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bluefish_dist

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bluefish_dist last won the day on April 15 2019

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  1. I found it did take a day or so for the proof to stabilize, so I would always add water, then let it set a day before checking and adjusting. I have heard others discuss not adding all the water at once for better flavor. Ie take a few days to add it all. Never tried it myself.
  2. Depends on how you run your still. I ran my whites with 3 plates and they came off around 165 proof. Barrel aged with 2 plates the came off 135-140 proof. I tended to run a higher reflux rate as I ran a vm style head vs a cm head as most others run. With the higher reflux rates it was critical to match the number of plates to the proof you wanted. Too many plates and you could not keep the proof low enough to meet requirements.
  3. I have had stratification, ie it’s not fully mixed and if you check by pulling off the top you get a false reading. The yeast mixes it up better and the reading goes up since the wort is now mixed and the denser wort is now evenly distributed.
  4. You can create your own buffer by adding equal amounts of calcium carbonate and citric acid. Calcium doesn’t dissolve very well in water and adding acid will dissolve more. I found that I like having the water buffered enough that the ph would fall from 5.2 to 4.0 in 24 to 48 hours. Then hold at 4.0 by adding cc or other ph boosters. Because I used molasses and sugar the mix between the two would change how much I buffered. Molasses had calcium in it, so more molasses, less buffering was needed. Straight sugar tends to need a lot of nutrients. As I never ran cane juice I can’t say how it compares, but using evaporated cane juice (aka raw sugar), it needed more a lot compared to grain, 2-4x as much. A few more things to consider, do you do step additions of nutrient? Say 60% at pitch, 40% at 24 hrs? Also pitch ph can make a big difference. Make sure it’s 5.2-5.4.
  5. From talking with the guy who wrote hoochware, it uses the ttb tables for calculations. They did not always give the same answer as the one app (true proof) I used to use which did the corrections based on thermal expansion. But in the end, the ttb says use the tables.
  6. Wow, I was buying for about $2/lb if I remember correctly from carbon Activated Corporation. They sold it in 55 lb bags.
  7. Not sure if it’s the best, but it worked well, 8-30 coconut carbon.
  8. I always filtered at 50% for just that reason. I usually only got a 1-2% drop during filtration and I started with wet carbon and flushed with water. 5% seems like too much of a drop. Start high so it can drop without getting you out of spec on bottled proof.
  9. From last June. Still good for planning if you are making from wash/wort Posted May 2, 2018 How much you can sell and how much you can make are two very different questions. Can't help on the how much can you sell. To answer the how much to make I will post what I think are some good estimates. Not perfect, but they will help you plan. Note I have posted this before. Start with how much you need to make (gross). Figure you can get $100/gallon for bottled product ($20/bottle) Maybe more, maybe less, but this is a rough estimate. So divide gross sales by 100, that is how many gallons you have to make. So roughly every $100k is 1000 gallons. Divide by 50 to get per week. That's 20 gallons or 100 bottles per week to sell $100k. Distillation is about a 10:1 reduction, so 20 gallons bottled is about 200 gallons of wash/wort into the still. To determine still size, decide how often to run the still. Once per week is a 200 gallon still, twice per week is 100. For fermenter, figure a two week turn. Some are faster, some slower, so that doubles the still volume. In rough numbers 400 gallons of fermentation, 200 gallon still run weekly gets you $100k/year gross.  I think this shows why you need a pretty big setup to make any money. also look at your fire code. If you don't have sprinklers you can only have 120 gallons in a control area. That isn't much barrel storage. It goes to 240 gallons with sprinklers.
  10. Calcium carbonate, not chloride. The calcium carbonate is a slight base and it will raise the ph if added by itself. I found if you add it in equal parts by volume with citric acid, it becomes a buffer. The cc dissolves in acid and by adding both I think it creates a liquid with more dissolved calcium than you would get by just adding cc as powder. You can add cc as a solid, shells, eggshells and it will dissolve slowly and in my experience won’t correct a ph crash as it’s too slow to react. You can also buy it as a powder which reacts quickly and can be added at any time during the fermentation. The trick is knowing how much to add. I would add 1/2 to 1 cup at a time to 110 gallons if it was a sugar based wash with little buffering. Less for grain based fermentations.
  11. I would not worry about the ending gravity all that much. Try a higher starting gravity instead. I easily had rm ferment at 1.10 with molasses based washes. I found rm with molasses or sugar to be one of the easiest fermentations to run and had great yields.
  12. With a 100% molasses fermentation I would not add much for nutrients. There should be plenty there from the molasses. In my experience you could start a lot higher on your sg. I was routinely starting around 1.10 and finishing about 1.02. With all molasses I would guess you could be 1.11-1.12 easily. I always did a step addition of nutrients, pitch and 24 hours in. Usually took about 7-10 days to finish even at 90 deg. I never had ph go up, always a drop. Usually with rm I would start at 5.2-5.3 and be down to 4.5 in 24 hours. Then it would drop more over time and I would adjust with calcium when I got under 4. Note that some molasses has a decent amount of calcium and won’t need as much adjustment. I added a small amount of citric acid and calcium carbonate in equal parts by volume to adjust ph at the beginning. The amount was determined by how much calcium was in the molasses. Ie more adjustment as I ran a higher % of sugar.
  13. The only way to legally allow aging at home would be to bottle at cask strength as a dss since it’s white and then sell the bottles. That way taxes are paid and it’s been sold in a bottle. The new owner of the bottles would be free to put them back in a barrel for aging. It could be a fun project, but I am not sure you could build a business around it as I think volume would be too low.
  14. Yes, that is acceptable. You will have to have a fanciful name, ie “joes special shine” or something not a type of spirit. You will have to have a distilled from xxxx on the front as well to show what was used to make it. Ours was made from corn and sugarcane. Check the Bam for exact wording.
  15. I tried that, more plates, less reflux. I found that it removed more flavor and didn’t change output very much if at all. I did come to the conclusion that I preferred it when I matched the desired output abv with a column setup that easily produced it instead of detuning or running slow to increase efficiency. For flavorful barrel aged product, 2 plates and a low abv, whites run with a higher abv and more plates for a cleaner spirit.
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