Adding caraway to a rye whiskey mash

Windy-City

My next mash I plan on making will be a straight rye whiskey.
My normal recipe is 90% malted rye and 10% wheat malt.
I love that heavy rye flavor.
I also love Beefsteak rye bread with caraway seeds, so my thought was to add some caraway seed to the mash.
Has anyone tried this before and at what percentages?
I don’t want to over power it with caraway because then it would almost be like an anise licorice flavor. I just want it in the background. I use a total of 240 pounds of grain for a 100 gallon mash, I was thinking of using 5 pounds
Any thoughts?The liver is evil and must be punished

Bradster68

I'm very new but 5lbs seems like a lot.They are pretty powerful

Windy-City

2% did not seem like a lotThe liver is evil and must be punished

Salt-Must-Flow

2% did not seem like a lotI quickly searched the site and didn't see anything that matched what you were asking. I agree, 5 lbs for a 240 lb grain bill doesn't seem like a lot. My question ... did you try a small scale mash to give it a go? That's precisely what I'd do especially before going balls out with 100 gallons. That's a good deal of work, time and money.
Honestly, even if someone does chime in, your first hand experience is more important and Trumps anecdotal experiences in my opinion. I'm pretty sure you're going to have to just give it go at the smallest scale you feel comfortable with.

OtisT

Hi WindyCity.  To answer your original question first, no I have not tried it.   
My thoughts:  A 100 gallon ferment is a lot (to me) to risk, considering you don’t even know if you will like the mix in a spirit.    I’m all in for experimenting, heaven knows I have ruined many a batch doing so, but I would try something smaller first.
One possible way to risk less of your batch would be to do something like NZChris does with his essence process, if you have a small gin still.   Macerate a pound of caraway in a gallon of new make rye and run that through your gin still.  Keep track of the exact amount of caraway you added and the amount of “gin” you make.  Do the maths to understand how much caraway goes into each increments of your gin.   Then add small amounts of that “gin” into a set amount of your rye newmake and taste the results.  Add more “gin” in small increments until you get the flavor you want.   Do the maths again to figure out what that grain bill ratio would be to get you to this result in a big batch.  
...... Or just add 5 lb to your 100 gallon ferment and see what you get.  What the hell.
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Windy-City

That was funny  

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The liver is evil and must be punished

Bushman

Your question was the first thing I thought of before reading your post.  I went to my gin information and the percent that was given to me at an ADI national conference for gin was x/10 thus if you are using 240 lbs.  it would be 240/10 or 24 lbs.  If it is really a strong flavor then the percent was x/2.  Hope this helps with a starting point.
Let us know how it comes out as rye whiskey is my favorite.For New and Novice Distillers
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Ben

I was going to suggest what Otis mentioned. Seems like adding them to the low wines would deliver the most control and bang for the buck out of the seeds.:)