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glisade

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Everything posted by glisade

  1. I think every distiller should know and understand how to use the water-ethanol equilibrium curve. This alone can be used to answer many of your questions...especially for a column still.
  2. Sorry everything is social media now but here's a couple photos in whiskey and gin basket configuration. Both use same pot, condenser and mantle.
  3. I built a modular 2 liter glass lab still that has a "whiskey" reflux column, gin basket, etc.. from components from: https://www.avogadro-lab-supply.com/category/Distillation_Glass/c105 and using the heating mantle from: https://pelletlab.com/product/heating-mantle/
  4. Not enough sugars and "sweet" congeners extracted from barrel aging? Many people relate sweetness to smoothness. I've done this with a blind vodka tasting: the more sugar you add (up to the legal limit for vodka) the "smoother" they said it was. Nobody actually said it tasted sweeter but it was smoother.
  5. For partly this reason is why we don't macerate but put all botanicals in the kettle during distillation. Seasonal affects will be minimal with this method. Have you considered going with this method instead? Of course using a gin basket will get rid of seasonal affects as well but I doubt you could do that with your alembic still.
  6. I had a pink gin at a previous distillery. It was a gin aged in a used red wine barrel.
  7. I've used both the Xpress volumetric fill and (currently) the enolmaster. I like the enolmaster over the xpress fill. I find the biggest advantage is you don't have to fill 4 bottles at a time. So you can constantly bring bottles in and out of the enolmaster. Since I usually bottle alone this helps keep a consistent flow because you can also increase or decrease pressure. And when you get down to the bottom of the bottling run you can just use it to bottle one at a time until you finish. I also like the stainless steel filters it comes with...and it's inherently explosion proof since it uses a vacuum pump so no product goes through the pump. I can fill, add closure and shrink wrap about 100 bottles/hour by myself with the enolmaster.
  8. This is one of the cheapest places I have found for stainless steel sanitary drums, I assume you mean drum and not barrel (as in wood barrel). They are local to us so no shipping needed. I can't comment on the lining but would be suspicious and wouldn't use it until I really knew that it would not affect my spirit. http://www.bubbasbarrels.com/catalog/stainless-steel-drums-and-accessories
  9. We've had something similar happen when we said our Malt Whiskey was finished in used beer barrels. They rejected that and said I needed a formula. I submitted a formula for a Malt Whiskey finished in used beer barrels and FONL came back and accepted the formula BUT said now it's a DSS and the statement of composition should say: Malt Whiskey finished in used beer barrels. From my experience, anytime your product goes slightly outside the typical Class definition then they want it to be DSS. You may get stuck with a DSS but maybe you can write the statement of composition as "xxxxx Liqueur finished in whiskey barrels" So maybe "xxxx Liqueur" may get you close to the original liqueur name. But now you'll also need a fanciful name.
  10. I use PBW and bring it back up to near boil and let it soak for a bit. It's always taken everything out. But I've also done something similar to Silk City but used rice and it works pretty good too.
  11. Finding adequate help is a common complaint, at least here in TN, when the distiller's guild members meet. Most distilleries I know are operated by the owners themselves until they can grow enough to hire someone or find someone worth hiring. You should learn as much as you can whether you work in production or not. That way you'll know if someone is actually good or just full of BS.
  12. I would LOVE that! Please do it and photograph the evidence..the only problem is it would cost you thousands on the "pappy black market" to even get the bottles.
  13. herbco.com sfherb.com mountainroseherbs.com
  14. We use two 330 gallon totes as fermentors and put cooling coils into them to help keep temps relatively stable. These coils from Bubbas Barrels will fit inside the standard opening: http://www.bubbasbarrels.com/cooling-coil I had Bubbas sell me just the coil with straight stainless lines, no triclamp or hose barb. The coils sit in the tote with the stainless lines poking through the tote screw lid then I run lines to a glycol chiller in parallel. I added an exit CO2 port in the back of each tote and temp gauges on each. I also added a thermowell to the back of one and put an Inkbird temp sensor into the thermowell and have the glycol chiller turn on and off based on the Inkbird temp sensor point. We go into the fermentors at about 75F and the wort usually doesn't get much higher than the lower 80s...BUT we also have some A/C in the distillery and keep it about 78-82. So it's a combination of the two that keeps it stable. The coil alone is very undersized for this amount of wort..coil is 3-4 bbl and it sits in 10bbl of wort. But we're not trying to make a 68F ale.... Silk City is right though and to me this should only be a startup/temporary solution.
  15. glisade

    Gin Cloudiness

    Two things you should try first before filtering (and I'm surprised a particle filter would even remove the oils): 1. Increase the proof - add more (neutral) base back into it until it clears. 2. Dilute with the same proof base - this will keep the same proof but may dilute more flavor I make gins with a lot of botanicals and flavor that are sometimes on the edge of louching but you'd be surprised how little flavor loss you can have through dilution or increasing the proof. Of course what indyspirits says is quite valid as well, though I take a very small heads cut with my citrus forward gin since most of the big citrus flavor comes out early.
  16. Did you submit with the latin name? Always submit with the latin name. If you did, at least for Sarsaparilla (Smilax aristolochiaefolia Mill.) it's on the FDA Gras list. If you give the common name, they don't really know what it is or what part of the plant or species. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=172.510
  17. You should run it until you are sure you got all alcohol out i.e. the vapor temperature is reading 212F. Then maybe run a little longer in case your temp probe is not accurate. Also use some boiling stones, they can sometimes help with solids burning.
  18. All you are trying to do when you re-distill your spirit is to separate the alcohol in the spirit from any solids. Your main goal is to distill ALL the ethanol from the spirit and leave only solids and water behind in the proofing still. Once you extract the ethanol then you add only pure water to your distillate to get back to your original volume that you distilled (before adding any extra water to rinse the flask). Then you can take the proof with hydrometers and that will tell you the proof of your original spirit. The extra water to rinse the flask will not change the amount of ethanol you will distill. Example: Start with 500ml of your sweetened spirit. Assume all volume and proof readings are taken at 60F! Make sure all 500ml gets into the still and use XXml of rinse water if needed. Distill until you have collected all ethanol, (until still temp is at 212F). Stop distillation and add XXml of water to get the distillate volume back to 500ml exactly. Now you've effectively replaced the solids in the spirit with just water but it has the same ethanol content and volume as your original sample. Proof distillate with hydrometers. The key is to make sure you get all the ethanol out so you must make sure all the spirit gets into the proofing still and you also don't lose any through evaporation while distilling or you'll be under proof.
  19. Part 3 here: https://www.ttb.gov/spirits/proofing.shtml It's not that hard and you can buy a nice little glass lab still for a few hundred $.
  20. Ya totally agree. I just wanted to point out to the OP that no matter how he was distilling: steam distillation with just water and essential oil (immiscible) or alcohol distillation with various solubles (miscible) that he was going to get thujone. Basically, as long as the liquid mixture boils (immiscible or miscible) he's going to get all the components to come over though in different amounts at different times. And that the "magic boiling point myth" does not exist even with mixtures that don't combine.
  21. Geraldmarken, Search "thujone content" there's a thread with similar issues about how to estimate the amount of thujone content in spirits.
  22. Bluestar, Not sure if there's a misunderstanding of what I wrote but check out this link: http://www.separationprocesses.com/Distillation/DT_Chp01m.htm Key point from the link: For example, the 2 liquids A and B are immiscible. At equilibrium, they each exerts equilibrium vapour pressure PVP,A and PVP,B respectively. Thus the total pressure exerted is The equilibrium vapour pressures of water and benzene at 100 oF (37.8 oC) are 0.95 and 3.30 psia respectively. The total pressure exerted is therefore (0.95 + 3.30) = 4.25 psia. Note here that in the calculations of total pressure, the actual amount of each is immaterial. An important outcome is that the boiling point of an immiscible mixture must be lower than that of either of its components. Again, using water-benzene mixture, we note that the mixture will boil when the total pressure exerted by the mixture equals the atmospheric pressure, 14.7 psia. This temperature is 156 oF (68.9 oC), when the equilibrium vapour pressures of water and benzene are 4.45 and 10.25 psia respectively (thus, total 14.7 psia). Note that the mixture boiling point is lower than that for pure water 212 oF (100 oC) and pure benzene 176 oF (80.2 oC).
  23. Many other botanical's essential oils also have high boiling points but they all come over into the distillate when you make gin. It's because oil and water are immiscible. And when you have two liquids that are immiscible (they do not dissolve in one another, they separate) but they can and will both still boil...and the boiling point of the immiscible liquids will be lower than the lower of the two boiling points! The temperature to boil will be when the summation of the vapor pressures of the two liquids is equal to the atmospheric pressure, which will end up being slightly less than the boiling point of water (the lower of the two boiling points). So the oil will end up in the distillate...the alcohol present will even further reduce this boiling point.
  24. Dried botanicals in half pint, wide mouth jars of our specific botanicals and other common gin botanicals.
  25. I've done something very similar at a distillery. It was a 1.5 hour private class and we went over: History of gin Explanation of different types of gin Botanicals review with many of them laid out in jars to smell/taste How gin is made with a demonstration in a 2L lab still and we had a production batch going at the same time How to setup and distill on a small lab still Gin Tasting We gave them a booklet we made that included most of the above along with the GRAS table, water-ethanol equilibrium curve, where to buy a lab still, etc..Both classes we did sold out with 15 people per class.
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