indyspirits

We went with a smaller yamada with an aluminum air motor, stainless bits & pieces, and teflon seals & balls. Handily enough it came with an attached grounding strap. We paid about a grand on ebay after shipping. It was the NDP-20BST. Great little pump.   

10 hours ago, Foreshot said:

https://malt-review.com/2018/12/15/chicago-distilling-company-blind-tiger-bourbon/

For starters, Taylor, doesn't need to be a douchebag. Second, the most valuable comment is:

Quote

A stale note of wet cardboard

More than anything this tells me the tails cut went too deep.  If that is in fact the case (and god knows there are so many whiskey "experts" out there, Taylor evidently being one of them) then his other comments have merit. However, I have never, ever heard of "puddle water". That's him trying to be cute.  Reviews like this couldn't be less helpful. 

My question is.... why bother?  There are so many other time consuming tasks. We just let it go and now it has that nice worn-penny patina.

5 hours ago, JustAndy said:

a standard 12" hydrometer doesn't float in our parrot until it reaches about 150p

OK.. Im dying to see a parrot pic.

4 hours ago, UAHJoe said:

Yeah our customer is definitely in the minority as far as "off the grain" distilling goes

I dont know of a single large distiller that lauters except for single malt. Of those that do, 100% are direct immersion.  There's no value in lautering if you dont have to OR if the product quality suffers because of not doing it.

1 hour ago, bostonapothecary said:

instituting an inhouse cooperage repair program to stop leaking

But I don't think it's leaking -- on the majority of these bbls there is no visible leaking,  so it must be evap or loss into staves.

2 hours ago, JustAndy said:

For 30 gal barrels it's something closer to 22% loss after 3 years

We're right there with you. Kind of screws with production estimates.  

23 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Are you guys consistently soaking?  Or going in dry?

We stopped soaking about two years ago.  For us it became a time thing but perhaps we need to revisit it.

I've always read:

• Small barrels experience much greater loss than large
• On the average and in the long run 53s lose 4% in year 1 and 2% per year thereafter

That's not exactly what we're seeing. After two years we're seeing about 20% loss in 30 gallon barrels and 11% (both on a proof gallon basis) in 53 gallon barrels. These are Kelvin #3 char. Barrels are stored vertically, four to a pallet in the midwest. We do get some weeping through the bungs which stops after some time or with liberal whack from a dead-blow.   Our prod facility is not climate controlled and drops to 60F in winter and high in the upper 90s (with humidity to match -- yes, it can get oppressive) in the summer. 

I'm displeased with this rate of loss. What are others seeing?

Edit:Spelling

41 minutes ago, MichaelAtTCW said:

Depends. We use the quad on the electric Minimax.

Got it. That's the one I was referring to. Thanks.

39 minutes ago, MichaelAtTCW said:

Exactly. Sounds like you're referring to Flojet's Quad pumps. Anyone thinking about using these pumps should note that Flojet warns against their use with products that have a flash point below 100 °F.

I assume you offer the quad in your bottle rinser for wine?

4 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Yield was mostly terrible.  1200 pounds of quinoa in, roughly 35 proof gallons out.

Thank you sir for taking one for the team!

Or just use patcote 376. relatively affordable considering how little you need to use.

1 hour ago, Tom Lenerz said:

Don't forget everything costs twice as much as you expect and takes twice as long, and at the end of the day you'll make half as much as you were hoping!

Ain't it the truth!

14 hours ago, adamOVD said:

One more question, is it easier to keep the mash liquid by milling the grain coarser or finer?

I find the entire process (gel / starch - > dextrines) is faster when the corn is ground finer. Never really noticed a difference regarding viscosity.  

13 hours ago, delta H said:

And yeah, mash can still be gummy at high temps,

Funny story... We normally pitch our HTAs at low temps and them let the heat up with the corn. Once we forgot and when the starch gelled (185ish ?)  you could actually hear the difference in the agitator.  Pitch our normal HTAs and within a few seconds it started to thin out. OK, we thought it was funny.  

making source spirit or purchasing?

On 12/15/2018 at 11:57 AM, bluestar said:

This is NOT NTEP

Does it need to be? 

3 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

I hear that many French Liqueurs use beet ethanol as the base.

Do you know of any commercial vodkas that are from beet ethanol? Curious if I can tell the difference between those and corn / cane. I'm certain many of our first forays into distilling started with a bag of Domino sugar, bakers yeast,  garden fertilizer and a few multi-vitamins. To say the resulting spirit was anything but rough and twangy is a compliment. 

49 minutes ago, DeerHunter said:

Am I just out of luck

Yes. 

25 minutes ago, Hudson bay distillers said:

ust curious if there was a way of figure out if the 70 points of sugar are all fermentable sugars . 

Add glucoamylase and cleave the dextrins so they are fermentable?  

17 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

beet molasses fermentation

What exactly is beet molasses? I assume the "waste" from producing beet sugar but don't want to, well, assume.  I agree with you re: SR / RM. We too use RM in our unaged white rum.  SR is, well, uninteresting. Early on we did produce a sugar based neutral which initially suffered from that "sugar twang". Switching from EC1118 to SR cleaned that up a bit. We've since switched to corn.

2 hours ago, jeffw said:

Use them at a higher dosage?

I'm with @jeffw on this one.  Too damn expensive to throw away.  As they get older we see (anecdotal) evidence that the conversion slows so we just let it go a bit longer.  Starch test is your friend at the high end.  

You did what?!?!!?  😉

Are you certain those are stainless? From what industry did they originate?