paulNL

The Snap 50 has been succeeded by the Snap 51, however accuracy and repeatabillity haven't changed AFAIK.

Mosaic, you might want to look at iStill (www.iStill.eu), they have fully automated stills which can do everything from potstill up to 40 redistillations for vodka at the touch of a button. And with the optional agitator and heat exchanger you can also mash in the same unit. Four day training (in English) can be followed at their Amsterdam training center.

San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles... Those seem to be the important ones as seen from the other side of the Atlantic. Google is your friend!

Err... The reasons for being near flowing water is obvious isn't it? Free water for cooling and cleaning, and if the quality is alright also for mashing and diluting. And if you put a water mill in also free power... I've got an electronic archive with around 70 old books (>10yr, up to 500yr) about distilling, including a few which are pre-1900 and in English - but they might come from the UK or somewhere else in the English speaking world. Just send me a message and I'll sort and share 'em with you.

Hello Thatch, my 2c: although in a completely different country (NL) I face the exact same issue over here. Am allowed to sell to bars, restaurants and liquor stores. The two main things I've learned in the last year are: - a. only go after companies that sell drinks in your price bracket (in my case 55 USD a bottle average retail price; so that's Michelin starred restaurants and specialty liquor stores) and - b. try to find some "ambassadors" who can introduce you (in my case several well-known chefs and a sommelier who worked at ** starred restaurants) Once you meet people immediately become friends with them on LinkedIn and FaceBook so once people look you up they see you know many of their colleagues. One more thing: try to find out what the typical markup is, so ask someone you know in a liquor store or a bar/restaurant (different) for the formula they use to go from purchase price to sales price for a bottle or a glass. Paul.

The one I have is only available in the EU, but an almost identical one is sold in the US for almost exactly the same price. I think it's called the Zap Labeler. Just Google "site:adiforums.com manual labeler" and you should find a suitable product. The roller on the front of the machine (nearest to you) should be adjustable, left side should be set a bit further out for a bottle that's smaller at the bottom (which goes on the right side, so the top of the bottle is pointing to the left).

I use a similar round bottle which is smaller at the bottom, couldn't find any semi automatic labeler <5K USD that can work with that. In the end I bought a 500 dollar manual labeler, that works fine. Do remember that you can't have a label that goes around (almost) the whole bottle, but you'll be fine with a conventional front and rear label. For square bottles I'm going to buy the AP550, at the moment I apply them by hand.

I don't think it's wise to put 65% ABV alcohol into the boiler for your gin run anyway...

Primera AP550e

One other way to start small but plan for growth is doing the production yourself, find a botteling plant and get pricing from them (but don't use 'em yet!), and buy the bare minimum botteling equipment. This way you can start cheaply, if business picks up speed you distill many times a week and outsource the botteling while waiting for your bigger still to arrive... This is exactly what I'm doing, space is limited but once I grow I move out the empty and filled bottles and boxes and will have no problem installing a 500 gallon or bigger still which makes one hell of a lot of gin per day... If I outgrow that there's enough money to buy a bigger building without getting a mortgage

Errr... So you're saying with the current interest it isn't profitable, and it won't be profitable unless a possible buyer can get considerably cheaper (or free) financing? Just askin'

Hi, anyone else noticed that every time you go to "Unread Content" and read a few articles one article that you've already read shows up again? I read everything from the end of April 2017 but since a week or so I keep seeing postings from July and beginning of August again and again, just one or two each time Paul.

UPDATE Once I used "Mark site read" function the problem went away...

What nabtastic says. I'm new in this industry but I hardly have any debt, and the amount of bottles I have to sell each month to pay interest and recurring costs is sow low I can carry it in one go, and I'm not Hulk Hogan's healthy nephew. Keep costs low, even if it means making other products then you originally intended (in my case gin instead of whisky), design your business to be as efficiant as possible, do not try to out-compete cheap brands and make sure you have some other income if business starts slowly (which it probably does).

In that case the reports don't work, from the moment Foreshot posted the message above I've used the "Report post" button on every new piece of spam I found. Haven't counted them but I think at least five.

Mouth feel. Especially important for neutral products, like vodka.

Not if you use more power... With more surface area you get better separation when using the same amount of power, or you get the same separation with more speed when using more power.

I'm roughly in the same situation, started selling in August, biggest individual sale 24 bottles. A lot of people have said this before on this forum: you're not running a distillery, you're running a marketing and sales company that also makes booze. I'm going to make a few hundred bottles in one go (one day distilling - one day botteling) this week. Why? Ingredients have already been paid, and I need all the time for sales. If you got the time you may ask your resellers if they need any help pushing your product on a busy day (Saturday?), or their Christmas fair. Use the opportunity to talk to their customers, see if there are any bars, restaurants or hotels you can convince to put your product on their "menu" - repeating sales!

I suppose you mean Still Dragon - yes I do, but it's a modular system so almost every one is different: Potstill, filled column (CM), bubblecaps... Better to explain what your producing and what kind of column you are thinking about first. BTW: mine's a massive 8" potstill, all stainless for gin and jenever.

Also depends whether the reseller opens the box and sells the individual bottles, or resells the whole box to a hotel for minibars (as an example).

No13Distilling is from Canada, so I guess they use the same temperature scale as most of the world - Celsius In both scales -50 is frikkin cold, no discussion needed

As Silk City already stated, fixatives. Try to add a bit of orris root, maybe 1/100th of the amount of juniper you use.

Glycerol or sugar. Almost every single russian vodka seems to contain a bit of sugar, and many in the western world have copied that.

Nope, no new answers to these old threads. I've attached two screendumps, I've read everything between half April and yesterday but some messages from the 18th and 17th of August (and more) are visible again - just about one for every NEW (or extremely old unread) I read. I clicked on the subject, "Supply Chain", no new answers there.

It's driving me mad, every single article I open from the "Unread Content" screen seems to add one random article from the last few months to the list, most from between the 11th and 15th of August. I see four articles from the 11th of August, read one, back to Unread Content - 3 left. Good. Open another one, back to Unread Content - three left again, but not the one I just opened. Aaarrgh! It doesn't matter which browser or OS (Windows/Mac) I use.