Patio29Dadio

Generally I see the game as a short and safe lift to a sturdy pallet and then lift the pallet with the forks. We use straps for the short lift.

Might be a dumb question, but if a stripping run, why do you care? Are you sure 13% ABV? It sounds like you are starting the run with reflux building in the plates and eventually breaking through thus concentrating the heads and then ABV falls and your boil temp goes up pushing more water vapor and lowering your proof. Why use any plates in a stripping run? Try no plates and a slower boil. Just a guess.

Based on your description I would consider a 2-pass with 10-micron and then .45 micron. We also use a 5-micron polishing filter in our bottle filler.

After mash, you need to strain out some mash liquid to remove solids and then measure SG. Depending on your enzymes, you may get more some increased conversion in early fermentation, but not much. You should be close enough. Then do the same after ferment. We use a medium fine wire mesh strainer (kitchen style) and a wooden spoon back and forth to allow liquid to strain into a pitcher that we then pour into a graduated cylinder for measuring. Easy peasy.

Yes, I forgot the 2-4 years age statement requirement for straight whiskeys. I think that is what we will do. A small sticker for now that covers the existing age statement.

Aria in Portland

That should simplify things substantially!

I think MGP and Ultrapure sell rum by the tote.

Now that is interesting... I did not know. The problem I have with reprints of labels and printing smaller batches is that the cost per label goes WAY up. For my regular-size run they may be $.20 each, but for a small run they might be $.70 each. I wonder if an age-range statement will work? Aged ____ TO _____ ?

Get in touch with Anne Gray cooperage.

My opinion here is that you educate yourself and develop your own basis. A basis is an opinion based on fact, evidence, documentation, etc.. Then you go to your officials and provide them with your plans including everything you think you need for compliance. In my opinion I would use the fire code for the barrel storage to make the case that you don't need sprinklers there, and you don't need floor drain. As Thatch points out, the building code seems to say that barrels are included in the Maximum Allowed Quantity (MAQ) calculation and thus it would easily push you requirements to nasty land. Show the sombrero of death requirement 10 ft from all stills and below 36" from the floor for needing explosion proof electrical. That will impress them. It will cost you a bit more, but should not break the bank... and you will more likely not blow up your distillery. Also make sure you talk about keep the barrels stacked no more than 2 high. That will prevent the high-stacking concern that some fire officials are trained to light up on. After the CofO you can certainly decide to go higher. In the end you are at the mercy of your local officials. If they are ignorant to the code, they can make your life miserable. If they are knowledgeable of the code they can make your life miserable. In my experience, if they are short men they will make your life miserable.

This might be a stupid question, but had the COLA and labels done for a bourbon and a rye including age statements based on assumptions for amount of time it would take to get to full extraction and maturity. But for some of the barrels, the extraction is moving a bit faster than expected. I assume I know the answer to the question about what to do with the label and COLA for the product... get new ones. My question is more about how to others deal with this? If you are waiting on a batch and you have one barrel that is a risk of going over-oaked, and you dump it early... then it becomes the basis for the age statement given that it is the youngest that would go into the multi-barrel batch dump. So to stay in the line for the age statement you would need to amend your COLA and labels or else remove the barrel from the batch... which is not something always in the cards unless there are other products it could be used for. Also, it seems not an effective business practice to wait until the barrels are ready to dump and then go get the COLA and labels. Maybe this is the reason to make only straight whiskeys so there is no age statement required. However, with younger whiskeys and those that are not classified as straight and less than four years old, it seems a problem to have a pre-printed label and per-COLAed product. Am I missing something?

We have a consistent 4 day ferment where we go from 19 brix to -2 brix. About the best I think we can do with a 50% sugar / 50% molasses wash. Turns out we were having standard results but just using a broken hydrometer and relying on it to tell us when to shut down the stripping run. We usually stop the run when the parrot is at 15% abv as the energy cost to keep going are not worth the remaining yield. We had a couple of runs were we mistakenly killed the stripping run where we probably were are 30-35% abv. That accounted for the low yield for the runs. So the lesson learned is to test the hydrometer and also rely on another control point (column head temp) to decide when to kill the strip.

Here is the answer. Never trust the hydrometer in the parrot. It was defective and causing the distiller to kill the stripping run too early. Going forward the process will require hydrometer reading (after testing it to make sure it is accurate) AND head temperature reading.

This gets back to my point that it depends on your local building official as most will gladly turn over all fire hazard code compliance decision to the fire authority. The fire code is at worst ambiguous about alcohol storage in wooden vessels. In my visits to most craft distilleries around the nation, I would say that most have barrel storage in their bonded space excess of the MAQ and with C1-D1/F1 occupancy compliance only. If you consider a barrel room a control room where the contents apply to the MAQ, then you could store about 5 full sized barrels before being put into H3. This business is already expensive enough without going to extremes in code compliance over things that can be interpreted away. I would always point to the fire code over the building code in this case. Let the building official lead the push to H3, but don't offer up that advice. The move up from C1-D1 can add several tens, if not hundreds, of thousands to the build cost. For example, it might require ripping out the existing sprinkler system and replacing it for the higher capacity required. My experience is that fire will be more concerned about high-stacking of barrels.... depending on your ceiling height and classification of your building sprinklers. But I am sure that everyone will have a difference experience with their local building official. These guys are generally CYA professionals... so your best approach is to convince them that their A will not be in hot water for what you are doing.

Agree with Thatch. However, depending on the level of distillery experience with you local building official and fire marshal, you might be better off driving this by telling them what you think is required and providing them the CYA materials they can use. Buy the DISCUS distillery code manual and read it top to bottom, and then give them your plan and a copy of the manual (I think the Copyright permissions allow you to provide copies to people involved in your project... check it out though). Your plan should include things like the MAQ you intend to support. For example, if you are making something with GNS and your operation is large enough to require in excess of the MAQ allowed given your sprinklered and/or non-sprinklered control rooms, then you would be pushed into a Class-1 / Division-2 fire code classification for flammable materials and you will need a lot of things including a floor with containment gutters and a drain and might require special fire prevention. You want to stay in Class-1 / Division-1 if at all possible. One thing that can help is that spirits stored in barrels are arguably not included in the MAQ calculation. But I know of some distilleries where the local officials still required sprinklers and a floor drain in the barrel storage area. I hear that in Kentucky due to the recent barrel rickhouse collapses where whisky went into the local streams and rivers and destroyed fish and other wildlife, and made a mess out of the environment, that there is talk of requiring containment drainage ponds for any new rickhouses. The last point I would make to anyone starting a DSP... put in floor drains. You will regret it later if you don't.

There is no flavored corn whisky category and so they probably kicked you into the distilled spirits specialty category. It depends on what you listed in your application as your fanciful name and your SOC. However, I think you should be able to put "Corn Whisky with Flavoring" as you SOC on the label.

Running into a weird problem. Our standard rum process started delivering very low yields and we cannot figure it out. The wash is 50% cane sugar and 50% premium dark molasses. We dissolve in (filtered) hot water, and then add (filtered) cold water to get to pitching temp of 90 degrees F. Starting brix is 19 and PH is 4.9 (after adjustment). We add a yeast nutrient blend day one and another smaller dose day two. Four day ferment with temp kept at 85 - 90 F. Ending brix of less than 1 (.08 from hydrometer and Anton Parr DM35). Ending PH is 4.2. Strangely the refractometer is giving us a 7 brix reading. Wash has no notable sweetness indicating good conversion confirming the brix differentiation readings (except for the refractometer); however, the stripping run yields are about 60-70% of normal. The only variable we can come up with is a colder fermentation... this time of the year we are running around 85 degrees instead the typical 90 we maintain during the warmer months. However, this does not explain the low yield relative to the start and ending brix measures unless something is messing with the hydrometer and Anton Parr readings. Any ideas?

You can see here what we are dealing with. Note the messy floor around all that stuff.

Note that you will need a yeast harvesting and propagation system in place to make this economically feasible. You should get 8-15 generations from the initial pitch. A 3BBL dose is about $180.

I think the issue is getting them and the pipe runs off the floor so it can be cleaned easily. Seems to me that the best design would be the condensate falls to a still-integrated tank that is under the pot and integrated with a pump and a float switch. Maybe just bolt a stainless steel version of that low profile Hoffman unit (need XP) to the underside of the still. Then it can be wired along with the agitator. I think the problem with this is that it then gets the still manufacture into a new subject matter that they might not want to be in. However, if you think about it... it is really just drawing a new line in system domain ownership along the process continuum. Steam goes into the pot still jacket and there is a low-point drain for the condensate to exit. Today the steam boiler equipment people come it to provide solutions connecting the steam equipment to the still equipment condensate drain. The shift would be that the steam boiler equipment people connect to a condensate pump outlet that is integrated into the still equipment and that is situated at least 16" above the ground. Said another way, the steam boiler people generally don't own much in aesthetic consideration nor care much about how one might clean around their proud mess of black pipe. The still manufacture people do care about these things. I don't have a problem with the steam boiler people working on the steam boiler, but I would like to limit their work around the stills.

Can someone explain how this works? If a competition needs a couple of bottles, shouldn't they also have a license to receive bottles direct from the maker? I am getting mixed information that the competition host needs to purchase as a retailer and thus we would be unable to ship as per the 3-tier rules. Also getting some mixed information that it depends on the state where the maker is located and the address where the bottles need to be shipped.

RO uses a lot of water... so you are somewhat defeating the purpose of condensate return to help prevent water waste. But in my neck of the woods I would not DSI the tap water. Correct me if I am wrong here, but DSI requires high-pressure steam?

This is one area I am definitely not happy about. My floor around my steam heated vessels is a mess of condensate return plumbing and the tank-pump. It makes cleaning in that area very problematic. And the black pipe holding the condensate produces some rust which then stains the floor. We have beautiful shiny stills and tanks, plumbing and electrical runs are symmetrical and straight... and then this mess of black pipe connections with the pump-tank on the floor that almost looks like a child designed it. I agree with you. Ideally all steam jacketed stills would have their own condensate tank and pump hanging off the bottom of the steam jacketed boiler tank and then the only connection would be a single pipe to the condensate return header.

On more consideration depending on your process and your target product, but you might need filtering to eliminate turbidity from the botanical oils... possibly chill-filtering.