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rumfarmer

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Everything posted by rumfarmer

  1. I have a farm-to-bottle rum distillery and am looking at making animal feed using a combination of my bagasse and stillage. We only make Agricole style rum, so no molasses. Stillage data: PH is 3.3, Phosphorus mg/L is 531, Ortho Phosphorus is 505, TKN is 368, total Nitrogen 413, COD 13,400, TDS 39,400. The nutrients contained in bagasse about 1-3% protein, <3% lipid, 2-8% ash, 25-35% crude fiber and 50-60% NFE, in dry weight. In January we will be processing 7+ tons an hour of this cane 3 days a week. Lots and lots of waste products to deal with. Would welcome input.
  2. Can you explain how you define "cane rum" for these barrels?
  3. My question is related only to wholesale pricing. We have a tasting room and sell there directly to the consumer. This is obviously the highest margin available. Once we box it up and give it to the distributor, they will re-sell either on premise (bar/restaurant) or retail (liquor store, big box guys). We can't control where it goes after the distributor takes it. All we can do is set our wholesale price. My question to everyone out there who has been at this for a while is: "is there any kind of general industry rule of thumb for what is a normal profit margin assuming a good COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) model has been developed? Is it 10%, 25%, 45%, 150%, 1000%? Most industries have some general idea as to profit margin norms. Is there one for our industry yet?
  4. What is the profit margin you expect or build into your wholesale price?
  5. I concur on the Yelp thing. We have a full 3 months of data and the click are way up, but it has not translated into increased tasting room visits.
  6. St. George ships freshly cut cane into their distillery and crushes it on site. A refrigerated 40 foot container will do the trick, but it will be pricey. If you keep the cane on ice for a week, I think you will have a perfectly good agricole style ferment.
  7. If you aren't using fresh cane juice, I don't think you will get the classic vegetal notes you want no matter what yeast you pick. I tried about 10 different ones before deciding to go with a wild strain that was isolated locally. None of the commercial yeasts I found gave that big agricole nose.
  8. Agree with most of what is said above. The big issue I see killing many distilleries now is simply the sheer number of us out there. Differentiating is tough when there are so many "craft" options now. The problem is compounded as I think the new players coming in are much better capitalized than the early adopters who bootstrapped to success. I think the days of the successful bootstrap distillery have passed. My DSP completed in August 2012. I worked at my business plan for a good two years before that, and had to start a farm to grow cane concurrently. We are only now approaching a positive cash flow. Marketing is also much more important than most startups know. I said to myself when I started that my marketing budget should be at least 5x my capital expenses in the first 3 years. Looking back, I would say that is accurate on the low end. It is so easy to buy shiny machines and cool equipment, but most distilleries have a "if I build it, they will come" mentality and those days are just over, in my opinion. Make something awesome and market the heck out of it. Put in the crazy hours, and forgo any salary for the foreseeable future. Only quit your day job if you can do this with no income. That is another big killer to distilleries. On a positive note, I truly believe all the work that went into starting my business will pay off well. If I had it to do over again, I would still do it, but I would do it much differently. I would say I started both undercapitalized and over-expensed. Don't do it that way
  9. Just curious what natural unrefined sugar is, exactly.
  10. Just curious, why aren't any of you with the Black Swan barrels doing a second fill on them?
  11. Long delay here, but I have never had a ferment go bad because of high temps in Hawaii. We have a proprietary local yeast that came from this tropical environment. Something like an EC-1118 makes really nice rum and it has great heat tolerance, too. We just like the flavor our wild yeast gives us, but there are plenty of options out there.
  12. I do not agitate during fermentation. The action of the ferment itself is robust.
  13. I ferment in 500 gallon stainless tanks without a jacket now. I started with 230 gallon Apollo Flextank fermenters, but they are a major pain to clean (I have bunches of them if anyone in Hawaii wants one). The heat in the larger tank is no greater and the last run was brilliant. Ferment was complete and the tank is much easier to clean since it has a CIP. My still is generally charged to 500 gallons, so I use 500 gallon fermenters. Keep it simple when you can.
  14. FedEx was a super easy setup for us, and they have no issues shipping spirits. We just filled out the forms and they sent us all the required labels. One of the easiest things we've done at the distillery. You might be dealing with a PA issue.
  15. Wow! This is just about the most beautiful setup I have ever seen.
  16. I guess this means you have your new still operational. Why not just keep it in the new tasting room as an attraction?
  17. There are 13 states that directly prohibit the shipment of spirits. Colorado is not one of them, I am nearly sure. This is an ongoing issue that will have to be handle at the high court level (again and again). States really can't stop interstate commerce like this. I know they want their taxes, but it violates a pretty fundamental constitutional rule. Maybe Dave Flintstone can chime in on this. He seems to understand all of this better than most. In the end, I think caution is required. All States have their own rules. To some extent, we craft distillers have to work together to push the envelope and allow fairness in the marketplace. If you can buy beer and wine online, you should be able to buy spirits in any State.
  18. They are a core element of my branding. Pain in the butt to put on until I can get the machine from Italy that will automate a lot of my labeling. Euro parity is making it tempting, but need more cash flow!
  19. Moved to Hawaii 6 years ago from Scottsdale and started a rum distillery here. Don't need a job, but happy to give free advice. Love to see growth in spirits in valley.
  20. Honestly, this is as much a cost of energy question as anything. Propane in Hawaii cost $5.80 a gallon, and electricity is around $0.49 Kw/Hr. The COGS in Hawaii energy is very relevant and screams for more efficient energy options. I know guys doing PV solar and continuous and we are looking to start more parabolic solar pre-heating in 2015 to offset the energy. If you are lucky enough to be in a place with cheap energy, try going lower than 10% and see. If not, I wouldn't waste the money.
  21. I agree that the market will sort this all out. Just find your own way and make great products. I watch all kinds of questionable marketing out here, and it bugs me from time to time. But in the end, I just need to make great rum (and other stuff). If you have a superior product and can get it out in the world, you should do fine in this business. If you shortcut, eventually it will catch up with you. No more regulation, please!!! We have enough to deal with already. Sam Walton: "There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."
  22. No filtering before going in the still. Racking works well. The yeast cakes up pretty well at the bottom of the fermenter.
  23. rumfarmer

    Aging Rum

    Done a lot since 2011 when this post started. All the rum I now age starts in 15 gallon new oak (until the second fills, of course). I do secondary finishing in 53 gallon whisky casks and also 60 gallon neutral white wine barrels. The wine are French Oak. I agree with Porter that going heavy into a whisky cask changes the rum a lot. It starts to be a lot less like rum and more like a whisky. The wine barrels keep the product more rum like, but the character still changes a lot. I personally like it, but I am still not sure what the ultimate barrel expression of our rum will look like. I am in Hawaii so my barrels are hot all the time. 6 months in small oak is nice, but longer is still better to me. I also start with a full-bodied agricole, so a lot of character is in the product at the beginning.
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