Sherman

If using the liquid it is about a teaspoon (5 ml) per gallon. That acidifies it to a tasty sweet/sour flavor especially with molasses or sorghum syrup washes. Makes you wan to drink it like soda.

In Kentucky, they allow gift shop sales collocated with the distillery. But there are a couple catches. 1. You have to run it through a wholesaler using a paper trail but not a physical movement. This is because KY taxes the wholesalers and the retail sales. 2. If you make it available in your gift shop it must be available to every retail liquor store in the state. This can be used in your favor if you are a liquor store owner and like something you see at a distillery's gift shop which is supposed to be a gift shop "Exclusive"

If you are after that mouth feel and flavor profile that sour mashing gives you in a non-mash wash, try using a little bit of liquid lactic acid from the brew shop. It adds a complexity and depth to the final product without having to reuse spent stillage. I do this when fermenting sorghum syrup because the fruity acids such as tartaric, malic, and citric acids do not compliment the flavor well. The lactic acid helps in creating ethyl lactate with is a desirable flavor in spirits unlike ethyl acetate from acetic acid and ethanol.

I've seen this stencil technology for a long time to. If I were tracking millions of dollars or hundreds of dollars worth of inventory, I would be using bar codes, or RFID and scanner directly into and out of the computer system and every movement. Sure beats fat finger all that information.

everyone needs to get to know these guys. http://www.demptos.com/ here is the bottle http://www.demptos.com/demp/stock/new/spirits/qubic.htm of course they do it in your choice of colors, etches such as a frosted all over, and silk screening if you like. Their catalog is massive. you can spend your just surfing their site.

I am not an employee or a paid representative, but my friends, Gordon Lung and Rob Sherman at Vendome Copper and Brass Works, would certainly be glad to talk to you. I would also be glad to help you work out your specification with them. If you would like to see a representation of their work please check them out on line at http://www.vendomecopper.com. They are the manufacture for all the well know distillers such as Brown Foreman, Beam Global Spirits and Wine and almost every other big name distiller. I only build the control systems for such systems. Some can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=pintoshine

It can take as much as three times as long to ferment to 10% vs. 5%. In this longer ferment time and harsher environment with a higher osmotic pressure, the stress to the yeast can cause off flavors to dominate the grain bill flavors. The weaker starting mash for corn allows more corn flavor to come over in the low wines. This makes for a more flavorful spirit run with less ethyl acetate to deal with. The super sized producers, Beam and B.F. have demonstrated this for nearly two centuries. The lower grain bill is so much easier on the equipment also. If you have any automation in the system, 2lb grain / gallon will kill your throughput because of the viscosity. Also it is hard to obtain 1.075 sg in an all grain without resorting to enzyme extracts due to mashing problems and viscosity. 1 to 1.2 lbs/ gallon is technically much easier to process. I have seen 3 batches of 5% produced faster than 1 batch of 10% of the same volume. This is where the real efficiency is. One can get 15% in the same time as the 10% batch. Even though the power requirements are not any more for the three fermentations as the single fermentaion if cooling is necessary, the distillation power usage is much more. Honestly I prefer the flavor of the lower ABV than the higher and the cuts are easier.

Jonathan, I hear what you are saying. I started a forum back in 2006 for advanced, artisan distillers. I found one thing to be true. The advanced distillers have nothing more to say on the subject and the forum quickly died from lack of anything new to say. The new people, educated and otherwise, contribute by asking questions to which we think we know the answer but have to really dig to come up with a good explanation that will translate to a person who does not have the foundation of knowledge or common terminology. Most times the answers are straight forward. Other times these questions can cause us to question ourselves as to why a process is followed. Sometimes, a beginner, having no preconceived notion of the history, suggests a solution that is so obvious that we ask ourselves "Why didn't I think of that?" Such has happened to me many times recently. Having some 30 years of small scale distilling and aging experience, I have often thought there is nothing more to learn. I get schooled regularly by novices. Just some observations from an avid forum watcher, reader, and administrator as food for thought to you.

I have been working with my local legislator. I have also talked to the Governor's Council on Agriculture. The largest blockade to farm distilleries and non-industrial class distilleries is the zoning requirements. Please help me in generating a demand for this class license which would primarily redefine distilling as an agricultural process. Thank you. You can see my effort so far at http://www.artisan-distiller.info/blog

I am not officially a producer yet. I am still working wiht the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Craft Distillers class of license. I indeed support this effort also.