Rum

If I were designing from scratch I would create as many opportunities to have gravity do the work as possible instead of pumps. i.e. molasses storage up high flowing down to mash tank, down to the fermentation tanks, down to still, etc... I would also put in a lot more drainage on the floor!

Thanks Nick. I don't think that it's a residue in the neck though. Looks more like water vapor. Kind of like steam on glass that turns into drops. The bottles are completely dry when we start bottling. Yes, I am doing well. Thanks. Just making and doing my best to sell some rum! How are things with you?

We are having issues with condensation forming in the bottle necks. We've tried making sure that the spirit and bottles are at the same temperature when bottling but still get the condensation. If you turn the bottle upside down it looks fine for a while, but the condensation comes back. It seems to form as the bottles are filled (Enolmaster). We usually bring the rum down close to bottling strength the night before and finish proofing shortly before bottling. Do we need to let it sit for more than an hour or so before bottling? Any ideas on how to stop this?

The majority of our sales are through off premise accounts. We even have individual locations that serve on premise as well as off premise, bottle sales. Those locations sell more through bottle sales then through drinks. Your mileage may vary!

John - I tried the powdered carbon and found it to be a huge mess. You also can end up breathing it in more easily. I've switched to using a gravity system and granulated carbon. I have a very simple filter that I built but am going to replace it as soon as my stainless filter from Trident arrives.

Yes, that's true. At least they are planning on buying enough in the first order that the profits will cover the cost of the racks. Hopefully they will use it to display our merchandise for a while. We found a nice wine rack this afternoon that will work well and look upscale. I'll modify it to add a "permanent" logo of ours to it.

One of our retailers would like us to provide them with some endcap displays that hold about 36 bottles. Preferably something that displays the bottles and not just the cases. I would also like to have a spot to brand the end cap itself. I've been looking around on the net and haven't found anything that I'm quite happy with yet. Anyone have a good source/website they can point me to?

http://www.facebook.com/siestakeyrum About 3900 fans so far. Facebook is an outstanding tool for marketing and keeping in touch with your consumers.

I have a Merlin. I've had it for about a year but have not been in full production yet. In the usage I've had it has proved to work very well. The only issue I have had is with water pressure. If I am filling a tank or using a lot of water elsewhere it drops my pressure too low and the Merlin stops producing. I don't have the best pressure to start with though. I have a water softener and a carbon filter in line prior to the Merlin. You should have a carbon filter in line for any RO system.

Are you heating the citric solution? If so, to what temperature?

I always rinse after the citric. I haven't been rinsing between the caustic and the citric. I was surprised at the statement above that mentioned rinsing between the caustic and the citrus but not after the citrus. Just making sure I'm not missing something basic!

Are you rinsing after the citric solution?

I received a letter in the mail from him as well.

Any recommendations on labeling machines? I prefer something simple and reliable.

Are you all agitating the wash during fermentation to help it along? If so, how are you doing it? I find that using pumps to circulate it can cause it to kick up too much and overflow. Do I need to circulate at all? Or just let it run?

After doing some more searching it looks like sulfer can turn copper blue. I am thinking that it must have been sewer gases that did it.

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately that is not it. A picture doesn't convey the coloration too well. There are some parts of the piping that turned silvery blue right next to parts that didn't change at all. I also polished up part of the column and it looks normal again. It must have been something in the air. The pipes on the ceiling have even gone bluish. I have had some foul odors come up out of the drain on occasion. Maybe something came up from there on Sunday. I need to have a trap put in. I also put a new pump in my sulfuric acid drum on Friday. It is not sealed like it normally is. Possibly it heated up over the weekend and put some gas in the air??? I am hesitant to polish everything up again until I solve the problem.

I was in the distillery on Saturday to check on fermentations and everything looked normal. I come in this morning (Monday) and most of my copper has gone silvery blue! The still, column and much of the copper piping all turned. They seem to clean up fairly easily but I'd like to figure out what the heck caused it. Any ideas?

There are some pretty inexpensive reverse osmosis units available now. I am using a Merlin 700 for mixing water. It supposedly can produce 700 gallons per day of r/o water. I paid about $330 for the basic system. I also added an inexpensive carbon filter in the line before the r/o unit. Here is one online seller: http://www.uswatersystems.com/shop/product...sis-System.html

I am ordering directly from Vitro. Can order just a few pallets at a time.

LMFAO!

I found the same to be true. In fact, the gas company was willing to bring the piping from the street to my building for no cost based on projected usage. I did have the additional cost of putting in a boiler room for the gas boiler that wouldn't have been required of the electric boiler. The electric company wouldn't bring the heavy service needed from the other end of the building to my end. The cost to upgrade the electric was going to be very expensive. I have 200 amps of three phase but needed more than that for the electric boiler. I find the gas very easy to control at the still with two differently sized valves. In my particular case it was going to be more expensive to startup the electric boiler and more expensive to run it on an ongoing basis. Your mileage may vary.

Some will disagree with this to some extent. A few things that will affect the aging are the temperature (and temp fluctuations) and the ratio of rum to wood (barrel size). If you age a rum in big barrels in Alaska it's not going to age as fast as doing it in 10 gallon barrels in an uncooled warehouse in Florida. Of course, most of us don't have a choice on where our distillery is located at this point. We can decide if we want to cool our storage areas and what type of barrels to use though.

I think that the Martinique distilleries are happy to position themselves as the premium rum makers due to using the cane juice. Personally, I think it's a matter of taste. Juice rum has a definite flavor profile compared to molasses rum. When I sit down for a Ti punch I prefer a good aged molasses rum to an agricole. For my palate the molasses rums have more intense and intricate flavors. I think that ideally you could use a combination of juice and molasses and come up with some pretty good rum.

Talk to Ed Hamilton on www.ministryofrum.com. He's a good guy who spends his time traveling the Caribbean on his sailboat visiting rum distilleries and writing about them and rum. He runs the site so he's on there often. I think he has been to most any rum distillery that you may be interested in visiting. He also does some importing.