Mackenzie

Hey everyone, I'm hoping to gather some intel on distilling cucumber. I would like to make a small amount of cucumber distillate to add to an existing gin and/or trial some flavoured vodka recipes. We have a small copper pot still that is suitable for small-volume distillation. Hoping some of you might have some advice! Couple questions: Should all parts of the cucumber get used? ie seeds, skin, and flesh? Have you macerated the cucumber before distillation? If so, do you leave the cucumber in the liquid or remove before distillation? What ABV do you macerate at? My current plan is to shred the cucumber, macerate overnight in 30% neutral, remove the fruit, and distil. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks to everyone for your replies! Extremely frustrated with this issue. We are cutting to 40% with RO water from a local filtration company. All our gin botanicals have been switched to a new source in the past six months. The still has been cleaned immediately prior to the run with a 1% citric acid solution. The copper in the still shouldn't be "tired" as it has been relatively lightly used. The neutral we're starting with doesn't have any perceivable "savoury" aroma: it's becoming perceivable post-gin distillation.

Hey everybody, We have a persistent problem with gins produced on an R&D still (20L copper alembic). After years of using this still successfully to make great product, we have recently found that gin produced on this still has a "wet dog," "skunky," or sulfur-y aroma. I'm out of ideas for what the source could be so I'd love to get some more suggestions! Our process is as follows: Cut neutral from 95% to 40% Macerate botanicals for ~24 hours. Total botanical load is approximately 25 grams botanicals per liter of 40% spirit. Run pot still with botanicals inside Take a small (~0.5% of still charge) heads cut, and collect gin until distillate goes "weak" or bitter at ~65% ABV Cut gin to 40% We made gins very successfully on this still for years. There was no obvious change that led to this problem. The product is not saleable -- and my concern is that if we scale up and do a gin run on our big still, the off-flavour might occur there too. A non-exhaustive list of things we've tried to tackle the problem: Our neutral spirit is clean and lightly fruity, and does not contain this off-aroma before gin distillation Our botanical sourcing has been entirely refreshed to make sure we didn't have any stale/problematic botanicals The still has been cleaned with a 1% citric acid solution Any ideas out there? Happy to provide a sample recipe if that would be useful. Thanks for any help!

Hello! We are opening a new distillery in BC. Does anyone have examples of production paperwork/spreadsheets that they could share with us? It would be a huge help to see how other businesses are tracking their bulk spirits across subsequent distillations, transfers, and bottling runs. Would really appreciate any help! Thanks!

Hey all, We are closing our doors as a craft distillery in BC, Canada. We have a variety of bulk ingredients that we aren’t going to use that we are looking to sell at a generous discount to anyone who wants them. All yeast has been fridge-stored since purchase, grain has been securely stored in a dry location. -28x 25kg bags Gambrinus Rye Malt -2x 500g GR2 Yeast -6x 500g M1 Yeast -3x 500g SO4 Yeast -2L Fermcap -2L Lactic Acid 88% -500mL Hitempase enzymes All items are available for 50% of new purchase price, further discounts available if you'll take more of it off our hands! Message me here if you're interested. Mack

Thanks for your response! To answer your questions: Yes, we leave the column to equalize and run in reflux for 2 hours before we start collecting. We do stripping runs in a separate stripping still. So we are bringing a "primary" distillate product of about ~160 LAA to our column still. We get a really good tasting neutral product, and the still operates really nicely once at equilibrium. The issue for me is not so much the heads cut, which feels quite obvious, but the tails cut. We are gun-shy about pushing our tails cut further into the run, and my instinct is that we're cutting too soon and wasting a significant amount of LAA each run!

I should say for context: we are typically retaining <50% of our LAA as "hearts". And we don't recycle any of our tails. So I'm trying to nose around whether we can improve our efficiency.

Hello everyone, Looking for some opinions on the expected yields when running a vodka still. Background info: we brew a malted barley wash, run a stripping still with no cuts, and then use a 20-plate still to produce our neutral for vodka and gins. I'm relatively new at my workplace. Until recently we have used sensory exclusively to make our cuts: ie "heads" flavours are gone, let's cut to hearts // "tailsy" flavours like increased acidity or vegetal notes are becoming discernable, let's cut to tails. We are trying to expand our process to include analytical benchmarks as well. So to that end I'm hoping people could share some info on what a "typical" (I know, every piece of equipment/methodology/ingredient base is different!) yield would be on a vodka still. ie if you put 100 LAA/proof gallons into your vodka still, how much do you expect to retain as "hearts"? I'm hoping this will give us a bit of info as to what analytical benchmarks we can set up to be more consistent. We are aiming to set up ABV targets and volume indicators to complement our sensory. Tasting the same way every day is tough!! Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!