Stumpy's

We separate our spent stillage and used to send the liquid/fines down the drain....miserable. We would have to get the 1k gal septic tank pumped every couple of months and the septic cleaning guys HATED us. We've since gone to a "settling pond" type operation (which was fun to get approved by the county)...similar to what cattle and hog farms use. This works very well as long as we keep pH neutral enough to promote healthy digestion of the fines in the settling pond. We do drain the pond every once and awhile to dig it out and apply to land with a manure spreader....works pretty well but obviously doesn't always smell the best!

Dumped, as in dumped the barrel and packaged...sorry. haha.

We've barreled some as low as 88 proof....some of the best stuff we've dumped.

That seems like a really high ABV for pure pot w/ low dephleg interaction. What type of hydrometer are you using to check your proof and are you temp correcting? Sorry for the basic questions but those seem like crazy numbers. If you're using a calibrated hydrometer and temp correcting, you've got once heck of a pot on your hands!!!

Ballparking without doing thermal calcs and knowing flows....30-40 tons with a 3k gal buffer tank should do the trick.

I'll toss in my +1 for SD. They've been great to work with!

That gets a bit into the "design" aspect so I can't go into great deal about it, but what I can say is that in the condition the still was sent to us (manufacturing flaw, design flaw, however you want to cut it up), it operated in a way that the pot shoved a portion of its contents into the base of the column, plugging the column and making the vapor path impassable (or largely impassable) for new vapor being generated in the pot.

I've been incredibly reluctant to post in this topic or any other topic regarding this company, but the time has come. We had a very bad dealing with Corson Distilling and are still working through issues and problems that this particular transaction has inflicted upon our business. Below is an article that was just posted by the Idaho Statesman....the same news source that posted a gleaming article about Corson a year ago (original article referenced in the link). I am the "Adam Stumpf" and "Stumpy's Spirits" referenced in the article, and the video they posted was taken right after our Corson still blew the hatch off on the first full production run...please excuse my frantic nature in the video. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the situation I cannot say much more, but would caution distillers and potential distillers who are considering purchasing equipment from this group to complete a bit of extra due diligence prior to committing to anything. I hope this post will save someone the trouble that we have had, and are continuing to struggle through. http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article187541748.html Adam

We got the load cell/weighing modules directly from Rice Lake...they have a bunch available here: https://www.ricelake.com/en-us/products/load-cells-weigh-modules/weigh-modules I purchased the GSE digital readout from Ebay.

SOLD

Forgot to mention...tank is single wall and open top with a dished bottom.

I'll give Hoochware another big +1. We use it for everything and love it.

We are selling our proofing tank. It is a great, easy-to-use setup. The sale includes a 480 gallon single wall stainless tank with 1.5" sanitary drain and valve, a GSE 335 digital readout with a relay (to turn water on/off), and 4x 2,500 lb load cells. We currently weight out to 0.01 but that can be adjusted for your preferred resolution. $3,500 F.O.B Columbia, Illinois 62236 For more info, please email adam dot stumpf at stumpysspirits dot com

Our Corson still had similar issues. Bottom seal on the gearbox was junk and all the oil ran out. We applied a "farm fix" to it and it has worked like a charm so far. I pulled out one of the oil sight plugs and put a grease zerk in its place. We packed the gearbox full of food grade grease and it has been working like a charm. Even if the seal junks itself again, being the correct material the "leak" issue will take a lot longer to show itself. We've done this on a bunch of gb's on the farm...the ones on the mower have been running for years like this. Just hit them with a few pumps every now and then. It also makes me feel MUCH better having something food grade in that box instead of gear oil in case of another failure...nothing nasty can make its way into the pot.

One thing you will want to build into your business plan is a sensitivity analysis to cover SOME of the "what-ifs". It will likely cross into the first 3 of the categories you listed above. As your business launches, this will help you understand how your business is operating relative to your initial plan and what you may need to do to course-correct if you have a problem. At some point in time, we all think "I am going to make the best hooch out there and it is going to fly off the shelves!" In almost every case, that is not true. What if your sales are 1/3 of what you project, it has taken you twice as long to get there and it costs you 25% more than you thought it was going to? Can your business model stand up to that? If not, you may want to tweak a few things to make it hold up in a near worst case scenario. If you don't plan for any downside, you are building significant risk into your model and may have some "oh $h#T" moments more often than you would like. On the flip side, what if your stuff sells so good and so many people want it that you have distributors knocking down your doors to sign deals? Can your team and your equipment keep up with it? If not, is it worth growing that quickly? How much will it cost to bump your production from 5k to say 25k cases per year and where does that money come from; equity, debt? A lot of what-ifs...way to many to really consider. I would just suggest planning for an upside and a downside and make sure you have a contingency plan in place for those. Cheers!

I'll definitely take some. PM'ing you now.

I'll take them if you end up having a few left over. Thanks, Adam

We have a little herd of them that rotates. Usually it takes about 1 week to get them back but we always make sure to keep 3 or 4 at the distillery to make sure we keep running!

We cut the top off 275 gallon IBCs and leave them in their cage. Work like a charm and easy to use with a forklift or loader tractor!

Is that a big Charles 803 w/ 2 deplegs?!?!?! I was going to set one of those up to finish out vodka on. How is it running?

14' 3" is what we have.

You should be fine without the air bleed. Generally, an air bleed is used for a high-point-press in the scenario that your system becomes air-locked. Generally, most distilleries (at least the ones that are our size) are running a small enough loop that that you generally shouldn't have to worry about that. Honestly, you could probably crack a valve on one of your process tanks to take care of any sort of air lock/dead head scenario. The check valve is nice to help with hammering and dead head. Imagine for a second that you are running your chiller loop and you shut it off. Everything will then drain to its lowest point without a check valve. That means that when you start up, say only the bottom 8' of your system has fluid in it so as soon as your pump fires, it is going to try to shove a ton of fluid into the air void above. This can cause issues with hammering and can eventually become destructive to not only your piping system, but also your circ pump. All of that being said, we run with a check valve and no air bleed, but do have a 15 psi PRV that connects our cold side to return side of the chilling loop, so it will kind of act as an air bleed as the system builds pressure. Long story short, your system will operate without either device, but for equipment reliability and repeatability, the check valve would be first priority with the air bleed/PRV as a second priority. These are just my $0.02 on how fluid systems work...please do not take them as gospel. Cheers! Adam

I'd agree with captnKB. We are currently running a 500 gallon pot and looking at adding a continuous column to run most of our whiskies on and strip a few of our products. After a few late nights with a spreadsheet and a few pours of bourbon, the only conclusion I could come to was that a big pot CAN (NOT WILL) run you broke. We are on our farm and have to burn propane instead of Nat Gas and have to run a fairly large water chiller. Our elec and propane costs are adding up quickly running this 500 gal pot. The quicker processing rate of the column (with almost no warm-up time) and the ability to use your beer as cooling fluid are pushing us in that direction.

Hi All, We are on the hunt for 1 or 2 pallets of Idaho glass bottles (750 ml). This is a stock design made by Piramal Glass. If you happen to have any leads or a pallet to spare, please let me know! Looking to purchase ASAP! Cheers! Adam Stumpf (618)281-7733 adam.stumpf at stumpysspirits dot com

We are also using a Kason centri-sifter. It is by far the best solution to separating grain from stillage that we have found thus far. Our farmer loves the quality of the grain he is getting off of it!