SlickFloss

I think there may be a gin shotting discussion somewhere if you search…. Have done it quite a bit open to answer any specific questions about it as far as I can be valuable. Shotting does work but it can take some dialing in. Packing botanicals can get particular and one must remember gin baskets and macerates aren’t equal. Also, some recipes just aren’t meant to shot.

Pig farmers. You need to find pig farmers. Find one within 40 miles of you call them and tell them you want to give them free fermented and distilled grain slurry for slop. If they’re within forty miles they’re 99% likely breaking even or saving money consider gas. Then buy yourself a 6k gallon tank and sell your dewatering equipment

Hey, welcome to the forums. I’m sorry that you had to move away, I’ve enjoyed the greatest gift of working with my father (and my grandfather) and I wish you got that, you may still one day. This is a really tough industry it’s labor and Capitol intensive, cash flow needs never end. I don’t know what scope or scale you’re talking about, but it’s very hard for small producers to get by on product alone. I’d highly encourage you guys look at ways to generate on site revenue to assist with cash flow needs of getting fermentables in the door. If y’all ever need help with technical issues in the production of alcohol this community is here to help, only thing we can’t do is sell it for you. Cheers! Slick P.S. second smartest thing your son can ever do is learn to weld.

Immediately upon macerating wormwood vaudevillian people of the night come out as a cacophony of disjointed instruments to Jazz at me like a shot of Malort betwixt propositions of sexual transactions

Hey Beav Daddy can you break this down for me? Too much pressure in the kettle so reflux can come back in?

Sombrero of death amigo

Plus, this website has a really great search function that people always forget about and I’m not trying to be catty with that remark but I know because I’ve looked this up before here lol

That is easy. That is what we (the community here) is for. Stump is the man he makes great whiskey and I’ve never met him but I knows he’s my friend. If for some reason he won’t tell you how to adjust your current process for it, I will, and I know my boy Tom L will chirp in, and our boys in Indy will have something to say I’m sure too and…. like I said we all got you!

Columns are ran at energy equilibrium....constant steam column loses energy as it travels away from source of column and refluxes out

exclusively issues to all malt mashes or what about say a different grain wash like a corn mash?

Retrofitting that tank with an agitator would cost you a new tank. If you’re set on those cookers you could get a slurry tank, so imagine a smaller cooker that you just use to mix grain and hot water in so obviously agitator wanted. Instead of a cooker per se you could take hot water and mix it with grain in a stainless 550 gallon tote, you can buy a removable top mounted agitator for it brand new for a couple gs, when slurry is mixed transfer it to cooker to cook. I would reccomend only slightly warm water for this like 80-100 so your not steaming up the agitator and can see inside of the tote. Recirc the tote while mixing. When mixed connect line to cooker, wash rinse repeat. Could have multiple stainless 550s with one agitator so you could do it generally quickly for the task at hand….. lots of labor….. could clean those up sell those for cash and buy a used one with an agitator or a new one from Paul for cheap! I got backwoods methods all day but they’re a ton of work lmk if you want me to keep chirping

Sorry didn’t want to make it feel like a stay in your lane type thing I’m just trying to save you the literal hours of heart ache and burns…. Big issue is the batch not moving and the fixed nature of a recirc line. All grist put into the kettle will be chased away by the flow of the recirc and all that flour will press together into clumps, if you’re at temp it will gelatinize the outsides completely water impermeable and you can find flour I shit you not on the other side of your strip. you could splurge for a grist hydrator but I’ve never really found one I’ve liked, always end up taking them out. you could plumb your recirc line to cause flow in the tank and weld a paddle baffle into the tank but you’d want a mother fucker of a pump

This is a process nightmare. I have a few 240 gallon mash cooker with bottom sweep only agitators and a recirc line once you get to certain level no benefit from mash vessel agitator for flour blending into grain slurry as cook progressed. Big time clumps and cakes of grain. Super dialed in now but not the best. But also important atleast with a bottom sweep the slurry is evenly heated and particles don’t sit on the jacket as you gel. You’re going to scorch without any agitation. A ton. Every time you make anything with high wheat rye and or malt percentage. Corn burns too. Your cook process at any scale is going to take forever by the time you are done oar paddling and comically large commercial kitchen whisking your clumps to smithereens.yields are gonna suck. Withbinvestment there are ways to do this but why don’t you just buy cookers meant for cooking slurry? You can either sell these. Or convert them to be used as fermenters, make stills out of them, only cook rum in them, but buy a great cooker!

PMd you homey send me your email!

Traditionally triple sec wouldn’t feature other spices, you can but traditionally it is only orange used for flavoring. There are variants of course though. Curaçao, a liqueur of Dutch origin using macerated orange peels from Curaçao as it’s main flavor in conjunction with spices may be more in like with what you’re thinking of. Triple sec traditionally was distilled but now the large houses making it a “schnapp” type cordial (Dekuyper etc.) are obviously compounding it from flavoring and color. Neutral base, often of Beet, distilled eith the peels and back colored and back sweetened with beet sugar. We do lots of recipe and profit development! Holler if you ever want to bring us in to up your game!

You are correct. it would be great for you specifically. You still need something to clean physical soil though, thats where caustic comes in. Manufacturers rec is to use in conjunction with Caustic for CIP, but you can do you! https://mcclainozone.com/products/

I kinda rambled a bit and jumbled some shit together so I’ll rambles some more….. A strahman hose is a brand name of a hose that uses a blending station to meet a water line with a steam line for variable hot hose functionality. They’re fucking awesome. An ozone generating machine is an incredible distillery resource. Ozone (03) is an incredible oxidizer. Used heavily in the larger brewing sectors not as popular in large whiskey because of lot manufacturing practices and the tendency to sour mash in KY so culturally less important…. McClain makes a great one it will make either gaseous ozone for fogging or ozonated water. Ozone will oxidize and degrade into h20 and 02. It’s like a non acidic water with anti microbial properties. Can hook it up to CIP can use as a hose for spray downs can use to sanitize equipment can use to gas barrels clean drains. Pu can use ozonated water in place of acid rinse in regular cips in between major cleanings. Won’t have same metallurgic benefits but anti microbial yes. The amount of money we’ve saved in citric so far has paid for the machine already we’ve had it a little over a year now.

You are on right track that process piping and condenser should be passivate and cleaned like rest of the still but I wouldn’t recommend placing anything inside of your kettle. Passivate on has two functionalities, the first is removing trap iron and other metals from the production process of making the vessel the other is creating a chromium oxide layer film over the inside of the tank. Allowing your vessel to sit up to three days from treatment dry seems to be the point of best return. Anytime you scrape the tank or use a brush on it or even touch it you compromise that film. Highly recommend to people starting out that they strive to get their inputs and their process to a point where they don’t need to do anything but hose until major cleaning is necessary. Depending on your budget Strahman (sp) hoses are incredibly handy for keeping a clean facility…. ozone is a stellar distillery resource. Will pay for itself in citric in no time. On top of other benefits. Re waste water and barrel sanitation and rinsing. Oh and remember you can reuse caustic well past the point it turns black.

PBW is a caustic agent, it can and will damage copper IF used unwisely and miscarefully. “Caustic” or “Caustic Soda” is a vernacular for sodium hydroxide. It can and will do the same under the same conditions. CIP is a functionality usually used to describe physical attributes of a vessel, but is also a vernacular term often used for the act of a caustic rinse (for actual soil removal), cool water rinse, light citric rinse, cool water rinse. A lot of people triple rinse. I would honestly take your head off cap the top passivate the kettle and the lyne arm and possibly even the condenser (who knows what that looks like) leave the copper as is but re CIP the kettle then do a sacrificial run with alcohol don’t need to go crazy into tails. CIP (what you have laid out is a CIP) and start ripping

Very wise answer! So you’re going to want to find ways to drive revenue on site. You need to pull in 10k. 20k. 30k. 40k. 50k. 60k etc per month because you have to pay for fucking fermentables. More and more and more and more fermentabulz. Because your fermenters can’t be empty. Because you have to make as much great alcohol as quickly as you can to justify on site traffic to drive revenue to support fermentables. If your business isn’t bulk alcohol, running an event space or a really successful and profitable cocktail program or other on site revenue flowing activity is the only way to support your hobby of distilling. That’s not meant to be said disrespectful or condescending at all this is most of our lives in varying ways. My hobby of distilling is supported by selling it as a commodity. Neither you nor I can realistically sustainably compete with large mass marketed mainstream conglomerate brands in 3 tiered distribution channel, it has to be icing on the cake. To keep people paid. To flowwwwww some revenue! But you shouldn’t “expect” shit! You should expect trickling by cash flow negative. You are going to literally need to drive revenue to get cash flow positive. It’s taxing.

Congrats that’s a fun day! What size and how many fermenters?

I believe I have emailed everyone who has requested specs and photos that has provided an email, if I missed you please ping me again I'm sorry I deleted more messages from my inbox. Hope all are well! Cheers, Slick

Jason, As you mentioned a lot of variables and a lot of them are going to depend on your plan and your decision of where to invest time and money. If you’re here, I’d imagine you’re thinking of starting small and trying to build some support in your local market. What does that really mean? Like your town bars? A large urban metro near you? Your state? Do you have a sales rep? Do you have a sales team? Are you doing it your self? Is it all just tasting room focused? Or maybe you do wanna go big and you want to fill barrels big time, or sell booze to other people or go hyper micro and buy a farm and grow your own botanicals and make one type of gin once a year and that’s it. Maybe you source some barrels? Maybe you don’t? Oh yeah, how much money you got? (Gonna need a shit ton.) do you have an exit strategy? Do you have a unique following to market and sell to already or are you gonna swim with the fishes? Lots of questions lots of possibilities lots of potential outcomes. Some people struggle struggle struggle to get traction only to slowly not afford to really buy grain anymore. Others have super long lines for initial releases and tons of support and sellout everything they do. Some people are in between. No matter what you do, people have already done it and they’re likely is someone doing it better who you can pay to teach you. Doubling yields cuts cogs in half. You can start your business from a place where doubling yields isn't really possible though and that’s a good spot to be in. My recommendation to everybody starting out is at some point in time bring in a great consultant to look at the project as a whole. Especially if you’re not 100% on FINANCES or PRODUCTION OF PHYSICAL INVENTORY. From a consultant, so take with a grain of salt, but I’ll refute even that with I have a consultant I love very much! good luck. Here to help, I won’t always be friendly but I will always be direct and extremely technical. cheers

Where does your septic go? Is it a municipal waste water treatment or a bio digester or what? Doe pending who they are you may be clear

FP 1 attenuates really well and is highly tolerant to osmotic pressure which makes it their defacto "high proof" option, in some cases the de facto rum option too because it really does well against just straight wash and you guys it juice to a point as well. As has been mentioned here so I won't dwell on it too long it also does really well with thicker bourbon mashes, sometimes it makes sense for us tor really trim up beer gallonage for efficiencies sake or grains sake etc and it handles that well (28 27 beer gallons). However I really like to sour mash it. Run a high proof sour mash with this distillate its pretty wild. Great texture can have great floral notes depending on your mashing technique. 927 can ferment fast and isn't as sensitive to heat and acidity as some of it's classmates. I've seen it rip 20 Brix in 50ish hours. Can finish ferments up to 25/26 Brix no problem. 921 can finish up to 24 Brix in a 72 to 96 hour ferments. Very popular strain a lot of people use this. Great texture. This yeast is versatile can be stretched to extend ferments if need be by cooling (obviously can't ya know stall a ferment 90% off the way through but ya know) 917 can finish 25 Brix in 48 to 72 hour ferment 048 is not as well known of a yeast strain but its one I like a lot for whiskey. It can't attenuate as well I've never seen it finish a ferment thicker than 22 Brix and it also doesn't like to be rushed but it responds interestingly enough to atmospheric stress. 900 is a newer and lesser discussed yeast with validity atleast for our neck of the woods. Attenuates decently middle of the pack for these ones but does well in cooler fermentation temperatures. Should that be a thing for you. All of these bone dogs love oxygen early and take off like rockets. 921 and 927 can get finicky with adjunct grains. Will rip 100% corn mashes no issues but with high percentages of rye they seem to not like to finish as strong without being babies along, which is a pleasure to do anyways so who cares.