Huffy2k

We use a grain scoop and load it by hand!

6 hours ago, Alaskan Spirits LLC said:

Software - I have read several posts on the software and I initially thought I would go with Stillhouse, but after reading people that had used Stillhouse AND Whiskey Systems; I got the overall feeling that Whiskey Systems was just as good but less money - if this is incorrect, can someone correct me?  

Marketing - Where have you found your best ROI has been when trying to tell your town you exist.  What local marketing worked best?  Where do you think you lost the most money?  Has anyone tried Groupon as a way of getting people in; if so which catch worked best ($5 tasting, $10 tour + free tasting, etc?).  

What sells the best besides the booze? Cups, shot glasses, sweatshirts, t-shirts, hats, etc.?  Not sure what to be pre-pared for here.

In my state, I can only be open from 9a till 8p; what are the best operating hours in your town?  I was thinking a short day 4p-8p for the tasting room (except weekends 11a-8p).  We will always have our master distiller there, so if someone walked in - he could technically still help them.  Are we cutting ourselves short on the hours?  I am just thinking if they REALLY want to check it out, they would come later......I also don't want to kill myself from sitting around all day, when I could be out visiting bars, restaurants, and stores.

I was recommended by another distiller to pay for a lawyer to help with the TTB, but when speaking to another distiller a week ago he said he felt that his process was much faster because he was able to get back to the TTB immediately.  He thought having a lawyer handle everything could actually delay some things.  Overall thoughts?

 

First of all, good luck to you!  I can't speak to all of your questions so I'll take a stab at the ones that I have thoughts on.

1) Software - You owe it to yourself to also consider Hoochware as your distillery management solution.  Great product, great service, highly recommended.

2) Marketing - We have been using Groupon and have been very satisfied with the results.   Most of our tour customers are Groupon voucher holders.  We are reaching people outside of our immediate area and most tell us they had not heard of us prior to seeing our deal on Groupon.  Our Groupon deal is structured as discount on our tour which includes a cocktail and a tasting.  We've found that most tour customers either stick around for another cocktail or take home a bottle or two and/or some merchandise.  If you can break even on the tour (after Groupon takes their cut) you will generate a decent amount of revenue on those folks with their after tour purchases.

I guess t-shirts or engraved glencairn glasses are the most popular non-booze item but to be honest, the non-booze stuff doesn't really make that much of an impact (at least for us). 

3) Hours - our tasting room is open from 11-7 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays for tastings, bottle sales and cocktails.  Since we're at the distillery on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we open the tasting room from 9-5 but only for bottle sales and tastings.  Since we have a couple people there at all times, taking care of a customer doesn't really impact production on M-T-W since we can always keep one person back in the shop - having only your master distiller could present a problem if he/she is being pulled to the front too often.

4) I used a consultant to help me with my DSP application but I did the grunt work and was the only point of contact for the application.  That way I had a sounding board for my answers but I was able to be very responsive to the TTB since they were reaching out to me with any issues.

Cheers!

Hey Black Creek, welcome to the forum!  Good luck to you and if by "Burg" you mean Pittsburgh, welcome to the Western PA distilling community!

Call Fred using contact info below, great customer service, great equipment.

Fred Herrmann
Sr Sales Executive
Prime USA Scales

Main Call Center | 511 F St. Suite 502
San Diego, CA 92101 | Tel: 858-484-8000
Direct: 858-405-3111 | Fax: 619-299-1800

Email: fred@primeusascales.com

BTW Joe, if you're ever down south in Washington PA, feel free to drop in and say hello!

Foreshot, there's a new distillery opening in the Carnegie one of these days but I'm not sure of their time frame.  We've had more luck doing combined distillery/brewery/winery tours rather than all distilleries.

Welcome to the board Joe and welcome to the Western PA distilling community!!

Lots of threads on this site that compare the various distillery management systems.  I would encourage you to also evaluate Hoochware - we use it and love it!

That's surprising, I'd give Aaron another call, he's the best.

We pre-filter out of the barrel and then use a 5 micron filter when bottling.

We have a globe valve on our steam line that allows us to control the flow of steam to the still.

Can't speak to Whiskey Systems but was wondering if you've looked at Hoochware? You really owe it to yourself to evaluate all three. We love Hoochware.

Welcome! Our distillery is in Washington PA, feel free to drop by and say hello sometime.

Regarding malt, check out Breiss and Great Western Malting.

Thumbs up for US FIP!

We also have the taper capable RLTC. Does a very nice job on our slightly tapered bottles. I went back through my emails with Marc and I don't see any DW on our order, we simply ordered the RLTC.

The Race works very well for us.

Wow!  Great minds think alike!

Congrats! Now the fun begins!

21 hours ago, Lenny said:

Would never try to speak to the circumstance mentioned above, but with regards to what went wrong on the TTB side... I'm going to assume that you've never spoken to a distillery that's been audited by the TTB? If records are not impeccably kept to the exact level of compliance that is expected from the TTB, you could absolutely expect to get hit with $ owed. We attempt to mitigate the risk of effing up something significant by running software from Distillery Solutions.

Very true Lenny but $33k is a lot of non compliance.  Is this a fine on top of missed tax payments?  Is it all missed tax payments, that's over 2400 pg's that weren't tax paid. This is actually pretty frightening.

I think the craft distillery industry has reached phase 2 in its lifecycle.  No longer will you be able to just build it and they will come.  The novelty of small batch, locally made spirits has pretty much worn off.  I think that to succeed now, new distilleries have to have a strong story/brand and most importantly, make a quality product.  The days of putting a still in a nondescript building and making sub par spirits are behind us (in my opinion).  There is still plenty of opportunity for distilleries that provide a quality product and a compelling brand to succeed.

Welcome to the club Killbuck Creek - I'm pretty sure most of us have that same experience of 6-12 months of making lease/mortgage payments on our distilleries before we could open the doors.  Look on the bright side, that barrier to entry will make it harder for someone else to open up right down the road from you in the very near future!   Cheers and I hope you hear something from TTB very soon!!!

Wow, that's awesome!!!  My wife is the amateur historian and she's very familiar with Herman Husband, in fact, we have a drink named in his honor on our cocktail menu today (pic attached).  She's so excited to have made contact with someone who can trace their roots back to the rebellion. She's going to go home and consult her research books to see if she can uncover any information on Mr. Philson - I'm sure we'll have a drink named in his honor in the very near future.

We're actually going to kick off the Whiskey Rebellion festival in Washington this year by raising a symbolic liberty pole outside of our distillery - all who attend will be honorary members of the new Mingo Creek Society.  If you ever get back this way you HAVE to stop in!!

no kidding? Awesome story! He would have been charged with sedition, that was the penalty for erecting liberty poles back in the day. Thanks for sharing your story.

Hamilton actually rode with the army and personally knocked on David Bradford's door (he was the de facto leader of the rebellion) to arrest him but Bradford was already gone. Bradfords restored home is about 500 yards from our distillery in Washington PA.

Hi Rachael, as Foreshot mentioned above, the pallet stackers are perfect solutions for those of us who don't have room to operate a fork lift. We build our own 3 level barrel racks and use the pallet stacker to load/unload from the top two rows.  Here's a link to an Instagram video we recently posted that shows a barrel being offloaded onto our racks.  These are 15 gallon barrels.