blair

Speaking of intellectual property law, is it necessary or wise to consult an attorney to do a search before putting a label/product in the marketplace? Is searching trademarks etc. yourself sufficient? If anyone has used an attorney for this purpose, what are the costs?

At one of the various distilling courses I attended, one of the speakers stressed that you should take no more than 5 hours to cook and cool the mash before pitching the yeast to avoid bacterial contamination. This raises several questions. 1. Does anyone agree with this? 2. How long is your mashing time? What volume mash? 3. How can the large distilleries achieve anywhere near a 5 hour time using 5 to 10 thousand gallon or larger mash tanks?

All the large distilleries that I have visited have black mold on the buildings and adjacent trees. Is this an issue for microdistilleries? How big do your fermentation tanks have to be before this becomes a problem? I presume white or light colored paint would not be good for my building.

Can anyone recommend a good bulk supplier for juniper berries, coriander etc? I am located in Tennessee and somewhere relatively close is preferred due to shipping costs.

I, too, had heard that Tito's was GNS redistilled in a pot still (gooseneck style without plates). Does anyone know the real story? On the Tito's bottle, it says "Distilled and Bottled by Fifth Generation, Inc, Austin, TX". I had heard that in order to put "distilled by" on your vodka label, you would have to be the one who distilled it to 190 proof which would not occur using watered down GNS and a simple pot still. In that case, you could only put "produced by" on your label. So I thought that you could tell whether the vodka maker was using GNS by looking at this distinction on the label. Can anybody give me a clarification on the TTB rules regarding this?

Can you explain louching? I am not familiar with that term. Is it precipitation of the heavy oils, development of cloudiness, or what?

Welcome to the forum. May the road of knowledge rise up to meet you.

Thanks Chuck. I reside in Tennessee and am considering opening a distillery here. I had heard that charcoal filtering was not required in the legal definition of Tennessee Whiskey but could not find confirmation of that. Nothing in the beverage alcohol manual, etc. So this explains it. There apparently was no concrete definition before this. I looked at the posts on your blog. I also agree that Brown Forman/Jack Daniels probably gave their blessing on this definition before it was put into the NAFTA agreement. However, it makes me wonder why they didn't include the charcoal filtering in their definition. Do you think they wanted to preserve the opportunity for Jack to market a nonfiltered TN whiskey? Or, more likely, for Brown Forman to create a new TN whiskey brand, nonfiltered? I would assume this means that you probably can't get TTB label approval for just any whiskey made in TN to be called Tennessee whiskey, only if it meets the straight bourbon standard including 2 years in a new charred oak barrel. Blair

Has anyone had problems with the EPA regarding disposal of still wastes, emissions, water runoff, etc. I am considering apply for USDA rural development small business loan to help with distillery set up. If approved for this type of loan, they would notify other government agencies, including the EPA. I am debating whether this would be a real downside to this type of loan. The byproducts of distilling do not seem toxic to me, but the EPA is not often reasonable.

I've been to Makers Mark for the tour. They do double distill but you only see the continuous still on the tour. I was interested to see the shape of the pot still but it was not shown. Based upon Chuck Cowdery's comments on other forums, I had assumed that other large buorbon makers were using a similar process but maybe that is not true. Continuous distillation on a small scale sounds interesting, but I too am not weel-heeled enough to finance that experiment. Still trying to decide which way to go for whiskey making - double pot still distillation vs. single distillation on a pot column still. One question I had is whether using a modified pot still with a few plates or at least a dephlegmator in one phase of the double distillation would be helpful to give better control of output and to raise final proof. Woodford Reserve triple distills to 155 proof and I think most of the other modern buorbons are fairly high proof as well. Makers says their final proof of 130 is the "lowest in the industry". For a microdistillery, a higher proof, "cleaner" whiskey with less congeners should taste better with shorter aging time than a lower proof whiskey. I don't think it is feasible to get 150 proof product from double distillation in a traditional pot still without packing the column or other manipulation but I am a novice and maybe this thought could be incorrect as well. Of course, this is easily achievable with a 4 plate pot column still but I sense some prejudice among purists that pot still whiskey is better.

I understand that the major buorbon producers (except Woodford) do double distillation, first on continuous still and second on a pot still (doubler or thumper). Apparently there are some undesirable molecules that they are not able to remove in the continuous process. Is the same thing true with the pot-column type still with plates favored by most microdistillers? Has anybody tried to emulate the process of the big boys by doing first distillation in a hybrid pot column still and a second distillation in a traditional whiskey or alembic type pot still? Of course, one can do two distillations in a traditional pot still, but I don't think you can readily achieve a high proof whiskey this way. I assume that is why Woodford Reserve is doing triple pot still distillation in order to get to 155 proof. I know that this is a controversial topic and that a number of microdistilleries are making whiskey/buorbon in a single distillation on a hybrid pot column still. I am hoping to stimulate some good discussion that may help me decide which direction to go. I am currently in distillery planning stage.