DR Distillery

On your first question: In a previous life I have seen that done with sugar washes with corn added to them (no cook method) that were not distilled on the grain. The grain left over stayed in the fermenter and was reset immediately with more sugar/water or a combination backset left from the run & sugar / water. There are some good threads on here talking about sour mash methods so maybe search for them for more details. Since I don't have a true mash cooker, I add water to my stillage inside the still, heat to where I want it, screen / pump the backset over to my open top fermenter / mix in my grain. Once everything is mixed and my iodine test is good, then I'll add cold water to bring it down to pitching temp. I end up with 31 to 33% backset on a 500 gal fermentation. All the spent grain is used for pig feed. Hope that helps a little.

Welcome Chris and best of luck.

and if your in need of insurance services, Aaron is the man to go to, in my opinion

Don Mateo - For what it's worth (since we are on another continent), our tastings and tours of the distillery are free. Inline with what Aaron mentioned, our state (PA) laws allow us to sell by the bottle and by the glass. We have not been open long but the vast majority of those who come in are buying bottles and/or mixed drinks. We are located in a rural area (on a farm) so there is quite a bit of repeat customers from the local area throughout the week. Weekend's are when we see the majority of our new customers / groups (bike runs, etc). With the new customers / groups, 95%+ are either buying bottle(s) and/or mixed drinks with the majority purchasing both. There are quite a few small wineries in our area so there is an established "trail" for folks from the region and tourists who are looking to sample craft beverages and we have been tying into that. We have been contacted by wineries and a brewery about some cooperative marketing (mainly word of mouth recommendations).

Welcome Ben! We are only about 65 miles from you so when you are up and going we will definitely drop by. If you have any questions we will be more than glad to help out any way can.

Thanks RBCD and THEJOLLYDODGER! We will be doing a traditional rye in both aged and unaged versions. Of course the unaged will be under a specialty category. We planned on that being the second spirit released but interest in rum and flavored whiskey is such that those will be released before the rye.

Hi MG Thanks for the welcome! We had been looking at this venture for several years and finally decided to go ahead with it after alot of research, visits, and seeing the laws (on tasting rooms, sales by the bottle & glass, etc) open up here in PA a couple of years ago. With a love of whiskey / a family heritage in the old days of white liquor, we decided to take the plunge... I may give you a shout to talk about chilling options. I built a basic closed loop system for condenser cooling water that has been sufficient for both stills so far but I'm pretty sure the system will need some extra cooling later in the summer. Thanks again! Mark

Hello, We are a new distillery located outside Slippery Rock Pa on a farm where we have purpose built a distillery and tasting / sales room with a pavilion outside as well. Its been a lengthy but enjoyable process and several folks we met here have been a great help along the way. At the moment we are in production with our corn whiskey, finishing up testing on Rye, and beginning testing on our vodka recipe. We anticipate our grand opening for the public in June. We are running a 250 gal pot still w/ thumper and a smaller test still that we can run w/ pot head or column. Our primary large fermenters are open top cypress and we are running smaller plastic fermenters for micro bacth and test batches. We are fortunate to have multiple spring water sources, including one at the distillery property, and plenty of local farms for all our grains. Thanks to those who have helped along the way and we look forward to being an active part of this site. DR Distillery Keister Road Slippery Rock, PA