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Joey Bender

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Everything posted by Joey Bender

  1. In the future I would use more premalt or add enzymes around 130 degrees before heating to 212. The gelled corn means starches weren’t converted into sugar. Learned this when I forgot to add enzymes as a premalt for a 100% corn whiskey and had to shovel out about 100 pounds of corn jelly from the bottom of a cooker.
  2. Distilling newbie here, I believe I understand the difference between a thumper and doubler. Correct me if I'm wrong... The doubler basically reboils condensed low wines to make high wines. Thumper does not use condensed low wines, only low wine vapors to make high wines. I've seen continuous systems that allow for a doubler still to work as a thumper or a doubler by changing valve configurations. Why would you use one over the other? What affect does each one have on the high wine product? Looked online for an answer and didn't really see much. I know there's a lot of expertise on this website, so I thought I'd ask here. Cheers, Joey
  3. Hello everyone, I am a graduate student at the University of Louisville studying Chemical Engineering. I am on track to graduate in May of 2018 with a master's degree in Chemical Engineering and would like to continue my work in the distilled spirits industry after graduation. I have about a year and a half of work experience, with six months working in two different distilleries. This summer, I worked at Moonshine University in Louisville, KY as a distillery assistant. I was in charge of operating and cleaning small scale distillery equipment to prepare for classes. The distillery at Moonshine University was a ~250 gallon batch system which included a small rolling mill, cooker, 3 fermenters, hybrid pot/column copper still, vodka column still, and a small 50 gallon gin still. My main responsibility was to ensure that everything was set up and ready for a class before it began. This would include buying grain and supplies, cooking and fermenting mashes, distilling fermented mashes, and a lot of cleaning. During my time there I had made batches of bourbon, whiskey, rum, scotch, gin, and vodka on the three different stills in the distillery. In addition to operating the distillery equipment, I assisted in a product development project. This large product development project was developing 5 different gin recipes using different base distillates for a large client. I was responsible for distilling the gin prototypes using lab-sized glass stills with botanical baskets. I would distill two fifths of gin for each gin recipe, and sit in on the tasting meetings where we would tweak each botanical recipe to perfect each gin. There were many iterations of each recipe, so there was a lot of gin that I had to distill. After about a month, we had five delicious gin recipes, one of which was for a barrel aged gin. I was also able to sit on a few of the classes offered at Moonshine University. I sat in on and learned from many different courses such as 5 Day Distiller Course, Advanced Sensory Analysis, Distilling Operations 201, Route to Market, Botanicals Workshop, and Bourbon Making Workshop. At these classes I got to meet and learn from many experienced engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, accountants, lawyers, and master distillers. After my summer internship ended at Moonshine University, I started a full course load of master's chemical engineering classes while also working part time at Michter's Distillery. At Michter's, I am an engineering intern doing small projects and work in different parts of the distillery. While I've been working part time at Michter's I've worked on updating SOP's for the processing department and assisting QA with GC/MS work. In addition to my small projects, I will also fill in for absent operators on the bottling line or in the warehouse. I've worked on the bottling line, filled barrels with distillate, and pulled barrel samples from the warehouse. Outside of the distilled spirits industry, I worked as a production engineer co-op for three semesters (about a year) at Ashland Specialty Chemicals in Calvert City, KY. At Ashland, I worked under two extremely talented production engineers who gave me projects that would improve production, quality, and safety in our department. I was in charge of managing out of spec material and implementing rework or removal of the OOS product. I was also responsible for creating weekly production reports for our most valuable process units and scheduling continuous improvement meetings to review my reports. I was able to learn from talented engineers, foremen, operators, managers, and other employees who taught me how to be an efficient engineer and a valuable asset to the company. As I said earlier, I am looking to continue working in the distilled spirits industry as a chemical engineer. I will graduate in May of 2018 with my master's degree in Chemical Engineering and would like to begin work soon after that. I believe my experience sets me apart from most college graduates looking to enter this field. I currently live in Louisville, KY, however I am willing to relocate to another state. I actually met Bill Owens while I was at Moonshine University, and he said that these forums are a great way to get connected in the industry and find work. If you have an opportunity for me or any leads on a job, you can email me at djbend01@louisville.edu , reply below, or PM on here. I appreciate any help anyone has to offer me! -Joey
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