil and sparges it over the grains in the mash tun which filter through a false bottom and back out to the pump.

I remember I had no electricity due to the storm so I had to go all moonshiner on it and run the pump off the Dixie Chopper battery! Yea, that’s a zero-turn

mower..

Thirdly, it didn’t yield but about 2/3s as much wort as I expected.I found out later that was because oats are not as high in starch content as corn.

Fourthly, although the wort tasted delicious (gave the kids the un-fermented and filtered grains as oatmeal and they loved it.) The fermented wash turned out to taste very “grassy”. I learned later that this is a distinct but not unique property associated with Oats.

I learned that Oat + anything tastes grassy as a white dog.. but 6 months in an oak barrel, and the grassy taste is replaced with something divine.

One of these days, who knows? Trinity may be resurrected...

Don@TexasRiversDistilling.com