Kindred Spirits

Have you tried a quick pass through some activated charcoal and then pass through a 1 micron or smaller cartridge filter? You can use gravity so its a "set-it and forget-it" kind of thing.

The main difference is that you will be leaving the grain in for the duration of the ferment so it ends up being a simpler process. It can result in some different chemistry due to the fact that the hulls are left in the fermenter. You can use your nutrient as you had before, along with any other stabilizers. Main thing is to watch the pH as the hulls of highly modified grains can tend to be acidic.

Hey Nuddy, welcome to the forums. So since you would be keeping the output the same, you would be increasing he amount of reflux in the column which should give you a higher output ABV and a cleaner spirit. Typically the slower the takeoff with refluxing occurring on all plates the cleaner the spirit and higher the ABV as the "heavier" components are pushed back lower in the column.

Are you sure they are flakes of glass? What type of water are you using to proof with? Sometimes minerals can come out of solution and bind with some gin oils creating "flakes" in the bottles.

Technically the fruit is not fermenting, its just dissolving into the substrate. Even if it does ferment It's a few pieces of fruit in hundreds of gallons of dunder, which equates to a few thin slices of fruit in a fermenter. That's like saying a single malt isn't a single malt if its got a few kernels of corn in it. Or a bourbon isn't a bourbon if you use the same paddle to stir a bourbon mash and a rum wash. Ground coffee has an allowable amount of rat feces and cockroaches in it, it still is classified as coffee. The TTB has been around for a while now and they know not everything is 100% absolute.

TTB has never given clients any issues, there are rums throughout the Caribbean that use dunder and muck pits in addition to the traditional rum washes. The amount used, percentage-wise, is so miniscule in the grand scheme of things they don't seem to care. It is based upon 90+% of rum backset so even if you used a bunch and the dunder made up 5% of the total ferment/pot charge, the dissolved fruit would only be .5% at most of the overall wash/distillation. Its like adding another ingredient like oyster shells for pH control or nutrient for yeast health. A small enough addition that doesn't change the classification of the spirit.

Yes you typically get a full pelicose layer, usually I like to see a thin one. The main goal is to dissolve the fruits into the liquid without getting overwhelmed with a bacterial infection. You are correct in saying that the input from the fruits don't necessarily impart their specific flavor, but for instance apples have a multitude of phenolic compounds which can be imparted. Bananas, mangoes, pineapple, pears, peaches, have all been used. I enjoy the experience of seeing how each one imparts different "notes" to the final product. That particular profile sounds like guava might play a nice role. Never hurts to try.

Yup you got it, I use the backset from the runs, its full of dead yeast and other nutrients leftover from the distilling process and then pretty much just smash up the desired fruits without washing them, to add some fresh wild yeasts, or inoculate it with some fresh yeast. It all depends on what profile the client is going for.

I always opt for closed fermentation, and recommend it for clients. It just better allows for you to control the variables that are involved with the process of fermenting. You have a super interesting thread going on the synthetic acidification, but have you also experimented with cultivated dunder? I am not talking about a pit just sitting there putrefying but rather dunder that is "fed" specific fruits to enhance the specific phenolic compounds which can be fed into your wash at time of distillation, or into ferments. Over the years I have cultivated a number of these "sweet dunder" pits as I like to call them. They work amazing for imparting some amazing fruity characteristics to the final product.

I can help design a custom rick system for your space. I have a number of clients using a custom design, and they all love the accessibility of the barrels vs standard stacking methods. Typically the cost of the ricks is less than what you would pay for those stacking racks too.

What's cool about the manufacturer I work with is can fully customize the stills I get for clients. I draw up the design on CAD, their engineers verify fabrication plans and then they build it up. Its been great to be able to hot rod stills with larger heating ports for better heat up times, different shaped helmets, and have more flexibility in connection types.

Yeah exactly, for all of those people that say you need more than a million dollars to start a distillery, they typically spend nearly half of that on just the still. Like I always tell my clients "you can put a chef in a basic kitchen and get a great meal, but even if you put a bad cook in the best kitchen you won't be thrilled with the results"

I have always been interested rum and also in "non-standard" still designs, and rum is one of the perfect examples of a spirit that benefits from the extras like, double retorts and thumper setups. One of the issues that I always run into when designing a distillery for clients is the amount of floor space required for double retort setups. I haven't personally seen a vertical version of a double retort setup but I imagine that would be really cool to see. Has anyone seen anything like this?

I've helped a number of DSPs open up in NC and up the Appalachians and also have a few more in the working along that mountain range, I would be happy to assess your product and see if any of my clients would like to collaborate on a barrel blend. If you need any help designing a distillery to make your own be sure to reach out too.

With distribution being a goal, a lot of my clients start out with 6-pack cases. It is much easier to get new stores/states to buy a sixer, vs paying twice as much for the 12. That being said, once established they switch over to a 12pk option to keep up with demand.

I personally have "The Alcohol Textbook" and "Batch Distillation". Both are great books, The alcohol textbook is more focused on industrial fuel alcohol and plants focusing on that. Batch distillation is a great general overview of the processes, but you might have gotten a lot of the information from other books you have read. I am an engineer by formal training, so I have quite a few books on the engineering side of the process, not sure if you would be interested in them as they can be a bit overwhelming at times without dedicated study. Definitely not casual "plane" reading.

I gotcha, its always interesting to see those non-standard pieces of equipment out there. I'm always eager to learn more. If you ever get a chance to do it let me know for sure, I would love to join you.

I was under the impression this was a standard single pot still with a 6-plate column. I totally missed the two kettles part. Now I see its a Figgins style. I 100% agree on there not being a best way to run all equipment, however there seems to be a number of people in the industry who were taught one way to run a still and they never change or question it. I have never run a two-kettle system either, but the way you described the process makes sense. Do they have check valves in line coming from the kettles? or is it just based on the vapor flowing from each kettle? I also like the "strip and finish" method for most grain spirits and this definitely seems like they could save time by switching to that method, not using the delph for the strips and tweaking its use for the finish runs. Having the better ablility to compress and make cuts on a finishing run typically results in a higher quality finished product. Single pass whiskeys have their place in the industry but a lot of times they suffer from excessive smearing into tails if not run correctly and can be oily.

I think you would benefit from a full assessment of how things are being done, starting at the grains and mashing through the distillation process. By being thorough on the processes documenting as much as possible you will be able to identify areas of improvement, or where you are doing great in the processes. The way your still designer suggested running the still doesn't match conventional wisdom. I would love to chat with him on why he recommends running equipment that way.

So just based on these responses, it doesn't sound to me like the still is getting run to the best of its ability. The main purpose of having a condenser at the top of the column is create more reflux and help you make tighter cuts. The way you are currently running your equipment does not allow it to function as designed. You should have the condenser fully open to start, reach equilibrium, make your heads cut very slowly pulling off the concentrated heads, and then run out your hearts, once again slowly pulling them off to reduce smearing. After that its up to you if you want to reach equilibrium again to try to extract some more of the higher or lighter tails, or just run out your tails for reuse, or just end the run.

If the purchaser needs help with dismantling and setting up in their space, I would be able to help out with that.

It wouldn't be the variations in the steam pressure, but rather the flowrate of the steam coming into the jacket of the boiler. If you guys want some hands on, on-site training, let me know. I would love to come help out and teach you the best way to run your equipment.

So this seems to be the change that has resulted in your increase. You said: "We have lowered the steam pressure for the majority of our run from approximately 50% full steam power to closer to 30%" Running at a lower steam input reduces the vapor flowrate leaving the pot, which in turn allows the reflux to be more effective in the helmet and column. The result is a longer run, but better separation and better yield.

Typically It is much easier to only move things to the processing side of things when you are wanting to bottle it. There isn't the same provisions as there are in the storage report for distinguishing the differences between what's there in the bulk or bottled section. Pretty much the way I was taught to do them is, anything you make goes in "production", stuff that's just hanging out in the distillery in bulk form goes into storage, and bottled and tax withdrawn shows up on processing. Its clear that 3 different people generated these forms at 3 different times, they really need to update them. All of the pertinent information could easily be compiled on 1 report sheet.

Technically you can just submit your own serial numbers for the equipment. As long as you mark them accordingly when they come in, there should not be any issues. This allows you to have your equipment on the way especially if your manufacturer has a long lead time.