Jake Holshue

I have heard about old shiners using sweet feed (a blend of corn, barley, oats, and molasses) to make whiskey from. Can you do this legally from a TTB standpoint? Since the product is not intended for human consumption, can you distill it and sell it?? Did I miss a thread somewhere on this? I assume you cannot as I cannot find any commercial examples of this. Jake

Ginger-Spiced Rum..... I believe Tim Minchin had something to say about this.....http://youtu.be/KVN_0qvuhhw Tinge of the Ginge Haha!

While I have no experience (yet) with herbs/botanicals and absinthe, I can tell you when I make my gin. I do crush my botanicals. I think it intensifies the flavor of my gin (versus not crushing it). Regarding enzymes, yes alcohol will denature them. BUT generally only if the alcohol concentration is over 70%. So I guess it depends. I feel an experiment or two are in order to really define if crushing makes a difference. In my mind, if these flavors are so volatile that opening the maceration to air is harmful, they probably wont make it out of the distillation process.... Good luck!

Yes thank you Charles@AEppleTreow, and everyone else for pointing me in the right direction. I have left the distillate open to the air for the last 48 hours and the smell has almost completely gone away. I am interested in trying the hydrogen peroxide prior to distillation, and using more copper in my primarily stainless small batch still. Cheers!

Well my small batch still has very little copper, so it did not have much contact with it during the vapor stage. So that could be part of it. But I am also airing it out to see if the sulfites bond with oxygen and gas off.

So I just tried to distill some wine on the small scale to investigate to potential of doing some brandy. I did not remember to ask the vintner if it had been sulfited or not. Well I got my answer, and it had been sulfited. It smells awful.... Can someone talk about sulfites and their effect on potential distillate? Is there a way to remove sulfites? Can you only distill unsulfited wine? Thanks! Jake

Even when you think you have enough hats, they ask for more... and more... Stickers, coasters, are good to give out especially when people buy a bottle or two. You'd think shot glasses would sell well... but they don't. Our hoodies and our sweatshirts do well too.

Getting back to the lautering of your rye, do you use any enzymes? Rice hulls? Do you use any clarifyers to drop solids out of suspension?

Yeah whats up with flavoring with sulfuric acid?

Wow very informative, thanks for the input!

So what you're saying is for 300 liter batch. I would need around 18-19 lbs of juniper??

Obviously I do not want to come out and ask what everyone's gin recipe is. But what I am asking you is to point me in the right direction. I am just trying to find the ballpark figure of how much total botanicals are needed for gin. I was given the number of 20-35 grams per liter. I think this recipe comes from homedistiller.org, and I don't know if this holds true or not. I am planning to macerate in the kettle overnight, and my kettle holds about 300 liters. Any help would greatly be appreciated! Jake

Thanks gents! I think the temp is the issue here. We filtered our product around 3 C, and most likely didn't give it enough time to warm up. Cheers!

We had an issue with a very few bottles of our first batch popping the cork off of itself. The thing is it only happened to 10 out of 540 some odd bottles. Any thoughts on why the corks wanted to jump ship? Jake

We have a grain-in system, with agitators in the fermenters as well as the still. Its my understanding that agitation helps prevent off flavors the yeast tend to lend to distillate when they get hot, as well as prevent scorching. Our tanks are 12 hectoliters and our still is 300 liters, so we have to do small stripping runs. IMHO, if you want to create a product, do as the Romans do. Old school bourbon was distilled on the grain. I think it would be hard to prove a definitive difference taste wise. Good luck!

We currently offer just our vodka, but we will have 3-5 or so releases a year (for the foreseeable future) keep the ones that work and retire the ones that aren't a hit. Vodka, gin, brown gin, absinthe, whiskies of all kinds, rum. I will be a busy guy! But we are limited by our batch size too. I think you need a blend of both monotony and spontaneity too. Breweries are a great petri dish for this kind of marketing. Montana has great diversity in this manner. We have Rough Stock in Bozeman making great whisky, Ridge Distilling making gin and absinthe only, as well as many small players trying to dabble in a little bit of everything (like John up at Headframe Spirits in Butte). To each their own, and success to all!

I do know a guy here locally that swears by fermenting/distilling ginger beer for addition to a Moscow Mule cocktail. I have never tried it because every time he makes it, it is gone before I can get over there! Good luck.

We use Novozymes after having really bad results with White Labs. White Labs always had issues shipping to us at a reasonable pace, and I just dont get the same results with them as I do with Novozymes. Plus be careful with White Labs enzymes instructions, there are two to three different dosing instructions with each enzyme. As far as chemicals, I go through Shepard Bros. Cheers!

Hello my name is Jake Holshue. I am the distiller at Billings' newest distillery Trailhead Spirits. We are distilling away in anticipation of our opening. Going to start with the obligatory vodka and gin, but have big plans to do many different small batch whiskeys, absinthe's, brandies, etc... Our building is a historic train depot, and has gone through many changes over the years. The owner, Casey McGowan, his great-grandfather owned a speakeasy in the Prohibition era in Butte, MT. We have named our gin after him- Healy's Gin. Our wheat comes from Casey's family farm up in Highwood, MT. Montana has some great distilleries, too many to name. But at least one in all the major cities, if not more. All of whom, so far, have welcomed us into the distilling community with open arms. I am using a Bavarian-Holstein system that is working out (although the kinks are still getting worked out). Hope to ask and answer many questions on this forum in the near future.