Andrew

What is a fair price range to pay a small brewery for (fermented) distiller's beer per gallon? There are a number of variables at play, but for a brew that is straightforward for the brewery, what's reasonable? Regards, -Andrew

Jeff: Best of luck and best wishes. You may have more luck with the TTB today. The TTB conference in Cincinnati that just wrapped up yesterday had heavy TTB staff participation; I was told ~50 out of town agents and most of the Cincinnati office were involved. -Andrew

Yeah. To be clear, look for places that might let you do a little contract distilling or might put you to work for a week in exchange for some still time.

Heartbreaking. But getting repurposed does keep it from further deterioration or teardown.

Josh: I'm a beginner as well, so grain of salt, but my MBA bias is to always do a first pass at the paperwork first. A business plan can serve either of two purposes (or both): organizing your thoughts, and providing the key tool for raising money both from friends/angel investors and from the bank. The former, organizing thoughts, is pretty important because there are any number of costs you'll run into that, until you research them and put them down on paper, seem inconsequential. They're not. And you'll identify other key needs you'd likely mentally gloss over unless you go through the process. The latter, raising money, speaks for itself. Unless you're very well connected, people expect that bit of paper when you start talking with them. In both cases, you don't need to make a novel. The first business plan I wrote was well over 100 pages incomplete; it was worthless. My business plan for our distillery is ten. The ten pager has been lightyears more effective for raising capital and for making us identify what's truly key about our business. That's not to say, get the paperwork done before anything else. Find a way to make some product in parallel with doing your homework. A sample accompanying your plan transforms you from "someone with an idea" to "that cool distiller guy". As a tip, a lot of business schools like to set up their MBA candidates with entrepreneurs to work on a business issue. You might find some help getting your research and business plan done (for free!) if you speak to the entrepreneurship profs. Regards, Andrew

Thanks, Gwydion. I hope your US project's making speedy progress. Typo above. My business partner's been homebrewing sake, not shochu. We intend to translate the one to the other, being fans of the stuff.

Heya folks! Long overdue introduction; our "quiet phase" has lasted longer than expected. I'm part of a two-man team getting a very small operation up and running in the mid-South (USA). We started out in late fall of last year and have most major things lined up except where we'll be producing (hence, the nebulous "mid-South"). Due to Tennessee's unfortunate distillery laws our home city is off-limits, as is anywhere else nearby, so finding a hometown for our distillery has been our biggest time-sink. We think we've got our site down, finally, and are shaking out the lease details. Though we're in whiskey/bourbon country (and now rum, thanks to Prichards), our initial focus will be on gin-head style gin. If you're at the '08 whiskey conference, you'll see our little 50 gallon at Vendome; it's just finished up and waiting on its heating unit. The two of us started last fall with no spirits distillation experience (though there may be some genetic predisposition). I have a biology background, which has helped, and have some startups under my belt. My partner, outside of making homebrew wine and shochu, is also a business geek. That said, we're both passionate about this little venture. Our biggest challenge has been preserving focus on a small start with a small set of products; there's so much we'd like to try.

That brings to mind a question I haven't needed to look into but am curious about. Are standard stainless drums DOT compliant for transport? Larger ethanol totes need to conform to specific design regulations; is 55 gallons small enough that they're under some cap? When doing initial numbers research, the cheapest price I came across for NGS was ~$3 per proof gallon (not delivered) from a place in California. The other queries came in a fair bit higher, between $5-$7 undelivered, for "small" bulk purchase. One think to ask about is minimum volume; some places don't want to sell less than a full tanker and others a full tote (a few hundred gallons) per order.

We just got in a set of H-B Instrument proof hydrometers I'd ordered a while ago from Thomas Scientific. They all come with certificates of calibration, but with one exception, none are dated. The dated one was calibrated in 2004! This suggests that Thomas Scientific doesn't have much turnover of alcohol hydrometers. It also brings to mind the question: should I send the package off for calibration even though they're new and certified calibrated? 4 years is a long time in a warehouse.

A few more thoughts regarding market data: The TTB does have some higher level data available at http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/stats.shtml If your library system has a business library, or better if you're near a business school with a library, head on over and ask them for help. Business research databases tend to contain most of the yearly market reports put together by market research firms, and (usually) use of these resources is free from within the library.

We had to walk away from an historic building that was perfect for our needs, and was otherwise zoning/codes compliant, because a divided portion was an apartment. This ran up the "dwelling house" red flag with the TTB. Multiple use zoning is becoming more popular, especially revitalizing old warehouses and factories, so clarifying or eliminating this qualification could help small operations and the towns that host them. Nuts that it'll be too late for us.

Very nice finds; thank you for sharing em. I'd completely forgotten about Project Gutenberg. There must be all sorts of treasures buried there. -A

Purple! If you made a limited run of purple cochineal absinthe, I'd buy one. Pinkie swear. I might be the only taker, but a clear purple to a lavender louche would be lovely. (And it's still traditional, kinda, in a way, if you look at it sideways).

"Dannon stawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, as do many candies, frozen fruit bars, fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink grapefruit juice drink." I never knew carminic acid (cochineal) was used widely in the food world. Ground cactus bug is useful! The things we learn, studying spirits.

The following is written from a position of ignorance, not challenge. Rum that isn't made from straight pressed sugar cane juice is made from molasses boosted by white sugar. Brown sugar is (almost always) white sugar that's had molasses added back in. It seems apples to apples for me. What's wrong with the term "rum" for this fellow's procedure?

Thanks much, Rich.

I'd seen the term "beetlejuice" mentioned; it was humorous but seemed apocryphal. Was cochineal really used? I'm not making the stuff, I'm just overly curious about most things.

This article provides the historic basis of a term, describes how over time the meaning evolved, then tries to apply the original definition to a subpopulation. I'm not even a simple country lawyer, and that flow of argument just doesn't make sense to me. The term "master" has become a diluted term broadly used in technical and engineering work to mean "head of" or "in control of" something. My use of this web page is being made possible by one or more webmasters and a hostmaster or two. They almost certainly didn't learn their trade in a formal medieval guild system, yet I'm using the result of their work happily. The term "master distiller" immediately communicates good information about someone's corporate role to a uninformed layman. That's kind of the point of titles these days. The labeling of bourbon should be strictly defined. The labeling of the bourbon maker? I'm unswayed.

Any success (or failure) stories on keeping tanks of cooling water clear of funk? I was thinking a weekly capful of bleach or some pool supply chlorine tablets, but outside of the unlovely poolside smell, I suspect concentrated chlorine might be bad for plastic tanks and associated fittings.

Rich: Thanks much. Very good to hear.

How helpful is an agitator to processing an unfiltered grain charge? Intuitively, it would speed heating and be better than convection at keeping the charge chemically and thermally mixed. But how much of a difference, practically, would this make for the volumes a small pot still takes on? For us, this is a speculative budgetting matter rather than an immediate issue, but agitators are pretty pricey and it's an interesting question.

We're looking at siting in a more developed area as well, and I'd always had in the back of my mind that we could just get a barrel house outside of town if and when we got to that point. The zoning I've run into is more lenient than it sounds like yours is, but your situation is causing me to second-guess our options.

Is having a separate barrel house out of the question?

Ah! That's very cool. Thank you.

Out of curiosity, what flowers are used to color rouges? Neither Google nor a scan of recipes show a quick answer, and I'm utterly clueless about natural coloring agents.