virtuoso

We are still taking signups!

Considering becoming a distiller?   Virtuoso Distillers is going to be offering its 7th annual  intense 1 day distilling workshop .

Testimonial from ADI Forums

“Something that really impressed me was how open and honest Steve was concerning his processes and recipes. He gave us information about his processes that no other commercial distiller I've ever met would disclose. I have no idea how Steve can offer this seminar at this low of a price, but I'm very happy I got to be part of it!”  -

The class is being updated so it will include all the previous materials and a beautiful unit geared to the small and medium size scale commercial distiller. The trend has been moving to distill with a tasting room and local distribution environment and our new unit will fully address this We will discuss the history and theory and chemistry of distilling, and demonstrate the actual process of distilling going from un ground grain to glass with all the steps in-between. all of the demonstrations will be live while there will be power point visuals you will be able to see all the processes take place in real time . We will discuss Government regs, enzymes and malt. you will see the mash batch being created and deal with adjusting ph, we will do a distillation this will be happening concurrently so will see all the steps. You will see the bottle and labeling process. Our starting time will be 9:00am and go till everything is finished which will be after 5:00. The class size will be a maximum of 15 people. The charge is $350.00

We will go through all the processes from grain to glass with a hands on approach. you will see the actual operations. Our last class had all of the participants feeling they gained a wealth of knowledge and what they most appreciated was actually seeing all the stages required not just hearing about them or seeing pictures. we have a comprehensive video presentation with a booklet of all the slide you will see. Our Equipment includes a 600 liter Holstein Still with 2 towers and a total of 21 plates. The course will be from 9 to 5. To cover everything, it has go for the full time. There is a pizza lunch provided. The course will center on vodka production but Whiskey will also covered as well as Gin and other liqueurs. just some of the items that will be cover are...

A very short history of distilling

grain grinding

grain cooking

grain fermenting

mash distilling

determining heads , tails and hearts

still maintenance and cleaning

bottling

maintaining TTb standards for alcohol proof

TTB reporting

Types of stills. 

we are:

Virtuoso Distillers (you can find us at 18Vodka.com)

4211 Grape rd Mishawaka IN46545

574 876 4450

The cost of the one day class is $350.00

We have a planned maximum of 15 seats

See other's review on ADI forum of our class...everyone comes away feeling it was useful and a great value.

Still interested?  PM me if looking for more

be careful dealing with Odin you may not have a pleasant experience if the equipment doesn't work he won't be there to make it good

Steve Ross

make sure you can sell that much before you buy the equipment.

I just spoke to Odin today and he informed me we will be recieving our still shortly so we be able to display the operating stills at our seminar.on may 31 sat.

Steve ross

steve@18vodka.com

I remember once learning about the temperature of the incoming cooling water and the out going watershould be a specific degree spread to get the best spirit quality i seem to remember it was around 22 degrees. Can anyone help remind me what that spread is suposed to be.

steve ross

there are a lot of " home distillers" and the new craze is to start a distillery. its not as easy as many of people think. the Federal Government hurdles are great. but after you get a permit you will find the federal government is primirly only concerened with your ability to pay them the tax on the spirits if they do grant a license, if they feel if you can't pay them they won't grant a licsense getting a security bond is hard for someone if they never have been in business fortunatley for me it was easy as I was in business before and had access to business insurance with a good history.They do have other criteria but if you want to open a distillery they are not unreasonable. The problem for many people is our states they still have a prohibition mentality and have lots of obsticles you must overcome.

What no one trying to sell you a still talks about is actually being able to sell your product other than telling you can. Most states have what's called a 3 tier. system. the distiller, the distributor and the retailer. as a distiller you must sell to a distributor or the state control board and in most states by custom you are only allowed one distributor to handle your spirits in that state Now the big multi national companies like diagio will go to a distributor which there are usually not many who distribute in the whole state and will offer their product line to them but demand a quota of sales from the distributor and if they don't meet it they will pull their product line an go to a competitor distributor in that state. To a distributor this multinational will represent at least 60% of a company's sales. Thus there is no incentive to handle small craft distiller by the distributor in fact some distributors see us as the enemy preventing them from not being able to meet their quotas. Finally With liquor stores having limited shelve space its hard for you to get on their shelves without a multi million dollar advertising campaign.

A small still with a reasonable investment may work well in this atmosphere as long as you can produce a decent spirit and I am not talking about some of the jury rigged stills that are home made or offered on the internet for less than $8000. then you can sell your product as a locally made product. I really don't think local distillers will make a lot of money but it can be a fun part time income for some people. If you then are sucessfull you surely can expand

opps Forgot the date

Feb. 23 2013 Its a Saturday

Steve Ross

We are going to once again offering our 1 day distilling course. During the day we will go through all the processes from grain to glass with a hands on approach. you will see the actual operations. Our last class had all of the participants feeling they gained a wealth of knowledge and what they most appreciated was actually seeing all the stages required not just hearing about them or seeing pictures. we have a comprehensive video presentation with a booklet of all the slide you will see. Our Equipment includes a 600 liter Holstein Still with 2 towers and a total of 21 plates. The course will be from 9 to 5. To cover everything, it has go for the full time. There is a pizza lunch provided. The course will center on vodka production but Whiskey will also discuseed as well as liqiours. the items that will be cover are.,

A very short history of distilling

grain grinding

grain cooking

grain fermenting

mash distilling

determining heads , tails and hearts

still maintaince and cleaning

bottling

maintaining TTb standards for alcohol proof

TTB reporting

Types of stills.

Last time one of the student wrote us before the class questioning if we could do it all in one day after the class he said we we really did it!

we are

Virtuoso Distillers (you can find us at 18Vodka.com)

4211 Grape rd Mishawaka IN46545

574 876 4450

 We have a planed maximum of 16 seats

Fortunatly no as in the 2 cases it was in the form of a warning. however now that they are on notice and they are inspected again who knows? Hopefully there would be some understanding but the ttb is adament about labeleling and revenue. and if its over proof they regard it as a revenue shortfall on the excise payment.

I have been preparing a group of slides for a workshop I am giving. Part of it will be dealing on gauging. After talking to other craft distiller I have found if they were audited by the TTB almost in every case they were not in conformance in terms of their alcohol content. The TTB specifies that you must be within 0.15+/-, 80 proof on grain products. looking at their charts for example if you have exactly an 80 proof reading on you certified hydrometer at 68F x their factor of .997 your actual proof is 79.76 but 79.85 is the minimum acceptable. The hydrometer must be in at least 10th's to give you a chance at being right on. So the bottom line I found is even the certified Hydrometers will not be accurate enough for the TTB. Because they are using a $24,000 machine against the $55.00 certified Hydrometer unless of course you have an equivalent machine.

Reminder, there are just 3 seats left for our 1 day distilling workshop on Sat. Sept.17 2011. There are over 75 slides for presentations covering equipment, grains, yeasts, grinding, all phases of grain mashing, fermenting, distilling, bottling, labeling, Gauging and information related to TTB requirements and fillings. As well as live exercises demonstrating all of the above. The price is $160.00 which includes a continental breakfast and pizza lunch. Due to the amount of material we will be covering, we have to start promptly at 9:00 AM. We are Located in Mishawaka Indiana at Virtuoso Distillers, 4211 Grape Rd, Mishawaka (South Bend)

For more information contact

Steve Ross

steve@18vodka.com

Sorry

My email is steve@18vodka.com

Hi

Well we finally have nailed down a date for our Distilling seminar. It will be Sat. September 17th 2011 the class is limited to 15 seats and we already have 6 people interested the fee will be $160.00. the time is 9:00 to 5:00 and I expect because it will be very intensive I would be suprised if it ends at 5 so it may be longer. We will provide coffee and dounuts in the morning and a pizza lunch. We are going through the whole process from raw grain to bottling with lots of demos and hands on demonstrations. Our still is a Holstein 600 liter one that is steam operated. we have a total of 21 plates. We will using a reactor to cook a grain mash. We are located in Mishawaka IN right next to South Bend.

Steve Ross

Virtuoso Distillers

18vodka.com

Virtuoso Distillers is going to be offering an intense 1 day distilling workshop. We will discuss the history and theory and chemistry of distilling, and demonstrate the actual process of distilling going from unground grain to glass with all the steps in-between. all of the demonstrations will be live while there will be some power point visuals you will be able to see all the processes take place in real time . We will discuss Government regs, enzymes and malt. you will see the mash batch being created and deal with adjusting ph, we will do a distillation this will be happening concurrently so will see all the steps. You will see the bottle and labeling process. Some of the inhformantion you will get can be used diectley in developing a business plan Our starting time will be 9:00am and go till everything is finished which should be around 4:30 or could be longer. The class size will be a maximum of 15 people. The charge is $160.00. we'll have a dononuts and coffe for starts and pizza for lunch. We are not sure at this time which Sat in Sept, 2011 we will be holding the class but we wanted those interested to have a heads-up about the class, we will probably have a final date at the end of April.

Virtuoso Distillers

4211 grape rd.

Mishawaka IN 46545(next to South Bend Indiana

18Vodka.com

Email Steve@18vodka.com

Hello All

while the ADI has done a wonderful job of promoting our industry within its membership as well as PR. AS the micro dsitilling industry matures I can see we will need additional resources. The time is comming when we will need to have our own associaton that will work on the two most important issues we face. they being state laws governeing how we operate, licensing and fees. The second is the distribution network at present it is not fair and often handicapes us. the old system needs to be changed wheter it is to be able to self distribute with state license fees which havee used to control competition for the big distributors so that they don't cost thousands of dollars a year or some other form of micro dsitilling legislation. Now we do have to deal with state by state rules but with a cental organization we could come up with a uniform set of laws and work to get them past state by state. we need a central reposityory of each states laws so we eqach use them in our state to get each state up to some consistent legislation. Its time to start thinking about this collectively

Steve Ross

Virtuoso Distillers is going to be offering an intense 1 day distilling workshop. We will discuss the history and theory and chemistry of distilling, and demonstrate the actual process of distilling going from unground grain to glass with all the steps in-between. all of the demonstrations will be live while there will be some power point visuals you will be able to see all the processes take place in real time . We will discuss Government regs, enzymes and malt. you will see the mash batch being created and deal with adjusting ph, we will do a distillation this will be happening concurrently so will see all the steps. You will see the bottle and labeling process. Our starting time will be 9:00am and go till everything is finished which should be around 4:30 or so. The class size will be a maximum of 15 people. The charge is $160.00. We are not sure at this time which Sat in Sept, 2011 we will be holding the class but we wanted those interested to have a heads-up about the class, we will probably have a final date at the end of April.

Virtuoso Distillers

4211 grape rd.

Mishawaka IN 46545(next to South Bend Indiana

18Vodka.com

Email Steve@18vodka.com

Virtuoso Distillers is going to be offering an intense 1 day distilling workshop. We will discuss the history and theory and chemistry of distilling, and demonstrate the actual process of distilling going from unground grain to glass with all the steps in-between. all of the demonstrations will be live while there will be some power point visuals you will be able to see all the processes take place in real time . We will discuss Government regs, enzymes and malt. you will see the mash batch being created and deal with adjusting ph, we will do a distillation this will be happening concurrently so will see all the steps. You will see the bottle and labeling process. Our starting time will be 9:00am and go till everything is finished which should be around 4:30 or so. The class size will be a maximum of 15 people. The charge is $160.00. We are not sure at this time which Sat in Sept, 2011 we will be holding the class but we wanted those interested to have a heads-up about the class, we will probably have a final date at the end of April.

Virtuoso Distillers

4211 grape rd.

Mishawaka IN 46545(next to South Bend Indiana

18Vodka.com

Email Steve@18vodka.com

WE have a never used 500l alembic charentais still for sale. We recieved is with some dents from Portugal and upgrsde to a column still, so we never used it, It cost over $9500 deliverd to us we are selling it for $5500.00.

Contact Steve@18vodka.com

First what are you mashing? there are liquification enzymes out there that will do what you want. check with novazyme they will have one that will work for you

steve

I've been recieving lots of email from them and I might like to take a class or 2 but their prices are just too high at around $700 a day for the week being $3500.00.

Unfortunatly there is no such thing as a hobby distillery unless you are interested in running a distillery to loose money. The federal laws governing distilling are very specfic it is Illegal to distill without a federal permit. You should go to one of the seminars given by the German still makers before moving forward. As for corn most are good just don't use any pre treated corn used for seeds that may have herbicide. I am in Indiana, South Bend Mishawaka if you would like you can visit my Distillery. Email me off the forum.

Steve Ross

I have had a very bad experience with them. Armindo is very good at responding but their shipping method was horrendous it took over a year to settle the insurance claim for extreme damage and basically after the settlemnt its a total write off so I lost Over $5000.00 over the settlement