bluestar

2 hours ago, stevea said:

Depends on the community.   The FM in one local city was the long-pole [he dealt with other industrial flammable production].  In the next city over [also a lot of industrial flammables] FM said they only do compliance inspections and it's totally up to zoning/building.

Sort of true. Any locality might have the FM limiting their scope. But state law usually gives the authority to the local FM to do more if they choose to, and bear responsibility if the required things are not done. And they can choose to exercise that authority later, and again, you are left in the lurch. So it is not even enough if the policy is supposedly fine now: that happened not long ago in the city of Chicago, when they realized after the first few distilleries were already in place that the FM were not sufficiently conservative with regards to local code. Effectively, rules changed on the fly. So, for example, in the case you suggest, if the FM leaves it to zoning/building, and they say its okay, and later during a compliance inspection the FM realizes that something is not being addressed (and that info can come from anywhere), they call you out of compliance, and require you to address the issue or shut down, do matter what zoning/building said. At least, in most states, that is how the authority is structured. Gee, you get that happening all the time anyway: two years in, FM does an inspection, says probably good idea you add another fire extinguisher here, alarm there. You gotta do it.

32 minutes ago, Thatch said:

If you search on the letters AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdication) on this forum you will find a significant amount of discussion on what they might want to talk about.  The other guy that you would want in a second meeting if the planning commission and the building inspector give you positive vibes is the Fire Marshall.

So whole heartedly agree. The Fire Marshall is usually the real make-or-break, but is the toughest, since if they are not already educated on distilleries, you are more likely educating them rather than them providing guidance to you at this stage. Nevertheless, better to deal with this early on, because the Fire Marshall can throw the wrench into the works AT ANY POINT in setting up your distillery. You can even go through full construction and inspection and approval to start operation, and if the FM returns and determines something does not satisfy their fire safety requirements, you are shut down. There is generally no appeal.

The legal description if it is flavored after distillation for corn whiskey, aged or not, would be "xxx flavored whiskey" where the xxx describes the flavoring agent. You will need a formula. In addition to the description, they may allow you to include additional wording elsewhere on the label that indicates the origin or type of whiskey used, but it must be clear that this is NOT an allowed or standard whiskey description that can be mistaken for the legal description, since that would be misleading.

On 1/2/2020 at 7:01 PM, Thatch said:

Respectfully disagree - Spirits in a barrel are included in the MAQ per zone.  In other words, if you are F-1 the most you can have is 960 gallons MAXIMUM not in bottles.  The 960 comes from 4 x 240 (4 control areas sprinkled - your distillery and 3 others).  There may be no maximums in the fire code but there are in the building code.  If you are H-3, there is no MAQ. 

There is a good ACSA safety presentation that goes through the current code, and establishes that the barrel exclusion would count in an H3 with appropriate ventilation and such. Not the F-1. Also, bottle spirits in the F-1 may count as part of the total if over 100 proof, you can get an exclusion for all bottle spirits for higher proof kept in an M occupancy, for example.

NB: corrected this last statement that previously indicated bottle spirits count toward MAQ in F-1 irrespective of alcohol concentration. As pointed out to me by @Thatch, there is an exception for product bottled below 50% ABV.

1 hour ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Not upset, we should be sharing more of this kind of information with each other - it's all good - I don't understand why we wouldn't leverage the knowledge of the collective to elevate everyone.

Compare this thread with a book on barrel aging published by a master distiller.  $35 for 150 worthless pages, without even a single actionable piece of information.

On another note, about bucking the trend.  We did some 1 year 100% Ryes in 15g, and 2+ in 30g - we still have customers today that beg us to lay down the 1 year rye (15g), they prefer it over the 2 and 3 year variants (30g).  The big difference is the fruitiness - big dark dried fruit and honey in the 1 year, it's nearly gone by 2, totally gone by 3, replaced with rye spice dominating.

We have a similar situation with our 100% malt rye whiskey, customers who still ask for the 1yo in 15g char 4, even though our standards are 2-3yo in 53g char 5 or 4 yo in 53g char 3. While it has a little more heat, it is sweeter with a bit more fruit and floral on the nose.

1 hour ago, Silk City Distillers said:

No prob.

My own 2 cents, which admittedly might not even be worth that, is that anything below 15g isn't worth anyone's time.  I'm sure I'll upset people using barrels smaller than that, but in our experience, the extraction curve crosses the maturation curve far too early below 15g.  We played around with 10g and 15g, and now only use 15g for our test batches, with the intent on 12-18m aging on the test batches.  We find this to be far superior than pushing a 10g to the 12 month mark, or dumping at 10g earlier than one year.  To us, 15g feels like the tipping point between small cask and large cask.  One thing to keep in mind for us, we're in a fairly dry climate during the winter, and our barrel storage is conditioned (read: very dry), so we typically see substantial evaporations - 10% a year is typical for us in smaller cooperage.  If you are cooler, and wetter, you might be able to stretch out the maturation time before over-oaking.  Our go-to now is 30g, and we're currently transitioning to 53g - which means laying down a lot of inventory (and needing lots of space).  I think the Kelvin 25g size is a nice balanced position if you needed to be slightly smaller, it's a manageable size, and we had some good results at the 2 year mark.  Barrel Mill 15/30g have been winners for us.

Used cooperage is another story entirely, we've found second and third fills on small barrels to work well with dark rums aged far longer than you would ever realistically consider in a first fill small cask (~1 month per gallon as a rule of thumb).  We have some high ester rums at 2 years in second fill 10g that are fantastic.  Depending on your jurisdictions, you might have better success with second-fill small cooperage whiskies aged longer.  We don't have this option in the US.

Certainly not upset. Just think your conclusions might be overreaching, and could be wrong in specific cases. We have experimented with 5, 8, 10, 15, 23, 30 gallon barrels, all chars, all toasts, different modifications (traditional, honeycomb, sliced, etc.). We also use 53g traditional in all chars. Our experience is that it VERY much depends on the barrel type, not just the size, as well as the type of spirit being aged. Even confining to whiskies, we found quite a difference in optimal choice for use of smaller barrels with malt barley, malt rye, and bourbon. With bourbon, it matters what the mash bill is. I would agree that using 5g (or smaller) is a real challenge for almost everything, although we have done so. For high-corn bourbon, we found 10g better than 15g or 23g, and definitely they will over oak in a short period of time. For this size, we particularly like the honeycomb, with very light char and good toast, for maximum vanillin extraction in a short time.  You CAN age through the over-oak period with a 10g or smaller barrel, but we found 2+ years necessary, and the extreme angel-share loss and concentrated extractives made these less interesting to drink on their own than to blend with larger barrels. For malt barley, would agree that 15g is a better minimum, but that also reflects the need to age 2+ years. Our preference in that case has been a light char, while using the same size for malt rye we preferred a heavy char and found 1+ years could work. The barrel we found the LEAST interesting was the 30g. We did not see much difference from using a 53g (not surprising, the difference in surface-to-volume ratio is very small). But something close to this size would have been traditional in the first part of the 19th century, and there is no reason to eschew it. We had used Barrel Mill in the past, particularly 15g & 30g, but lately have been using Black Swan exclusively for the small barrels, in part because Barrel Mill no longer makes one of the chars we found worked best for one of our whiskies, and Black Swan was more flexible with regard to special toasts and chars. But otherwise, we found Barrel Mill to produce barrels of high quality and good value. We agree that small barrels can be very interesting for aging in used barrels. This is particularly so when the barrels have only been used for short period aging, the quality of the spirit in the second use has some of the character more associated with aging in new char. One of our whiskies and a couple of our gins definitely owe their lauded flavor profile to that, we think. We also found them a good choice for aging brandy and are doing our first rum tests now.

Not really looking to argue against @Silk City Distillers observations, I think it is great to make their experience available to others here. I just wanted to add our own experience, especially where it might vary to some degree from others.

I think any of them should work fine. As a company, Mettler Toledo is a little less friendly, its business model is oriented toward corporate pharma. But that being said, they will support products that have not been aged out. We bought a used Mettler that works well, and is still supported. We have not used desktop Anton Paar, but had good support and ease of purchase of the handhelds. The Rudolph looks like a good value, and I have had good experience with them for other equipment, but have not done so for their densitometer/alcoholometer.

On 12/24/2019 at 2:21 PM, Southernhighlander said:

  Using my recollections of the amount of whiskey my grandfather was producing, his fermentation had to be between 7% and 9% ethanol.  The large kernel, white, hickory king corn malted extremely well, with lots of sprouts and zero mold.   Dillard Hall's primary corn whiskey recipe consisted of his malted corn and our families yeast strain and that was it.  Keep in mind that my people made corn whiskey from malted corn for centuries and they were the progenitors of American style whiskies that utilize corn.

   Growing up, I knew a lot of old timers who had made corn whiskey.  I knew them because of my grandfather and all  of them, except for a few, who were his close friends, called him Uncle Dillard.  Uncle was a term of respect among the Southern Mountaineers. These old timers where mostly born just before or just after the turn of the 20th century.  Before cheap sugar came along, they all used malted corn that they malted themselves using the same corn strains and methods that my grandfather used, as well as the same kind of indirectly fired copper still.  They all distilled their malted corn whiskies on the grain.  Many times the stills they used had copper pots, copper line arms and copper coils with the head, thumper and flake stand made from barrels. Add the fermented mash, stir like hell with a wooden paddle until the mash starts to boil then put on the cap/head and line arm and you are off and running. 

I have heard others also say that there are varieties of white corn suitable for malting, but definitely not yellow hard dent, which is prone to mold.

I think what @dhdunbar said is correct, but I found it a bit hard to follow, so I will summarize what I thought was the most important takeaway: you might not be able redistill the product with flavoring components and call it flavored vodka. It might be a specialty. Flavored vodka is vodka that later has flavorings and maybe sugar added to it. And a formula will be required. If your formula says you are redistilling (and you must say so if you are doing so), I think they will tell you it is not flavored vodka but a specialty. I can see the argument against this if you take vodka and then redistill with a gin basket: the product entering the basket is still vodka, and that you flavor it by high-temperature vapor infusion should mean it is flavored vodka. Not an unreasonable argument, try it out in your formula submission as @dhdunbar suggests. I think where you could run into a problem with the process you describe is that you are diluting to 30% before redistillation. Now the product is not vodka (has to be above 40%), although again since 60 proof is the minimum for a flavored product, maybe you can argue that, again as @dhdunbar suggests. And please relay the response from TTB, I am very interested.

4 hours ago, SlickFloss said:

Gotcha thanks..... I have seen it in my malts that we hit with toasted Limousin.

 

Phenomenal contributions here, wonderful share very valuable. Thanks again.

Strangely, we do a 100% malt whiskey that is aged in smaller cask with heavy toast and very light char,  and bottle below 90 proof, so we might expect to see some flock. But we don't!

On 12/13/2019 at 8:13 AM, SlickFloss said:

Hey bluestar are the oligosaccharides from hemicellulases in the barrel? My thoughts being lower char levels don't burn these up as much

thanks for sharing your knowledge

hemicellulose (hemicellulase is an enzyme). They can be. I think you are probably right about low char levels, we see it the most on exposure to char 1 or toast without char.

1 hour ago, Naked Spirits Distillery said:

Help a new guy out on this matter. We just opened and have our first TTB reports due for the month of November. Taxes are due when bottled or sold? I thought sold, but  if I bottle a bunch I am under the old rates if it doesn't pass?

Taxes are due on the product that is taken out of the bonded premises: sold, trashed, donated, whatever. Taxes are due to be paid for the year/quarter/month you are reporting on, depending on whether you are on an annual/quarterly/monthly payment schedule (they will have told you), even though you report production/storage/processing monthly.

3 hours ago, PeteB said:

OK, lets call the flock "clusters" not "crystals".

My observation is that after a period of time these clusters can be broken up by vigorous shaking and they disappear for some time. Eventually a small amount of fine sediment settles on the bottom of the bottle.

If shaking pushed some of these compounds back into solution I would have thought the "clusters" could re-form.

I would be very interested if someone has access to an ultra sonic device to test if this type of vibration could break the clusters down so fine that they would not be visible.

The fact that this process seems to change over time is part of what I researched. It is because of various possible reasons. For example, the initial flocculant may actually not be the lowest energy state, just how the product initially came out of solution, which is a kinetic process, not necessarily equilibrium. Since shaking can put it back into solution, it may not go back in the same way as was prior to flocculation, which means if it precipitates again, it may not have the same kinetic pathway, and may form a different type of cluster. Moreover, because oligosaccharides are made up of chains of sugars, they have the similar instability in solution that sugars do, in that they can undergo isomerization reactions and hydrogen-bonding rearrangements that change their isomeric and configurational structure, and then they will flocculate back out of solution in a different form. For those that are not aware, as an example, there are multiple structures of as simple a sugar as D-glucose, and in solution, the two most stable cyclic forms will interconvert continuously, through a linear open form. At equilibrium, there will be about a 1:2 ratio of the two cyclic isomers, with only a percent of the linear intermediary at any moment. Now, imagine that kind of reactivity can also exist in polymers of saccharides, and then if they are in close proximity to each other, reactions might occur that change their structure before they are redissolved by agitation. Subsequently, since they are now different molecules, the may form a different, and likely more stable, precipitate. Finally, the polymer chain itself may break and reform. The reactions can even be enhanced by the bonding energies between the flocculated polymers, and other reactions inhibited by the steric hinderance due to the clustering. All this to say, it is not surprising that the process of redissolving and precipitating again is not fully reversible for this class of compounds.

On 9/17/2019 at 6:33 PM, Sator Square Distillery said:

I understand that aquavit is traditionally made using a neutral that originates from either rye or potatoes. It is then infused with a predominate flavor of caraway and sometimes dill, among other botanicals. Often barrel aged, sometimes not.

To those that make or enjoy aquavit, would it be off-putting to see used a neutral derived from a source other than rye or potatoes? TIA.

You can use almost any neutral or schnapp, but traditional is rye for Sweden, potato for Norway, other northern countries might use other grains as well. But grain or potato, so I would avoid neutral from cane, grape, etc.

16 hours ago, Roger said:

Are you asking for advise on lautering a mash of 51%+ corn ?  If so, there are a lot of threads on here about that, and the general consensus seem to be : No.

Agreed, that would be tough to do, even with flaked corn.

19 hours ago, Patio29Dadio said:

It does not look good.  We can generally thank one politician elected by a single district in a single state that has held her position for 34 years. 

Why do you think the speaker is holding up this legislation? That is not my understanding. It is true she is not a cosponsor, but that is not unusual for the speaker to not cosponsor a bill they might even be in support of. There are 320 sponsors of this bill, there is little doubt that it would pass. Same situation is true of the Senate bill, Mitch is not a cosponsor. But we DO know that he intends to pass no bills at this time. My suspicion is that BOTH bills are tied up in committee waiting to determine if they will be rolled into a single budget bill, and passed as a whole. So, it may die if we can't get a budget bill passed before the end of the calendar year. I suspect the House would be willing to pass it separately if it looks like we will need a CR beyond the end of December. The real problem might be in the Senate.

15 hours ago, Southernhighlander said:

I have no idea whether the still helmet is brass or not  It could just be the colors off in the photo.

  I've never thought about building a brass still helmet but If I wanted to build one, it would not be a problem. Brass is easily worked into all kinds of things such as lamps, spittoons, bowls,  billions if not trillions of ammo casings & primers and on and on.  Our metal spinning machine will do the halves of a brass onion up to 32" in diameter.

Both brass and bronze will work harden, but brass is hard to anneal that out, some bronzes may. That also means thermal cycling will further coarsen grain structure in brass, and eventually it might fail. And if you leach out the zinc (which has significant vapor pressure at high temperatures), that's not good. So I probably would not want to use it on a boiler device. On the other hand, it is fine for resistance to corrosion at room temperature, in part because exposure passivates the surface and inhibits further corrosion. Hence, why brass is used for ships.

Just now, Southernhighlander said:

For all of those interested.  The head on the Muller still is not brass or bronze.  It is copper.  

It's a gold color because the copper has been coated with a sealer.  The sealer turned yellow when the copper got hot.  We have used sealers in the past but our sealed columns would turn a darker red when they got hot.  However copper from different places reacts differently.  Heat will cause some to turn lighter and some to turn darker.  The reason the 4 plate is not yellow is because it did not get as hot.  Mystery solved.

That all makes sense.

On 11/22/2019 at 2:42 PM, Hogback Distillery said:

Im looking for best advice on avoiding getting a stuck mash while mashing a flaked corn, rye, barley mash in lauter tun. 

Im hoping that if I use 20%+ malted barley, that I wont need rice husks or additional enzymes, although im not adverse to using either.

1. Any recomendations on a) the order in which the grains are added b) strike/mash temperature ranges for each and c) time left in the mashtun?

2. Would it be advantagous or counterproductive to use the rake?

 

We find you need about 50% bulky grain/malt in the mix to avoid getting stuck. Can be mixture of grist, hull, etc.

On 11/22/2019 at 12:46 PM, Southernhighlander said:

You may be right.  Especially since the whole head looks like brass and I have never seen that before.

  However, we reworked an older Mueller still here about 3 years ago that had a copper head but the manway was a heavy solid brass manway and it did not have any kind of coating.  Not something that I would put on a still but brass was used a lot for manways and other fittings on older stills of all makes, including the stills of Vendome Copper & Brass Works.

 The Germans still use brass manways on some newer stills.  Today it is probably de-leaded or lead free brass  but in the old days it was just regular old brass with 2% lead added for machinability. 

Also bronze is metallic brown in color, not yellow.  

Interesting fact.  The Chinese call regular copper "red copper" and brass "yellow copper".

Bronzes can be many colors, including gold, depending on the specific alloy makeup. Bronze can be worked, generally not true for brass. Hence, where machined, like for a manway cover, I guess it could be brass, but I would be surprised if the stillhead were brass.

4 hours ago, PeteB said:

I have always thought flock was a crystalline structure. Can't remember if I heard it as fact. If it is crystalline then it would naturally take time to form at ambient temperature. At lower temperatures a solution holds less dissolved solids which would speed up crystal formation, hence chill filtration works.  Freshly diluted whisky has not had time to grow large crystals and much of the compounds are still in solution  while " bottling, to packaging, to palletizing, delivery, forklifts, etc" . Flock would form in the following weeks as it sits on a shelf.

It is NOT crystalline in any conventional sense. The oligosaccharides are long chain polymers, some branched. Flocculation is a process of condensation, like crystallization. But crystallization usually either means the molecules are coming out of solution as ordered crystallites, or possibly hydrated but still ordered crystallites, the flocculation is a formation of only partially ordered or even disordered mats, flakes, and/or globules of the polymers, often still partially hydrated. The oligosaccharides are generally fairly soluble, but if there are hydrophilic parts, those parts will bond to similar parts of other oligosaccharides by hydrogen bonding, possibly with bridging water; and for hydrophobic parts, those may cluster together expelling any hydrating water. Generally, the oligosaccharides have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts, and when flocculating, try to align to minimize energy with each kind of part finding its own. In addition, any residual protein fragments, fats, or oils may also find their way to bind to the appropriate parts. But since the oligosaccharides are often atactic polymers, they can not form crystals, nor condense enough to form a true solid. Hence, their cloud-like, wispy structures. Generally, the flocculants take long times to form, although more quickly at lower temperature. Heating or even aggressively shaking can often resolublize them, although the longer they are out of solution, the more difficult this appears to be.

On 11/15/2019 at 7:13 PM, Brewstillery said:

I’m pretty sure that is a brass alloy. 

I doubt it is actually brass (zinc alloy of copper), since the zinc is an undesirable metal for this purpose, and thermally cycling brass can cause it to degrade. Although I guess it is not impossible, if the interior is coated. More likely a bronze (tin alloy of copper)?

On 11/19/2019 at 12:51 PM, Falling Rock said:

My State is a 3 tier system (distillery, distributor, retailer), but State has no direct input on price at any level. What we initially found was, Our price to distributor, Distributor+30%, Retailer +30%. But each step is negotiable/variable. Distributors do seem to discount for Quantity.

We are also 3 tier, but the typical MARGIN at each level is 30%, not the MARK UP, which would be closer to 42%. Hence, typical retailer price on shelf is often double the wholesale price, depending also on state taxes. Typically discount for quantity, or even charge more for broken case or less-than-case orders. This can really hurt sales to small bars, but some distributors will give the full multiple case discount to bars, to get product placed on the back bar as a form of marketing.

On 11/3/2019 at 1:00 PM, et1883 said:

How do you present that feature to the less-informed-consumers who may not know that the haze/flocc is harmless and/or composed of flavor elements?    The mainstream products are, well, what they are, but also clear (or transparent) to a fault.   part of distilling is education, do you add that to labels or advert to pre-advise consumers?  

Education is a challenge. We have not done this yet, but others have put information on the bottle providing information, which is probably a good idea.

On 11/3/2019 at 2:13 PM, PeteB said:

Sullivans Cove whisky from Tasmania  has won world's best single malt several times.

Look at this video to see how they are now dealing with it. 

https://sullivanscove.com/journal/flocking-and-filtration/ 

It is a very good video, the only error is they describe the flocculant as being from fats and oils. That is not quite correct, it is longer hydrocarbons (like fats and oils), but generally it is oligosaccharides (long sugars) that may also be partially binding with some protein fragments and many a small quantity of fats or oils.