Christian

A new chapter began yesterday in the story of Tennessee’s whiskey making heritage when three living legends of moonshine making signed a deal to bring over 100 years of backwoods experience to Short Mountain Distillery.

OK, just realized I posted this in the wrong place. Sorry. Will post where it goes.

A new chapter began yesterday in the story of Tennessee’s whiskey making heritage when three living legends of moonshine making signed a deal to bring over 100 years of backwoods experience to Short Mountain Distillery.

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We got a little extra help from the Middle Tennessee Mule Skinners Association when it came to getting our first organic corn fields disced and planted. Here's some video showing the five mule teams that showed up Saturday April 9, 2011. Each Saturday in April we're hosting local mule teams as we disc and plant 7 acres of organic corn for the distillery's Fall whiskey and moonshine runs. We hope to make Spring planting an annual event for our friends and neighbors starting next year.

Scott, thanks for your interest in how we do business. If your curiosity is made worse by a Google search of our company or the individuals involved, please accept my invitation to come visit when we're done building the distillery. You are welcome to stay in one of our cabins if you can stand not having power or running water.

KB, thanks for the compliment. We love what we do Scott, we won't have product available until the end of the year or early next year. It's a fortunate problem to have, but we haven't figured out how to price and bottle something like farmers wanting to help us. We're humbled and hope you enjoy seeing that slice of America as much as we do.

The mules are getting ready to plant our organic corn crop up on Short Mountain in Tennessee.

Food fermentation expert Sandor Katz makes a batch of compost tea for the organic corn crop. Here is a post on how we are working to integrate future grain product from the distillery into the adjacent 300 acre working farm. I would love to read about ways you are integrating your products into sustainable permaculture or agricultural processes of any stripe.

Sorry for the delayed reply here. Thanks for the congrats. Cowdery is correct that the team behind this self-financed the first level of investment. That probably answers Dick and Paul's question as well, but I don't want to minimize the level of confidence we had to reach in our plan to get that commitment. It came to a point in planning when it was clear we didn't have to sell what we want to do because whatever we plugged into the plan did the selling. We still have a lot of work to do and are working and meeting with a lot of talented and respected folks.

Just a note on our progress up here on Short Mountain. You can read more here.

Clarity, coop, swb - thanks very much. Very good ideas. I think what we're doing is a little new for our local farmers, so it's interesting to see the ideas we had aren't that unique. That helps. coop, is that from a co-op?

Pete, thanks for the reply. The type grain was mentioned: corn. Is it a safe assumption any company that makes grain storage bins would make a full range small and large? I'd be happy to talk quantity with the vendor. I'm just looking for suggestions from satisfied customers no matter what their own quantities are. Thanks!

Hello, I was wondering if anyone has experience with any grain storage bins they'd recommend: both large quantity off site bins (for tons of corn) and smaller on-site bins and systems to transfer to a miller and on to the mash tun. Thanks

I thought y'all would enjoy a peek at our unofficial ground breaking... more like plowing. http://www.shortmountaindistillery.com/2010/11/19/tilling-begins-on-first-distillery-corn-crops/

I understand the answers may vary as much as the methods here, but do you all have a preference of brands of boiler systems and maybe contacts? Thanks!

We've been trying to get in touch with Vendome as well. Good to know they are busy. Anyone with working relations with other still makers (whiskey stills) they suggest we look at?

I'm new to this process, so forgive me ahead of time for asking elementary questions. Regarding bonding, would I be correct is assuming the bond on storage also applies to aging product? If I had 100 barrels of aging corn whiskey, is that 55 PGs (per barrel) x 100 x $13.50 = $74,250 bond for those 100 barrels?

WI, I'm new as well. One thing I've found extremely useful is creating a kind of conversions spreadsheet. When you start with knowns, like grain weights (56 lbs of shelled corn per bushel) and weights, measures and costs for bottles, labling, etc (much longer list), you can quickly start to see the output into a business plan for any number of production levels at the click of a button. It will then tell you how much grain your need to purchase and store, how much it will be, how many bottles, labels, toppers, boxes, etc you need. It's like making a big old calculator that changes hundreds of fields output all at once. Start there, and you'll start to fill in the wholes and come up with a decent plan. Just a thought

I agree with Joe. I don't mean offense as a new person here, but if you are vendor and sells is your goal here, it's a great value to you and to us to provide us in the very least a phone number and web address. It works for you and us.

Thanks, guys DEPhoenix, I'm sure this is where the hard part starts I look forward to early morning and late evening browsing.

Hi, I'm new to the forums and look forward to reading them. I am with a small group that just won a county referendum to allow us to build a distillery in a dry county. We plan to build Short Mountain Distillery on 300 acres in the heart of Tennessee and produce Tennessee Corn Whiskey and white dog (moonshine). Short Mountain Distillery http://shortmountaindistillery.com