Uncle Jesse’s Simple Sour Mash (UJSSM) is a wash recipe targeting original gravity 1.065 with a white sugar + cracked corn bill. Use it as the starting fermentation for moonshine runs in Broover, or as a reference template for your own variation.
Sugar bill, yeast, nutrient, target original gravity, and fermentation temperature band. These values pre-fill the New Wash form so you're not retyping them every time you start a fermentation.
The gold-standard beginner whiskey recipe. Sugar-head style — corn provides flavour, sugar provides the alcohol. Re-runnable across 6–8 generations: leave 1/3 of corn + yeast cake in the fermenter, top up with fresh sugar + water, no new yeast needed. Each generation deepens the corn character.
DISTILLATION: Strip first (pot still, run wide open), then spirit run on combined low wines. Discard ~30 mL foreshots per 25 L. Heads taper into hearts around 78–80°C vapour. Hearts to ~92°C, tails saved for next strip. Cuts can be wider than rum or whiskey — UJSSM is meant to taste like corn whiskey.
AGING: Drink white as moonshine, OR oak-age 3–6 months on medium-charred American oak chips (10 g/L) for amber colour + bourbon-adjacent character.
GOTCHAS: Use UNTREATED feed-grade corn (pet-store cracked corn often treated). No need to cook — boiling water dissolves sugar + softens corn. Don’t seal fermenter airtight (CO₂ + corn cap can over-pressurise). Stuck Gen 1 = pitch temp too high or chlorinated water.
Source: homedistiller.org forum, Uncle Jesse thread (circa 2008). Typical OG 1.060–1.070, FG 0.995–1.000, wash ABV ~8–9%.
Broover is the workflow app for craft and home distillers — track every wash, distillation run, and bottled lot from a single screen with full provenance from kettle to bottle. Clone this recipe to your account and Broover pre-fills your next wash from these settings; strip and spirit runs link automatically, and the bottled lot at the end traces all the way back to this recipe.