indyspirits

Anyone here (other than us) buying 200 pf GNS? We do nothing other than proof with RO (then again, what could you do).

We too polished relentlessly the first few months but then took a more relaxed attitude and embraced the worn penny look. That and it takes a long damn time to keep it new looking.

I neglected to mention we do have a large AC filter but, as discussed, don't use it for chloramine removal. It's OK in terms of flow rate, but as we've bough larger equipment (600 liter to 2500 liter) we need to research another solution. Im at risk of hijacking the thread so think I'll start another topic!

Exactly. But it's much more expensive that standard AC. We use the recommended 35mg of potassium metabisulfite / gallon of water. No flow rate restrictions, no filter medium PM needed, etc. Filling a 2500 liter mash cooker at 7 gpm would be painful.

Really good article on brewing water. We've worked with this guy in the past. https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/water-knowledge

Suboptimal for chloramine removal.

You dont need to pay a premium for fermaid-k, just make your own from (basically) deactivated yeast, vitamin b complex, DAP, and a bit of mag sulphate.

Regarding fermaid-K... Google is your friend

FWIW: I have never, ever used nutrients in any grain mash. I've found, more than anything, correct pitch rate and ferm temps affect attenuation. And I have tried much (most?) of the fancy yeast-chow starter goo on the marker. With proper temp and pitch rate I go from 1070 to dry in 3 to 4 days.

Exactly what he said!

For us, the two biggest challenges have been: Scaling up recipes Botanical consistency We started our recipe development on a small 2L glass lab still which was just too small. Even weighing botanicals to the picogram (OK not really) by the time we scaled up (100 liters) the organoleptic properties bore only a passing resemblance to that which we started. We found vapor infused to be infinitely more difficult to scale up that macerated. I don't know what to do about the consistency issues. Resellers don't know or at least won't tell which producers provided their bots. At one point we started buying in larger quantities but then the bontanicals (most noticeable in the juniper) started to dry out before we used them all.

Oh shit. I totally missed the part about the matched mash cooker. You're sized just fine. We run our at 10 PSI w/ our pressurtrol set to +/- 2 degrees

The first question is, "Why??". You're going to be WAY over capacity which will cause no end of short-cycling problems -- this wont harm the boiler, it's just inefficient as hell. Also, it's unlikely (and way about my maths skills) that your jacket is designed to "pass through" 1M BTU/hr of heat so there's that. Do you a mash cooker or hot liquor tank you're heating? Generally speaking, 1KBTU/hr will get you about a 1-hour heat up time. Talk do your boiler people and ask them. We have a 600 liter still and our boiler is about 270K BTU on the output side. Heat up in about 50 minutes.

I've found soaking in TSP usually gets off even the most stubborn labels.

E150 coloring. Works for the scots. You can make your own.

Experiment, experiment, experiment. Who knows what really went into the grain bill. The end product is absolutely not important. What's important is the marketing story around it. Remember, you're not in the distilling business, you're in a marketing business whose product is a distilled beverage. You've got a great story. Go with it.

I absolutely wouldn't, except it's my son's school and I believe it to be a good cause (scholarships). Notwithstanding, your point is very well taken. I can't tell you a week over the past two years where we haven't had at least one request for a donation of one thing or another.

That's a fantastic approach. Regarding the botanicals -- had they been individually distilled or were these the actually source herbs / spices / etc?

My son's school has caught wind that I work/contribute/participate at a distillery and have asked that I donate a "Gin Class" for the annual fundraiser. I'm not even sure what that means. If this were a paying gig I would distill individual botanicals at varying quantities at varying etoh concentrations; conduct an organoleptic evaluation of each and then work toward a recipe and point out the trials & tribulations of scaling up a recipe to production levels.... But it's not. We do have four small 2L lab stills for use which is nice. I'm interested in your thoughts on how to do this. My ideas are roughly: History Traditional Botanicals How it's made Stylistic variations Any sage advice greatly appreciated

https://www.whiskeysystems.com/

Hmm. That's not the impression we've gotten. Wonder if it's that a barrel full of dry-ish stillage is a helluva lot easier to move around than a barrel of wet. I'm definitely going to make some calls.

It seems it's a combination of both: http://beerandwinejournal.com/tannins-in-the-boil/ Not to belabor the point (or hijack a thread) but I don't know of a single single malt producer that employs a grain in approach making lautering a necessity.

Two thoughts -- firstly, most (if not all) large breweries control step mashing via application of heat (steam) to their mash tuns, not by removing / boiling / adding wort (decoction). When I have seen this done (only twice to be fair) , it's lautered wort that's removed for decoction simply because it's easier (he was using a dairly tank w/o steam jacket). Today's highly modified malts make this possible.

We process the stillage post grain-in distillation so our local farmers will take it. There's such a glut of breweries here they can be picky about what they take and wet stillage doesnt cut it.

I can tell you from experience that corn (or any grain ground flour-like) is a poor candidate for lautering using a standard wedgewire false bottom. Even improperly processed rye (read: lack of beta glucanase) will cause issues. All of my research points to the need for a centrifugal sifter such as Kason makes. They seem to have the best price point although even remanufactured they are north of $10,000. I look forward to be proven wrong!