coop

We also order direct from Vitro, We can order direct from saver but with a few wrinkels. One you have to pay in advance the other is in order to get a better price you need to have at least a 10 pallet order. Lots of bucks their. They would not even take a guarantee from our bank for payment on delivery. Coop

We do here in Colorado, along with Vitro. Vitro does us a good job. Easy to work with and we can buy in single pallet orders. Coop

We are definently interested here at Colorado Gold Distillery in Cedaredge Colorado. Coop

After you take your column apart and spend hours cleaning and re furbishing your packings. You will see why we use plates. I can clean and refurbish my 16 plate still in about 1 1/2 hours total. Nothing to take apart so no need for new gaskets and no chance of breaking anything. CIP system is the only way to go. Coop

My filler has been re built for Free and works great now. 4/01/2010 Coop

Thanks Ken, looks like another wannabe distributor. Coop

We take our cases which also have dividers also, put a few inches of popcorn all around our sealed case and ship a box in a box. The 2 inch of popcorn give extra protection from the miss handling of boxes. You can never be too safe. If you can drop it 5' and feel it is ok then ship. coop

We use Carbon Activated Corp 1-310-885-4555 Coop

Got the book at my local library. Thanks, Coop

Things are going great here in Colorado. We are now in over 70 stores within the state and have been contacted by Southern Wine and Spirits about taking over distributions for us. We are now considering a stock offering to raise some capital. We decided early on that we would prove ourselves first as it would prove to investors just what we have accomplished in just 9 short months and removing many of the problems with a start up company. Has any one ever looked into this? We are looking at the offering called a SCORE type. Thanks, Coop

Not at all, heat is heat. Electric i think is safer than gas unless your boiler source is far enough away. Our boiler is about 50' from the still and is in a sealed room with outside source for combustion air. Coop

Colorado allows it also, thank god.

Yes it contradicts what I am doing, they would want to say you cannot do that just let us stock and sell your product but you will be paying a wholesaler. The on line liquor stores DO NOT have a distributors license for each and every state either. One cannot buy at a cost of over $200,000.00 a distributor and liquor license for each state. We are not selling over the internet. We are selling to customers who want to ship a bottle to friends or someone calls us and ask us to ship to another friend. We do not ship to liquor stores or distributors. We only ship to certain states which ship to Colorado. If they can ship to Colorado then we can ship to them. I think it has something to do with the rights to ship wine between some states which have a reciprocating agreement. What is good enough for them is good enough for me. Coop

Just retail, we self distribute here and to ship to bars and stores the mark up would be way to high. It cost about $40.00 to ship a case. We are not reducing our price per bottle and then their mark up would out price it. Coop

We here in Colorado tried for 6 months to get UPS to make all of our deliveries to no avail. I got so many answers as to why they could not do it it made me sick. I went to FED-X and within 10 minutes had our account set up and have been shipping with them every week. With UPS i even went so far as to go on line to an on line liquor store in California and ordered a bottle of whiskey which UPS delivered to me in 5 days, had the delivery man sign and open the package to verify what it was and all they did was just to say we did not ship liquor. Their corporate people are so far off that it was silly. We ship to 29 states all of which were on the ship to states from that California company. If they could do it and if you are in one of those listed states then we can also ship to those states. We are shipping about 10 gift boxes a week and are real happy. The UPS rep came by last week and was flabbergasted by what we are doing and again had no answers as to why they could not ship for us but could and are shipping for them. I told him it was discrimination pure and simple. Coop

Thanks for your quick responses. I do have at least two valves open at one time and open another section before closing off the one I just cleaned. I also clean at 130F to 140F. I have noticed that while running the pump the supply hose from the still tends to collapse when it heats up and becomes soft. This I think should be changed to a reinforced hose thus assuring a full supply of water to the pump. Thanks again, Coop

For those of you who have a Bavarian Holstein still I was wondering if any of you are or have had problems with the brass fittings connecting the CIP cleaning system to the still columns. I have had two of them crack and leak after about 8 months of operation. I think their is a flaw with them where maybe the pump is putting out too much pressure on the fitting when the heated cleaning solution is being pumped through it. Any thoughts??? Coop

First I would check with Vitro. They would not make a bottle unless it had screw cap available. Coop

You guys are making me cry, all that added expense and trouble. We were so lucky here. All I did was to invite all the fire department personal, 25 of which my wife taught in school, down for a work night training session at the distillery. First I gave them all samples to get off on the right foot, then we toured the building so that they could see what was going on and where. They then devised a plan that if their was a fire it would be started in the building next door, a counter top manufacture, They would enter the rear of the building where the bourbon was stored for aging by cutting a hole in the roll up door and save only that corner of the building. Every thing else could burn down but for gods sake," save the bourbon at all cost". Coop

First you need to decide on a bottle as your label will need to fit it. Then the label design comes after that. We here at Colorado Gold had a very talented lady artist work hand and hand with us taking our ideas and putting them down then created our label from that. The cost was about 350.00. Then the printing company she works with got us quotes on the labels them selves. Worked great. Coop

We get one of our bottles pre packaged the same way but carton does not accommodate our bar top. Coop

I would check with Briess Malt and Ingredients Co. 1-800-657-0806, www.briess.com. Coop

In Colorado we pay 1050.00 per year and a one time filing fee of 1000.00 Coop

You may also help by having an agitator to keep the mash moving, if it keeps moving no scorching but controlling temperature is important.

If you are going to cook your mash as we do and at this elevation, 6100 feet above sea level, our water boils at about 180, and we use a direct steam injection method to heat with, should this not cook off any chlorine contained in the water used for mashing? We hold that temperature for 1/2 hour to make sure we are cooking all the starch out of the grains we can then we have to cool it down to 145 to add our malted barley or risk killing the enzymes we need to convert that starch to sugar. We then have to further cool it down to around 95 before transferring it to our fermentation tanks which at this time we cast our yeast. Within 3 to 5 days fermentation is complete. Our town puts in only just enough chlorine in to make it legal. The water we use to make our cut is first run through a activated charcoal cartridge then we use another activated charcoal filtering system before bottling. Everything seams to be working just fine here. Maybe I am missing something? Coop