DrDistillation

Sorry, just when I see 15% boiler charge (sugar wash) and 96.x% take off it's basically as neutral or as flavorless as you'll get which isn't interesting in itself as it won't have much profile or any mouth feel at 40%. This you can almost always purchase cheaper. Now if doing 8% to 10% boiler charges from grains like corn, wheat, rye, oats, potato, rice, etc you can get a nice mouth feel as well as a different profile then a sugar wash even at 96.x% that can make a unique vodka and something to build a brand around. This would also fit a lot of farm and craft distillers who will want to use grains, not sugar washes. This is why I suggested the 10% & 30% runs to show what your still will do for a large market of potential farm and/or craft buyers. Besides just neutrals or vodkas it would be great to see how whiskey, rum and brandy are handled as well, as those are other potential small craft markets.

I guess he thinks a virus like Polio just up and vanished on it's own as a coincidence to the vaccines that were used.

You should try a few barrels at 100, 105, 110, 115 & 120 proof vs just 125 proof. Then do a tasting every quarter and take notes how each barrel progresses. They will develop differently. Lower proof will bring out more of the sweater flavors like caramels & vanillas while higher proof leans more toward nutty/earthy generally speaking with more astringency, dryness, and bitterness. Of course you need more barrels when you put up lower proof spirits which is why a lot of companies only put in the max 125 proof as it saves overhead. Part of this depends on your local climate as well as what the angels take more of from your barrel as well. ie does your proof increase or decrease? Maker's Mark put up barrels at 110 proof, Wild Turkey at 115. Michter’s Distillery does 103 proof barrels. Buffalo Trace determined their optimum barrel entry proofs are 115 and 125 in wheated bourbon and rye respectively. Four Roses: 120 barrel entry proof Wild Turkey: 115 barrel entry proof W.L. Weller/Van Winkle: 114 barrel entry proof Maker’s Mark: 110 barrel entry proof Peerless: 107 barrel entry proof MB Roland: 105 barrel entry proof Michter’s: 103 barrel entry proof

Kannuk Hearts were finished at 5:20 in the video so 5.33 * 0.13 or $8.31 at average residential rates you gave. $8.31 / 27 liters = about 31 cents per liter at 96.3% or 3.2 bottles (per proof liter) at 40% at 9.7 cents per bottle just in average residential electrical costs. If you're on the coasts of USA your business rates are likely higher than this and you'd be looking more like 15 cents a bottle just in electric cost. The still will cost you roughly $4 a day if amortized for 15 years so $4.00 /27 = 14.81 cents per liter or 4.6 cents per 40% bottle. In order to make a mash of 14.7% you would need (off the top of my head) approximately 1100 pounds of corn or 22 50 lb bags. If you pay $5 per bag you have $110 wrapped up in grain cost or another $1.27 per bottle. Of course if you pay more or use other more expensive grains your costs are higher yet. Corn would require enzymes for example and cost to heat the water... You're now close to $1.50 per bottle without figuring labor or any other overhead or costs for other equipment needed for milling, fermenters, etc. Without any additional costs but the still, electric and grain cost you are already at 2 to 3 times the wholesale GNS cost. Of course if you are farm distiller your grain costs could be far lower but still have some cost associated with them. The problem with "small" stills for many people is that you don't use enough grains to get the pricing the big distilleries get when they fill a silo by truck or train and you normally don't have the equipment for it so you purchase by the bag or similar smaller containers. That is the root of the problem at it's heart and not any particular brand of still. Your grain costs alone are likely higher than what you could have purchased GNS for! Now talking about other types of spirits may be a different ball game.

You're kidding right?

You can purchase GNS from a few of the larger wholesale suppliers and specify Ohio grains or pick from several other states. I certainly understand farm distillers who want/need to process their own grains or local grains. I also get the fact you may want to not have pure "neutral" and want a certain profile to come through for your vodka, gin, aqua vitea, etc that might only be available by distilling yourself. But I don't think that really was the question he was asking.

Agree Richard, When I watched the video I thought too much heat input (energy) and too much coolant being used to offset it. I think the proof is in the pudding during the runs. If things were balanced better, there would be NO need for re-stabilization during the hearts" runs as thing would be be balanced the whole run. Re-Destabilization is a sign of things to correct and need of balance because you are likely pulling too quickly. I got a friend/acquaintance who I worked with during our big computerization a decade ago, who I asked to take a look at the video and he said the same thing as above. Dude is a master genius at this type of thing of automation and has worked on the biggest stills on the planet. His basic analysis without having looked or worked on the still, but just looking at the video, was that the algorithms weren't balanced properly and the temps vs cooling are "fighting" each other and call for re balance/stabilization during the run to "right" things and allow the vapor to build back up in the column before take off. With more proper balanced column you could take off the whole time at less volume but at a more standard ABV. He also asked a frank question, what is the market for this type of still? As he stated the liters per hours in very low from a commercial standpoint. The electrical usage in the USA would be minimal 1/2 cost of commercial GNS alone without cost of still, fermenters, labor, space, etc. So when all costs are figured in the cost of producing GNS in house would be much more then just purchasing wholesale, freeing up labor to process it at will. So why pay more to do in house then just purchase cleaner spirits wholesale by the by the tote? Frankly this is the same problem the iStill has, which is no surprise as they work very similar, but cost more.

For home brew type sanitizer I'd have zero issue using "heads" (I do) from any of the mashes/washes I make. Just not enough methanol to worry about IMHO. I'm not drinking it and it's just skin content which I'll wash off anyway. What I do after being in public is use my alcohol based sanitizer THEN rinse with at least water. My sanitizer is strong (70%+) of alcohol (from heads runs) so it kills germs but I don't want it lingering on my skin so I at least rinse with water to rinse off any residual alcohol. Wouldn't want to light a cig or cigar or work around the stove without a quick rinse first to dilute any residual alcohol on the skin even though most would just evaporate and probably never be an issue. From my own personal/family standpoint I look at it from killing germs, bacteria, virus first then neutralizing alcohol then softening skin with anything of your choosing including aloe if you have it. We (people here on this forum) understand alcohol and instinctively know to do quick rinse with water after killing germs to not become a fire hazard. That is part of FDA responsibility to make sure people are safe with products high in alcohol. Some dumb smuck who doesn't know better could rinse with a high alcohol sanitizer, lean over his kerosene heater in the family room and poof... We on the other hand can can bacteria, virus, etc with alcohol, then rinse with water and then soften skin as 3 separate steps. Teach your family/friends(if you share) how to use alcohol to kill germs and rinse with water to be safe and then use something to keep skin soft and not dried out from the alcohol evaporating from skin. Does that make sense or no?

You can probably pick up a UV pond or industrial filter and just plumb it right as the water comes out of the tote. One thing I'd suggest is to setup a filter inline as well before dumping the water back in the tank. If you are killing off microbes in the water with UV you want to have a way to remove them as well. If you are using the water pretty consistently you probably don't need to keep it circulating 100% of the time as just your normal usage will be enough. You should be able to calculate the watts needed to kill off anything based on your flow rate. Do some reading of needed watts per flow rate (contact time) before buying anything. You'll need to clean them occasionally as well (easy) so that the glass doesn't build up a slime on it stopping the UV from doing it's thing. You can also plumb in 2 or 3 smaller units in parallel if needed as that could be cheaper. Look into how much bulbs cost at different sizes. With multiple units you can stagger replacement. If this is for cooling water only and will never be potable or used for anything else, you can add 1/4 teaspoon of bleach per gallon of storage water to kill off algae and microbes as well. That's about 1/3 gallon of bleach for a 1000 gallon storage tank.

dhdunbar, I think you got it pretty well covered The document is pretty self explanatory as to what the FDA would allow right now for C-19 and by who and you explained the bond (at a high level) and recording properly as far as I can tell. Most here probably wouldn't even be able to partner with a local pharmacist due to not having the right type of bond on file to sell them the alcohol assuming it was denatured properly. Now on a personal/family note, I've been making my own for a while (don't care if it's denatured) but I use aloe and it has worked well. After reading that doc I'm going to add in a splash of hydrogen peroxide and maybe try Glycerol instead of the aloe as it's a lot cheaper on my next batch. I also add some food coloring I had in the pantry to tint it as well (purple) so it couldn't be confused for anything else in my household.

https://www.fda.gov/media/136118/download Because of the public health emergency posed by COVID-19, FDA does not intend to take action against compounders that prepare alcohol-based hand sanitizers for consumer use for the duration of the public health emergency declared by the Secretary of HHS on January 31, 2020, provided the following circumstances are present: It's only 9 pages that are easy to read. I didn't even give thought to selling this when reading the thread and just thought it was for own personal/family use. Interesting they give a recipe using 80% alcohol plus Glycerol (1.45% v/v), Hydrogen peroxide (0.125% v/v), Sterile distilled water or boiled cold water.

I certainly wasn't knocking you guys or the system by any means. You put together a very nice video with a lot of information in it that is straight forward and very easy to understand which I applaud! I'd just loose the word average or say "production average" or similar but that's just me, it's not that important really when you are a through with the information as this was. I think the rate would actually be higher if expressed this way as well. I mainly was wondering about the water temp and just wanted to suggest run maybe more typical runs using 10% ferment and 30% low wines as the charge. Keep up the good work and quality videos like this!

You can of course use spirits you make if higher enough proof or just use cheap Isopropyl Alcohol you can pickup at the grocery store or drug store (if you don't have it already). 2/3 90% alcohol and 1/3 aloe gel does the trick and ends up at 60% or so which is where you want to be. There are a bunch of good recipes online including this easy one that anyone can do: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-make-hand-sanitizer/

Actually I think I'm correct. You stated "AVERAGE production speed of 12.4L per hour." You could say it produced hearts at 12.4 Liter after stabilizing but you can't say average as that has meaning which would be amount produced / time. Example if a run takes 6 hours and you quote 12.4 L per hour then that would be 74.4 Liters produced other wise it's not an AVERAGE. Your still produced a total of 42 liters over 6 hours which is an average of 7 liters per hour while peeks reached I think from memory 14.5 Liters after stabilization 2 running hearts. But during all the stabilization of warm up times the still isn't producing anything. 1 hour of nothing produced and 1 hour of 14 Liter production would AVERAGE 7 Liters per hour.

Nice video. The video noted room temperature cooling water at 18 C but the distillate coming out of the still was registering 14.8 C??? I'm not sure I'd agree with your "average liters per hour figure above". In the video I saw a total of 5.2 hours from the start to end of hearts collection. Including fores, heads and hearts you collected 31 liters which is an average of 5.3 liters per hour with a 15% boiler charge. If you recalculate including tails then you collected a total of 42 liters in 6 hours or an average of 7 liters per hour. Looks like you used a total of 1274 liters of cooling water or 5x the charge amount or 30.3 x the product in cooling water. A suggestion for the next video you do. Don't use a weird alcohol percent such as 15%, but instead use something more realistic like 8-10% or 27-30% which would be a typical ferment or low wines run that many people would use. With the 15% boiler charge this produced about 65 Liters (after diluting down to 40% or 86 750 mL bottles. With a 10% boiler charge I'd image this would produce 2/3 of those numbers or 43 Liters and 57 750 mL bottles. That would translate to 4.7 cases per run at 10% charge. I'd really love to see this done with a typical low wine run (foreshots discarded) which would increase the rates and run times as well as produce more spirits.

I come from BIG distillery ops where this type of thing is common, so I'm biased of course. I'm pretty sure all the big distilleries are all computer controlled these days but I'm wondering how many of you guys use temperature monitoring/control in your distillation operations? By this I mean manipulating boiler energy input and/or reflux cooling based on temperature of one or more probes in your column? Of course if you use plates with multiple take off points you are doing this mechanically so you automatically fall into the yes I do this. I don't care if it's computer controlled, PID for the smaller electric guys or steam heating, or if you use temp controlled valves. Don't really care if it's automated or manual operation. What I'm wondering is how many of you guys use temps as a guide to fractions or cuts or to automate the distillation process to produce faster. This could be predetermined cut off points for batches you run often or just a point to get a distiller involved to manually check for the cut over from heads to hearts or hearts to tails. Of course the type of spirit dictates how you do the run as a whiskey put on oak is good with some smearing (or heads and tails) where a vodka/neutral will want tighter cuts/fractions. So anyway without giving away any trade/proprietary secrets can you comment if you use any type of automated or manual control based on temperature?

I have no coin or loyalty in this "debate/conversation" but only looking at it from a 3rd party standpoint. Concerning the copy: I think that was just an allegation without any proof. The two controllers are built quite differently, so not sure how one was copied from the other. I believe your last line is correct. I've also know people who have purchase from the two different vendors most active in this thread with good comments about both. If you sell enough products (of anything) you will have a customer or two who go out of their way to slander or give you a very hard time. It's just law of averages, but how you rise to these types of things says a lot about character IMHO. One thing however that doesn't look good is the multiple logins (shill accounts) to give reviews of one's own products. That is pretty obvious in this thread and doesn't look good. BTW, I know your username from other forums but you should make a post in the intro section here as well.

Watch it Silk City Distillers, you're giving away the Tito's formula. I don't think I'd load a pot still with 190 proof spirit, but would dilute it down to at least 60%, but that's just me. Since Vodka is normally 60% water and 40% alcohol the water used becomes an important part of your final taste. This would give you a chance to play with different water profiles used to dilute the spirit prior to running. A mineral rich water for example will leave most of the minerals in the pot, but by default some will make it through giving your product something slightly unique compared to other bottles on the shelf. It will leave it a different mouth feel compared to dilution with RO or distilled water (good or bad). The starting ABV,, the water used to dilute and the speed of the run (natural reflux) will all affect the profile of the vodka produced and is worth playing with a bit if you go down this route of starting with GNS and rerunning it in a plain old pot still. Even the temperature of the cooling water will come into play on the profile of the spirit. Colder water will condense the vapor faster at the start of the condenser vs warmer water that allows the vapor to travel further down the condenser before it cools to a liquid. Of course the water used to dilute the spirit to 80 proof (bottle proof) will play a huge amount in the final profile as well. Even if you never intend to produce vodka this way, it's a great set of experiments to run with neutral to see how these changes affect the profile of the spirit being made which you can then apply to your brown or other flavored spirits. People who make gin in a pot still for example know the difference the initial charge makes (all else being equal) and a 30% vs a 45% charge makes a different spirit with one being "more dry" than the other. Of course the botanicals come into play (like any flavor) but this holds true for neutral as well to a limited amount.

Wonder what they are using sugar for if they are bringing in GNS?

Most of these techniques have been tried many times over the years by many, with no long term benefit, just short term waste of time and resources. You can certainly speed up rest periods with moderate heat and mixing. You can also force extraction through heat and cold as well, but I'm not sure you can call this maturation and certainly not aging. Is it worth additional equipment cost, ongoing energy & labor costs to speed up a rest period for a white spirit from say 30 days to 5 days? You can use heat upfront, use UV, use ozone, use ultrasound, use vacuum and pressure, etc but they are all short term solutions and with flavored spirits such as whiskey, brandy or rum often create a worse spirit long term after it's been in a barrel for a couple of years. You name it, been tested by all the large distilleries over the years.

There is not an issue in doing this if stated properly on the label. It needs to be clear where distillation and bottling take place.

Do these stills come with a time machine or something? No such thing as fast aging.

Here is what I personally would do. My first few runs in the 350L would be the same exact recipe and batch size as if you would run it in the 100L rig. What this will hopefully show you is the profile difference you will get from the new bigger still (good bad or indifferent). In a nut shell before trying to "upscaing", first identify if you get a slightly different profile just from running on a new/different rig and adjust for this first if needed. I'd run at least 3 batch destined for the 100L still in your new bigger still before upscaling. You're going to need to learn the new foreshot cuts and how much to take off the front. Remember when running a still the first spirits through the still also does some cleaning. With more physical material the foreshot cut will likely increase even with the same size batch and you'll want to learn to adjust for this especially with Gin. TIP/Bit of history: For those not familiar with spirit safe use, back in the day when you couldn't actually smell or taste the spirit but only had access to it in an enclosed locked case (spirit safe) you created a sample in the safe pulling the current spirit and diluting it to 46% (temp corrected) by mixing in water. The spirit safe had both thermometers and hydrometers in "sampling jars". You could divert both spirit and water to these "jars". If the spirit louched you were still in foreshots. When it no longer louched at 46% you were past the foreshots. Then you could pull your heads and hearts by proof moving forward. The interesting thing about this "misting" test done in the spirit safe was that the louching wasn't caused by oils in the fresh spirit but from the cleaning that took place as the first set of vapors worked their way through the still. High proof spirits are GREAT cleaning products! Essentially the first set of high proof spirits ran through the pot still cleaned up what was left stuck to the pot still from the tails and oils of the previous batch. This just happened to match up really close to what we presently consider the actual foreshots you wanted to remove, so 2 birds/one stone. What was clear from doing this with whiskey is that the size of the batch really didn't determine the foreshot to throw away as much as the "cleaning" that took place. Bigger stills will have more crud being removed at the start and will change the initial cut volume to accommodate this "cleaning". Now the "misting" trick worked well with grains but obviously when dealing with things like juniper will not work as the oils come over early. You will need to nose/taste it and determine a new minimal "foreshot" cut to throw away on the bigger still. But it will be different and not determined by the batch as much as the size/shape of the new still. So this needs to be taken into consideration. So now with that knowledge, the first run won't have crud/tails so the amount of foreshots to be taken won't show up until the next set of runs. Within 3 runs as if you were running the 100L still you should have a good idea of the different initial cut needed and will give you a very good base of what the Gin is going to taste like coming off the 350L still before doing any upsizing or changes to recipe. You may or may not need to tweak your existing recipe as the new still will produce differently. You may get more upfront peel or juniper, you may get more earthly or less earthy tones from the herbs/botanicals. While the two still may look similar they may work quite differently due to different riser heights, different coolant temps, different types of condensers, different boiler shapes which can affect reflux, etc. Tweak the 100L recipe for the new still if needed. Tweak the foreshot cut and the gin botanical recipe and once satisfied start to scale it up. You could try 150L (50% more botanicals) or jump to 200L (2x botanicals) depending on how good it taste at 100L. I'd do a few step ups in size with adjustments if needed vs just going for a 350L run. Consider it a transition or ramp up period. If you macerate and put botanicals in the boiler you might find the additional time in the boiler changes flavor a bit, or if doing vapor infusion might find you need to change out botanicals at a certain point. No one can tell you what to expect as all setups and stills are different. Just try to change only 1 thing at a time per run and you shouldn't have a lot to worry about and shouldn't really have any waste. Hope this helps.

Best of luck to you in your new adventure. Besides wanting to wish you success I did want to comment on the name "Macon Booze". I hope I don't offend with the following but you did ask for feedback on the name. Not crazy about it. "Booze" sounds cheap to me, but maybe that's a personal thing. I'd worry that people would associate booze with cheap and bottom shelf. It's sort of the same as bar vs tavern or pub. I don't know much about the area and did a google search. Your area has a rich history and surely you could pull a name from history or geo/landmark things in the area. Ocmulgee Distillery for example using a river name that pops up on many pages. If you want to keep the "Macon" in the name, something like Macon Spirits, Macon Distillery, Macon Heritage Distillery, Macon Heritage Spirits, etc "Booze" to me just seems like it may draw the wrong conclusion from consumers to city employees & inspector you need approvals from. For lack of a better way to put it, "booze" lacks "class".

I would certainly not purchase any equipment until you know exactly what type of spirits you intend to make. The type of spirits being made should dictate the type of equipment used vs the other way around IMHO. I realize you want versatility, but that may call for a compromise still compared to a dedicated still built to task. Vodka from GNS is easy and the most basic pot still will do the job for Gin. It's the whiskey's and/or rums that I'd spend time deciding what exactly you like and want to produce. By this I mean, spend some time looking at the equipment being used by the distilleries of products you know, like and want to produce something similar to. If for example you wanted to make a malt whiskey like many of the fine drams from Scotland then look at the style of still used to produce it. Likely it will be a fat pot with swan neck, big lyne arm and made of all copper. The width and height of the swan neck will give a clue to the flavor it will produce. That type of flavor would be very difficult to match on a flute style still (pot with plates) with out a lot of work and nearly perfectly dialed in run with just the right amount of additional reflux (if you can do it at all). And if you can, at what speed will it produce at vs a still made specifically for that task that will be easier to run for that spirit? There are tons of videos online these days from many different distilleries throughout the world. Spend a couple of days and watch them looking at the equipment being used and overall techniques they use. What are the fermenters made of? What do the stills look like (wide and/or tall), copper or stainless? Worm or tube style condenser? You might find the products you like best are distilled at close to 160 proof or could be double or triple distilled right at barrel proof of around 120. You might find the spirits you want to make are done on plated stills. Or the spirits you like could be a blend of pot and column produced spirits. This is an exercise you should do if you haven't already. If you think you know the brand of still you want to go with source some bottles produced by a couple different distilleries at retail and try them. Do you like it? Is it the type of spirit you want to make or did you have something a bit different in mind? Would you be happy to have your name on the bottle? Would 2 or 3 smaller stills be better than one bigger still if they are producing simultaneously? Vodka can be made via AC filtering from GNS without ever touching a still on your premises. Gin could be made in a small still compounded then mixed back with your vodka. For example 3x botanicals used in the smaller still then mixed back with an additional 2 parts of vodka after the run. With multiple smaller stills could you mash and still at the same time? Most of the spirits you mentioned except for Vodka can be made with a pot still, and no plates or reflux required, assuming you'll make vodka from GNS via filtration. This is what I was getting at by asking what exactly do you want to produce. Work the problem backwards starting with the products you want to make!