indyspirits

you'll think it's fun until you "send to loss" your your umpeenth run. ?

Im confused, are you redistilling GNS, or are you making gin from gns and looking for the heads cut for the gin run? If the latter, I normally conduct a demisting test -- dilute the distillate to bottle proof, if it's doesn't cloud you're good to go. Taking a "heads" cut to eliminate the possibility of bottle-louching is different than taking a heads cut when redistilling purchased GNS (or everclear, etc)

We have experimented with invert because it greatly simplifies the process but, as you've noticed, it's not a money saver. We've never had crystallization issues even with home-rolled sucrose solutions up to 400 g/liter (when testing sugar loads for liqueurs. FYI: 400 g/l is cloyingly sweet!) . @meerkat is the man when it comes to solubility questions.

It's quite difficult because there are very little to begin with. Can you give us a bit of info regarding the type of equipment you're running?

Off topic: Am I correct in my understanding that home distilling is legal in MO?

Fair enough. Moving along.

You've piqued my curiosity. The class "Neutral Spirits" is broadly defined as: And vodka is: If a rectifier charges the still at say... 50% ABV and redistills to 95% how are they changing the classification? Is it the act of dilution? What if they simple reduce to 50% and filter without re-rectifying? Clearly this is now getting a bit far afield from the OP but I feel closely enough related so I shouldnt be labels a thread hijacker (although apologies to the OP regardless).

Again, the OP said there were laws preventing craft distillers. There were not (at least in Indiana).

That's not exactly accurate. There was no limitation on new distilleries in Indiana. Prior to the Artisan law the state license was $2,500 and there was no provision for on-premise sales. Notwithstanding, there were about a half-dozen distilleries (including LDI) some of which were only rectifiers (See Indiana Bourbon / Harrison Bourbon). In short there was no law preventing distillery start-ups, but on the flip-side there were no incentives to start one. The vast majority of new distilleries that opened after Jan 1 2015 still don't fall under the artisan law (you must have been in operation for 24 months) so they are operating under the same regs as if they opened in the mid 1990s.

My answer is always "whatever is lease expensive". We use added enzymes so are not concerned with high diastatic power grains. We normally use bog standard 2-row. If you're one of those brave soles that doesn't use enzymes, you'll want to use distillers barley with a very high DP.

Couldn't have put it better!

Reference?

Many a balance sheet would beg to differ. Were they ever illegal after the 21st Amendment? If by that you mean marketing blackmagicfuckery I certainly agree. Well I certainly hope they charcoal filter. Frankly I say more power to them. I don't even know what you mean by "Craft Price". I once saw a crystal skull head bottle of vodka for $100. It's not the first time! https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/dining/a-humble-old-label-ices-its-rivals.html

Why all the anger about using GNS? Aren't we all in this to make money, to pay our kids college tuition and our mortgages, to save for retirement and look for that happy exit (from the business, not life!) ? I've yet to find a a business plan whereby home-rolled neutral spirits are consistently better and less expensive to produce than GNS. Hell you can even get 200 proof GNS which I doubt has much in the way of heads or tails. Try that in your 40 tray column. Help this noob to understand.

Just so we're clear, boiled down cane juice isn't molasses, it's, well, closer to "evaporated cane juice"

Explain please.

Never misses a trick.

In his first post he's looking to buy a large distillery and references a "distillery" that's not even a distillery? I don't know if it's a scam but if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...

Scammy AF.

I've attached our newly created spreadsheet for our 19.600 compliance (yes I know we're missing a few columns)... it's a work in progress. We have both a Mori 4-spout filler and the expressfill time-based filler. This spreadsheet is for the latter. All in all, we're doing OK. Not sure what to think about the intra-spout differences. Spouts 2 and 3 are less underfilled than 1 and 4. I'm going to add some calculated columns for the corresponding volume deltas at 30F and 90F (thanks @meerkat for making this so simple). I have no damn clue how to address this: since this filler consistently underfills but well within limits. I have a theory based on how these are plumbed. The last stats class I had was in the fall of 1985 so forgive my errors. I look forward to your thoughts. Expressfill Filler Audit.xlsx

That and preserving ones own sanity. Thanks for the primer!

Meerkat... Is there a way in AlcoDens to enter a volume/temp and then amend the temp to see how that affects the volume? I played aroudn a bit this morning and it wasn't intuitive to this casual (and a bit lazy) user.

Whew! That's what I thought. I was looking at the temp range in Table 7 and thought, "No way in hell I'm doing that". Riddle me this batman... if a consumer buys a bottle of 45% ABV that was bottled at 100F and then takes it skiing (ignore the impracticalities of the premise) where it's 10F will the fill be out of spec? More rhetorical than anything. Bottom line is that we may tighten our internal range-of-acceptability but will continue to audit by mass

Where are you getting the 30 to 90 range?

19.356 states: Our current internal SOP specifies to use mass thus our 45% ABV product's net weight must be between 692 grams and 720 grams (actually a bit tighter than +/- 2%). What I can't wrap my head around is if this is OK. The thought of making volume temp corrections and testing that way fills me with FUD. Are we in compliance using mass?