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Up&Adam

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Everything posted by Up&Adam

  1. lol, i was telling myself to stay in my lane! Thank you for the advice, i think ill wait to make a move until i get an agitator in house. apparently its kinda hard to find/retrofit an agitator for a 23 year old vessel. i do respect the creativity of the baffle idea, almost like a sparge arm/ scatter plate.
  2. I thought i would throw everything ive got at it, high temp enzymes/betaglucans, potentially a rice hull or two. i think based on everyones advice that ill stay in my lane and avoid shoveling doughballs for the time being.
  3. Were looking into a cooker for sure, we paid $1750 a piece for these things, they actually hold about 25 BBL of rum wash, anything low protein/low foam works off just fine without a massive mess. we picked them up locally with the intention of using them as fermenters and have primarily been using them for Rum and Moonshine washes. as of now they are not hooked into our steam lines but i can come straight out of our 30BBL kettle from a boil and only lose a few degrees. Point well taken, i got to dreaming yesterday and wondered if it was possible, Thanks for talking me off of that cliff.
  4. We just bought 2 x 500 gallon "working capacity" open top mixing vessels, they were dirt cheap, steam jacketed and are in excellent shape. They did not come with agitators although I am chasing quotes for some. My question is, how far out of my mind am I to try to mash in without agitation if I plan on fermenting in the same vessel? My idea is to recirculate the slurry through our diaphragm pump while reverse step mashing, basically mashing my corn at high temp with help from a nearby kettle, resting for 90 minutes and then using the jackets and cold liquor in dropping temp to add wheat, rest, drop to add barley, rest and then knockout. All grain is milled very fine. i realize that my efficiency and yield will likely suffer and that without agitation my temp drops will be considerably slower but am I just setting myself up to COMPLETELY fail? All advice and criticism is welcome.
  5. CP seems to have the market cornered on calibrated instruments and i do not want to purchase from them again because reasons. i know that this subject has been beaten to death on this forum but most of the suggestions and paired links are dead. what are you using day to day for gauging?
  6. Lol, S-town happened relatively close to me, I haven't listened to it yet though.
  7. Music and podcasts can get us through even the longest of days, what keeps your eyes open and your head straight through the week? For me its a perpetual stew of jam bands. Grateful Dead, Phish, Goose, King Gizzard, Billy Strings, Widespread Panic (ill see y'all at setbreak) Podcasts include (Spirits) Distillers Talk, Still Talking, Distillery Nation, Craft Spirits Podcast, Single Malt Matters, Life Behind Bars, (Music) Long May They Run, Alive Again, After Midnight, Undermine, Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, Cocaine and Rhinestones (Comedy) Bertcast, Your Moms House, 2 Bears 1 Cave, Honeydew w/ Ryan Sickler, Danny Brown Show, Dr Drew After Dark. Audiobooks: Stephen King's Dark Tower 1-7 (my personal equivalent to The Lord of The Rings), Salems Lot, The Stand, Billy Summers, 11-22-63, Thomas Perry - Butchers Boy, The Old man, Sleeping Dogs, Wayne Curtis - And a Bottle of Rum, David Wondrich - Imbibe, Rob Arnold - The Terroir of Whiskey, Kyle Jerrard - Cognac, Tom Standage - A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Bruce Cannon Gibney - A Generation of Sociopaths, Dr. Christopher Ryan - Civilized to Death, Dr. Carl L. Hart - Drug Use For Grown-Ups, Adam Rogers - Proof, Daniel Okrent - Last Call - The Rise and Fall of Prohibition How broad are our collective interests? (because mine are narrow) Show me what you got!
  8. 7 hours! Wut?! Do you have a Heat Exchanger and hot water to pre-heat your mash in line to the still? That could cut your heating time drastically. We are fortunate to have a plate heat exchanger (wont work with grain in fermentation) and a large HLT (185*F) that can take a crashed mash @ 35*F to 140*F into the still. As soon as my elements are covered I turn the power on to 100% @ 22,000W (4x 5500W elements) By the time I reach volume (116 Gallons) i have a 30-45 minute wait until takeoff. of course that time depends on ABV in the Boiler and whether im doing a stripping/spirit run.
  9. I would be interested to side by side a batch rested with 15-20% headspace and somewhere around 5% headspace. I wonder if it would pop on sensory panel or if it would take GCMS to see a difference, we let our Gin rest for 3-4 weeks before release with varying head space. It seems like more head space would allow for more volatiles to escape, especially during proofing while the exothermic reaction is still occurring. Interesting thought.
  10. We have been using the Springfield 750 for a few years. Because O.Berk refused to answer the phone or return emails late last year we had to order through an independent broker, the lead time was 9 months. the cases we received from India smell like a sour barnyard. I have also noticed some pretty extreme variances with this lot using a volumetric filler. I am feeling the fatigue of this glass shortage/supply chain issues, We ordered 2 skids of Kaleidoscope 375's from Canada with a reasonable lead time and the truck showed up with damaged pallets, loose bottles rolling around and broken glass all over the place. I have reached out to other suppliers and have received few or severely delayed responses. Saverglass took 5 months to respond to an email. I wish it was legal to have a refillable growler style program/club.
  11. We are scaling up production to a 600 gallon steam jacketed pot, any suggestions on valve type (Gate, Proportional, Ball) for control? I would like to stay away from a ball valve but if anyone has any insight it would be very much appreciated.
  12. i will certainly be reaching out later this year after a few single barrel releases, i am interested in what your process looks like.
  13. This brings up a question that I've seen discussed here in the past but never saw a definitive answer. first off, are you starting to proof before a barrel reaches its intended age statement? if not it shouldn't really make a difference to the TTB, If so does the addition of water to a barrel change the age statement? would your aging stop as soon as water is added or is it fair game as long as the spirit doesnt leave the barrel as its being slowly proofed? people certainly have opinions but i have not seen a CFR regarding this specifically.
  14. Thank you for the reply, I think I will follow your advice and do a triangle test on them. I have nothing but time while were waiting on shipment and installation of our new still.
  15. we are working through our small format barrels, i have a stock of 15s and 30s full of Bourbon and Single Malt that we will be pulling for the next couple of years until we get into our stock of 53s. i pulled 2x 30s last week that are 2 years old and a little rough around the edges, barrel entry proof was 125 (definitely a contributing factor to the spice level) and they are now sitting at 131.6 proof (no climate control in our warehouse in the South East) I would really like to slowly proof them over the next month or two to bottle strength if the available headspace allows. i keep tare weights on all of my barrels so i assume it will be pretty easy to just use the Cut To Proof function in Whiskey Systems alongside my floor scale to approximately bring them down to human strength. How is everyone going about this? how much proof are you dropping per day/week/month? how are you tracking it and what does your process look like? Many thanks in advance for your time and information.
  16. We have an older model Packleader PRO515 that we use for small batch beer releases, I would like to know if this can be used as is or modified to label bottles with a slight taper and front/back labels. has anyone ever made this work? is it worth my time to mess with it?
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