How To Make Your Own All Grain Mash recipe from Scratch

Introduction

If you're new to moonshining, developing your own mash recipe can seem like a daunting task, but I'm here to show you just how simple it is.

In this article, I'm going to show you a very simple process you can use to create your own individual mash recipe from scratch.

To watch a full tutorial video of this process click the video below.

Most beginners start out by copying other people's recipes or just following a set of instructions for a recipe and making it that way.

And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's the best place to start when you're new. But at some point, you will want to be able to develop your own recipes with your own style. It can seem a little bit complicated, but there is a simple process and I’m about to walk you through it.

Mashing terms to understand first

What is an all grain Mash?

An all grain mash is a traditional mash where starches in the grain are converted into fermentable sugars using enzymes in malted grains or commercially produced enzymes. This eliminates the need to add store-bought sugar.

What is the difference between a mash bill and a recipe?

A mash bill is the percentage of each grain in the recipe, while a recipe includes the exact weight of each grain and the amount of water used.

For example one Mash bill might be 50 percent corn, 20 percent malted barley and 30 percent rye. That's the mash bill, but that's not really a recipe. The recipe would be something like 10 pounds of corn, 4 pounds of malted barley, and 6 pounds of rye to in 10 gallons of water. That's a recipe.

The process I'll be teaching you in this article builds the recipe and the mash bill at the same time. So, it makes it very easy for you to do both. Once you have the mash bill you can use it to create any size batch recipe you would like.

What is Points per Pound per Gallon(PPG)?

PPG is short for Points per Pounds per Gallon. This is just a measurement of how much starch is in the grain that can be converted into sugar. PPG allows you to predict what your starting gravity of a mash will be, thus allowing you to calculate what the ABV% of your final fermented mash.

Each grain has its own PPG, they are mostly very close to each other, the average is 30 points per pounds per gallon for most grains.

What is Diastatic Power(DP)?

Diastatic Power is really just the a grain's ability to convert the starch that's in the grain or in a recipe.

We measure that by degrees Lintner and some grains have zero degrees Lintner or zero diastatic power and some grains have enough diastatic power to convert their own starches and some grains have enough to convert their own starches plus other starches within the recipe. So, every malted grain has its own degree Lintner.

What is Specific Gravity?

Specific Gravity is simply a measurement of a solution in water. The tool we use for this is the triple scale hydrometer, also known as a saccharometer because it specifically measure sugar in solution with water.

The Specific Gravity scale number ranges from 1.000 and up. When we're talking about gravity points in a recipe, we're really just talking about that number after the decimal. The "1" that comes before the decimal is just the measurement of water with nothing. As we add sugar to water, the number right of the decimal starts to rise, and those are the points that we're talking about when we're talking about gravity points in a recipe.

Three mash decisions to make

To use this process effectively you need to make three decisions. These three components are the basis for all the math involved with creating the mash bill and the recipe.

What grains to use in your moonshine mash?

You need to choose your grains based on the flavor profile you're trying to achieve. You also need to choose at least one malted grain. Remember, only malted grains have Diastatic Power to convert the starches from your grains into sugar for your yeast. More on this later.

What target Original Gravity are you going to try to achieve?

Your starting gravity will ultimately dictate your final ABV% for your fermentation. A good all around Original Gravity for whiskeys is in the 1.060 to 1.090 range.

What size moonshine batch are you going to make?

This process creates a mash bill and a recipe at the same time. You can choose whatever size you like for the process and once you've created the mash bill it easily translates to any size batch.

Let's create a moonshine mash/recipe

Now, let's create a simple bourbon mash bill and recipe using this simple process.

Step 1: What grains are we going to use?

Since I like a good wheated bourbon that is what we're going to make. The grains we're going to use are Corn Wheat and Distiller's Malt. Distiller's malt is just a fancy malted 2-row with a very high diastatic power of 240 degrees lintner.

Step 2: What is our target gravity going to be?

When I'm making a bourbon whiskey I like to have an original gravity around 1.065. This is a personal preference of mine. You can choose whatever target gravity you want. That said, If you are aiming for a high gravity like 1.090 or higher you will have some variable considerations to keep your fermentation going, but that's a discussion for another article.

Step 3: What size batch are we going to make?

For this example, we are going to be making a 6. Remember, after you've gone through this process to create your mash bill it is easy to create any size batch.

Step 4: How to calculate how much grains to use?

The first thing we're going to do is figure out how many pounds of grain we need to use in this 6 gallon batch in order to have a target gravity of 1.065 or 65 gravity points.

We start by averaging out the PPG of the grains we're using in this mash bill.

Remember, PPG is the points per pounds per gallon, and every grain has its own PPG. You can Google that, and Google will tell you what the PPG of a specific grain is. Or, you can have a chart, and we have a chart on typical PPG of most commonly used grains. We also have a FREE downloadable guides sheets that lists out the PPG values of the most common grains.

The average ppg of the grains that we're using in this recipe is 31. So we're going to take 31 and divide that into our target gravity or our gravity points, which is 65. And that's going to give us a 2.09 or Which means, we are going to use 2 pounds of grain for every gallon of water in the recipe. We're doing a 6 gallon batch, so we multiply that by 2, we get 12. 12 pounds of grain total in the recipe, That's the corn, the wheat, and the barley. All of that added together is going to be 12 pounds.

Step 5: Calculate amount of each grain

distiller's Malt

The next step is going to be figuring out how much of each of those grains that we're going to use in this recipe. And we're going to start with our malted barley. Because you always have to have a minimum amount of the malted grains that you're using for conversion, in our case, Distiller's Malt.

This is easy to figure out. We are just going to be using the diastatic power of the Distiller's Malt that we're using. And we're going to be using the total number of grains in our recipe, which is 12 pounds.

We have to understand first that a diastatic power for the entire recipe by pound needs to be a minimum of 30.

Anything under 30 is not going to have enough diastatic power to convert the starches in all the grains in the recipe. Now, I fudge that number up to 35. I use 35 as my minimum. This just gives me a cushion so that I don't have to worry if I don't get a full conversion. It gives me a little extra diastatic power.

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Now, in order to make this calculation, we are going to take the number of pounds in the recipe, in our case 12, we're going to multiply that by 35. 12 times 35 is 420. So in this recipe, we need a minimum of 420 degrees Lintner total in order to convert all the starches. Now in order to figure out how many pounds of the distiller's malt we need, we're gonna divide the 420 by the diastatic power of the grain. In most of my recipes, I use a distiller's malt. It has a degrees Lintner of 240, and when you're purchasing your malted grains, you can always find out from the person you are purchasing them from what the degrees lintner of that grain is. 420 total divided by 240 gives us 1.75, so we know we need at least 1.75 lbs of distiller malt to convert all the starches.

Now you can leave that number just like that, and that's how much malted barley you're gonna use. Or you can bump that up a little bit if you want more flavor from the barley. That's all up to you. But we know the minimum. Now, I'm going to bump that up to two pounds, just because of math.

Corn

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In our case, we're making a bourbon, and so if we want to follow the TTB guidelines for what a bourbon is, we know that we need to have at least 51 percent corn to call it a bourbon.

So we take 12 pounds and multiply by 51%. This will give us 6.12 pounds. I'm gonna also round that number up because I like a little extra corn flavor and I can round that up to whatever number I want. I'm bumping up from 6.12 to 7 pounds keeping the math simple. So now we know we're going to use 7 pounds of corn and we're going to use 2 pounds of the distiller's malt or malted barley.

Wheat

Next is the third grain, the wheat, which is going to be easy to figure out because 7 pounds of corn in a 12 pound recipe is 58%. We're going to have 58% corn, two pounds of distiller malt, which comes out to be 17%. So we have a total in the mash bills so far, 58% corn and 17%. That is 75% of our total grains.

Which means the last grain, our wheat, is going to be 25 percent of that which is going to be 3 pounds 3 is 25% of 12.

So now we have our mash bill, which is 58%t corn 17% distiller's malt and 25% wheat. We also have created a recipe at the same time, which is six gallons of water, seven pounds of corn, two pounds of distiller's malt, and three pounds of wheat.

So, as you can see, using this simple process, we can create a mash bill and a recipe at the same time.

Now, we can take that mash bill of 58%, 17%, and 25%, and we can make whatever size batch we want based on the two pounds of grain per gallon that we decided on in step 4.

Take the time to learn this process and I promise you will be glad you did.