All-Bran wash

About this recipe

This recipe comes from rad14701, who developed it with fellow distiller LWTCS as a sister to his Gerber recipe - the same method, with All-Bran breakfast cereal in place of Gerber's baby barley cereal. Bran is rich in the B vitamins and minerals that plain sugar lacks, so the yeast is fully fed without tomato paste, nutrients or acid.

The quantities are refreshingly easy to remember: for every litre of water, one cup of sugar, a quarter-cup of cereal and half a tablespoon of yeast, scaled to your batch. The sugar is inverted first, which gives the yeast a quick, clean start.

Original recipe discussion ↗

Ingredients and calculator

Active baking yeast - the ordinary dried yeast sold for bread.

Method

1. Invert the sugar. Simmer the sugar with an equal amount of water for 30 minutes or longer. This splits the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which the yeast can use straight away. The original uses no acid, so the simmer mainly dissolves and sterilises the sugar; to invert it properly, add about ¼ tsp (1 g) of citric acid per kilogram - see the guide to inverted sugar.
2. Combine. Add the hot syrup to the rest of the water - cold, to bring the temperature down - together with the crushed cereal, making up the full volume.
3. Cool. Let it cool to 35 °C (95 °F).
4. Pitch the yeast. Add the yeast.
5. Aerate. Aerate the wash for one hour to give the yeast the oxygen it needs to multiply.
6. Seal and ferment. Fit the lid and an airlock. It should ferment dry within about seven days.
7. Rack into the boiler. By the end of fermentation the wash should be clearing, so it can be racked straight into the boiler, leaving the solids behind.

Fermentation

Expect a steady, clean fermentation that finishes in about a week. The cereal's solids settle as it finishes, and the wash begins to clear by itself - one of the reasons the recipe is so easy to live with.

Distilling

The wash gives good results in either a pot still or a reflux still. Run it through a reflux still for a clean neutral; strip and re-run in a pot still if you would like to keep a little of the soft, bready character for ageing or flavouring. Discard the foreshots and make your cuts by smell and taste.

Fermenting a wash is legal in many places; distilling it often is not. Distil only where it is legal to do so, and check your local licensing first.

Troubleshooting

It's slow to start.

Check it cooled to about 35 °C before pitching, and that it was aerated for the full hour.

It hasn't cleared.

Give it a few more days, or let it stand somewhere cool so the solids drop out before racking.

Variations

• Total cereal in place of All-Bran works the same way.
• Gerber barley cereal gives rad14701's original Gerber recipe, with a slightly maltier note.
• Less cereal: ¾ cup per 4 L is usually enough.

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