Sherman

In the book 'The New History of Kentucky' By Lowell Hayes Harrison, James C. Klotter Page 138 There were several malting houses in Kentucky. In 1855 EW Herman had a really large malting operation. He later partnered with JH Pank. In 1870 they formed the largest malting house in the US. The Kentucky Malting Co. had a capacity of 500,000 bushels on the floor. Which was larger than JH Pank and CO their sister company in Chicago. The business dried up when the spring barley took over production in the midwest over the winter barley grown in KY. Until 1961, Kentucky exported more beer than it consumed.

Well, of all the distilleries I've been in, I can only name three which had wooden fermenters. Of those, none had all wooden fermenters. Most of their production fermenters are stainless. It has been explained to me by several distillers the steps to prevent unexpected contamination. 1. acidification while too hot for contamination 2. very rapid cooling in a closed system before placing in the fermenter. 3. inoculating with good known mono culture type lacto. 4. using as much as 1.5% mash quantity in active culture.(source Jim Rutledge Four Roses) 5. very active fermentation forms a vapor seal with the co2 above the mash. 6. mash is distilled as soon as active fermentation is finished. no settling and clearing period at all. 7. caustic and steam in the fermenters between batches. Even the wooden ones. All these precaurions together prevent unwanted contamination. From the results that the major distillers are accomplishing, they would be a good example to immitate as far as cleanliness standards are concerned.

I don't look at it in that perspective. I look at it as San Fransisco Sourdough. The profile is suited for Bourbon and it is just widely accepted as THE flavor of Bourbon. The best experts in the industry are still blending and matching standards from the 19th century that were developed before the scientific methods. But the scientific methods have been used to purify and augment the production, purity, and consistency. When you are fermenting in 35 foot deep 80000 gallon fermenters, one contaminated batch is very costly. Risk reduction is the way. On the conversation about using backset, there are different camp to when the backset is added. In most bourbon distilleries it is added during mashing. At Buffalo trace, they add it to the mash corn immediately before pitching yeast. Buffalo trace isn't even running their Dona Tubs anymore. They buy all their yeast. They turned their yeast room into a separate small distilling company with its own craft size still.

Not unsubstantiated and not a wild claim. The Encyclopedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences ..., Volume 15 By Hugh Chisholm page 742 At least one documented claim the same as mine from 1910. I clearly didn't make it up.

Our rural area next to a metro area make all of the neighborhood a big target for thieves. Many have installed video systems and recorders. This seems to stop the thieves much better than than alarm systems. The one's that advertise the camera systems are the most protected.

I am sorry about the name misspelling. I bow to your wisdom. Sherman AKA pintoshine

Skill has little to do with it. It is mostly environment. Like I said, central KY, TN, West PA. It is all in the locality. Seems you are not listening Mr. Chowdery.

Not that it is really important but Four Roses is now owned by Kirin in Japan. They are operating autonomously though. It is an interesting place and Jim Rutledge is a wonderful fellow to talk to. He really loves what he does. Back on topic, I support the old ways. I just never expect to be able to make anything consistent for a batch. Each on is unique and interesting but maybe not the best stuff. Isn't it the case that if a new and exciting strain was developed, it is back to the jug. Possible that wasn't your issue.

I already have a photographic essay on starting a lacto-bacillus and yeast culture on my website. If you would care to see it check out http://www.artisan-distiller.net/photoalbum/main.php?cmd=album&var1=pint_o_shine%2Fsour_corn/&var2=0 Comments are at the bottoms of the photos, click on the first picture and then use the next link.

The technique for going from wild yeast is not that difficult. The problem is that wild yeast, even though usable, is a slightly different strain. The beer yeast is a particularly isolated strain which is very productive and is bred for less off flavors. The wild yeast is a mixture of several and extremely unpredictable. Dr. Crow did lots of research on this subject in the interest of making whiskey consistent. Many hundreds of different yeasts have been isolated and cultured. Even the old timer continued to try until they found a productive yeast with a good enough flavor profile. They were extremely protective of them. After that first trial an error period though, it came back to jug yeast again. They were even rumored to sleep with the jug to prevent it from freezing. I would dare believe that some of those jugs came all the way from Ireland or Scotland and may be the basis or the really great whiskeys. Of course these have been isolated, propagated, and turned right back into jug yeast using scientific methods. During the 1950's this was cutting edge work with all the new electron microscopes becoming available to the distilling industry. I couldn't imagine any small producer having the spare time or money to reproduce this effort. With large companies especially dedicated to yeast technologies, it is a matter of calling them up and making a request for a yeast that will do what you want.

Many distilleries are still growing a propagating their yeast. Four Roses in Lawrenceburg KY active talks about the process. It is really no different that beer yeast propagation other than the fact that they often start from known slants of yeast. From that single slant they do a liter, then a stage it larger and larger in reactor using an excess of filtered air and usually barley beer as a medium, until the volume of yeast needed is ready to pitch. The book "The Homebrewer's Companion" Charles Papazian (Author) gives a small scale but scalable method of yeast propagation and storage. I forgot to add, if you use a culture that is from central KY or TN and even west PA, you will get the best Lacto-bacillus culture. Just as it takes a particular culture to make sourdough, the whiskey flavor is affected by this lact culture also. Strains for bread an whiskey are significantly different.

I make them custom for smaller operations. http://www.artisanresources.com/sales/pot.htm These are in your price range. These are traditional ones. For a little extra they can be fitted with man ways, drains and the top permanently attached.

the worst thing is the price and shipping. I have bought malt extract from MaltProducts. It was $143 per hundred weight. Good enough for packaging and resale as an ice cream topping but not for making beer or whiskey. As an ice cream topping it was bottled and resold for $5 a pint at the local flea market. I can't say it would ever be cost effective except for home brewing. The local brew shop is selling it for $12 to $14 for a 3.3 lb can. ouch.

I estimated 12000. 15000 may be for a less efficient system. that is only a 25% increase in the estimate. Very liberal grain bill allowing lots of waste. It would be to your advantage to sell that much grain.

In order to be able to answer that question, you would have to be able to tell us the fermentable sugar yield for a a given quantity of grain. If we know this we can use tried and expected efficiencies to go from sugar quantity to alcohol content in the barrel. It would be just as easy if you knew the ABV of a beer made from that grain and the grain bill. A good target is 42% weight for weight sugar to alcohol. Just some round numbers the weigh of alcohol is around .79 kg per L. The 42% is what is drinkable after all the heads and tails cuts and process loses. Your results may vary. a small example is HFCS fermented. 1kg yield 87% sugar. .87kg sugar to alcohol is .42 X .87 / .79 yields .46L alcohol. diluted to barrel strength at 62.5% gives you .74L which about right. working this example backwards: 600 gallon would be 2271L the pure alcohol content would be 2271 *.625 or 1419 L the weight of 1419L would be 1121 kg, the weight sugar needed for that would be 1121kg / .42 to yield 2670 kg sugar. if your grain is 50% fermentable then you would need 5340 kgs. grain. in US units that is nearly 6 tons grain. From another way of looking at it, is if you make a 5% beer by whatever method, and you know what quantity grain is needed to make that beer then you still need 1419L pure alcohol. that would be 1419 / .05 or 28380 liters beer not accounting for heads and tails. This could easily grow to be 50000 liters to supply enough for the needed quantity of drinkable alcohol. I hope this helps. Maybe someone else could give the expectations from a brewers point of view and not an engineers. These guys speak in odd quantities such as barrels which are 33 gallons. 400 barrels of beer for 600 gallons single malt?

@robert You have to be very careful exposing marketing ideas to the ADI staff. I feel I have been denied profits in excess of $200K to the ADI Bill group et. al. due to the marketing ideas I divulged. I got involved in ADI hoping for help developing my ideas, not being completely ripped off and not given any credit or monetary benefit.

Would there be a fee for this service? Who pockets the profit? Isn't this like making a privatized COLA? What would the TTB say about these addendum labels? What is to stop Brown Forman and others from spinning off Small LLC,s that make the small batch and limited production varieties that meet this criteria. At the moment Brown Forman registers an LLC for each brand. The criteria is flawed.

I am using a Windows Mobile phone and can use Mobile Office directly with no spreadsheet changes. Used to be palm treo but that is now obsolete. Just a thought. The phone doesn't have to be on a network to be a great pda.

Potassium metabisulfate is the usual neutralizer for chloramine. The resulting ammonia sulfate aids in fermentation.

The charts you are asking about can be found here. These are from well known formulas. There are simple instructions and also instruction using the charts for diluting low wines for desired output abv. The charts are in F and C. http://www.artisan-distiller.net/photoalbum/main.php?cmd=album&var1=pint_o_shine/&var2=0 I hope it helps.

GFS Marketplace is located in your town according to their website. They sell 1 gallon sized blackstrap with 60% sugar for $12.95 here in KY. A gallon weighs 12 lbs. and is more than half fermentable sugar. They usually give a $4.00 discount for a case of 4 gallons. Most stores only stock 4 gallons if they have it. They will order it in large quantities if you need it. They deliver to businesses. I bet they can help you out. This is the base to a lot of barbecue recipes. It has a bit of ash but I can tell you it makes great heavy rum. For a bit lighter go with half molasses and an equivalent sugar by weight for a bit lighter rum. GFS has reasonable prices on cane sugar also. I wouldn't use beet sugar it has a slightly off flavor. Of course this is not the most cost effective way but it is well worth the experimental value. Another source is Malt Products. They sell a minimum of 5 gallons table grade. The last I got from them was $0.60 a pound and a 5 gallon bucket weighs 60 lbs. The shipping was Expensive. They best ship in bulk 55 gallon barrels. The thing about Malt Products is that they sell many other syrups such as agave, brown rice syrup and Malt extract.

If you are very concerned about contamination or chemical resistance there are several suppliers of both suction side and pressure side lined hoses for bulk transfer. One such supplier is http://puretransfer.com/hose/smooth-bore-ptfe.html who has both EPDM and PTFE lined hoses. PTFE is commonly known as Teflon and is excellent and insoluble in every known solvent. It is attacked only by molten alkali metals and by fluorine at high temperatures. Of course it is not cheap but it sounds like a one time investment.

I posted a copy of your post over on my forum hoping to generate some interest. I hope you don't mind. You can see it at http://www.artisan-distiller.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2599

I would suggest you think about Boston rounds. They come in various sizes and can be bout by the case. Here is an example. http://www.specialtybottle.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=4

a 10HP boiler will do it in an hour given a 75% efficiency. 8.34 btu/gallon/degree f * 200 gallons * 137 degrees = 228516 btu or about 7hp /75% = about 10 hp for an hour.