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Newbie question - If I am stripping "beer" to make whiskey or saving heads/tails cuts from a whiskey spirit run, at the end of the month do I include this in my calculation of "proof gallons of whiskey produced" on 5110.40 - Monthly Report of Production Operations? I understand that I would need to record them on my own daily report of operations, but is it considered "produced" according to the TTB, or do I only report the whiskey as produced once it is finished and ready for barreling/storage? As a second part to this question - do "unfinished products" such as heads/tails or stripping run materials need to be entered into "storage" on report 5110.11 or again, do I wait until the product is "finished" before entering them into this report? I assume that in either case, the ingredients would need to be recorded in part VI - "materials used" in the month that they were used, regardless if they resulted in a finished product or not... Thank you!

I am located in Kane, PA. CJ Spirits. And in answer to indy......the company both times cut me a deal and I can pass it on to somebody else. Plus, they are very nice to deal with and I don't want to ruin a good thing. Not sure if you are buying any barrels yet, but sometimes they can be tough to get. These guys are good to me, so instead of having them pay for shipping twice I try to sell them local.

First, he said he does not have the capital for that software, and I understand where he came from... I am not sure I agree with using the costly software for small folks starting out, a couple hundred dollars a month is great if it does everything and you have ten thousand a month coming in, but they don't do everything, they can't... You still have to do all the measuring, all the data entry, and you have to do it their way, they just do math and database recording... sure they fill out the reports, but in my opinion, you really need to do the reports yourself for at least a little bit, your name is still on them!... Oh, and from what I hear, don't try to go back and correct a mistake you found you made in one of those programs... worse than trying to correct something in your Retail POS system... I spend maybe an hour a week filling out basic daily log forms I created in excel for each kind of tracked activity: received fermentables, fermentations, transfers, stripping runs, whiskey runs, neutral runs, botanical runs, dilution, gauging and bottling runs, barreling and entry to storage, and removal from bond... In the beginning, it was well more than an hour, but you get good at it... those forms have no math, they are simple daily records that I print out a bunch of each type and keep in the distillery area, I do something on the list above, I fill it out by hand... (it is also a great thing to show people on tours to show the detail of records you keep to appease the government and why they should buy a bottle of something that is truly 'hand crafted!) Monthly, tonight, actually, I will take all those daily record sheets in my binder and last month's forms, and tally up totals.... I will go through my distillation records and total up any 'finished spirits' and open the 5110.40 "production", I will go through it and triple check everything.. I will go through my dilution, gauging, and bottling records and my 'removed from bond records and tally them up and I will fill out 5110.28 "processing".. I didn't fill any new barrels this month, so my 5110.10 'Storage' will have the same values that I ended with last month... I literally spent more time typing this than I probably will doing the reports tonight.... I have looked at putting my data into one of the lower cost systems like distillitrak. I probably will go with them eventually, but the startup is too time intensive at the moment, as the setup of vendors, every container, every ingredient, etc... are one thing, but every time you turn around to do something different, you have to go add this or that to your ingredients or vendors or items or whatever before proceeding, it really seems to hurt the artistic workflow of a small shop.... you should do it in excel sheets of your own making for a year or so, specifically so you know what the software you will likely eventually purchase is doing... The biggest reason I will eventually get a system is for more than 10 products and products at multiple proofs, that is where spreadsheets fail and a database shines... but even then, it will do things the operator does not understand, especially if the operator does not have an intimate understanding of how the daily records and monthly TTB forms relate to each other... OK, I spent an hour and a half writing this... time to do reports..

Did you get this sorted out? I'm trying to figure out the same thing. if I do 4 stripping runs, yielding 25 PG each, then combine them for a 100 PG spirit run, what's the best way to account for this in daily records? And then, I'm trying to figure out how to account for losses in distilling, if I distill my wash down till I'm getting 15% ABV out, and dump the wash, how do I account for the lost alcohol?