Denver Distiller

We distill all our botanicals individually (some journalists have told me that we were the first to do this to Gin, but I have a hard time believing that), and then blend them together after distillation for a final Gin. Blending is the solution to any consistency issues. Although we don't do this, I'd blend your botanicals from a few year's worth of harvests if you can keep them dry, and blend batches as much as possible..... solera method, or anything else you can manage if you can afford the tank space. Have you tried ringing the boys at Beefeater's? Seems they're the reigning expert on Gin consistency.

I had a brewery, distillery, and winery all under one roof. It does appear that you can't do that in one section, but it's ok'ed in another. The CFR's are just confusing, is all. Talk to your TTB rep.

You'd be hard pressed to find better education in the US. You'll be learning from teachers with distilling and fermentation experience that can be measured in decades rather than weeks. More importantly, should you need help, you'll have someone to call for the rest of your career. (full disclosure: Siebel Malting & Brewing Diploma Class of '96)

Thank you, Violent Blue. That photo is what I was trying to describe in the above quote. You could clamp that right into a handway on your column, Tailwinds, and connect it to a pump. Make sure you have a vent to protect against pressure and vacuum, and there's your CIP circuit, at least for your column. Don't know what openings you have on the pot itself.

IMHO, that's a dangerous way to handle it. If I were you, I"d do one of two things. Either I'd find a reputable welder with experience with copper in your area, and have them cut holes in your still to install spray balls in the pot as well as over each plate. Or, I'd call vendome and as them to fabricate a spray ball and plate assembly that can replace the windows above your plates one at a time for circulating cleaner using a pump. Your column windows are Triclamp, right? Should be easy to fabricate a triclamp and spray ball assembly to fit into that opening. If you're running molasses in that thing, you're going to need a cip system to keep your life from becoming utter hell. All my opinion, of course.

To clarify, what I'm concerned about is for a distiller to get to that 65,000 pg limit, cross it by a few cases, and then suddenly have to pony up several hundred thousand dollars in excise taxes at the full rate. There should be language that makes it so that the anything after 65K proof gallons gets taxed at the full rate. Thank you so very much for all your work on this, Mr. Erenzo.

http://dairyengineering.com/centsearch.asp Call them up, and tell them what you want. Top notch refabbed pumps, top notch sales engineers. Half the breweries in the US get pumps from these guys. And you can't beat their prices.

A couple points, if you don't mind. In HR 777 language the following language is included ‘(A) regulations to prevent the credit provided by this subsection from benefiting any person who produces more than 100,000 proof gallons of distilled spirits during a calendar year, and..... I think that this limit should be raised. I'm sure our shop isn't the only one that's looking at that 65K PG limit and realizing that it's not too far off. The brewers are dealing with the same issue..... in the sense that they're outgrowing their old definition of craft brewer. This is something we need to watch carefully: that success in the marketplace doesn't outpace these arbitrary limits. If that 100,000 PG limit is passed by your shop, what then? You lose a few hundred grand in tax credits? Seems too low to me, as silly as that sounds to most today. This may be our only bite at this apple. I understand that HR777 can't be changed right now, but if it doesn't make it out of committee, perhaps we can change a number or two.

You're welcome. I forgot to add that you should check the site daily, and have cash in hand ready to go because with so many breweries opening and expanding, used equipment changes hands very, very quickly. We sold our brewhouse a few years ago within 24 hours of listing, and the market now is tighter still.

Ah, well then the classifieds at probrewer.com is your best bet. It can be difficult to get them used isolated from an entire brewhouse for obvious reasons. I noticed that there are a couple listed for sale this very day, though. http://probrewer.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=55

New or used? Will you lauter?

No excise taxes on exports..... Best of luck!

Respectfully, the clothing tag example isn't true. The tag tells you where the clothes are assembled. The materials, the production of usable textiles, the dyes, etc. can come from anywhere. To give an example of one of my spirits, the corn comes from the midwest (a blend from various States), the barley is from North Dakota but is malted in Minnesota, and the rye is from Germany and Austria and is malted in Germany. The bottles are from France, the cork is from Portugal, the capsules are from California (I have no idea where their raw materials come from), and the gun I use to shrink the capsules is assembled in Italy. My fermenters are from Pennsylvania, the wood is from Florida and Georgia, and the fittings are from Germany. One still is from Germany, and the other Kentucky. I could go on, but you get the idea. It's pretty amazing how many hands and how many countries are a part of our processes. When people talk about where something is made, what they really mean, whether they know it or not, is "who touched this last"? As for this whole "Master Distiller" thing that I get asked about all the time, you can sit and take the Heriot Watt exam anytime you'd like to get a little piece of paper. The trouble is, you have to have a complete knowledge of brewing as well. This is a major problem for those who have never fermented before, and likely never will. The certification isn't designed for the public. The certification is designed for potential employers who want to know that the person sitting in front of them has a fundamental knowledge of the subject. That's it. It's no guarantee of quality work, and many a Dipl. Braumeister (the German Master Brewer M.S.) out there are all thumbs in a brewery and should stick to research or larger plants where they don't have to get dirty. The part of Mr. McKee's suggestion that has great merit is the pursuit of the piece of paper. Continuing education should be a part of any professional distiller's M.O.

That mueller tank pictured won't be cheap. They're top notch fabricators. I can't tell you if that's a good deal because you didn't list a price. There's no way that a usable SS tank will go for scrap value. There's too much demand from small brewers and winemakers.

Freezing beer (making a true eisbock) and removing the water and concomitant tannins is viewed as distilling (or at the very least, not brewing) by the TTB. The only way you can make/sell it in the US is if you freeze it and then let it thaw back into the beer (this is how Bud Ice got around this quirk), thereby defeating the purpose of Eisbock (raising the alcohol while smoothing the flavor and mouthfeel). Redhook recently released an Eisbock. Since they are a Bud outfit now, I would guess that they cleared their production methods with the TTB. In any event, I think that this thread has run its course, and this bickering is going nowhere.

At 90 minutes of knockout time, 4 liters per minute might be ok. If you're happy with the profile of your white dog pitching at 80F, might I suggest adding 02 directly to the fermenter for another 30 minutes with the yeast in, and leave the pitching temp alone? Dropping the temperature of the wort a few degrees will have a negligible effect on the dissolved oxygen. However, adding 02 directly to a fermenter pitched with yeast will increase oxygen consumption by your yeast markedly. Changing the pitching temp could alter the congeners that your yeast produces, and it seems that you're quite happy with your new make.

It could be that your adding such a high amount of specialty grains that your terminal gravity is simply stopping at 2 Plato because of unfermentables from such a large amount of crystal or other malts. But, as you say, it's worth your time to up the pitching rate and oxygen to see if you can drop the plato down a tad further. If it doesn't drop the terminal gravity, you can return to your initial rates. 80F wort isn't going to hold very much in the way of dissolved oxygen, and that's a pretty high gravity for that pitching rate. How long does it take for you run through the heat exchanger? 1 hour? Using a sintered carbonation stone and compressed air? If so, IMHO, 4 liters/min is too low. This is all just my opinion.

Oxygen is needed for sterol synthesis, which is a fancy way of saying.... yeast cells need it to create daughter cells, boost your yeast count, and ensure that the yeast is healthy and active enough to completely ferment the substrate. You can either add oxygen to the mash/wort, or you can "overpitch". Some distilleries add it, some don't. Unaware of any breweries that don't oxygenate before or during pitching.

What temp are you pitching at? What's your pitching rate (how many cells per ml)? What's your starting gravity? Some yeast strains like more, and some like less. Remember, too, that you're fermenting more sugars than brewers are because you're fermenting 100% of available sugar (hopefully, anyway) whereas they are leaving residual sugars behind. In other words, you're asking your yeast to do ~20% more work than brewers are. Oh, and are you adding yeast before you add oxygen? And how are you measuring how much 02 you're adding?

Thank you for sharing this with us.

There's no TTB Standard of Identity of beer. You can label that Double IPA anything that you damn well please if you were a licensed brewer.

We had a pub with a distillery, winery, and brewery for about a decade. We could sell wine (vermouth), spirits, and beer to go without going through a distributor. We also served cocktails for our 400p capacity bar. Every State is different. Read the applicable regs for Nevada as many times as you can handles, ignoring everything you've ever been told about the laws. Spirits laws are very rarely well-written, so you'll likely be surprised at the contradictions and loopholes you'll find.

Funny thing is, when I asked about filtration of both Gin and Vodka, I was told at their Cincinnati office in 2001 that you specifically don't have to filter either.. since that was of particular interest to me, as a brewer who made unfiltered beers. The read the same passage to me that I cited to you. Happy Holidays to you, Coop!

1. There isn't a formulation requirement for vodka, so that's irrelevant. Send in your label and you're done. 2. The operative portion of the CFR is "so distilled, or so treated" There's no need for filtration of any kind, folks. 3. The whole section on vodka is relative to other spirits. Flavors, odors, etc. are all relative to all the other types of spirits (i.e., everything distilled south of 95%). No vodka is odorless or flavorless. Again, the operative word is "distinctive"... as in when you look at the of the Standard of Identity for, say, whiskey you find, "that the distillate possesses the taste, aroma, and characteristics generally attributed to whiskey". In other words, characteristics distinctive of whiskey. So when the CFR reads "....as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.", what they mean is that it doesn't have the distinctive characteristics of any of the other spirits listed in the Standards of Identity. 4. Happy holidays to my fellow distillers!

You have your entire adult life if you drink anything that's fermented... which obviously includes distilled spirits. Smaller German breweries I worked at would hang plates of zinc in the kettle to get tiny amounts dissolved and through to the yeast without violating the Purity law.