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Showing results for tags 'engineer'.
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Hello everyone, I am a graduate student at the University of Louisville studying Chemical Engineering. I am on track to graduate in May of 2018 with a master's degree in Chemical Engineering and would like to continue my work in the distilled spirits industry after graduation. I have about a year and a half of work experience, with six months working in two different distilleries. This summer, I worked at Moonshine University in Louisville, KY as a distillery assistant. I was in charge of operating and cleaning small scale distillery equipment to prepare for classes. The distillery at Moonshine University was a ~250 gallon batch system which included a small rolling mill, cooker, 3 fermenters, hybrid pot/column copper still, vodka column still, and a small 50 gallon gin still. My main responsibility was to ensure that everything was set up and ready for a class before it began. This would include buying grain and supplies, cooking and fermenting mashes, distilling fermented mashes, and a lot of cleaning. During my time there I had made batches of bourbon, whiskey, rum, scotch, gin, and vodka on the three different stills in the distillery. In addition to operating the distillery equipment, I assisted in a product development project. This large product development project was developing 5 different gin recipes using different base distillates for a large client. I was responsible for distilling the gin prototypes using lab-sized glass stills with botanical baskets. I would distill two fifths of gin for each gin recipe, and sit in on the tasting meetings where we would tweak each botanical recipe to perfect each gin. There were many iterations of each recipe, so there was a lot of gin that I had to distill. After about a month, we had five delicious gin recipes, one of which was for a barrel aged gin. I was also able to sit on a few of the classes offered at Moonshine University. I sat in on and learned from many different courses such as 5 Day Distiller Course, Advanced Sensory Analysis, Distilling Operations 201, Route to Market, Botanicals Workshop, and Bourbon Making Workshop. At these classes I got to meet and learn from many experienced engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, accountants, lawyers, and master distillers. After my summer internship ended at Moonshine University, I started a full course load of master's chemical engineering classes while also working part time at Michter's Distillery. At Michter's, I am an engineering intern doing small projects and work in different parts of the distillery. While I've been working part time at Michter's I've worked on updating SOP's for the processing department and assisting QA with GC/MS work. In addition to my small projects, I will also fill in for absent operators on the bottling line or in the warehouse. I've worked on the bottling line, filled barrels with distillate, and pulled barrel samples from the warehouse. Outside of the distilled spirits industry, I worked as a production engineer co-op for three semesters (about a year) at Ashland Specialty Chemicals in Calvert City, KY. At Ashland, I worked under two extremely talented production engineers who gave me projects that would improve production, quality, and safety in our department. I was in charge of managing out of spec material and implementing rework or removal of the OOS product. I was also responsible for creating weekly production reports for our most valuable process units and scheduling continuous improvement meetings to review my reports. I was able to learn from talented engineers, foremen, operators, managers, and other employees who taught me how to be an efficient engineer and a valuable asset to the company. As I said earlier, I am looking to continue working in the distilled spirits industry as a chemical engineer. I will graduate in May of 2018 with my master's degree in Chemical Engineering and would like to begin work soon after that. I believe my experience sets me apart from most college graduates looking to enter this field. I currently live in Louisville, KY, however I am willing to relocate to another state. I actually met Bill Owens while I was at Moonshine University, and he said that these forums are a great way to get connected in the industry and find work. If you have an opportunity for me or any leads on a job, you can email me at djbend01@louisville.edu , reply below, or PM on here. I appreciate any help anyone has to offer me! -Joey -
Hello All! I am currently looking for an opening as an assistant distiller/apprentice within the realm of craft spirits. Over the past few years, I have grown a passion for distilling and brewing and am looking for a position that allows me to use that passion towards developing a successful career. I have experience making home-brews and have just started distilling whiskeys with a homemade apparatus. I am now looking for an opportunity that allows me to learn from an experienced professional to further my own skill set. A little about me, I have worked in multiple large-scale manufacturing environments that rely heavily on distillation operation (petroleum refining and Agri-Manufacturing of vegetable oils). In these roles, I was (and still am in the refinery's case) a primary contact for troubleshooting process issues, optimizing unit operation, and formulating adjustments for different quality specifications. My experiences at the refinery have also developed my skills of data extraction and yield analysis, which are integral to any manufacturing operation. Thank you for your time! Please reach out to me privately or respond on this post for additional information.
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Hello, I am a senior chemical engineering student at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology looking to begin my career in a distillery. Recently one of my senior design projects involved the design of a distillery and I absolutely loved project. In addition to this project I have hands on experience in distillation processes from my lab experiences in unit operations working with industrial distillation columns and other equipment. I also have distilled bourbon and whiskey as projects for my classes in organic chemistry. Specific to breweries and distilleries my course work in engineering has also involved the design of several other smaller scale brewery and distillation processes. During my junior year I worked on a project modeling and designing a brewery with several mechanical and electrical engineering students. As far as hands on experience outside of academia I have had several internships in manufacturing environments. This past summer I had a co-op with a steel manufacturer performing quality control and process engineering tasks. The summer before that I interned at a utilities company on the startup of a landfill gas power plant, working directly under the project manager on the startup of a filtration process and several pieces of equipment. I am more than willing to relocate to pursue a position as a distiller. I am a quick learner and excel at applying my knowledge to hands on situations. Thank You, William Hubbs hubbswj@rose-hulman.edu
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I am a business consultant with a PE in chemical engineering. I became interested in this industry after realizing that many of the code enforcement officers dealing with the many new, small distilleries have little or no background in dealing with this type of business.I put together a two-hour training program for them and will present it three times in NY by the end of March, 2017. I also will present a slight variation on it at the 2017 ADI Conference in April. I also have 40 years of experience dealing with facility design, construction, building codes, distillation, mixing, and much more. You can check me out at www.topsengineering.com or on Facebook. Have a safe and enjoyable day! Ross Topliff. PE
