Lenny

I'm at 66ppm dissolved solids coming from our municipal water passed though a carbon filter. When first started out and used that water to proof down, we got a lot of "clouds" precipitating out and collecting towards the bottom of the bottle. When we switched to RO for proofing down, we still got a slight amount of clouding -- but when we used the same water passed though an ro filter and then ran the proofed down distillate though a 1 micron filter we're not seeing any precipitate. I've never tried using *just* carbon filtered municipal water with final product run though a 1 micron filter - too scared.

I'm on the exact same page. We're smack in the middle of colorado (8'000 feet) at the base of a whole mess of 14,000' peaks, and our water comes the snowmelt off of cottonwood pass (continental divide). It tastes like... nothing. Just like water is meant to. It's at a ph of 7 and full of minerals. We run it though a carbon for mashing and RO for proofing down. I'm not confident enough that variation could not happen and cause massive clouding or the odd flavors to develop. Curious though -- for as many distilleries out here or wherever that sing the songs of using water from springs/glaciers/martian ice/artisan wells/etc. (cough... breckenridge, spring44, tincup) I always wonder how many are really using it straight from the tap (no RO filtered) to proof down their spirits, and if I might be over estimating the importance of ro'ing our water.

...and if you don't have clouding issues, is there a specific low micron level filter that you might be running though to prevent it?

Mine have that back dent too. Pretty sure all St.Louis bottles do. Figured it was a component of the manufacturing process but it makes sense that it could be used in some way to center the bottles for labeling -- i'll look into that. The more I mess around with the zap labeler the closer I'm getting to a working solution. I'll post a video of how it works in it's current configuration. It can work, and it seems very similar to that race labeler that was linked to, but was hoping there might be a better solution out there.

We use Pirmal's St.Louis Bottle (pictured below). It's tall and oval shaped and it SUCKS to apply labels to! We're currently in process of trying to adapt a zap labeler to work by adding additional guides to allow the rounded bottle to hopefully slide straight - not a lot of success with it thus far. We typically do not exceed 500/run and I don't foresee ever going beyond 1,000/run. There's gotta be something out there... I've scene folks make mention of race and primera on this forum, but neither seem all that appropriate for the bottle shape we're using. Is ANYONE having real success using any sort of label applicator machine with an oval shaped bottle?

Do you guys really think consumers are reading and discerning the fine print?

Thanks for all the feedback. We ended up scoring this beast (9' tall x 2' wide with 60 sq/ft of cooling area) from Dairy engineering in Denver: https://www.instagram.com/p/_5RElzOfXY/ Pretty sure they have a few more priced at $3,500 if anyone is in need of one. We are currently finishing up the chilling of our first successful bourbon mash! We milled to a fairly course flour and it's being recirculated very effectively though our 1.5hp centrifugal pump with a 3/4" out port, on though the heat exchanger with a 1" inner tube that the mash travels though.

...But we're the only ones that geek out about this information. The majority of consumers assume it all to be so for most every bottle on the shelf.

John, I agree with you on most counts. As you eluded to above... If a dsp chooses to bring to market a 5min. matured bourbon, they can do so within federal regulations. It's weird for sure, but unless the standards of identity are amended to require a minimum maturation for "bourbon", it makes sense to me. What does NOT make sense to me is the lack of TTB regulation for a dsp to claim boldly on their packaging, for example, "Colorado Bourbon", when the juice was distilled in Indiana and "produced" in colorado. I was recently shut down on a cola application for a product that I would like to market as 'Single Malt Gin'. It's a gin made from a 100% malted barley. The reasoning I received for the rejection was, "You may not make false or misleading statements on labels.". Cool story TTB agent (I'm currently discussing my case with her)... but wouldn't you think that labeling an Indiana sourced bourbon as colorado bourbon would fit squarely within the definition of "misleading"? I'm pretty sure Tennessee and Kentucky are the only 2 states with an appellation - which comes with regulation of state name in the labeling of a product. The TTB's permissibility of state name usage on a whiskey label without the spirit being distilled in-state is complete bunk, and it's certainly opens the door for "misleading statements". I get why many NDP's opt to put their home state on the label of out-of-state sourced juice and reap the sales benefits of a consumers belief they are buying a home-town whiskey. Super disingenuous but a smart business move since our government currently chooses not to regulate that aspect of labeling. It's my opinion that, while there might never be "craft" or "micro" certification, the TTB should start to better regulate a designation for where the spirit was distilled and bottled.

"The best and most straightforward real solution though would be a mandate that all labels include a clear designation of where the spirit was distilled, and where it was bottled." Totally on board with this — esp. if the requirement was that such a statement must be made clearly on the front label. I don't see how any consumer would not also be in favor of this. Tiny lettering on the back of a label that requires a consumer to squint and understand the difference between 'distilled by' vs. 'produced by'... Wtf kind of solution is that?!?!?! Unless of course one is a non-distiller producer and is enjoying significant sales from a consumer base that believes that it is buying a locally distilled product. For the amount of money that we shovel over to the government via federal excise tax, I sure as shit wish they would look at a proper solution (possibly something similar to what's suggested in that article) to this issue.

I had reached out to AS about that hx -- pretty sure Bluestone was insinuating that it the pictured heat exchanger would be appropriate for chilling batches of 300+ in size. I had considered that exact unit for a 600 gallon batch. Opted for a really nice used unit that I found locally.

You could lauter a mash with corn if it were a smaller percentage of a mostly malt grainbill with the addition of rice hulls and maybe some sort of liquefaction enzyeme. If you want to go majority corn, then as mentioned above, you might want to reconsider lautering. Might be worth your while to reach out to James Beck at Cereal Byproducts (847-818-1550). He has a solid understanding of grains used in distilling and could help you source quantities of local corn or whatever else you might be after.

This past fall we were sorta inspected by the fda - via a contracted employee from the Colorado Department of Environmental Health and Sustainability. The inspector was poking around and asking questions for a solid 3 hours. In the end she requested that we not leave any hoses on the floor and that we remove the duct tape from the connection point between our flex auger and our mill.

We're very happy with Stillhouse from the folks at Distillery Solutions. I'm might even go so far as to say that their software for monthly reporting of production operations has saved my marriage! I hear what Donald has put together is quite nice as well. I'd recommend giving both options a look - especially considering that Distillery Solutions has just rolled out v2 of their Stillhouse software.

Head up here any time! I've got a 300k btu ng burner under my spirit still only. Everything else is steam. The burner was supplied by ward burners and I leaned on their expertise for the sizing and specific style of burner and related safety features. I'm a big fan of direct fire stills, but I wan't too keen on running *that* much fire beyond my small sprit still. Plus, I wanted easy grain-in handling which the steam jackets on my mashtun and stripping still allow for. I hear you on having to work within your resources though. We started out much smaller and would not have done it any other way.

40% low wines. Worth noting: I'm rounding the numbers up/down slightly. Our wash abv is sometimes a bit higher than 8% and our low wines yield is +/- 100g sometimes. But on average...

You're loosing me on your equipment and numbers (I'm easily lost), but here's what we run and it works out perfectly... * 600 gallon mashtun - steam jacketed with false bottom for lautered 100% malt mashes * 300 gallon hot liquor tank - which we use for sparge water and refill with the hot water off of our heat exchanger that cools the wash * x3 700 gallon fermenters which we fill to 600g with wash * 600 gallon stripping still - which yields aprox. 100g of low wines off of 600 gallons of 8%abv wash * 140g spirit still

We plan to use an air diaphragm pump.

For those that pump their mash though a tube-in-tube/shell heat exchanger... how large of a diameter inner tube would you think adequate to avoid clogging? We've had a hx with approximately 50 square feet of cooling capacity speced out for a bourbon project that we're getting going -- I've got 3 options I'm looking at with different tube diameters for the mash to to travel though: A is .75", B is 1", and C is 1.5". I'm leaning towards option B because of the units minimal footprint, but I sure don't want to bring something in here that can't pass the mash. I should mention, the mash that we're looking to cool will be grain-in with a fairly standard water to grist ratio, ground close to flour though a 3 roller mill, and with potential to be on the stickier side. Thoughts?

We use Highrise.

Can't comment on how shelf life prior to wild fermentation, but... if you are driving out there to pick it up, just bring a slug of yeast with you and pitch it into juice. Should be bubbling away nicely by the time you get it back to your place.

We used a saison yeast that was taken from a brewery that had just finished fermenting out a raspberry saison. Weird pitching a slug of yeast that looked like raspberry yogurt. We fermented at around 75-80f and had complete attenuation after 4 days. I don't recall equating the flavor/aroma of the fresh distillate to tequilla, but it's been a while - the spirit has been in a barrel for 18 months and tastes really good. Lot's of fruit (cherry/apple) and a nice earthy finish. Another 6 months and we'll be bottling it up. Wish I made more of the stuff.

We've got 20 or so new 25g pre-toast #3 char barrels from Kelvin Cooperage. All still wrapped in plastic and stacked on a pallet. We went a little crazy on a recent order and would be down to sell these off for what we paid for them. Each one cost us $300 delivered — we'd be willing to deliver them to most anywhere in Colorado, or if anyone wants to pick them up here in Buena Vista... that's cool too, I just don't feel like dealing with shipping. Shoot me an email if you're interested - lenny@deerhammer.com You all know what little barrels look like, but here are a few that we filled up:

Hmm. I don't get any errors in chrome or safari. What platform are you on so that I can communicate the issue to their tech support?

TB, I looked at a bunch of solutions, and while I wasn't looking for Facebook functionality, it seems that Bullseye allows for it. I ended up going with Prolo for a website bar and liquor store locator. I'm really happy with it so far. Their pricing structure makes the most sense for our size ($9/month), adding and managing locations is super fast and easy, customer support is awesome, and implementation into a website is a piece of cake. I'd totally recommend this solution for anyone working towards something like this. Here's how ours came together: http://www.deerhammer.com/liquor-store-locator.html