adamOVD

I don't personally, it gave me a bit of a chuckle I guess. I'm sure you've found some customers that do though. Or maybe it's great publicity? my knowledge on marketing is pretty lacking.

Crater Lake in Bend was able to get their 50ml bottles served on certain airlines. Seems like it might be valuable marketing worth the hassle. Beaver likker? Really?

That's disappointing, I've never run one or closely inspected one. Who would you recommend as the gold standard?

A 1000 gallon pressure cooker sounds kinda terrifying. One of my neighbors gets deliveries in the alley behind our distillery where the still is, and when the driver's air brakes go off it already makes me jump every time. I guess it's not really any scarier than a 1000 gallon still though, and all the benefits mentioned sound pretty great, plus i suppose you could even sterilize your mash if that was important to you.

What does it taste like?

Trouble shooting a ferment is like trouble shooting and engine or anything else. Start gathering data eliminating possibilities step by step. Is the problem with the conversion or the ferment? Do an iodine conversion test so you have a better idea. Is your grain gelling? Do a longer or hotter cook to see what happens, or do a mini sample without enzyme to see if it thickens up. Is your ferment healthy? What's the gravity, ph and temp of your ferment each day? Does it start slow? What does it taste like? Will it start again if you repitch? When I was brewing I'd even do yeast cell counts and viability tests to get ahead of any problems before they happened. Mashing schedules are really up to you and your equipment/ mash bill. You'll probably get more helpful tips if you can isolate the actual problem. Good news is there are really only a handful of things that can go wrong.

Usually a Beta-Glucanase is recommended for a high rye or wheat mashes. It should make your mash less gluey as well if your agitator was the motor that you mention was strained, not your mill. It needs to be added around 140F though. Glucoamylase is supposed to break down more types of starch chains than Beta or Alpha. I also use a little yeast nutrient when using non-malted grains.

I was making sugar washes for sanitizer many moons ago, and found a ph buffer was necessary. You can buy them, or make it by mixing equal quantity calcium carbonate and citric acid. I'd pitch 4 oz of buffer per 100 gallons then adjust the ph again the next day with just calcium carbonate, and it would hold pretty steady the rest of the ferment. If any brewers near you make a hard seltzer regularly you could also ask them what they do.

I use the terms similarly to Jon, first couple of ounces of Fores come off first, which I don't recycle into the next batch, just so I'm not building up methanol. Heads come next, they don't make it into the final blend, but do get recycled into the next batch. Hearts are everything that gets bottled. Tails come last, and feints are the mix of heads and tails that all go into the next distillation.

I'd be worried about cooking my yeast. 900 gallons of grain in mash puts off and retains a lot of heat. It tracks with it only happening sometimes (summer?) as well. Can you go into the fermenter cooler to see what happens? If you can get it started again with a repitching of yeast like @kleclerc77says, and it finishes, you will know the conversion was good, and the problem is elsewhere. It might be hard to start again now that the ph is pretty low though. Also, you use a different brand of enzyme than me, but you may want to ask them what Ph you should cook and rest at, I'd guess it should be lower, like 5-6 range. Maybe the ph of your grain/water has changed recently.

Are your fermenters temperature controlled, and kept at 90F?

I bought a cheap 100$ Chinese VFD for my pump. hoping it would last a year, and figuring it couldn't hurt a pump. Right or wrong, I'm still using it 3 years later. Being able to reverse the pump flow (If you have a compatible pump type) comes In handy for me as well.

Cool post from the past. Are you still lautering your rye @PeteB, or have you switched to on grain? If you are still lautering I'm sure you've got it dialed in now. Breweries often use rice hulls to help speed up sticky run offs. Knowing what I do now about the variety of enzymes, if I went back to brewing I'd probably use those too. Most brewers aren't too familiar with them because they work almost entirely with malt.

@Jedd Haas Has some excellent advice. All I would add is when you are finding a label printer ask if they have any suggestions on designers. They have likely worked with a lot of them. Its insane what some designers charge, but that doesn't neccessary mean they can give you a "better" design, especially if you have a pretty good idea of what you want.

They called us the other day. I didn't speak to him much, he wanted to speak to the person that filed the FDA paperwork, which thankfully wasn't me. We made the alchohol in our sanitizer, and they just asked a few questions about proof, denaturing ect. No physical inspection, asking for samples for testing, or records. Knock on wood. My guess is they are checking for excess methanol or fuel ethanol with crap in it.

Show itself seemed bit gimmicky and pandering. He lacks the genuine feeling of someone like Anthony Bourdain. I fast forwarded to your segment, and they seemed to really want to focus on the sheep shit aspect, and little else. Based on your washing machine malter, I would have loved to have seen the rest of your operation. That's great if it opens new markets for you though. Americans always want the things other people cant get.

Your episode is now streaming on disney plus in the US. Season 2 episode 1 for anyone interested.

There is a discussion on here somewhere, that it is better to filter compound gins and barreled products through a cheap bag filter or something similar before running it though and clogging an expensive prebottling filter. I think the smallest micron those stainless filters go to is 5 micron, so maybe a 1 micron bag filter?

Thanks everyone that's very encouraging. I'm in a hot dry climate, and I've been putting a pretty clean spirit in the barrel so I think 1 year might be enough. Hopefully, if we can build up an inventory, (and can handle it financially) I can slowly extend aging further and start playing around with putting a heavier spirit in the barrel.

What, you're not aging exclusively in floating pyramids now??? @Silk City Distillers and @bluestar thanks for sharing all you do on this forum. I'm thinking of using this slow (We haven't felt the covid pain too bad so far, but about two months ago things really started slowing down) time to transition to aging in 15 gallon barrels to 30s. Your insights on this post and others are super helpful. Do those of you who have transitioned to a larger barrel think that if you double the barrel size, doubling the aging time is a good rule of thumb. I filled two 30s as test run, and tasted them at 6 months for the first time the other day, and I think seems about right, But I don't currently have a 15g at 3 months to do a side by side comparison.

There is a book by Hubert Germain Robin. It's the only book I know of dedicated to the subject. I recall "Whiskey technology, production and marketing" having a pretty in depth section on aging, and is absolutely worth finding a copy of if you can, for a number of topics.

Don't worry, occasionally a man of "genius" will show up on the forum. They usually tire quickly of dealing with those of us with lesser intellects and opinions based on mere real world experience.

To get back to your original question, and away from business philosophy, if you are already running a brewery you dont need much, especially if you already have a boiler and a bunch of free space. To make some malt whiskey all you need is a simple pot still, hydrometers, and some hoses, vessels, pumps and bottle filler designed for ethanol. Maybe start with that? You can certainly make a great gin soaking your botanicals without a basket. Sometimes having limited options can be helpful starting out anyways, as it simplifies your decisions. In gin the possibilities are already enormous. Shaped whiskey heads look very cool, which might make it worthwhile just for the marketing effect, but in my opinion, they really just provide surfaces to condense vapor on, and I think think the same effect can be replicated in far cheaper and more efficient ways. I'm sure some people with way more experience than me would disagree, and maybe they're right. If you're hell bent on making a nuetral alcohol you will need to invest in a specialized column, but it can be built cheaply, especially if you have high ceilings. Nuetral can also be purchased, but I personally don't like the ethics of that option. I come from the brewing industry as well. I still think the fermentation side is the hardest part of the process, even though it's what I know the most about, so if you're making healthy beer, you should be able to figure out the rest with reading and trial and error.

I'd recommend contacting their customer service, but when I tried, all I could find was an email address, and I never received a response.

What do you want your Starting gravity to be? The higher you want your gravity to be, the more grain you will need, and the bigger your mash tun needs to be. Are you purchasing your equipment from someone? They should be able to size your equipment accurately for you. I'd guess most people that lauter have, at an absolute minimum, a mash tun 1/2 the capacity of their desired quantity of wort. Are you going to use it for anything other than lautering, or are you ever going to ferment on the grain? If so you might want one the same size as your fermenter.