paulNL

indyspirits, how much botanicals do you use? 40g per liter or per US gallon? 40g/l would be too much, 30g-32g/l about the max. Heads cut <1% of boiler content, in fact I normally take around 0,5%. Total alcohol that ends up in the bottle is 90% of what I started with, I stop collecting hearts when what comes out of the still is at 45% ABV / 90proof. Bottled at 42% ABV / 84 proof, no problems with clouding. Lots of taste.

Question: is there a possibility that you just distill too fast, and therefor get too much smearing? I sometimes did...

@indyspiritsIt depends - I know there are people in the UK who can get 200A 240V (48kW) single phase at home, that would take a few hours but as long as you program your still to start heating up in the early morning it will be fine. And as a business you can get a bigger connection of course. I use a "tiny" 3phase 63A feed in my distillery in NL which is roughly the same power, that has proven to be enough for a 2000L (528 gallon) directly heated electrically still. If I need more power I'll just have to order an upgrade...

Regarding still size - 400L stripper and 100L still for spirits runs is not a lot if you do your own ferments, might have to think about roughly doubling both. If you make spirits from GNS on the other hand a 400L still is huge, that's hundreds of 0.7/0.75L bottles every production day. In that case it might be better to get a 200L still or smaller and put some more money in the marketing budget to actually move those bottles...

Hardly any distributor will know the labeling requirements, they don't make labels (or bottles for that matter). That's the producers job. And it isn't a very difficult one in Europe.

First thing which you should read is EU regulation 110/2008 as it discribes what kind of spirits you can make and what name to put on them:

 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32008R0110

And after that look at regulation 1169/2011 for rules about labeling. Without a doubt there's some Italian website which condenses all this info and also tells you what (if any) symbols to add related to recycling of bottles, discouraging drink driving and consumption by pregnant women. This does vary by country, like the text that tells the ABV. And make sure there's a barcode on it that follows the rules, even many smaller liquor stores have scanners nowadays.

EDIT: forgot to mention COLA, we don't have something like that. You don't need to get your label approved. It should follow the rules.

Best regards,

Paul.

You might want to tell in which state (or which country!) you are... "It depends".

22 hours ago, Streven said:

The price I'm getting for the 6-pack boxes and partitions is approximately $1.00 for the box and $1.45 for the partition (if ordering 1,000 at a time).

 

 

That still sounds like a lot of money, I pay less than 1 EUR (1.19 USD at the moment) for boxes of 6 including the partition in the Netherlands. That's for a custom sized box, white on the outside, inside brown. 1260 boxes. Can't imagine cardboard being more expensive in the USA.

18 hours ago, DonMateo said:

The excise is around 15%

15% of the sales price? Like VAT is calculated? That seems strange, I thought most countries base the excise for spirits on the amount of ethanol present.

The Snap 50 has been succeeded by the Snap 51, however accuracy and repeatabillity haven't changed AFAIK.

Mosaic,

you might want to look at iStill (www.iStill.eu), they have fully automated stills which can do everything from potstill up to 40 redistillations for vodka at the touch of a button. And with the optional agitator and heat exchanger you can also mash in the same unit. Four day training (in English) can be followed at their Amsterdam training center.

San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles... Those seem to be the important ones as seen from the other side of the Atlantic. Google is your friend!

Err... The reasons for being near flowing water is obvious isn't it? Free water for cooling and cleaning, and if the quality is alright also for mashing and diluting. And if you put a water mill in also free power...

I've got an electronic archive with around 70 old books (>10yr, up to 500yr) about distilling, including a few which are pre-1900 and in English - but they might come from the UK or somewhere else in the English speaking world. Just send me a message and I'll sort and share 'em with you.

Hello Thatch,

my 2c:

although in a completely different country (NL) I face the exact same issue over here. Am allowed to sell to bars, restaurants and liquor stores. The two main things I've learned in the last year are:

- a. only go after companies that sell drinks in your price bracket (in my case 55 USD a bottle average retail price; so that's Michelin starred restaurants and specialty liquor stores) and

- b. try to find some "ambassadors" who can introduce you (in my case several well-known chefs and a sommelier who worked at ** starred restaurants)

Once you meet people immediately become friends with them on LinkedIn and FaceBook so once people look you up they see you know many of their colleagues.

One more thing: try to find out what the typical markup is, so ask someone you know in a liquor store or a bar/restaurant (different) for the formula they use to go from purchase price to sales price for a bottle or a glass.

Paul.

The one I have is only available in the EU, but an almost identical one is sold in the US for almost exactly the same price. I think it's called the Zap Labeler. Just Google "site:adiforums.com manual labeler" and you should find a suitable product. The roller on the front of the machine (nearest to you) should be adjustable, left side should be set a bit further out for a bottle that's smaller at the bottom (which goes on the right side, so the top of the bottle is pointing to the left).

I use a similar round bottle which is smaller at the bottom, couldn't find any semi automatic labeler <5K USD that can work with that. In the end I bought a 500 dollar manual labeler, that works fine. Do remember that you can't have a label that goes around (almost) the whole bottle, but you'll be fine with a conventional front and rear label.

For square bottles I'm going to buy the AP550, at the moment I apply them by hand.

I don't think it's wise to put 65% ABV alcohol into the boiler for your gin run anyway...

1 hour ago, kleclerc77 said:

Does anyone have a label applicator that works well with square bottles? I have only dealt with round bottles in the past and can't find any convincing sources for one. Thanks!

Primera AP550e

One other way to start small but plan for growth is doing the production yourself, find a botteling plant and get pricing from them (but don't use 'em yet!), and buy the bare minimum botteling equipment. This way you can start cheaply, if business picks up speed you distill many times a week and outsource the botteling while waiting for your bigger still to arrive...

This is exactly what I'm doing, space is limited but once I grow I move out the empty and filled bottles and boxes and will have no problem installing a 500 gallon or bigger still which makes one hell of a lot of gin per day... If I outgrow that there's enough money to buy a bigger building without getting a mortgage 

14 minutes ago, Whiskey Jim said:

* After paying off debt (included in asking price) the business would be profitable at current scale.

Errr... So you're saying with the current interest it isn't profitable, and it won't be profitable unless a possible buyer can get considerably cheaper (or free) financing? Just askin' 

UPDATE

Once I used "Mark site read" function the problem went away...

What nabtastic says. I'm new in this industry but I hardly have any debt, and the amount of bottles I have to sell each month to pay interest and recurring costs is sow low I can carry it in one go, and I'm not Hulk Hogan's healthy nephew. Keep costs low, even if it means making other products then you originally intended (in my case gin instead of whisky), design your business to be as efficiant as possible, do not try to out-compete cheap brands and make sure you have some other income if business starts slowly (which it probably does). 

In that case the reports don't work, from the moment Foreshot posted the message above I've used the "Report post" button on every new piece of spam I found. Haven't counted them but I think at least five.

Mouth feel. Especially important for neutral products, like vodka.

15 minutes ago, flyhigher87 said:

The larger column has more surface area and will have more dephlegamation(in the old sense of the word).  So If anything the larger column diameter would actually have a slower collection(output rate) than the smaller column?  Since it has a higher reflux ratio.

Not if you use more power... With more surface area you get better separation when using the same amount of power, or you get the same separation with more speed when using more power.

I'm roughly in the same situation, started selling in August, biggest individual sale 24 bottles. A lot of people have said this before on this forum: you're not running a distillery, you're running a marketing and sales company that also makes booze. I'm going to make a few hundred bottles in one go (one day distilling - one day botteling)  this week. Why? Ingredients have already been paid, and I need all the time for sales. If you got the time you may ask your resellers if they need any help pushing your product on a busy day (Saturday?), or their Christmas fair. Use the opportunity to talk to their customers, see if there are any bars, restaurants or hotels you can convince to put your product on their "menu" - repeating sales!