adamOVD

We are right outside a ski town as well. Probably smaller than you. If you are making a quality product at a reasonable price point, and actively pushing sales, I think 500-1000 cases is a reasonable goal. We sold 500 cases at year 2, just out of the tasting room, and had little to no marketing or sales calls. Starting slow on purpose. Limited distribution as well, and a whole lot of bottles going into cocktails. Don't recall those numbers. We may have hit 500 cases year one combining all of that, but I doubt it. If you are only selling whiskeys and products at a high price point, it is going to be a lot harder. However the beer sales may make up your lower price point sales, and give you greater flexibility, and flexibility is pretty key these days. To me a case is 6 750ml bottles. Just to be sure I'm on the same page. 80% of distilleries selling fewer than 500 cases seems strange to me, as we are about as small as seems feasible.

@captnKB gotcha, thought you were talking about proofing the spirts after emptying the barrel. Makes sense to proof in the barrel though, and makes slow proofing more manageable if you dont have to free up a vessel for a month or so. Thanks for the tip!

Do you proof your barrel aged spirits more slowly purely because they are "premium" products, or is it more related to the oak aging process?

Here's a video that helped me. there's no one right answer though. I think this is a pretty good example of how most people run, but I believe some people will run more like a pot still, running at a lower heat, and just using the plates for passive reflux, or running the dephlemator just at the beginning and/or end of the run to isolate heads/tails.

@dhdunbar Dave Dunbar

Making hand sanitizer is so 2 months ago. Denaturing with Tert-Butyl is so six months ago. If you read through this thread it goes into great detail of why. Just denature with Bitrex (Denatonium Benzoate). It's super easy, and like Naked Spirits says you can probably get it along with your Glycerin and HP from another distillery cheap, as most people have found demand has dried up, and stopped making it. Or google Bitrex. You must denature. Again, this thread already goes into great detail why.

You seem to have worked at a lot of different places and its given you a lot of insights. You had post on proofing times at different distilleries that was also interesting. Thanks for sharing. I figured there was no real wrong way to make vodka from vodka, but i guess even that can be messed up.

Thanks @Ish200 . That is indeed way more than I've been using. I thought I had searched the forum well before posting, but later I did find someone say ph 3.8 is ideal.

How much Citric acid per gallon do use for cleaning? Is there a Ph you aim for? I've been aiming for a weak solution, but I think I haven't been using enough.

Based on what Ive read, I'm sure slow proofing vodka wouldn't hurt, but it's not as critical, because it has far fewer oils in suspention than something that is typically double pot distilled like a brandy, or has a lot of oils from botanicals like a gin.

I've been thinking of doing a low tech version of something similar by building a stand with a load cell and a vessel suspended top of it, so I could weigh out my proofing water into the vessel, and use gravity and a needle valve to slowly trickle water into a spirit vessel.

It's a Bain Marie with electric elements. I talked to the still manufacturer and he confirmed that if still is less than 30% full the surging will get worse and worse. I filled it with hot water before trying again, and it ran super smooth. The agitator is vertical, not offset, and there is a fin on the side that works as a vortex breaker. My theory is that if the liquid drop below the fin, the vortex causes some sort of vacuum effect. I wish I had tried running it without the agitator to confirm my thinking.

I use the same enzymes and the same rest stages on a also about 2# per gallon 80% Wheat whiskey. I have a Bain Marie still so my heat times are probably slower. I only rest at 15 min at 120. When the mash temp reaches 165 I start my cook time, and turn off the heat at 180, which is usually about 20 minutes later. My last rest is at 130-140F and 5.3 pH(not sure where I got a different number than you) for 30 min. I figure even though the grains aren't as well modified as malt, the enzymes remain active during the fermentation. My final gravity is .1-.2 Brix, but I also use some specialty malts, and I'm not sure they would ever finish out 100%. You could always try a shorter rest, and see if your final gravity goes up at all. I'd be interested in the results. I tried a few changes in my rests when developing the recipe, but didn't notice much of a difference. I was changing a couple of things at once though, and still figuring things out, so my numbers aren't very reliable.

If you overlap your wrap by half, and pull the shrink wrap super tight as you are rounding the corners its really strong. My trick is i push a finger against the inside of the cardboard roller, top and bottom, so i dont burn my hands as i roll, then grab it tight and pull as i round the corner. I dont wrap many pallets these days, but got lots of practice packaging beer. If things are still loose youre probably doing it wrong.

I havent had cable for a long time, but Ill absolutely watch it when it streams on Disney plus, which it sounds like it will. Hope it boosts your sales and gives you some worldwide exposure. You seem to be killing it. Ill be looking out for any opportunities to try your stuff, although.... the product described here might not be my first choice.

Thanks Pete, I really dont want to throw anything in the botton of the still, as it also serves as a mash cooker and ill have to pull them out again. It also has a pretty oversized agitator, which i would think would create plenty of bubbles and nucleation points. It has quite a few sharp corners on it as well. In the past i isolated the surging to my condensor being too cold. This seems to be something else and is much more dramatic. I topped off the still with water, and ill look over the plates and lyne arm before i try again. I can't run the still again until monday though, so i thought id try to see if anyone here had an idea.

How low is too low? My still is always a bit finicky when it comes to surging, but today was atrocious. I had to just shut it down and walk away. The best thing I can think of is that is was under-filled. I usually run my low wines in my small still, but I had a lot saved up, So I put them in my "Large Still" and planned to run it over the course of 2 days. First day it was 3/4 full and ran great all day. Second day when I started it up It was about half full with Low wines, and it was nearly impossible to run. The problem with my theory though, is that when I do my final run of Gin after macerating my botanicals, by then end of the run the liquid level in the still is probably even lower but has no problems. It is a Bain Marie water jacket. I was running it through two plates. I gave up at one point and just tried stripping the rest with no reflux, and it still surged like mad.

Can you move the pump down to the level of your lauter tun and then run a hose to your fermenter? Then when you are finished running off push the last of the wash through the pump/hose with water or CO2.

This is great advice. if you make the pipe transparent, you can also monitor the the level of liquid in it. If it drops well below the liquid level of of your mash tun you know you're pulling liquid out faster than your sparging water is filtering though your grain bed, and risking a stuck mash. This probably isn't possible, but if you are able to raise your mash tun higher than your boiler, you can just use gravity and a valve to control the flow rate, instead of a VFD. That's how many brewhouses are set up, with the mash tun on top of a hot liquor tank or something.

"You fools, if you cross your streams you'll cause a total protonic reversal."

I like him, adds some spice to the forum. Also, what happened to the guy building a home brew sized continuous fermenter/still that thought he was a genius and everyone else was a moron?

We aren't in a major city area, so maybe we are bit slower in getting restocked by the bigger brands, but it seems like the demand has increased or stayed the same as things are beginning to reopen. I've been making the alcohol, as I had never purchased GNS before, and none of the GNS companies replied to me when this first started. I have a batch finishing now. I'm going to start at least one more batch this week, probably another next week. I wouldn't worry too much, just wait and see what happens as things reopen and possibly new outbreaks emerge. I think this thing is a long ways from being resolved. Bigger companies may now have the ability to meet any future demand, but worse case scenario, I figure we donate it. I don't think any of us got into this to profit from making hand sanitizer anyways, and I'm tired of making and reading about it. I know how you feel though, I feel like I finally have making sugar washes dialed in. Learning to maintain the right pH has been a worthwhile learning experience I guess.

I'd be pretty concerned about tied house laws. I'm sure you've done your research, and I'm certainly no lawyer, but I would assume you'd need at least 3 separate establishments listed on the "sponsor" list, and toe the line in a lot of other ways as well. Special allowance of "to go" cocktails and deliverys in California have been our main saving grace so far (along with bottles sales and a little hand sanitizer). We've taken the opportunity to submit the recipes we've been developing as RTDs and creating labels, so that after the "to go" rule is gone, we can continue to sell them. Our tasting room is very small. It may be a long time before we can reopen. As with most business right now, I imagine, its adapt or die.

I bought all cheap hoses out of necessity when we first started that weren't rated for high temp. I put a stainless T at the outlet of the still, and a cold water hose on one end of the T to cool the stillage while I drained it. That being said, I think hoses are the under appreciated workhorses of a distillery or brewery, and quality hoses were the first thing I bought the moment I had some extra cash. Vintner's Vault had the best prices I could find.

Interesting way to do it, does seem like it would speed up the proofing and resting process. When you say "100% vapor distilled", do you mean all your botanicals are in a basket? If you did a macerated gin (soaking at a higher proof, and then proofing way down I assume) do you think you would end up with a larger "tails" cut doing a run that low? To answer the original question, I do a macerated gin, soak the botanicals starting at 100 proof, and then proof down to 80 before the actual gin run.