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Roger

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Everything posted by Roger

  1. Ok, not to beat a dead horse here but, when using NGS to make vodka, there are really two ways to do it. 1) Just reduce it close to bottle proof, filter it any of several way, add your flavor, sugar, citric (if applicable) then reduce to final proof and bottle. 2) Add some water to NGS so you don't blow up your building, put it in any type of still from a Kurig , to a 1000 plate nuclear powered column that is slightly shorter than the troposphere , warm up the mix and it will come out exactally as it was when you put it in. No heads, tails, hearts, or magic beans will come from your efforts, so it will be impossible to identify these non existent segments. However you can say you distilled it. Maybe the best way would be to do "simulated cuts" . Just pull the first 2% of the warmed up NGS off into one container, then segregate the next 70% into your hearts container, then run the remainder into a tails container. Just use the hearts for your Vodka. The next day, dump the heads and tails into the next batch and repeat the process. Should work out pretty well. Either way you are still required to state on the bottle (Contains 100% NGS) Prost
  2. The entire topic of how changes in state laws over the past 10 years have allowed for the expansion of craft distillers is to absurd to even comment on. Move along Indy, you are usually less obtuse.
  3. Onerous state laws basically prevented small distillers from operating. Grow up.
  4. Put simply, NGS vodka is ordinary. It is not good or bad, it is just ordinary. It's been sold off the bottom shelf of liquor stores for years, and out of millions of bar wells. It is essentially a commodity with no margin. Meanwhile independent small distilleries are now legal in the US and are growing at a reasonable rate, made primarily possible by said distilleries being able to charge a premium price for their products, to consumers who appreciate their sense of craft and efforts. In between that is the Fakillery. The flood of pretend producers who tout " our grains are grown right in our back 40 and harvested by disadvantage Amish who then grind the grains with a horse operated mill...." What they don't tell the consumer is they are talking about the 4 barrels of whiskey they put away for 10 years from now, while 99% of their revenue stream is really just dumping NGS in bottles, some with drops of flavor and sugar, which they then charge a craft price for. so yes we are here to make money, and if you are a re-bubbler, than you are welcome for our helping to allow you to charge an exhorbinate price for a disingenuous product and process. Prost
  5. Explain what ? That's like asking someone to prove a lie. If you want to ask a question, ask a Fakeillery to explain the process of how they remove the "heads" from NGS and then every actual distiller on the planet will knock off their "secret process" for themselves.
  6. Sorry, but it is absolutely false that commercial NGS has "heads" that can be removed by a common column still. That is a complete fabrication invented by the re-bubbler's who want to pretend that they are actually doing something to the product. In most cases the re-bubblers can't even remove the impurities from the water they add to keep their facility from blowing up. Paul - you make some great equipment, but don't try to undermine the actual distilling industry by adding fake credibility to the re-bubbling scam.
  7. True dat. However I was referencing the much more valuable craft, handmade "pot distilled" option. Its the closest to a Coffey still, 90% of the current crop of distilers will ever get.
  8. Can't you just run a hose out of the bottom of a commercial Bunn coffee machine and pump NGS into the top, and make Vodka ? Why in the world would you spend $100,000- to make fake vodka ?
  9. I think a few might be looking at the flash point / fire point a bit incorrectly. Yes it may be true that as a static substance, the vapor of a 30% wash would contain less energy and have a somewhat higher flash point that a static 60% wash vapor, but that's not what we all do for a living. What we do for a living is convert that liquid into a vapor ABV% far and above the pot wash beginning virtually the moment it starts to warm up. In some cases that conversion may be from 30% to 80% almost instantly (once up to temp). So the fact that one has a 30% low wine in their still that they then transform into a 80,90% ABV spirit really has no bearing what-so-ever on the "flash point" or inherent danger or safety of the process. Again, the only way the "static wash ABV" matters, is if you had two pots side by side, neither one was being heated, and someone threw a match into both. The 30% may not go Boom, but the 60% probably would. If however you had both stills up to temperature, there would be virtually no difference in the outcome.
  10. Now that's funny ! It's profile is like the 95% of "Craft Rye" currently on the market .
  11. Don't take a credit card. Get your money, deposit the wire, then xfer the money. Any "guy" who doesn't know what he needs the label to be to sell in his own country, is a scammer.
  12. You're overthinking it. Use tap water, and pitch at 85. If you want to cool it back down after it gets violent, then do so. You are chilling out your yeast while allowing some grain bacteria to eat the sugars.
  13. Fourmulas are crazy fast now. A week or less. Keep in mind that the most creative products typically don't have the best sell through in any place but your own tasting room. People en mass are quite reluctant to part with their 40 bucks in a liquor store when looking at your speciality in a sea of choice, whether you think your persimmon spice double mint latte cream is the best thing on the planet or not. Tasting room, yes. Liquor store and bar, not so much.
  14. Ah yes. Dilute your own viability by selling your products at the lowest possible price to competitors in your own backyard, to force downward pressure on your retail price point. Drat. Must have missed that in Business 101.
  15. I must say, this is one of the most interesting chains in a while It's appears to be a question from a distillery in Australia that makes Bourbon there, which is illegal, asking about moonshine sales over here, which is illegal, and he want to know "how are sales". Perhaps the question is instead: We make whiskey in Australia in the manner that you make Bourbon in the US, and we are wondering, how sales are in the US for Distilled Spirits Specialties, that are essentially fruit flavored cocktails sold in jars with screw on lids ? Is that the question ?
  16. Well, just off the cuff the first one would probably be pretty good, and the 2nd one would probably taste like sangria
  17. Stumpy - can you post a couple pics of the grist hydrator with the flap. We are having the same problem with steam drifting up into our auger drop. Tks
  18. Honestly unless you have come up with some incredible speciality spirit, and are realitvely new, you would be better off to just enter any of the myriad of "Pay to Play" HoneyBooBoo competitions out there. It seems like most people who play that game enter contests far away from their actual location, so it adds more drama to the purchased medals. Also make sure it has an official sounding name like "The Elon Musk Intergalactic Bourbon Challenge" We have a Quasi-illery near us that actually entered and won a bunch of medals in a "competition" for several different unreleased aged whiskeys that were still halfway through their way to being straight (+/- 16 months). A rye, bourbon, corn, etc. must have been awesome ! Playing Devils advocate, wouldn't that mean that the actual spirit you eventually release is different than the one you purchased the medal for, making said fake award even less valid ? But people seem to buy it, so follow the sheep. ps: They also were victorious with their 100% NGS vodka and gin. prost
  19. Aren't most large open top fermenters dosed with antibiotics, which is the reason the EPA wants to change the regulations on mixing distillers/Brewers grains into the commercial beef and pork industry ? So while many distilleries.do in fact use open fermenters, how many are dosing to prevent infection ?
  20. You can just charge more for it. I believe Booker sells "ovenproof" . It is very common in the industry. The rules dictate what goes in, not what happens once it's in there. Prost
  21. As real distillers, let's at least try to all get along when we are talking about process. There's plenty of time to argue with the bartenders For the corn issue, we have tried dewatering / lautering a variety of ways. One of the things that gets lost in the translation when talking about if you can or not can do it, is the actual yield and additional cost. We have tried everything from shaker table concept, to screens over barrels, to our real screen bottom commercial mash tun, to slits in the bottom of copper pipes in bulk milk tanks. They all "work" to some degree, but the one constant is that unlike for example a barley which allows you to sparge down through, the corn has a tendency to "back up" the sparge water, and then slowly drain through. You essentially re-float the sugars in solution, where it then re-adheres to the protiens (ground husk). It's like taking a bath in dirty water. You never really get clean. The example given above by Still Holler makes the point. His laborious process is yielding roughly 22 proof gallons for 350# of lautered corn. The TTB and USDA expect between 5-5.1 proof gallons per bushel (56#) which means that if he did not lauter, he could expect 31.25 proof gallons from that 350# +/-. We encountered those same form of horrible numbers, which is why we stopped doing it. In the end it's not really about if it can or can't be done, it's about what the cost will be if you chose to do it. As for Paul at AFD i believe he, like Joe Dehner has always tried to take the "long view" to suggest equipment that fits a real production facility and process, vs the hobby shop set up. Prost.
  22. Try shutting the defleg water off quickly and completely after 45min or so of column to equalization. This will blast the heads out and keep them from smearing. Then go full defleg again for 15 mins or so, then bleed into the hearts.
  23. Joe - Sadly you completely misinterpret the data. While it could certainly be argued that 99.9% of your customers (those buying bulk spirits from you) do not care where their bulk products comes from, that is not the same as 99.9% of end customers "not-caring" about where the products originated. For example 80% of people who go anywhere on vacation bring home some form of Geographically branded merchandise. In the old days it was snow globes of the statue of liberty and T-Shirts, now it's more typically craft beer, wine or spirits. The wine industry is very strict about viticulture, fortification origin, etc and the beer industry is all local, but unfortunately Big Alcohol has embraced laws that obfuscate the actual origin of spirits to the detriment of the true craft / local centric culture. You even appear to veil the actual origin of some of the bulk products you sell on this very site, I would assume as an attempt to even further push the false narrative that what people don't know, won't hurt them. A self serving and self fulfilling prophesy that goes something like " If I dump enough cheap Bio-Ethanol on the system by pretending that it's ok with the end consumer, eventually every distiller in the country will have to stop making their own alcohol, because they will not be able to compete with the price points and margins of fake craft products ". I completely reject your assertion that 99.9% of "end customers" are either too dumb, cheap, or non-caring, to pay a premium for a hand crafted product. In fact that's not even the argument of the fake craft distillers who buy bulk products which they pretend are their own craft spirits. That actual hidden argument goes something like, " if the end customer is actually so stupid that fake distillers can dupe them into paying more, regardless of where the spirits actually comes from, then it should be considered "craft industry standard". This obvious because otherwise all " fake craft distillers" selling NGS Vodka, Gin and flavored liqueurs would be pricing their products the same as can be found on the bottom shelf of any inner city liquor store. Or better than that, at $1.20 +/- cheaper that "Barton'esq" Vodka, because "fake craft" distillers have the FIT reduction that large producers don't. But they don't do that. Why ? Because as long as they can, the fake craft distillers will charge the absolute maximum possible for the products they spend pennies on, provided that the customer doesn't find out. The success of craft spirits, craft beer and farm wine, is dependent on our ability to actually charge enough to offset the higher cost of production to make those goods in-house. All of that is contingent upon the trust that the customer places in our industry to not deceive them. We spend a lot of time and energy educating our customers about the process of making our spirits, and we hear time and again how they hear exactly the same things from another local "distiller". The only difference is that on the back of their bottles in really fine print it say "100% NGS". We, and I use that collectively for all real distillers, unwittingly support the fake distillery industry, and we need to figure out how to fix that. I am sorry that your attempt at running a true craft distillery failed, even thought literally hundreds of us are thriving. and I appreciate the concept of you as a distiller selling your bulk products into the base of the 3 tiered system and to manufacturers who do not pretend to be actual distillers. That market place is very price sensitive, and your products obviously fit that bill. At the same time, try not to destroy the industry that we chose to operate in, by pushing the false narrative that end customers are too stupid or too cheap to care about their purchase decision. What's on your label ?
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