Roger

most self storage do not allow flammable or combustible materials. I know when you store a car you are only supposed to have enough fuel in the tank to drive it in and out.

That's a lot of volume for 440k without a mixer, which is part of the delay. Once it gets going it should be fine. I think the biggest problem as mentioned above, is that you have a thermometer in the pot, and you are looking at it. The only two devices you need to run the still are a thermometer at the top of your column, and a hydrometer in the parrot. You don,t really need the thermometer in the coulmn, but it gives you something to watch, other than the clock. Crank up the heat prost

Hoochware - Best bang for the buck.

If I might:. One thing you have all no doubt seen is the success of companies like High West, Angels Envy, etc... I believe those type of companies point out the market potential of "Craft perception" associated with decent products. And no I don't want to get into the argument about if any of them actually produce their products (grain to glass). Let's for a second pretend that they do because regardless, they sell good spirits. Therein lies the rub: can you get by with a great facility and plan, if your products are not close to perfect ? I would argue that the answer is no. That you can plan all you want, and make your facility look great, but if your end products are not as good or better then the thousands of like products on the market, as well as cost competitive, you will struggle or fail. Alternatively one way to keep going while your products mature (or you get better at the craft) is to run a tasting room/Distill Pub environment (which may be all you ever need to do). However I strongly feel that the saturation that is occuring in the "Real Craft"and "Fake Craft" market is rapidly deteriorating the get rich quick market that so many people think exists. Another help is if you are in an area where there are no other producers and you have a sufficent population to help float the "local" aspect of your products. However they still better be very good and price competitive, and you need to hope that someone else doesn't open up around the corner. You need to take the long view, and have the initial capital or tasting room cash flow to wait out the 5-10 years that it will take for your brands and products to mature. Or as mentioned, you can run a cool Distill Pub, if your State allows it. My suggestion is to not need to be a distiller, but to want to be a distiller, and if you must, have at least 1 X the burn fund of your entire infrastructure budget. This will allow you to both operate day to day, as well to stock/mature sufficient product for potential future sales. Then consider that like most business, it may fail anyway, and you need to be able to absorb that loss. Its a great industry, but it is just that, an industry. Most industries have more companies fail than succeed, and most fail due to lack of operating capital while waiting for potential break even sales. Also keep in mind that there seems to be a push for distributors to lock up craft producers with promises of sales, and once signed, essentially do nothing. I wouldn't be surprised to see that as being encouraged by the big producers. prost

Paul As I was drafting my original post above, I was thinking of you and how important your "moonshine heritage" is, and as such was very cautious to not paint moonshine or moonshiners as "wrong" in any shape, manner or form. In fact I would equate Moonshine as the one true American craft spirit. Nor was I comparing Craft Moonshine production to Vodka production. We make vodka (on one of your great columns) but that's not what we really aspire to, nor is it even 10% of our product base. We make Brandy, Rum, Bourbon (straight) , Wheat Whiskey (straight), Bourbon barrel aged Corn Whiskey, and Vodka The one thing we however do not make is Moonshine. We do not make Moonshine for one primary reason, and that is because there is so much bad white product out there masquerading as Heritage Moonshine, that it has given the craft distilling industry and Moonshine a bad name. I can tell you for a fact after working in my tasting room for 3 years, there is one constant comment from customers, and it always goes something like: "Wow, I assumed your products would suck, because I've had.......", which ultimately ends up with their describing their journey into craft distilleries across the county selling "moonshine". The thing is, it's not really Moonshine (because there of course really isn't a definition of Moonshine) and arguably most customers have not ever had a real Moonshine. What they instead typically have tried is yet another "craft distiller" trying to pay their light bills by selling the first raw products that there shiny new stills spit out. That is bad for the industry and I believe it's bad for the serious Moonshine distillers. Real Moonshiners who have taken the legal path, need to look at what is happening to their brand, and non-Moonshiners need to be aware that attaching themselves to a brand in turmoil is not necessarily a good idea. So once again this is not an attack on those distillers who embrace and actually set their sights on producing Moonshine. This is a commentary on a problem in our fledgling "legal industry" with perception by the masses.

Yep, I am aware of your hypothesis, that the 20+% is the potential market for "craft". What I was mentioning is that a wonderful intent may in fact be hindered by a moniker that is perceived as less than desirable by the bulk of said market.

I will probably hear back on this, but here goes: It's all good stuff, but my own opinion is that the very name of your organization is in and of itself part of the problem with broader acceptance of our craft. No offenses to those out there who produce moonshine, but I can count on one hand the number of people I know that have ever bought moonshine, and even then it is usually as a novelty or gift. There are no doubt areas of our country where moonshine is local/historical and I am sure it does fine there, but that market it incredibly small in relationship to the issue at hand I.e. How do we regularly serve 20% + of the US population ? We also know that many new distillers start their journey by selling "white whiskey" while they are waiting for their real whiskey to develop and mature. Even that is problematic, because most consumers find moonshine harsh, and once they try it they paint all craft spirits with that "harsh brush". Many new distilleries end up with a bad reputation, just because they are trying to move their first products out the door as "moonshine" instead or waiting for it to mature. Moonshine is a fine product, and those who make it well should be proud of the heritage that goes along with that product. At the same time, if there is an effort here to push craft spirits on the populous at large, you are potentially harming that intent by attaching the initiative to a product category or name that is not universally accepted as of significant quality. I understand the "cute name" idea behind this, but to me it is an automatic fail for any serious distillery that is trying to broaden their market base into the mainstream.

Every time I see one of his posts pop up a vision comes to mind of a big puff of white smoke blasting out of the window of a high rise followed by a skinny little dweeb, arms and legs flailing as he plummets to the earth below.

Didn't catch the name.

Just took a call from some Bevis that went something like," I retired from the marine corp after 20 years and started a large craft distillery, did great for several years, and then the craft industry went wild and crushed me, so I stepped back and built a relationship with 100's of distributors in the US over the past few years....... sign with us and sell 1/2 skids and skids at net 45, after you pay a one time $3500- fee to set up the program to distribute galactic wide...... Guy sounded like he was 20 years old, working in a call center. I wasted 7 minutes of my life. Don't make the same mistake.

I was referencing the concept pushed by some in the industry, and that you will find in other threads on this forum, that some fake craft producers feel it should be "buyer beware" , and that customers are somehow not worthy of knowing what they are buying just because they don't know all 2400 pages of the CFR. As for "crap craft pushback" somehow being a negative to the craft industry, surely you must not sample much craft beer. If you did, you would know that taste is entirely subjective, and does not need to fit the cookie cutter profiles that Big Bev wants customers to believe is the only thing worth drinking. Its trully sad that some consider the non-standardized flavor profiles of true craft as somehow being wrong, or that one must use bulk "natural flavors" that are in most cases only "natural" because the beaver's ass the flavor came from is "natural" (look it up). The only think a craft distiller really needs to Concentrate on, is once you have a product that has been generally accepted by a reasonably sized cross section of customers, you need to be able to replicate that in a volume that fits your business plan. When people get used to expecting a specific flavor, they expect it time and again. You can always push towards new and different flavors, but you should maintain the flavors of the successful sellers.

Agreed, but more to the point, no one knows what the front of the label means, if producers continue to push the narrative that it "doesn't matter" and / or the customer is so dumb, they deserve to be deceived. The beer industry is going through fake craft pushback, as will the distilled spirits industry.

Contact Signature Spirits. The have all the product you could possibly want at various ages.

Can't you just turn on your still, pour the NGS in the top and drain it out the bottom ? Why are you even bothering to go through the charade of running it ?

Pose the question at our next NYS Distillers Guild meeting. I assume you are a member, as the guild has been the driving force in the NY industry for the past few years.

Which brings you to the moral of the story: "Count on spending at least double what you budget for, and have your sales be less than half."

Just curious. Why would you boil a malt mash ? Seems rather distructive to the natural enzymes ?

Paul - as you well know, it's not easy for a independent craft distiller to make a good Vodka in house, even with great equipment like the column you designed for us. It took us literally months to perfect everything from fermentation, through stripping process, through re-strip, through Azetrope, through chill filtration, through chill reduction, and on, and on.... All the way to a gold medal in a real "non -honey boo boo" NY competition. It would be a lot easier to just buy it in 250 gallon totes for 44 cents a bottle, but we refuse to lie to our customers by using the smallest legal font of "100% NGS" alongside the giant font "Hand Crafted".

As per Mark Twain there are 3 types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. The problem with using NGS is when companies lie about it, and when they are challenged, they claim that statistically it's ok, because other people do it to. i personally don't have any problem with someone using NGS. What I have a problem with is when they market it as "Hand made with local ingredients" when the only local ingredient is the water they add to it, so it doesn't blow up their still when they warm it up, to legal claim "distilled by". So statistically speaking, I don't care if they join a guild, but they better not compare their Mr. Bubble NGS to a craft spirit, becuase that's a "damn lie."

Without taking any position on the contraptions viability in the market place, I will comment on the "brain teaser " you seem to be having with continuous flow to the mini still thing. Just hook it to a keg of beer. If it's a really really tiny still, just feed it a can

I just had a COLA for a Distilled Spirits Specialty kicked back for the 2nd time because I put on the label :Distilled from Wheat. TTB insists that because a product source is not required on a DSS, that to put one on, is potentially confusing to the customer. This is the 2nd of two (so far) identical products (vodkas infused with natural ingredients) and the first one which is identical in formulation and labeling (except different natural flavor ingredients) is 6 months old, and on that label the TTB demanded that I put Distilled from Wheat on the label Because we distill our NGS/Vodka from grain and/or fruit in house it would seem that as all vodka is NGS and all continuous distillation of NGS follows: §5.39 Presence of neutral spirits and coloring, flavoring, and blending materials - (2) In the case of neutral spirits or of gin produced by a process of continuous distillation, there shall be stated the name of the commodity from which such neutral spirits or gin have been distilled. The statement of the name of the commodity shall be made in substantially the following form: “Distilled from grain”, or “Distilled from cane products”, or “Distilled from fruit”. From that, one could infer that the first TTB agent got it right for the first label, and the 2nd one got it wrong ? In todays hyper conscious society of food allergies, particularly with Gluten sensitivity (whether viably carried through Azeotrope or not) we have always felt that it is best to advise our customers of the base ingredients. I believe the TTB allows distillers to claim "does not contain gluten" on products that are corn based. It seems strange that they would allow a distiller to advertise that their products are "gluten free" but not allow distillers who are being conscientious, to alert their potential customers of something that they may have either a real or physiological aversion to. Has anyone received label approvals for DSS's where this has come up, one way of the other? tks

I can never quite grasp the nuance between distillers who don't actually do anything other than warm up someone else's distilled spirtis, and bartenders. Oops, I mean mixologists.

What I meant by that is if you run your strip down to 10% ABV coming over, you are left with aprox 4% of your total original alcohol in the stillage, which you can dispose of, or use some segment of, as backseat. Example. You have 10 gallons of raw alcohol in your 100 gallons of beer. You strip down to 10% ABV at the parrot, and you are left with aprox 4/10th of one gallon in the stillage. Your results may vary depending on reflux efficiencies. The last quote I got on NGS was 44cents per bottle. That's why fake craft vodka for $30- a bottle is such a profitable scam.

We make our own GNS / Vodka, Gin base etc, what I don't quite understand about your question is how or why you are losing 10-20% X 3 runs ? You should be getting initial Aprox 5.1 PG per bushel and the only thing that should be waste is your heads, a little tails and some minimal stillage left in the bottom. In you first run (stripping run) you should lose nothing but what's left in the pot (aprox 10% ABV) which is probably like 4% of the total. The next run (column run) should be less than 5% heads, keep all your hearts, pull off the tails seperate, hold and dump back in your next column run. Take that down to 10% again, and you have 4%+/- waste. Cut your NGS down with RO water, and run it all through your vapor path. It shouldn't have any heads or tails, if your water is clean. Dispose of the 10% wash in your pot (4%)+/- of total. Rinse and repeat, trash your tails after 4-5 runs (or barrel it for something really special). Your yield should be close to 80% final alcohol. Now, if you can make money on that at wholesale, is a totally different question. prost

Sadly, I shall never regain the 15 minutes of my life I just wasted reading this thread. Best of luck. Over and out.