adamOVD

Distilleries are only allowed to make sanitizer now as a special allowance, and it must follow the TTB/WHO/FDA guidelines and recipes. If you don't want to get in trouble with those agencies later, I would highly recommend trying to stick to the straight and narrow, and leave out gels, aromatics, magnetic moon dust, gold leaf, or psychic healing crystals which are not in the WHO recipe.

Perfect, super simple, thanks.

Does anyone know how to report hand sanitizer production? I've been making it from sugar washes, so it seems like I need to report it somewhere so all my records of materials in and out match. I asked on the previous mega-thread, but now were coming up on the end of the month, so maybe someone ( @dhdunbar ? ) will bite. I called the TTB today, but got forwarded to two different other departments, and the last, the special Covid-19 department, hasn't gotten back to me yet.

Like Pete says enolmatic works great. There is a program called Alcodens that makes proofing much simpler. TTB also just made some changes that effectively doubles the tollerances for error. You can be over or under .3 proof now. With patience and practice you shouldn't have a problem hitting a target proof.

Depending on your climate, two years is a very long time to age in a barrel that small. I think most people aging in 5 gallon barrels only go for about 6 months. You have probably over extracted the wood tannins, and that is the "heat" you are tasting.

A proof gallon is way different than a wine gallon of 96% alchohol. Maybe english is your second language, but you sound pretty sketchy. I think I'd buy from the 100$ a gallon guy before I gave you any money or spirits.

I know the guy is a nut, and i'm a bit afraid to agree with him, but hospitals have found bacteria is becoming more resistant to alcohol based sanitizer. I am a bit worried about all the super bacteria and viruses we are mutating with the huge uptick of hand sanitizer use.

This goes a way back in the thread, but for making small batches I was thinking of dissolving the Bitrex in 10x its weight in water to make the batch measurement easier.

@DrDistillation Makes sense. Guess it is kind of a stupid idea the more I think about it. I think I should be playing around with backset more though.

I know that is how it is done traditionally, just wondering if it would work the other way, and if not, why. I might try both ways, after checking the ph of each, for kicks. Unfortunately I'm done with whiskey production for another 7 months or so. I strip pretty low, and keep my SG reasonable, so a little extra alchohol should be ok. Good tip though, thanks.

I haven't been using backset, but I think I need to start playing around with it. I distill on the grain, and I've been thinking of simple ways to separate grains from the liquid post distillation, but then I thought what if I just used "backset" from my low wines after the spirit run? It would probably have less nutrients in it from dead yeast cells, but, possibly more of of the other things Silk mentioned. Has anyone tried using backset from a spirit run instead of a stripping run? I'd love to know what you think @Silk City Distillers you seem to be an authority on backset, among other things.

Yes it should start again. As long as the low ph was truly the reason it stalled, not a lack of yeast nutrient or something else, and as long as you haven't produced enough alcohol already that new yeast cells will be shocked when you pitch them. Maybe rehydrate them first if you're over 4% alcohol or so.

Once you make all this tax free alcohol, how do you report it? is it under "HOSPITAL, SCIENTIFIC, OR EDUCATIONAL USE", or does it even go on the production report?

That makes things easier. Looks like we can now use different barrels and combine the aging times to one age statement. Also they aren't going to define a barrel as oak and 50 gallons like they proposed. Those where the highlights to me. Seems like the TTB is trying, in its slow bureaucratic way, to accommodate the influx of small distilleries.

Cool name.

Be right there @DrDistillation We do have to check IDs, I guess I'm being generous by calling it contactless. These are all brand new temporary allowances in CA, hopefully other states will do something similar in conjunction with any mandated closures. We can sell directly to wholesalers, do transactions outside the tasting room, and all sorts of crazy things at the moment. https://cadistillers.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=bdd5626039a95e60853a13fde&id=f7587c728a&e=5716db5319

Last couple weeks have been very stressful and I definitely am not happy about anything covid 19 related. Thought I would share something positive that might help people stay in business though. This weekend we started offering curbside pick up and contactless home delivery of bottles, to go cocktails (a new temporary allowance in California) in 12oz bottles, and a very, very basic food menu. We got hammered. Our sales were 30% higher than the same week last year. I don't know what next week will bring, but i hope if distilleries can be flexible and creative they stay in business, and retain their staff. People, at least where we live, want to support small businesses, and many aren't affected in the least financially by what's happening so far.

Where does it say this? Im looking for it but cant find it.

I got a batch of sugar wash started today, but even sugar is getting difficult to get these days. Locally I'm only allowed to buy 100#s at a time, if they have any, and feel a bit guilty for buying them out repeatedly.

I've got gallons of 5-star santizer, and of glass sanitizer. Why not just make santizer out of sanitizer? Just add water.

Been waiting for someone else to start this, as it's a bit alarmist, but no one has, so... We're in California, and we got hit with a huge punch to the gut yesterday. Most of our sales are through a tasting room, bottle sales and cocktails. I'm sure even people with more of a distribution business model are also very concerned, with many bars and restaurants closing. We're closed the next few days regardless, so we have some time to figure out a game plan. Probably just do bottle sales with reduced hours, and additional precautions. Curious what other people are doing. Are you worried? is this a short disruption, or a real game-changer? The ADI news letter also mentioned this being impetus to the politicians to make FET permanent, which could be a silver lining to this mess.

Thanks for all the insights @dhdunbar. You're a great resource for the distilling community. I would have done the exact same thing as @JailBreak. I make my own neutral, but have done similar things when changing classification of spirits. I don't think I realized the full scope of the Processing account, and was just using it as a bottling account. In the following situation, does the sample sheet I've attached look right? 100 Proof Gallons of neutral are produced, or purchased. 50 proof gallons are filtered and bottled as vodka. There is a .3 proof gallon loss in filtering, and a .1 proof gallon loss in bottling 50 Proof gallons are re-distilled into gin. There is a 1 proof gallon loss in "heads and tails cuts" and a .1 proof gallon loss in bottling example.pdf I'm still not quite sure if I understand how to change the class correctly, but this is much simpler than "juggling" spirits around on reports to do so.

i deleted a post because it was non-sense. I searched everywhere for a leak and nothing was leaking. Turns out the filter cylinder was just clogged. Works fine with a new filter. Also works if I crack the valve on top of the filter. Might do that for a while to get a little more life from my filters.

I had some time to call the TTB today. Mary Was delightful and informed me that line 22- "other losses" on the storage report is indeed the place to to report angel share losses. An audit would only be triggered if the losses were much higher. Her example was 50%.

I pull from the top and do not stir up. I figure that if there are any residual sugars they are dissolved though out the liquid. If you are very concerned about it you could try both ways and see if there is a difference. I don't focus too much on gravity readings, and pay more attention to my yields to determine the success of a ferment.