Spitfire

@meerkat It seems our rum contains dissolved solids, as we get a 41.97% reading with our SNAP 50 and the lab gives us a reading of 42.52%. They use a DMA 5000M, and their method takes into account dissolved sugar and solids. Why the rum contains dissolved solids is still an open question in my mind, but surely enough we cannot trust the SNAP 50 readings for this particular alcohol.

@Silk City Distillers We had fresh 95% alc./vol. alcohol and our SNAP 50 gave us a 95.01% reading, and we took measure from a few off the shelf bottles and our readings were always on target even on a summer day. This is why we are thinking that they are some dissolved solids in our rum which would offset the SNAP. We aged the rum in small bourbon barrel casks, nothing fancy.

Hello, My understanding is that the distillation process takes out any residual sugar left from the fermentation, is this accurate? We double distill our rum and age it for 18 months. We use a calibrated SNAP 50 to measure the ABV and we are off by 0.6% alc./vol when it comes to our rum, when we compare the readings with a external lab. So we are thinking, either there is a small quantity of dissolved leftover sugar in our rum (we did not add any sugar after distillation), in which case it would explain why the SNAP 50 does not give an accurate reading as it does not work with obscurated spirits. Another hypothesis is that the rum was not filtered enough and residual particules impact the SNAP reading. Your thoughts? Chris

I should have mentioned, the container we are looking for is to be used for transport and therefore short-term use, it will likely sustain a fair share of shock and vibrations. A food-grade plastic drum properly secured on a pallet will do the job.

Hello, we are looking for plastic jugs / drums suitable for high-proof alcohol. Our provider can get us containers made from FDA compliant resins, but we are not sure if this is sufficient or not, we don't want our gin to taste like cheap plastic toys after a couple of days.... Anyone had good or bad experience with food-grade plastic drums and booze ? Thanks. Chris

I have been told yesterday by a reseller that the enolmatic is not recommended as the hoses and other materials are not rated for high proof alcohols. Interesting.

Hello, We are considering purchasing a manual machine to fill 50 ml bottles with our gin. The volume is not big enough to consider anything automated. I checked a couple of manual fillers on Amazon, they all share the same design (more or less), and some comments said that the volume of liquid was not accurate which is a bit of a problem. Anyone out there purchased a manual filler for these tiny bottles and had a good experience so far ? Thanks. Chris

The last tests we did were not conclusive, we could not find any rubber material that did not introduce cloudiness into alcool when immersed for a couple of days. We changed our procedures to prevent any situation where high-proof alcohol is in contact with rubber material for a long period of time.

Hello group, Anyone has done something interesting with their botanicals after they have been used for distilling? Like creating a spice mix by adding salt to ground botanicals ? Chris

We are assembling our still at this point, not in production yet. Can't wait.

Thanks. We will probably end up cleaning the kettle with an electric pressure washer unless we can find an inexpensive alternative. What do you use to push 30-45 gallons/minute into a spray ball ?

Hello, We hooked up the spray ball of our 1,000L kettle to city water using 1/2 PEX tubing and found the water pressure to be very insufficient to clean the kettle inside. At first we thought we could hook up an electric pressure washer since it could deliver many more PSI, but the output is not designed to be coupled with a standard garden hose fitting or anything off-the-shelf. Any tip on how to efficiently deliver water pressure to spray balls ? Chris

Thanks everyone, we use angelica root and oris root and noticed that our grind was too coarse. Oris root is harder than concrete and we had to switch to a new grinder. Anyone had a good experience with chamomile as a fixative?

Hello everyone, We are putting the final touch on our first compound gin these days and we’ve been asking ourselves the following question: What factors contribute to a fragrant gin ? Some gins have a good but fleeting aroma. We pour some in a glass, it smells wonderful but after 5 minutes the fragrance is almost gone. We also noticed that a fleeting aroma is not related to a weak flavour, the gin can have a bold taste but an aroma that has a short life. Other gins are much more fragrant, you can leave the glass for 20 minutes, come back and their signature aroma is still very much there. We can think of a few factors that influence the amount of fragrance in a gin: 1. Choice of method (gin basket, botanicals in kettle or compound gin) 2. Choice of botanicals Factor 1 does not seem a likely explanation, we found compound gins that are very aromatic. Factor 2 is a likely cause. Not at botanicals are created equal. Your thoughts ? Chris

The goal is to design a cam lock adapter to extract small amount of alcohol, as our tote tank is on a shelf and the top opening is not easily accessible. The adapter has a second valve at the end, controlling flow to a 1/4 vinyl tubing. So when we need for instance to extract 1 liter of GNS for R&D, we open the tote tank valve, then the adapter valve, and there is a small flow of alcohol that we can put inside a beaker. What is happening is that a small amount of alcohol is alway trapped inside the adapter between the tote tank valve and the adapter valve, and after a week or this alcohol reacts with the gaskets/seals inside this adapter.

A quick update on this topic, I finished another test this time with a silicon gasket and got same result although less cloudy than the other tests (see photo) I started another round of tests by washing all previously tested gaskets (nitrile, viton) and adding some fresh GNS in a small jar for a week, we'll see how it goes. Also, a new test this time with a neoprene gasket.

PeteB, The gasket looked exactly the same after a week marinating in alcohol, no change of colour or appearance. Your suggestion is an excellent one, I haven't thought of that. I will re-do the experiment after washing thoroughly each gasket and let everyone knows the outcome. Chris

My take on this is that everything has to be tested first, never trust blindly what the manufacturer says. Thanks to everyone.

SouthernHighlander, Thank you for the reference, the chart says that nitrile, viton and teflon are rated "conditional" for grain alcohol ethanol which leads me to conclude that they don't work with pure alcohol. I will look for seals made from other material rated "excellent". Chris

Hello, When working with GNS, we found that some "rubber" material used for seals are not alcohol-proof even though the manufacturer say they are "fit" for alcohol use. There is chemically-speaking a huge difference between a 10% abv mash and 95% GNS. Based on our experience, material like nitrile, viton and teflon tape are not suitable when used with 95% alcohol for a prolonged period of time. We did a simple test by putting a small seal in a jar with a 50 ml of 95% alcohol for a week, then rectified the alcohol to 40% by using RO water. Attached is the result for nitrile, viton and teflon tape. Nitrile creates the most opaque solution. What rubber material should we go for to prevent this? We are about to do the same test with a silicon seal. Chris

How short?

Aaron, Thank for the tip, I contacted them and they replied quickly. Here's the essence of what they told me: - When equipment is depreciated using a declining balance method this tends to not reflect the economic reality. - For stainless type equipment, like stills, a life between 20 and 30 years is selected and it is depreciated straight line. While the stainless itself is still existing at 20-30 years, the equipment could be obsolete so 20-30 years is about the right life, generally. - For the other equipment, we will often pick a 5-10 year life for each asset depending on what’s reasonable. This makes a lot of sense to me. Chris

Hello everyone, I'm trying to determine what could be a reasonable accounting method to compute equipment depreciation and life expectancy when it comes to a distillery. My accountant tells me that general equipment is usually treated using a declining balance method where 20% of the remaining cost is shaved each year from earnings. A linear method could also be used. But then he asked me, what is life expectancy of distillery equipment? Unlike a desktop computer which is worth next to nothing after 5 years, a pot still has a long life. Stainless steel tanks are still worth something after 50 years. Some other equipment has shorter life expectancy. That being said, all this equipment must be treated as a whole from an accounting perspective. This may not sound sexy, but depreciation method and equipment life expectancy can have a significant impact on financial projection, so I'm curious to hear what methods and parameters distillery owners are using. Thanks. Chris

Thanks for the input, I get from your example that the grain-to-water ratio for the mashing should be somewhere around 2 pounds per gallon of water. Would this ratio be dependent on the type of grain used, or is it pretty much the same ? I hope you had your 2nd cup of coffee by now.

Hello, I’m working to build a list of equipment for a business plan. My approach is to start with the still capacity, and then estimating the optimal capacity of the mashing tank, fermenters and low-wine receivers. The following numbers are based on my theoretical understanding of the whole process and observations in other small distilleries, I want to be challenged by people who own distilling equipment. Assuming I’m working with a 400 litres pot still, I’m figuring a 1200 litres mash tank would be convenient since it’s a 3-for-1 ratio. A full batch of mash with this equipment would require approx. 1000 lbs of grain. I’m estimating that this mash tank of 1200 litres would yield approximately 70% of its volume in strained mash ready for fermentation, therefore 1200 x .7 = 840 litres. Assuming that a fermenter can be loaded at 75% capacity (leaving room for bubbling), I would require 3 fermenters of 400 litres each for instance (or 2 of 600 litres, but I hear that a smaller fermenters are best). After the fermentation has been done, I would have 840 litres @ 8.5% abv for instance. The beer-stripping run would yield 25% of the original volume (840 litres x 0.25 = 210 litres @ 40-50% abv). If my low-wine receiver has a capacity of 450-500 litres, I could do 2 beer-stripping run (for a total of 400-420 litres) ready for the spirits run. Do these numbers make sense ? Thanks.