Long first post here, but I'm kinda enthused about this.

I'm a retired geneticist, long been fascinated by the chemistry of fermentation, distillation, and aging. Decided it was time to give it a try.

I've got my first batch bubbling away right now, 8 pounds of distillers malt in 4 gallons of prepared water. Yeah, I know that 100% distillers malt is overkill and won't carry a lot of the flavors that other grains and malts will, but I figured if I'm going to start with an all-grain mash, this is kind of the training wheels version. Got just over 4 gallons after sparging, at 1.038 SG, pitched US-05 last night, and it's got a cap of yeast and light bubbling today. This is fun.

Learned some things already. I'm completely open to comment, correction, or advice.

One, I have great tap water, and it maybe kind of sucks for this. It is extremely soft, with only about 10 PPM calcium out of the tap. And the pH out of the tap is over 9, but with almost no buffering. The biochemist in me was curious and went looking, and it seems our friends the amylases like 50 PPM or better to function properly. I used the calculator at BrewersFriend, prepped 5 gallons of water, added one teaspoon each gypsum and calcium chloride, and one quarter teaspoon baking soda, which according to the calculator put me in good shape on all the major minerals.

While I was at it I neutralized chloramine. Our tap water has 3-3.5 PPM. I know a lot of people say this doesn't matter, but I figured it doesn't hurt anything. Added 400 mg Sodium Ascorbate, which is about a 1.5 x excess of neutralizing ability. It's interesting that about 15 minutes after adding it, I could faintly smell chlorine as the chloramine dissociated and the chlorine outgassed. Within an hour of that smell was gone.

Second, I could easily have had a lot more grain in my mash. My next batch I'm up into 10 lb in 4 gallons - 2 lb distillers malt, 8 lb flaked barley. Should be enough diastatic power, and if I just extrapolate from 8 to 10 lb, I should get closer to 1.050 SG.

I mashed for 90 minutes @148F, and monitored SG about every 15 minutes through the process. It kept rising for the first hour. There should have been a massive overkill of diastatic power in the mash, so I'm assuming that what I was seeing was more starches being extracted from the malt, and then almost instantly converted. I had my malt milled by the supplier, and I think it could be substantially more finely ground, to help extraction. Sparging through a BIAB was almost trivially easy. So my next batch I'm also going to grind substantially finer than I did this time.

Checked pH 15 minutes after adding grain, and it looks fine at 5.4. but it crept up, and by 45 minutes it was up to 5.8 - 6.0. I added 4 ml of lactic acid 88%, and it was slightly overkill, dropping my pH to 5.1. It was back to about 5.3 in my final wort, after sparging with a gallon of additional water. In my next batch I'm going to try adding two ml of lactic acid to my prep water before I start. Should put me pretty close to the appropriate pH after adding grain, and then I can monitor it from there. I assume I'll get a better feel for this as I do more batches.

I'm starting with an Air Still, and yes I'm aware of its limitations. It also has the advantage of allowing me to try lots of small recipes, and I have a program for the next few months working through different single grains and malts ( plus distillers malt for enzyme), to create exemplars of the flavor profile for each of these things. Basically educate myself on the flavors of things that go into whiskey, while I'm educating myself on mashing, fermenting, and distilling.

I'll throw in some fun projects along the way, probably a sweet feed mash, a rum, and a redistilled apricot infusion when my friend's apricot tree starts producing massive overloads of fruit later this spring. So many good things to make!

I'm already putting plans together to build a still probably late this summer, probably an 8 gallon milk can style kettle, with a pot still head, and a separate CCVM reflux head. I have some skills working with copper and soldering, so part of my plan is to make the things elegant and beautiful. I have some ideas for an elegant and simple control mechanism for the CCVM condenser, which I will almost certainly talk about here once I get my ideas refined. Life is too short not to fill it with sexy things. I'm looking forward to learning and participating with people who've already done a lot of the work to figure this stuff out.