indyspirits

2 hours ago, Spanish_Moss_Gin said:

I guess it’s just a trial and error type of experiment which is fine and half the fun I guess...

 

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

15 minutes ago, Spanish_Moss_Gin said:

first 2% seems to be a good amount to take, especially with Gin where a lot of the juniper oils appear in this first amount

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)

16 hours ago, jenschmunk@gmail.com said:

I've had someone recommended liquid invert sugar to prevent this, but this is a costly way of doing things. Thanks! 

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.

11 hours ago, Spanish_Moss_Gin said:

how do you identify accurately the heads and tails when using pure spirits to start with

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?

4 hours ago, Southernhighlander said:

The laws in MO changed in 2009 to make starting a distillery in MO a much easier process.

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

1 hour ago, Roger said:

Move along Indy, you are usually less obtuse. 

Fair enough. Moving along.

31 minutes ago, bluestar said:

BUT, if you are buying GNS (not officially sold as vodka) and redistilling to call it vodka, in fact, you need a formula, because you are changing the classification of the spirit. Many don't realize this.

You've piqued my curiosity. The class "Neutral Spirits" is broadly defined as:

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Spirits distilled from any material at or above 95% alcohol by volume (190 proof), and if bottled, bottled at not less than 40% alcohol by volume (80 proof)

And vodka is:

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Neutral spirits distilled or treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials so as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color

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).  

39 minutes ago, bluestar said:

Reference? How about all the craft distilling press in the past 2 decades.

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

34 minutes ago, bluestar said:

Geez, you are in IN, and you should know that is true for your state, where there was an existing large and small(er) distillery, but those couple were locked in place, and no others allowed!

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.

23 hours ago, Georgeous said:

what is most common barley used in making whiskey

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.  

6 hours ago, whiskeytango said:

Iv tastes plenty of vodka made from small craft brands that taste like dank ass.

Couldn't have put it better!  

9 hours ago, Roger said:

Onerous state laws basically prevented small distillers from operating.

Reference? 

7 hours ago, Roger said:

It is essentially a commodity with no margin.

Many a balance sheet would beg to differ.

7 hours ago, Roger said:

independent small distilleries are now legal in the US

Were they ever illegal after the 21st Amendment?

7 hours ago, Roger said:

to consumers who appreciate their sense of craft and efforts.

If by that you mean marketing blackmagicfuckery I certainly agree.

7 hours ago, Roger said:

99% of their revenue stream is really just dumping NGS in bottles, some with drops of flavor and sugar, which they then charge a craft price for.

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. 

7 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Did a double blind tasting of vodkas with 20-30 other distillers.  Smirnoff won.

It's not the first time!

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/dining/a-humble-old-label-ices-its-rivals.html

23 hours ago, Roger said:

If you want to ask a question, ask a Fakeillery to explain the process of how they remove the "heads" from NGS

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.

20 hours ago, richard1 said:

boiled down sugar cane juice into mollasses

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

13 hours ago, Roger said:

Sorry, but it is absolutely false that commercial NGS has "heads" that can be removed by a common column still.

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...

22 hours ago, SVJim said:

They have looked at Cutty Sark, but did not check enough boxes?

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:

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There must be approximately the same number of overfills and underfills for each lot bottled

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

53 minutes ago, meerkat said:

this is why almost everyone prefers to bottle by mass.

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

1 hour ago, meerkat said:

In the TTB document SSD:TM:516 they give an example of correcting fill levels for temperature

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.

2 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Made it up

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

10 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

tolerance across the entire 30-90f temperature range 

Where are you getting the 30 to 90 range?

19.356 states:

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 In no case will the quantity contained in a bottle vary from the quantity stated on the label or bottle by more than plus or minus:

(1) 1.5 percent for bottles 1.0 liter and above;

(2) 2.0 percent for bottles 999 mL through 376 mL;

(3) 3.0 percent for bottles 375 mL through 101 mL; or

(4) 4.5 percent for bottles 100 mL and below.

 

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?