Below you’ll find some amazing whiskey recipe guides that we’ve discovered throughout the distilling community. Try them for yourself and let us know how your batch turns out!
How to Make Whiskey Recipe
Making moonshine is an art that has roots stretching thousands of years into our past. Getting hands on with this process is a way to experience history first-hand. The overall process is relatively simple on its face. However, as with so many things, once you begin the process of trial and error you will learn the nuances that can make is quite challenging. Starting off the process with the right moonshine ingredients will make all the difference in the spirits that you’ll be able to create. A quick and simple overview of the process of making moonshine is as follows:
Procedure
- Gather Your Materials and Moonshine Ingredients
- Mix Your Chosen Type of Mash
- Ferment Your Mash
- Prepare Your Still
- Transfer Fermented Mash to Your Still
- Run Your Still
- Separate Foreshots, Heads, Hearts, and Tails
- Clean Your Still
For a more complete guide on making moonshine, check out our how to make whiskey article. We also have complete guides on how to make vodka, how to make rum, and how to make gin.
Whiskey Recipes
Below you’ll find some amazing whiskey recipe guides that we’ve discovered throughout the distilling community. Try them for yourself and let us know how your batch turns out!
A very in-depth video on how to make single malt whiskey shot with our pals over at Downslope Distilling in Englewood, CO
Sweet Feed Moonshine Recipe
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- 8 Gallon fermenter with lid and airlock
- sweet feed (Sweet feed has several different grains and molasses making it a great tasting whiskey.)
- One package of Whisky Yeast
- 6 pounds sugar
- Water 6.5 Gallon Recipe Put enough feed to cover bottom of 8 gallon fermenter bucket, a good 5 inches deep.
- Add 6 pounds of sugar. Fill 1/2 fermenter full with boiling water. Mix until sugar is dissolved. Mix the rest and finish filling with warm water until you get to 6.5 gallons of mash or 3″ of head space in fermenter.
- Add the yeast after it has cooled to the recommended temperature of 75F to 80F. Cover with lid and use airlock. 5-6 days later it’s ready to distill. This recipe is an old one that works well. Run it at 150-160 proof.
- Filter the mash before distilling to remove solids and sediment or it will stick to the bottom or to the heating elements and burn giving off flavors. Suggest to run it through a plated or reflux still once or if using a pot run it through the still twice. One stripping run then a spirit run with a pot still. If using a pot still you will want to ferment enough volume to yield enough to run a stripping run. Estimated 4 fermenters with this sweet feed recipe then stripping run to yield around 3-4 gallons of low wines then dilute down with water to 50% before running spirit run. age on some oak for a few months to really bring in the character.
Good Whiskey Recipe
I thought you might like this moonshine recipe to enable you to make whiskey at home. The ingredients are malt, sugar, yeast and water. You can buy the malt from most big supermarkets, if they don’t have it they will probably order it for you. (You can also purchase it from us here) To every 1-2 pounds of malt you will add 1 gallons of hot water, up to 6.5 gallons. Dissolve 5 pounds of sugar and add yeast. Your yeast might require nutrients. (Always check the package to be sure.) Mix all this together in a barrel made of food grade plastic, stainless steel, or copper, under no circumstances use aluminum.
Keep it covered with cheese cloth to keep the bugs out (or just put the lid on your fermenter). Keep it in a cool place till it ferments. Then you can cook it off in your still and you have the smoothest whiskey you have ever tasted. After you run off the whiskey, it is clear like water. You can color it by taking a piece of dry fruit wood (or maple), burn the fruit wood over a flame till it is blackened, then drop the burned fruitwood in your clear whiskey. (You can also use oak spirals or oak chips). In a few days the whiskey will be the color of store bought whiskey.
Rye Whiskey Recipe
A Rye Whiskey recipe by law is made from a mash that has at least 51% rye. The other ingredients that are usually found in a rye whiskey recipe are malted barley, wheat and corn. Although the law requires a rye whiskey recipe to have at least 51% rye most traditional rye whiskey recipes have more like 80% rye to give rye whiskey that spicy or fruity flavor to the whiskey.
Recipe for 6.5 gallon batch
INGREDIENTS
- 7 Lbs. Flaked Rye
- 2 Lbs. Malted Barley (Distiller’s Malt)
- 1 Lbs. Rye Malt
- 6 gallons of water
- 1 packet of Tubo Whiskey Yeast
DIRECTIONS
Heat water to 70 degrees and then mix in malt barley, malted rye and flaked rye. While stirring the mixture slowly heat to 160 degrees (raise temperature 5-10 degrees every 2-4 minutes).
Keep mixture at 160 degrees stirring constantly for 1.5-2 hours to convert starch into fermentable sugar and dextrin.
Filter off liquid and place into fermentation device and allow to cool to 70- 80 degrees. Immediately pitch one packet of whiskey yeast.
Stir liquid for 1 minute then cover and seal with a airlock.
Mash will take 5-7 days to ferment.
After fermentation is complete pour into the still, filtering it through a pillow case or strainer and cheesecloth to remove all solids.
Distill rye whiskey at no more then 160 proof. Distilleries will usually do a stripping run then spirit run to produce a quality rye whiskey. After distillation rye whiskey distilleries will proof down to 125 proof and put in a new whiskey barrels for two years. Alternative to whiskey barrels can be oak chips and or oak spirals for the hobbyist.
Corn Whiskey Recipe
INGREDIENTS
- 10 lbs. Whole kernel corn, untreated
- 5 Gallons Water
- 1 whiskey pure
DIRECTIONS
Put corn in a burlap bag and wet with warm water. Place bag in a warm dark
place and keep moist for about ten days. When the sprouts are about a 1/4″ long the corn is ready for the next step.
Wash the corn in a tub of water, rubbing the sprouts and roots off. Throw the sprouts and roots away and transfer the corn into your primary fermenter With a pole or another hard object mash the corn, make sure all kernels are cracked. (You can skip this step entirely by buying corn already sprouted)
Add 5 gallons of boiling water and when the mash cools add yeast. Seal fermenter and vent with a water sealed vent.
Fermentation will take 7-10 days. When fermentation is done, pour into the still filtering through a pillow case or straining bag to remove all solids. Distill.
Grandpas Pride Recipe
Created by Rod in honor of his Grandfather
Some of the smoothest Moonshine you will every drink
10 Gallon Batch
6 gallons water, 2.5 lbs quick oats ( Quaker Oats 1 min oats ) 10 pounds white sugar, 2 pounds brown sugar, 1/2 cup of bread yeast.
Put 6 gallons of hot 120F water in fermenter and stir in both sugars and quick oats stirring the hell out of it until all sugars are dissolved. Let cool to 80-85F then throw yeast. After fermentation is complete usually about 7 days then let settle ( clear ). Siphon off the top into a still then before you run it, throw in one pomelo fruit. Peel and quarter cut a pomelo fruit into quarter sections and add to the still. Then run that baby and out comes pure liquid gold.
It is legal to own a moonshine still or alcohol still, but illegal to produce and sell alcohol without a proper license.