patrick260z

Other then there being waxy bits in the distillate, are there any other negatives? Could you do some sort of loose filtration?

Just making sure your comparing apples to oranges... The sitosterol is across multiple barreled lots? The unaged spirit is from the same sitosterol lots in barrel? Only asking because I've seen wax flakes come across at the very end of a tails run happen, which logic and the nature of partial boiling pressures would dictate that some tiny degree of those waxy compounds are present in all parts of the distillation. Maybe this problem lot was distilled at too low of a proof? Allowing more of those compounds to come across? Or perhaps a bad heads cut? The heads of the next run can pull alot of higher alcohols and waxes stuck to the walls of your still. With whiskey barrels, coopers don't really season at all if they can help it. They kiln dry, this also allows them to use more of the soft sap wood. These two facts are why our american charred barrels are sub-200/bbl and the wineries are paying over 500/bbl, too BTW. But the kiln drying process is industry standard, to my understanding. I don't think the soft sap wood is the sitosterol source, because then one would think that the problem would be more prevalent.

I didn't see any cost outlays for barrels for all that bourbon you're going to want to make.

Nice! Although I think that caption under the leading photo is a little misleading

Correct, they have a certificate of trace-ability from the manufacture but not calibration. Just means they can be calibrated if you wanted to send them out, or get them pre-calibrated. For your follow up, we are a winery/distillery. All of our base material starts as grapes and is processed through the winery. Calibration of hydrometers are not required. When we transfer the wine from the BW to the DSP we must then have an accurate wine alcohol. And for that we use the FOSS oenofoss at the winery, pre-transfer. As far as I understand that covers our legal obligations. The FOSS is a very expensive, but it makes things very, very easy. Otherwise, we'd use the old school ebulliometer. But back to the spirit of your question. If I were you, I would have one calibrated hydrometer for every range of SG you need. I would buy 2 or 3 extra un-calibrated hydrometers for actual use at each SG. I would then spend a bit of time cross referencing your calibrated with the uncalibrateds and note any deviation. Should by all pretty close, but this should allow you to confidently use your uncalibrated hydrometers. Same process for your proofing hydrometers, would be a good idea too.

Just an fyi, maybe a heads up when one of your articles is redirect to an article on playboy.com. Just to avoid work place hassles !

Lots more $$ worth of KW then your water system, I'd bet. On a pure water cost to KW cost, I don't believe anywhere outside of bone dry california makes sense. Especially if you are flowing less than 1 gpm. MG, thats some cool stuff, could not find pix on your website though.

How much cooling water do you end up collecting in a single run? For us we found we were pouring 500 gallons down the drain each run, so collection, cooling and reusing made more sense, considering the water situation here in California. Additionally, our distillery is co-located with a large winery with a huge glycol cooling system. We siphon off 20F glycol to run our little heat exchanger. Works out well enough, a bigger heat exchanger would be better, but we wanted to limit costs for this first build "prototype". I have to remember "KISS"

Remember to then slowly cool the dephlig while maintaining your proof during your hearts, until you're fully cooling again, or the flow has stopped. Then warm the deflig and collect your tails.

If you're distilling during the winter, I understand you boys in NH get pretty cold. Running your hot waste water through an outdoor radiator type heat exchange with a large fan could pull that heat out quite nicely. You'd be looking at a recirculating pump that can meet the requirement of flow and pressure you demand for your condenser cooling and a small holding tank large enough to contain the water system when the re circulation system is off (to avoid overflow), in addition to the radiator setup. In my experience, your greatest material cost will be in the pump. Should be pretty low energy use with that system, but will take abit of creativity to cobble together the right parts, too. Addition of glycol cooling would probably add a significant energy costs, but allow for summer running. You could even play around with some subterranean heat sinking as well...

Talk to the guys at Castoro Bottling Co. They have 4 bottling lines, so scheduling is a lot easier to work out then with the other guys. Whether or not they can fit your needs, I don't know.

Thank Michael

Wines are +/- .5%, still point well taken. With the "parts that can handle high proof", are we talking about seals and seats? I think silicone and buna-n are prevalent with our wine line, is this compatible with 80-85 proof spirit? What kind of filtering media? Different then that used in wines? I don't necessarily mean how tight, more like what kind of media? Thanks!

Anyone have experience in putting clean brandy down to neutral wine barrels, and getting green/garlic characteristics after about 6 months? Is this some sort of intermediate wood extraction smell? These were one year old MT AO red wine barrels that I soaked over night in peroxyclean, then over night in citric acid water before hot rinsing to remove the color and wine tannin from the barrel.

When setting up a bottling line, what are the main challenges in bottling spirits that differ from those of bottling wine?

Using the Gauger's Manual §30.22 Hydrometers and thermometers, you find a list of hydrometers and their precision letter and range. I would have 3 of each hydrometer on hand, except for the F, G, H. Maybe one of each to have on hand. I use Davis Intruments. H-B Durac Ethyl Alcohol Glass Hydrometers are the best deal. You'll need to get at least one of each hydrometer precision level calibrated, that you use to determine tax liabilities. For us that's our K, P, Q, and R hydrometers. This will raise the price of the hydrometer significantly. Note that there is no precision letter with the Duracs. This is okay, because you will also note that they are "made according to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, US Treasure Department." but you'll need to pay attention to the proof range. Good luck

Have had a good experience with the Bottlematic. It's a good semi-auto labeler with pretty straight forward setup. Never have used label inc.

I'm trying to understand the difference in equipment needs between say a wine bottling line and spirits bottling line. I understand there are concerns with using some of the Buna-N seals found on standard wine bottling equipment, but at 40%-ish I haven't seen any notable degradation. Can someone educate me on this?

What about talking to some of the mobile bottling lines in the state? The only technically challenging part of the operation would be the corking with those t-tops. What kind of bottle per minute speed are you looking for?

MG, what is your cooling water flow rate max and temp delta? Right now I've plumed a 3/4 hp pump up to an old AC Freon radiator and box fan as a pre-cooler that then is piped into a small glycol wart chiller. Glycol set at 25f, and getting nearly 50F drop, but flow rate is only about 5gpm, which means at the end of my runs, when my distillate rate is pushed, I'm not flowing enough cool water to keep temperatures under control in my still condenser.

San Francisco Herbs is also a good bet, but I'm a bit closer to 'em then you are...

I bounce between mountain rose, spice jungle, starwest, and bulk apothocary. The big boys buy a year or more worth of supply to marginalize seasonal variance and availability problems.

Calculators can work on the fly. TTB wants whatever method you use to be based off their manual. https://chms.ucdavis.edu/research/miller/Resources/TrueProofCalculator.xlsx is a great calculator and is based off the TTB gauging manual, but needs a correction in the formula. For the True Proof cell (C25), formula should be ...ROUND(C22,1), not ...ROUND(C21,1)

Your mash waste solids are an excellent cattle feed. I've heard of farmers picking up poly IBC tanks full of spent mash to feed live stock. Your heads and tails have a number of options. There is much debate on what to do. What there is consensus on is that Heads can be pitched into active fermentations.With tails, there is debate on redistillation and returning it back to your next distillation. The EU funded a study that found that the highest concentration of Methanol was found in the Tails, however. To avoid any question, the easiest and safest (both environmentally and with the TTB) is to have an outside tank with a secured grate top and let your tails (for that matter your heads, too, if you want to) evaporate.

Would need a statement like "Finished in Maple" or whatever, right?