Brewstilla

I've had great success distilling and barreling lightly hopped dark beers like stouts and porters that end up more in the malt whiskey realm. Also our sister company brewery has a very successful double IPA that we distill and age in our used cooperage for a year or so as an annual release that is sold out before it is bottled. Not my cup of tea but certainly has a following, mostly beer folks. I left 15 years of brewing because I was sick of brewing IPAs and here I am haha. When distilling double ipa, the amount of oils that come off in the heads and early hearts is absurd, and makes the oils coming off early in gin look like a joke.  

Replaced fermcap a few years ago with pace 376 as a much cheaper solution. Vegetable oil based and seems to work better 

Our flagship gin uses our house made vodka as a base, but we also do a completely different barrel rested gin in various barrels that uses white malt whiskey mashed from pale malt as a base. It lends incredible mouthfeel and flavor to the finished gin. I think its one of our best products, but alas one of our slowest movers.   

Good luck, most of the time we couldn't get in touch with them when they were in business regarding our still

Long shot I know, but if anyone has ANY barrels they can part with, we are looking to buy.

Received an email this weekend from our current supplier stating "I am writing with the unfortunate news that we are unable to guarantee you any barrels next year"

While in our July email discussing our 2023 needs they stated, 

"...We want you to be confident you’ll be able to take delivery of barrels next year....We want to give customers like yourself the first opportunity to secure calendar space..." 

Well we were confident and now we shit out of luck. 

Appreciate any help guys

All depends what you plan to vapor infuse. Most will have the bulk of their botanicals in their boiler with base alcohol. For reference, for a gin run on our 300 gallon still, we use about 80 pounds of bontanicals, and of that 3 pounds goes in the gin basket. Our gin basket is basically the size of two 5 gallon buckets stacked vertically, and we come no where near using it all. Now if we were doing an all vapor infused gin, it would be quite undersized. There's a million ways to skin a cat when it comes to gin, play around and plan accordingly. Hope this helps

19 hours ago, SlickFloss said:

Hello fainting goat I am the dancing goat it is nice to meet you 

 

so traditional ricks are intended to allow easy sampling of barrels by drilling the heads and then using spikes to seal (use hard oak spikes not poplar). Kindred has posted a somewhat modified design of ricks which have more space between them. It would appear you could possibly use a fork lift to remove barrels but realistically drilling is the safest, cheapest from labor perspective, and quickest way to sample. Opening bungs to extract samples are just wonderful opportunities for contamination 

Hey slick,

Can you speak more to the contaminants you are worried about from bung sampling? 

Only other thing I have tried is making a "dunder" pit out of our agave spirit stillage. Became an acetobactor bomb that I ended up dumping 

Does citric actually remove a layer of copper? Doesn't citric react with and dissolve copper oxide, not the copper itself, leaving the solution a blue color?

Hi all,

One of my business partners absolutely loves amaretto and drinks a fair bit of it. She has asked me about making some of our own. I would like to make it as traditional as possible using bitter apricot kernels, not interested in using extracts. I am aware they contain precursors that are metabolized into cyanide when eaten, but looking for clarity when used in spirits. Does the alcohol denature this or something? Any references or input from folks who have made amaretto would be much appreciated as my searches have produced minimal sources of substance. Trying to educate myself on this before experimenting.

Thanks!

Appreciate hearing that real world example. Similar set up here, but at two year mark. I'll keep on keepin on

Lemon zest is soaked in our 190 proof for a couple weeks. Proofed down to 60 proof with sugar and water. The filter is .2 micron which I realize is super small, just what I had. 
 

Silk - we have been bottling out of a conical tank with this in mind, but the strange thing is no oils in bulk. I will try filtering from proofing tank to the conical bottom bottling tank, rest, then bottle to see if that works. If not I will also visit reducing the amount of zest I use. 
 

Last ditch effort will be a label or sticker marketing the oils, which I almost want to do anyway as I feel this is a sign of good extraction and a high quality limoncello. But want to get ahead of any complaints and concerns  from consumers before we get them. 
 

Thanks for the suggestions 

We recently introduced a Limoncello to our line up that has been very well received. We are on our third batch, the first batch had no issues, batch two and three had the issue. This being that once bottled, we are seeing lemon oils (we assume) breaking out of solution and forming a layer on top of the limoncello once bottled. There is no layer floating in the bulk tank we are bottling out of, so we are led to believe something is occurring during bottling. 

It is a simple set up, bulk tank with screen gasket to catch any larger chunks of zest. We were then going thru a cartridge filter setup that all our spirits get. We thought maybe this was the culprit, but after removing it, the same issue persists. Bottle filler is an Enolmatic.

The layer forms within 30 minutes max of botting, and if bottle is vigorously shaken, it reappears in the same timeframe. Any thoughts other than a "floating oil in natural" sticker?

Thanks  

I do. I would say I use in the 5-10% range. I really just go by pH

Anyone using dunder in their rums want to share how old of dunder they use? Here is my process that has been working great, but just curious about over all age. Have an old 5 barrel conical from our sister brewery. Filled with dunder from out first rum run, July 2020. Since then every batch we make I use enough dunder to drop my pH to where I want it. After stripping, I let the dunder cool and top my "pit" back up. It works great and the flavor seems deeper and more complex each time, but I started to think what others are doing vs my "solera" style dunder

I have been happy sourcing from Monterey Bay Spice Co www.herbco.com 

On a smaller rig I've run in the past, I have used half the size of the boiler for the first and a third the size of the boiler for the second and it ran great with nothing more than parasitic heat

We are currently running a batch of rye with the same issues.  Pulled a sample of late heads as I approached what should be hearts, proofed down, gave the glass a smell and started choking. Back of throat burning and eyes watering. The only variable in this batch is we used a saison esque yeast at a fairly high temp. I'm guessing this caused it to produce a ton of sulfur and now potentially acrolein. Thoughts?

Because marketing

On 8/14/2020 at 12:03 PM, Silk City Distillers said:

Hornindal in Bourbon Mash - The amount of tropical fruit and dark fruit jam straight through the hearts is nuts.  Some might call those all off flavors.

We will see how those flavors survive aging.

@Silk City Distillers, how are those flavors and esters now that you are a year or so in the barrel? Planning on trialing a couple kveik strains in the near future on rum, and if favorable whiskey after that 

Interested on hearing peoples thoughts on compressing heads using a couple plates, switching to pot still for hearts, and back to a couple plates for tails. I am sure this is product and system dependent, but just as a general discussion. 

We create many products, rarely the same a few times in a row, so sitting on a bunch of random feints to recycle is a bit of a pain. My concern with compressing is losing those favorable congeners that live in late heads and early tails. Curious to hear folks real life experiences. 

I have tried it and it certainly helps yield, however we are not far enough along into our barrel aging to see its impacts on the final products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi5WzVGBkuw

Interesting watch with some info regarding what you are interested in 

Fermentis us-05

What if any records are required when moving a spirit (bourbon in this case) to a finishing barrel (rum in this case). I understand the age statement implications and the clock stopping, just not sure what records (gauge?) are required. Thanks

Title about says it all, just wondering how long folks are keeping columns in full reflux prior to taking product off?