Denver Distiller

Without running down your production methods, if your Gin was clear upon bottling, the most likely culprit would be salts in your dilution water that can start out as white flakes, and oxidize to those off colors. You might find a bit of iron in your water as well. What are you doing for your dilution water? Any magnets in your filtration system? When you say "random batches", do you mean a few bottles out of a batch has this problem, or the entire batch? Again, just an educated guess. Dilution water is where I'd start looking.

You should burn the BAM handbook. It contains several outright errors. All your regs come in the CFR's. That's the controlling language you need to follow.

Need more info. You can absolutely mash raw barley without enzymes, but only to a point. What is the malt portion? Distillers malt? 2-row? Need more data. What is the raw barley? Sourced locally from a farmer? Do you have specs on it? Are you trying to lauter it? How are you milling both the malt and the raw barley?

Sure you do. We do. Do it for our NS, too.

Look forward to your books.

This won't help with your electrical question, but I used several different mills, washers, and presses from Voran while working in Germany and Austria, and it's all top notch and tough as hell. If you're planning to handle a lot of non-grape fruit every year, look no further. IMHO.

Assuming you're fermenting some type of grain, pick up the phone, and call your malt supplier. They all have former brewers on staff. Between the maltsters and brewers, you'll have everything you'll need to know for your fermentation in one phone call. Best of all, its free. All you have to do is reciprocate their good faith help, and buy their malt.

Ah. What I missed is that you're using exogenous enzymes, Sherman. My advice was for all natural mashing, which is what I do. Good stuff, thanks sherman.

IMHO, you don't have to hold it quite that long, but Sherman is being cautious, and when people brand new to mashing are asking questions, caution is frequently the best path. I will say, though, that higher temperatures than 190 are warranted when you're using high nitrogen (low quality) adjuncts. You will indeed improve your yield by raising to boil or pressure cooking. Many here are mashing blind---- using grains from farms with no QC tests on the grains they are using. They have no idea what the starch contents are of the grains they use, let alone the nitrogen content.

Milling uncleaned grain is a fine way to ignite a grain explosion (sparking). You want magnets in as many places as you can manage in your grain handling path---and you need to clean the magnets regularly.

If I were you, I'd do what I did---- make an appointment, and go to the TTB in Cincinnati. They will sit down with you and go over every single form. You can learn from the people who process your forms. Looks like it's an 8 hour drive for you, or a quick cheap flight. They spend a total of 4 hours with me, passing me from department to department, going over everything from Formulation to COLA's to tax reporting. It cost me some gas money and lunch. Best of luck, and thank you very much for your service....

Double distillation will help in the sense that, all things being equal, you're doubling the contact of the vapor with copper. Copper takes care of your SMM and sulphury notes in your new make. Obviously if you distill in one pass, you're likely using a plate still, so you'll hopefully get enough copper contact to reduce DMS. Personally, I wouldn't use fewer than either two passes in an alembic or one pass with at least 6 plates in an eaux de vie still. There's a reason eaux de vie distilleries use catalytic converters in conjunction with their 3 plate stills.... they need more copper contact both for sulphur reduction as well as EC reduction in stone fruit fermentations. Copper will reduce your sulphur issues everywhere save your spirit condenser (if you are using two separate stills). Recall, too, that if you're working with barley, kilning reduces DMS-P greatly. If you're using green malt or distiller's malt, you'll have elevated DMS-P in your grain relative to traditionally kilned brewer's malts simply because the barley isn't heated enough to convert and . Your fermentation regime may all but eliminate this effect, however, leading to relatively little DMS in your fermented mash/wash.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#air-regulators/=ovl74t

Tom at Finger Lakes Distilling and Leopold Bros. both use it. I think a few of the dozens of Dave Pickerell shops do as well, but you'd have to ask him.

Only one I know of is in the UK

The 25% corn that this poster is using should help to suppress that. I've personally had no difficulty boiling rye with corn. You can always add stillage to the mash to help with foaming issues.

Distiller's malt is made using high protein barley (protein levels are the building blocks for enzymes), and is cured with very low temperatures in an effort to ensure that enzymes aren't denatured during kilning. So the finished malt has a very high Diastatic Power (DP), and very little flavor. Brewer's malt is made using low protein barley, which means the total potential DP is relatively low, and then it is cured at higher temperatures, which denatures a portion of those enzymes in an effort to create a malty flavor in beer.

Well, since you already have to expend the energy to boil the corn... Hammer mill the rye and corn, bring to a boil. Cool to saccharification temperature, taking at least one hour for cooling, add 10% distiller's malt, and rest. If you try and add only 10% of malted rye or brewer's malt, imho you won't get complete conversion. Happy and safe distilling to you....

Just as there is for open fermenters for beer.... there is a carbon dioxide "blanket" over the top of the fermenting mash. Oxidation is minimal. Brewers transfer that beer out of an open fermenter to closed aging tanks. The distiller simply pumps in to the beer well, an into the still.

My only thoughts on this pressing matter of what the meaning of what handcrafted is, is that Modest Mouse went to the dogs and ran out of musical ideas when they gave up and brought Johnny Marr on board. There. I said it.

Malted Rye will have been kilned (dried with hot air), so you'll have a little (little) bit of maillard reactions----essentially, toasting---- in the malted rye. The flavor of malted rye will be a little more pronounced. Malted Rye will also have enzymes and a lower water content.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20101120/ISSUE01/311209986/pay-to-play-infects-chicago-beer-market-crains-investigation-finds?plckCurrentPage=1&sid=sitelife.chicagobusiness.com

Ditto on the Mcmaster carr diagram, and on the quality of Ingersol Rand. If you're running a pump with air, you can blow through gaskets and seals in no time if you're running without an air cooler.... especially in the summer, and especially if that pump is in continuous operation. You want cool, dry air.

Yes, that's correct. The barley is treated with heat in most flaking processes. This denatures enzymes. Every supplier of malt will offer you milled grains.

I have a feeling you are already aware of all of these sources, but in case you are not: If you're speaking as to US research papers on malt mashes, the Master Brewer's Association of the Americas Quarterly is your best option. http://www.mbaa.com/publications/tq/Pages/default.aspx The Journal of the Institute of Brewing has infrequent research on distilling topics, though this is a British Publication, and I'm sure you are familiar with Brauwelt International. And there has been some exchange between the United States and Austria. I spent some time with Mr. Hochmair many years ago at his distillery in Wallern.