Rum

Assuming you are talking about gas vs. electric boiler then there is no difference in the end product. If you mean a still with electric heating elements built in I've read that it may have an effect on the final product depending on how it's implemented.

Be sure to look at the amp requirements for the boiler you are considering. I went down the electric boiler path for a bit as it opened up more potential distillery sties. I soon discovered that many of the buildings had three phase electric but not enough amperage. I ended up going with a location that has natural gas.

Here in Florida we have very hard water. It is quite a bit higher than we want to have running through the equipment. I am looking at various water softener options as well as carbon filtering to remove the chlorine for the production water. I also need to find an RO unit for the water used in final dilution. Any recommendations on equipment? Specific manufacturers or general setup would be helpful. Thanks

Ouch! I was lucky to find space that worked for me in a large industrial building that had housed boat builders at some point. The main line coming in is either 8" or 10", I've forgotten which. The feed line coming into my space was large enough as well. Everything else needed to be replaced. Several buildings were ruled out due to no backflow or too small of a main.

I have about 4000 square feet that had to have hazardous sprinklers. It cost about $10k, much of which was picked up by the landlord.

Congrats!

The issues raised in this thread are faced by any growing internet forum. I have been through this personally from the admin side as well as the user side. There isn't going to be any clear easy answer that addresses all of the issues in a positive way. Tradeoffs are everywhere. On the one extreme is a fully closed forum that only allows posting by members of the organization. This has the benefit of keeping out trolls, spammers and other undesirables. The downside is that the forum is not likely to be vital, especially in a small field such as this. By way of example, I started a community site for automotive enthusiasts back in 1999. Early on I had two competitors; another open forum and a closed forum. The closed forum was in support of an established organization that had many thousands of members. My forum was completely open. To make a long story short, the members of the closed forum's organization ended up actively posting at my forum and the closed forum died on the vine. The other open forum started charging a membership fee to try to fight off trolls and others causing troubles. They died on the vine as well. My site grew to hundreds of thousands of members, close to 2 million threads and over 27 million posts. It is an incredible resource for anyone interested in the topic. It requires a lot of moderators to combat the constant issues that arise from such a large open forum but it is an unmatched resource due to the incredible depth of knowledge and activity of the members. At the other extreme is a completely closed forum. The competitive site mentioned in the last paragraph fits into this category. The difficulty is having enough members to keep the forum active. One of the benefits is that you cut out the clutter. There are several ways to have a successful middle ground. One example that I participated in as a user is one that is for professional webmasters. It has several discussion areas that are open to the general public. It also has an area that is only for supporters of the site (at about $130 per year if I recall correctly). In their case it is a big enough field that the member area is very active and, in fact, contains the best information. Those who are not members can see the topic titles in the member's area and are tempted to sign up if they are serious about the topic. Another option is to keep the forums open to all and to design the categories in such a way that topics fit into well defined areas and then aggressively moderate them into the right areas. On my sites I even ended up even separating out religion, politics and other controversial topics to a special area from other Off Topic discussions to keep the peace. This may or may not work here as a complete solution since I'm not sure that a home distilling category (as an example) would be desired by the professionals on the forum. It can also help to have member tags identifying facts about the poster. For example, members of ADI could have a tag under their name identifying them as such. You could also have other levels of support at different cost levels. This is all available with off the shelf software such as vbulletin and others. The bottom line is you need to strike a balance between vitality of a forum for professionals with the need to cut the clutter. I would hesitate to close off the forum given the current size of the membership and the industry. It might work to have some areas be read only to non-ADI members though. Combine that with aggressively moving threads into the appropriate categories and you might have a solution for now.

True, but I did the lack of sleep thing when I was in my thirties and starting my prior businesses while working a full time job. I understand what those of you working a job while starting a business are going through. It's fun, challenging, motivating and exhausting. Now that I'm in my forties I actually appreciate a good nap in the afternoon! lol I'm a natural hard worker when I like what I'm doing but I also appreciate time with my family these days.

There is no uniform minimum. It can vary from county to county. In fact, in my county it varied by who I spoke with. They did not have anything on the books and in the end it was a judgement call. They required at least Light Industrial in my case. I spent at least six months just finding a location for my distillery that would work with the county and the fire marshall. In the end I signed a lease before I knew if the building would work or not. I needed the address to move forward on my federal license and was not willing to wait any longer. I put a clause in the lease that let me out if any governmental agency deemed the location unsuitable for the intended purpose.

Unfortunately many local governments make that all but impossible due to zoning restrictions.

Now that's funny. There aren't any wild hogs roaming about my area. There are plenty of dumpster divers looking for metal to sell at the recycling place up the street though.

Funny. I've seen the same thing. A lot of people would like to be involved in this business. Especially after seeing the equipment. My landlord wanted to exchange rent for a piece of it.

It must be quite a challenge to do a startup distillery and continue to work a full time job. When do you guys sleep?! This is planned to be my full time project for the foreseeable future. I sold my other businesses almost two years ago. I've been considering doing some side businesses in my old field if I have extra time once I'm up and running. Extra time may be at a premium once I get going at full speed though. What has been your biggest challenge in getting to the point where you can go full time at the distillery? Is it just not having enough sales yet? Is it re-investment in additional equipment & the biz? High costs, payments on equipment, etc?

I'm curious if the credit crunch is affecting plans for starting new distilleries. I'm sure not everyone wants to answer this, but how did you do your funding? For those getting money from leasing companies or banks - did you have any troubles getting the commitment? How about those who have been to the banks recently? I suspect that many are like me and either self finance or bring in partners. If that's the case our little industry probably won't be affected as much as the rest of the economy in terms of new startups.

Yep! We can't control the tax break, but we can sure make better products.

I had been looking for about 3000 square feet but ended up finding a great deal on on just over 6000. A lot of boat builders are having troubles in my area and are vacating industrial space at a rapid rate. I was able to lock in all the extra space for less per month than the buildings 1/2 the size. 3000 would have worked just fine but 6000 will make it a lot easier to move around. I have no worries about having room to store large quantities of bottles, barrels, and whatever else I need while still having room to expand if I am fortunate enough to have that need. I envy those of you like Jonathan who can operate in downtown areas. My local zoning limited me to light industrial.

I'm sorry to hear that you did not have a good experience with the seminar and Christian CARL. I agree that the seminars put on by the still manufacturers are basic intro courses. They appear to be designed as an intro to those thinking about getting into the business as opposed to those already doing it. There is some good networking to be done, but still, if you are not a beginner or interested in seeing the Christian CARL equipment it probably isn't going to be for you. There is better networking at the ADI conferences. I would personally like to see an advanced course for those with some experience already. I am surprised to hear of your experiences with Nick and Alexander though. One of the main reasons that I went with CC was because of them. Both have gone above and beyond in helping me get my distillery launched. They have provided information and knowledge about topics well beyond the scope of what a still manufacturer would normally be expected to do. In fact, they both flew down to Florida to setup my still! The factory was quite busy and did not have time to tag all of the parts for end user assembly. Instead of leaving me trying to figure it out for myself they took the time to fly down here and do it themselves. It's nice to see one of the owners of the company put on his work gloves and very competently put a still together. The lack of responsiveness that you received may have to do with the fact that Nick seems to get a large number of calls these days. I would guess that most are not real prospects yet request complete detailed proposals. I'm not saying that everyone shouldn't get the most attention possible (and I would be angry if I did not get responses), but it must be difficult for them to try and keep up and prioritize. I would be upset if they had not followed through with me before the sale but I have to say that I am extremely happy with how they have followed through after getting my money. They are good guys to work with and stand behind their product. I do not give out recommendations very lightly or often as it reflects on me if they don't live up to it. I strongly recommend these guys.

Looks like about 32 or 33 of the states allow self distribution. A few have quantity limits in place.

Unfortunately it's not an option for many of us.

I noticed a basket full of various whiskeys in 100ml flask-style bottles at a checkout the other day. They provided a relatively large area for the label compared to regular bottle shaped 50ml minis. Is anyone here using these? Pros? Cons?

What coverage types/amounts are others using for liability, equipment coverage, etc? Any recommendations on carriers?

Email sent.

I've been trying to buy some bottles from Vitro but get sporadic (at best) responses from the sales guy. Does anyone have contact info for a responsive Vitro rep that you could forward me?

Count in Drum Circle Distilling from Sarasota, Florida. I'll contact my legislators with this suggestion as well. For those of you who have had success in getting state laws passed in favor of small producers - what other arguments helped? I've heard that tying in support of agriculture has been quite convincing. Tourism seems to be another potential benefit that legislators like. Should we be focusing on these benefits as well when we contact our reps?

We won't be squeezing our own cane juice but we'll do everything else starting with the fermentation. Should have my license in about a month. Production about a month after that.