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glisade

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Everything posted by glisade

  1. You can buy these online, just search for a 1/2" copper cooling coil. You can also buy coiled copper pipe at Lowe's and make on yourself pretty cheaply. I've done this a few times before to fit into a 55 gallon drum.
  2. It's all up to the state laws. Every state can be different. Talk to your local alcohol regulating body in your state and ask them specifically what you want to do.
  3. I don't think I would make the bar/retail any part of your legal distillery (DSP) at all. The bar/retail may be a part of your distillery business but they are not a part of your legal distillery from the point of view of the TTB. So you should make three areas within your building: legal distillery, bar, retail. Your distillery is your DSP and what the TTB regulates. The bar and retail are regulated by your state laws. Within your distillery, you would have potentially two main areas: bonded and unbonded (general) premises. Bonded premises are where all your alcohol is made, stored, bottled, etc..you have to have the alcohol in this space insured and you pay your federal excise tax once your alcohol LEAVES the bonded area; no matter where it goes. General premises is maybe offices, storage, etc..where no unpaid excise tax alcohol will be stored. If you decide you ran out of room in your bonded premises and want to store bottled and boxed alcohol in your general premises you would have to pay the excise tax on it even if it's not sold. Most smaller distilleries are probably in 100% bonded premises.
  4. They way it reads you are doing exactly what is required. Your building isn't a distillery, the distillery is located within your building. You just need to make sure you clearly mark what is your distillery in your building drawing and then mark what is the bonded premises and general premises within the distillery. If you are selling alcohol in the bar and retail spaces, just make sure they are NOT part of your distillery. They should be marked on the drawing but they will NOT be a part of your distillery (general or bonded). They are just saying if you plan to sell alcohol it can't be in any part of the distillery but if you are just selling merchandise it can be in the general (non-alcohol producing) premises of the distillery. But it's probably best to keep all the bar and retail totally separate from the distillery...otherwise any part that is in your distillery would be under their jurisdiction during an audit.
  5. There's some similar here but not in your size: https://www.glaciertanks.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=manhole+gasket but maybe they can get some. Also, check with https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/ Paul can probably get you anything. I have a 15" on my manway from one of his stills.
  6. https://otherhandbranding.com/ They do all our labels, website, videos, etc..
  7. Yup, I've seen for the last couple months that some don't seat down all the way. There might be a ~1mm gap and I can't get it to go down further. Maybe 10-20% of the ones I've used recently. However, that's only for the larger ones I have, the smaller ones don't have this issue though the bottle opening may be slightly bigger in the smaller stopper case.
  8. I did a half gallon test batch one time where I mixed apple juice and malt wort (for a beer but no hops) and fermented them together. Then distilled it and put an oak cube on it for a month. I thought it turned out great with with hints of both malt whiskey and apple brandy. As a product it's tricky since it doesn't fall into a normal category (distilled spirits specialty) so it could be harder to sell. If you do it, I would recommend aging in a toasted, not charred barrel.
  9. I wouldn't touch it. Let it sit for a week or so if you can. A lot of times the louche will clear itself. And if you proofed at a cold temperature, when the temp goes up it may clear itself. For example: if it's 60F in the distillery and the gin louches, when it's sitting on the liquor store shelf at 70F it's fine. Try warming a bottle up a bit and see if it goes away.
  10. You can use any sample size you want...what matters is the sample size and the proofing sample are exactly the same volume (at the same temperature). You can add as much water as you want to your sample but if you add too much your proofing sample may end up being larger than your sample size. The concept of adding the water to the sample is to use the water to make sure you rinsed out all the sample liqueur from the graduated cylinder, funnel, etc..so you collect all the alcohol that was in the sample. So you should just use the minimum amount of water it takes and you should be fine.
  11. Basically the cheapest deep fry oil that has a good smoke point for us it's a soy/peanut blend. Then when you're done with it the biodiesel companies will take it from you.
  12. We used deep fry oil in our jacket with electric heating elements in our 150 gallon still. Just swapped it out after using the same oil for 5 years. We run it to 325F.
  13. We use http://www.eprintgroup.com/ They can do same week if they have materials in stock and your labels are digitally printed. They also have laser cutting "dies" for smaller runs to speed things up.
  14. Yes. I made different diluted versions until I felt I found the correct flavor profile. I don't feel the flavors changed depending on the upscaling.
  15. Correct on all points. The main reason I feel it was being concentrated on the 600L is when I would proof it to bottle strength the gin was louching so it tells me it's has a higher oil content than the 2L still batch. And of course the flavor was stronger than the original 2L batches. So instead of reducing the amount of botanicals on the large batch it made more sense to just dilute it.
  16. That's great and not surprising to me. Thanks for posting that video!
  17. We develop all of our gin recipes as one-shot but then they all naturally become multi-shot. The reason is all our gins are developed on a 2 liter lab still, then we test it on our pre-production 60 liter still then to our 600 liter production still. The botanical amounts are scaled linearly but the heat up and distillation times take longer and longer as we move to bigger stills. The 2 liter still takes about an hour to make gin (20min to boil) but the 600 liter takes 5 hours (1.5 hours to boil). So the botanicals are sitting in the pot longer and the alcohol naturally extracts more flavors from them producing a much richer flavored gin. FYI, We load all the botanicals into the pot of the still to make our gin. So we make multi-shot gins but it wasn't done originally on purpose, though I think it's a more practical approach. When we bottle the gin, I proof it to bottle proof then add GNS and water of the same proof to dilute it by 25%. I've never actually played around with purposely making a multi-shot gin or trying to make it more concentrate, so I'm no multi-shot expert.
  18. I don't know of any other alternatives other than probably the more automated labelers. It solved all my issues, same as what is happening with you. No cons yet. I use two labels: a single label that goes on a cylindrical bottle and a front and back label that goes on a tapered bottle.
  19. Had the same issues with the mechanical version of the Bottle-Matic, sold it and bought the optical version instead and now everything is good. https://www.propacksolutions.com/bottle-matic-os-label-applicator.html
  20. I know a local brewery that uses multiple tankless water heaters in series to get to hot enough water for mashing malt for a 5bbl mash tun.
  21. Message me with your email and I can send some pics. And I make various liqueurs with my setup.
  22. I don't worry about grounding. The drum should be grounded on the concrete or proofing scale. When on the wooden pallet, I still don't see much concern. But, as you say this is a stainless steel paddle in a stainless steel drum. So there isn't all that much movement and vapor being pushed up like potentially with a mixer, just muscle slowly sloshing everything around. I'm sure you could put a ground strap on it though and tie it to a set point when on the scale. I just have a drum on a pallet and lift with fork lift or a drum directly on the forks. Depending on the size of the drum, I may strap it to the forklift. I use tri-clamp fittings from the bottom valve of the upper drum to flow or filter into the bottom drum. Right now I have a 100 gallon plastic cone bottom tank that's bolted to a mini-pallet in the air with the forklift. I am transferring the liqueur through a 1 micron bag filter into a 100 gallon stainless drum on the proofing scale. I strapped the tank to the forklift so I can tilt it forwards to get all the product out. All I have to clean afterwards is the tank and a few tri-clamp fittings. I've done it like this for 5 years without any issues.
  23. I use a ~400 liter stainless steel drum to proof and mix my liqueurs for bottling. It has a lid but yes its essentially open top and I just use a stainless steel pale to mix everything. Usually after multiple mixes, everything is uniform in about 24 hours. It sits on the proofing scale on top of a pallet so I can move it around later or onto the forklift if I need to filter it into another drum. I don't like using pumps to circulate or move spirit from drum to drum since you can lose product in the hoses and pump and then you have to clean everything after. If you have a forklift, gravity is more efficient with less clean up.
  24. These coils are undersized for our fermenters but we don't need tight temperature control. We don't agitate, the fermentation is doing that for us in a way. I've also built some coils for cooling mash from coiled copper pipe you can buy at Lowe's. They sell it in a flat coil and you can just slowly unwind it and coil it yourself but the diameter of the coil would be better for a 55 gallon drum. We used something like this: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Mueller-Streamline-3-4-in-x-60-ft-Copper-K-Coil/4742152 made a cooling coil with it and put it in a drum filled with cold water and pumped the mash through the coil into the fermenter.
  25. Check out: http://www.bubbasbarrels.com/cooling-coil These are made for ~100 gallon fermenters. If you don't have the right tri-clamp fitting for your fermenter, you can buy the coils alone and make adapt them to fit your tank lid/manway. That's what I did with our 275 gallon IBC totes that we use as fermenters.
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