Foreshot

https://www.ttb.gov/distilled-spirits/proofing-tutorial https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnqnEJ2hWpEZa9Udxuq7-A Much more convenient that having to download them.

I forgot about this thread. I did a little research but did not report back. It could be a low level of butyric acid. Stephen from BA had the same issue & he analyzed it as such. Most likely from an infection. Yeast can produce it too though I don't know the level/reasons. http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Butyric_Acid https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1979.tb06846.x

Just started playing with hibiscus and will try other colored fruit/herbs/etc. For the hibiscus users - how long does the color last before fading? How off does the color go? Any way you could snap a pic to share? Thanks!

- How many beer sales do you make? If X% buy a bottle how many bottles are you going to sell? If you have both a brewery and distillery you'll probably see an increase in foot traffic. How much? No idea. - I would go off of a % of your sales for the Brewery. Will it be 50/50? Probably not. Look at your average sale for the brewery and split it to how you see it - so if they spent an average of $40 on beer before the distillery maybe they spend $20 - $30 on beer and add in a bottle of spirits. This will vary wildly per sale but eventually you'll have an average. It's hard to know before you start. Your average sale will probably go up. You know your numbers, I don't. The lower your average sale the harder it will be to get people to buy a bottle of spirits. Your average ticket probably won't double or triple or something like that. People have internal limits on how much money they spend. They won't go above that often. - You're going to cannibalize some sales from the brewery - see above for the example. So for every X% of spirits sales you're going to lose brewery sales. What that percentage is unknown. That should be a factor. - 500 cases of 6 is 3000 bottles. At $30 average that's $90,000. Change that for what you think your average bottle will sell for. How does that compare to your sales for the brewery? If you're selling $1,000,000 of beer then you're likely to hit that goal. If you're selling $100,000 of beer you're going to have a harder time. - You already already have an existing company and have marketing set up - this helps significantly.

If you're in the middle of Alaska, probably not many. If you're in the middle of downtown NYC, probably a lot. Asking that question without any context as to location, product, marketing experience, foot traffic, retail size, still capacity, your experience level with distilling, etc etc is a waste of time. Give us some context and we'll give you a somewhat meaningful answer.

Personally I've not tried one but all the reviews I've heard is that the spirit displays some positive characteristics of aging but some are missing leading to an odd flavor. Some reviews: TerraPURE: https://reviews.whiskeyfellow.net/2020/04/oz-tyler-kentucky-rye-review-tasting.html Cleveland Whiskey's proprietary process: https://distiller.com/spirits/cleveland-bourbon THEA Reactor: https://thewhiskeywash.com/whiskey-styles/american-whiskey/whiskey-review-round-lost-spirits-old-traditional-new-thea-whiskeys/

https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2019/12/nielsen-reveals-top-alcohol-trends-for-2020/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2020/07/29/distilling-liquor-with-machine-learning-and-big-data/ Another fast aging technology:

Just watched it. It was fun to see your place & your process/equipment. Funny thing - my wife asked me "Don't they have any inspectors there?" just before Gordon did. ha. I wish I could buy some here in the states, it would be an interesting whiskey to taste. Good job!

For PA Ag Dept it's a minimum of a 2/3 bowl sink, hand wash sink, mop sink, bathroom with hand wash sink and mirror.There has to be a hand wash sink within a short distance (nothing solid, just the inspector's judgement) of any work/production area. If you have a huge facility then you probably need more than 1. The local health dept has the most say over these things though - and that will vary wildly. If you have the above setup you'll probably be ok. I will say for the Pittsburgh area (AGH county) we also had to have our plumbing inspected with water supply, drain and vent pipes having to meet certain requirements.

Thanks - I appreciate the input. I'll give that a try next time.

We use https://www.allamericancontainers.com/ for a similar style.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_hydroxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate Yeah, I did not really present anything that meaningful other than the difference in pH. I don't think solubility matters if you mix the solution well, does it? It just has to be present. A base and acid interact in close proximity regardless of carrier solution, yes? Eventually the calcium hydroxide would flocculate where the calcium carbonate would stay in solution. So after time C. Carbonate would do a better job even though it's a lower pH?

Thanks for the replies. And so down the rabbit hole I go. Below is a really good article on Soda Carbonate vs Soda Ash for pH and total alkalinity. The total alkalinity isn't relevant as that's not a part of my local water co's requirements. https://www.poolspanews.com/how-to/maintenance/soda-ash-vs-baking-soda_o And Soda Carbonate vs sodium hydroxide: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-sodium-carbonate-more-frequently-used-in-neutralising-acid-compared-to-sodium-hydroxide-despite-being-a-weaker-base pH level: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/bases-ph-d_402.html Calcium carbonate pH 9.4 Calcium hydroxide pH 12.4 So it looks like Calcium hydroxide is the correct route to follow to raise the pH the most, but it seems not to be working for me - maybe because my stillage is too acidic? (total acidity vs pH) This really is not a fun way to spend time since it's a waste product...

As we scale up to full production I'm finding it hard to raise the pH of stillage before we dump it. I dumped more than a pound of calcium hydroxide in a 50g barrel of stillage and I barely raised the pH 0.2. I'm assuming that calcium hydroxide is probably the best wait to raise pH. Is there anything I'm missing? Cause it seems pretty expensive to raise the pH to where it needs to be before I can dump it.

I second the mold suggestion. I had a batch from a local farmer and it was bad to begin with and went worse from there. If the corn wasn't properly dried out or it got humid in storage it will go bad quickly. The sucky thing part was that aside from losing a couple batches it was a test with Creole Orange corn. It had an awesome taste hidden behind the cardboard taste. Haven't had a chance to try it again.

I don't know, but this is how I envision him working on this still:

We got into it know that in 2-3 months the big players would fulfill demand at a much lower price point. We did ours via GoFundMe donations and gave everything away. Looking around now it's not hard to get sanitizer at local stores now. I doubt that anyone our size will be able to be competitive price wise with the big guys.

The process isn't fun. Basically you follow the document. There's a few parts that aren't super clear but you'll figure it out. The pain part is that you you do a couple things and validate which take a few minutes to a few hours. Then you submit which take a few hours to a few days. You do that many times. I was able to complete in 2-3 days while only half paying attention.

In PA most people I know are selling out since the state stores were closed but we were allowed to stay open. Which, oddly enough, is where the only distillery to shutdown I know of happened: https://www.ydr.com/story/news/2020/05/12/bald-hills-distillery-dover-close-due-coronavirus-concerns/3120363001/

You could probably have these guys create something custom for you. Kinda like a gin basket so the sides always have a path for the fluid. The top of the U of the drain line should be right at the top of /slightly above where your botanicals/fruit/whatever is. The idea of the soxhlet is to soak the materials in the solvent. I'm building one out of a StillDragon gin basket right now. It's easy to do. I need to work on the drain line. You can see how to change the vapor flow, drainage & condenser setup in the second photo. Larry was awesome and helped out with drawings of how to setup the hardlines for drainage instead of the silicon tubing in the image. https://www.utahbiodieselsupply.com/brewingfilters.php

You probably have it there. The soxhlet works by vacuum created by the fluid moving back into the boiler. The fluid level has to be above the top of the U in the drain. If you don't have enough fluid to go over the top of the U then it won't work. Gravity pulls the fluid down creating a vacuum further back. If the fluid can't flow freely then it won't drain properly.

So from Thermoworks: The two accreditation groups accept each other's standards. And it is traceable. We ordered one to go along with our analog one to back the other up.

Yes - sorry I forgot about that. Don't remember where I got that.

It's UKAS but not NIST. Would the TTB be ok with it?