bluestar

Washington, if you mean the state, allows various forms of self-distribution where no distributor has to be appointed.

I would suspect a deep tails cut could explain it. Don't know where they get their corn, but we've had trouble with that kind of flavor in a test run when the corn ended up having picked up a touch of mold.

It is about a third, for us, paying urban rates for electric, power, and water/sewer.

Sorry, correct if you are buying or selling as packaged. But I believe any repackaging would require a federal permit of some kind.

Where are you finding them for $1 FOB Chicago? What quantity? I haven't seen them that cheap. You can PM me.

We have good experience working with Berlin. If you can pick up at warehouse will-call, definitely worth considering, since shipping can be comparable to cost of goods. Their prices above 1000 bottles are competitive for PET. While glass has its appeal, PET will reduce breakage, cost less, and is cheaper to ship because of reduced weight. If you are bottling very small quantities, hand filling on an Enolmatic with small-bottle accessory is doable.

If you see any increase in proof, you may be too dry in the winter, unless you are going in at very low proof. We see early initial loss in volume, but that is both angel's share and devil's cut. The latter will scale with size too, due to change in surface to volume ratio, and also the humidity and grain structure in the wood. 2% loss from devil's cut in a 53g is not unusual, so a 30g could be twice that, and a 10g could be more than 3x that. At the most extreme, for total loss, we have seen more than 50% loss after 2 years in a 5g barrel, compared to 10% for a 53g barrel. So, 20% loss for a 30g barrel does not seem so unusual, especially in a dry environment.

You can buy and sell denatured industrial ethanol without a DSP permit, although you will need an SDA permit. But if you want to process ethanol, beverage or industrial, you need a DSP permit. So, if you are handling pure (not denatured) industrial ethanol to repackage, or if you are proofing down denatured spirits, you would need a DSP.

Yes, beet ethanol (as neutral spirit) was used in France for many spirits and liqueurs, especially once grape became scarce during phylloxera epidemics. Most notably, it was used for many absinthes. Beet sugar "rums" like Stroh's were never made from molasses, but from beet syrup, second to last step product in refining beet sugar. Still a challenge to make a good spirit from that. I did my own tests making beet syrup "rum".

Correct, it is the waste from beet sugar refining. It's disgusting. It can not be consumed by humans, inedible. I think it can be consumed by livestock. The only way you might want to use it for spirit is if you distill the ferment to completely neutral spirit.

Theoretically that is true. BUT, we did tests and found that while the peroxide cured EPDM gaskets don't appear to degrade in performance as gaskets, it does allow a small amount of leachate to be picked up by the spirit if the EPDM is downstream of the still head in the path of high-temperature, high-proof spirit (like between the dephlegmator and the condensor). For that location, we use platinum-cured translucent silicone. These might toughen a bit over long use, but they hold up to temperature, and we don't observe any leachate.

EPDM is okay near RT. No good at high temps with high proof alcohol. Charts shown here don't address this.

And if you DID care about HISTORICAL precedent, you would not restrict barrel size to larger than 50 gal. Only used after WWII. Prior common sizes included 48 gal "standard" barrel and 31 gal US beer barrel, and the early spirits barrel at 40 gal. And the earliest bourbon barrels may have been the smaller, narrow "blood" cask.

Where are u? Does the price include shipping?

https://www.prime-scales.com/product/304-stainless-steel-ntep-legal-trade-bench-scale-food-process-scale-recycling-scale/ is close to what you want. $1000, NTEP approved, does 0.2 lb up to 1000 lbs. Can also be had as 0.1 lb up to 500 lbs. Another option from Prime: https://www.prime-scales.com/product/z-tcs-bench-scale-stainless-steel-indicator-platter/ This is NOT NTEP, but does 0.05 lb up to 800 lbs, and is only $500.

Did you ever see any further precipitation on the batch done with uncoated oranges? Just thought I would follow up.

@Silk City Distillers has the right reference. Description is typically Gin if there was any compounding. It is Distilled Gin only if there is no compounding. The BAM is giving guidance beyond the CFR requirements as to what descriptions might be considered misleading or false, which the CFR prohibits. The interpretation here is that if there is any compounding, a description that includes "distilled" would not be allowed. Remember, you can add adjectives to many descriptions, provided they are true, not misleading, and fit within the category and type. Like American Single Malt Whiskey for malt whiskey.

New oak got into the CFR in the 30's because of the coopers lobbying, needing to rebuild their business after prohibition. I doubt it is the coopers now, they can't make enough to sell. But I don't doubt lobbying from large distillers would be likely.

That is also my take on it, the move to 50 gallons is to codify current large distillery practice. In correspondence, it would also be useful to note that today's "standard" 53 gallon barrel is not historical. It was established AFTER World War 2 to reduce costs. It was determined to be the largest barrel that could be accommodated in rack houses that used the previous "standard" whiskey barrel of 48 gallons. And in the 19th century there was really no standard at all, smaller barrels were often used.

From our research, we learned the same conventional wisdom, that many corns won't malt well, like yellow hard dent, because of tendency to get moldy. Whether it is true or not, it is one of the reasons malting corn was generally avoided, that and the flavor for some corn gets too "green".

If by "hot" they are referring to what I call "fire", as found in new make spirits of all kinds, generally this is due to the presence of ketones that will ebb with aging, either due to removal by char or conversion by esterfication. So, longer aged spirits usually have less fire. But the ketones are primarily in the front end of the separation if you are pot distilling, so if you are making head cuts that are not conservative enough, or if you have poor fractionation (smearing), you might be getting more ketones to begin with. Char #4 sounds like a very reasonable choice for 4 year aging, we do well with char #3 from ISC removing "fire" or "heat", so I suspect it is not how long you are aging, but the nature of the new make. In addition to the cut, the grain choice matters, corn being the cleanest. I see you have about 22% wheat, and that is has IMO the "hot, chalky" flavor that requires significant care to cut or age out. But 4 years in char #4 seems reasonable, maybe you need better cuts. We have only done one try at a wheated bourbon, and we do see longer aging is required. Others want to weigh in?

Resolution just tells you how small the lowest digit is on the readout, it does not affect accuracy, unless it is worse than the accuracy. Essentially, in this case, it is telling you how many digits is on the LCD display, and that is the same regardless of the accuracy of the model. Snap 41 is NOT more accurate than the DMA35, in any version, as far as I can tell. The Snap 51 is better than the lower end model DMA 35, and I think that is because of the improved accuracy in measuring the temperature.

Okay, yes, I knew I met someone from Crozehead at our distillery, but was not sure if the same person was posting! Look forward to your next visit! And definitely become a member of the ICDA http://illinoisdistillers.org

From the info you have, you can estimate: density is about 1 g/cc, so you are about 0.1%. Which makes sense, since the Snap 51 is essentially a DMA 35 Standard or Ex. The Snap 41 and 51 are the same, except for the accuracy of the temperature measurement, needed for correction of proof. The DMA 35 Basic is the old design but also has the poorer temperature reading like the Snap 41, while the DMA 35 Standard and Ex are similar to the new Snap 51. The Ex and Standard has a special deal right now for ordering directly on-line from Anton-Paar: free lifetime replacements of the quartz tube sensor. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be offering this for the Snap series. In the old versions, this was the most common way the unit would fail: bump or drop it and the tube would crack. The earliest versions of the DMA 35 could not even replace the tube as a repair. The most recent (ie, DMA 35 Basic) can be replaced at significant expense. The new design looks like it is both better protecting the quartz tube and making it easier to replace.

If you are in Illinois, I suggest you join the Illinois Craft Distillers Association. You might want to do that even as a regional cooperage, or associate member in any case. And I would be happy to give you some feedback, just visit our distillery. We are very small, and I don't know how much you intend as a small amount to put toward start up, but even a very small distillery will require 100s of K dollars, especially in Illinois. Good luck!