Silk City Distillers

Of my colleagues - most everyone is holding their ground.

Spirits sales are actually up, and sales at retailers in New Jersey have been fairly brisk.  From a market perspective, growth in spirits is strongest of all categories, and spirits are strongly up year on year.

We aren't selling hand sanitizer, but it's been a tremendous positive for us.  We did it for the karma, but it's been a better investment than the equivalent spend in advertising dollars.  We gave away more than 10,000 bottles.  We gained 10x that in new customers.  The experience of working with first responders was worth every penny.  The local community has been tremendous at supporting small business.

By the way - if anyone is considering this - our CCR runs like a champ - great deal.  This unit can be retrofit to a conveyor system in the future.

Damn, too bad, just picked up a brand new CCR a month ago.

If they want a dead man valve, just add one?  Use something like this and just add threaded to triclamp adapters.  Or thread some stainless pipe in as a nozzle, and use the triclamp on the other.  Easy-peasy.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224008286563?hash=item3427ef3163:g:W34AAOSwETxec5Yj

Really though, look into hydrosols and steam distillation.

Snap 51 will work just fine, just make sure your liquid is clean, and rinse the hell out of it after you measure mash.  I don't like using my DMA for mash, but that's just me.

As a discharge hose, it's going to be subjected to high temperature for very brief periods of time, we're not talking about extended time under pressure at temperature.  Will it degrade the hose faster?  Absolutely, that's why you don't use your good hose, even if it is rated for the temp.

EPDM, Silicone, whatever really.  As long as it's your discharge hose, you don't care if it's food grade either.  Just stay away from cheap PVC hoses.

If your obsessed about the max, top up your still with cold water prior to discharging, you can probably drop your temperature low enough to hit the top end of most common hose types.  Your pipes will probably thank you for it too, since most waste plumbing is not intended for waste so hot.

What length?  Are you in the states?  Discharging mash with solids, or just liquid?  Could probably find you a hose on ebay in a few minutes.

Making them is easy, finding the $10 million in marketing budget to be able to actually sell them, that's the tough part...  

Hydrometer, you might need to strain or settle prior to measurement.  We turn off the mixer in the mash tun and let it settle for a little bit, and usually skim off enough of the clear liquid "floating" on top to measure.

In a pinch, you can measure your final gravity with a refractometer, assuming you have an accurate measure of the starting gravity.  You'll need to find an online calculator to do the conversion for you, and it'll ask for both starting and current gravity.  It's not necessarily the most accurate approach, but will give you an idea of the overall trend during fermentation.  Or look at how active the fermentation is and taste it if you don't want to do with the glass floaty approach.

1 hour ago, DrDistillation said:

Stop cutting to big 5 gallon containers during the whole run.  Sure use one for feints when you KNOW you are in heads and tails.  Use one or many during the true center/hearts run but SWITCH to much smaller containers when you are near the cut over points.  Hell even switching to gallon containers and using a couple between heads/hearts and hearts/tails will allow you to evaluate them the next day and get a better understanding of where the cuts should have been.  Use that technique along with other data (temps and proof) for repetitive batches.  With 1/2 gallon to 1 gallon used to collect during the cut over points you will have more to look at an include/exclude. Track your proof and temps along with which of these you kept or discarded to feints gives you more room next time to fine tune.

 

Bingo

I think 5 gallons is far too big a fraction.  I would say even a gallon is too large for a 150g still.  Keep in mind, you only care about the fractions around the cut points.  Don't worry about collecting fractions of initial heads, center hearts, or late tails.

Just so I'm clear - you are collecting a full 5 gallons as "heads" on a 150 gallon still run?  If so, that's far too much.  You can't tip that container and pour it into your product/hearts tank, as it's already mixed early heads, mid heads, late heads, probably early hearts as well.

22 minutes ago, Mountain Brewer said:

"Think about this one.  How did the guys of old do cuts when they had no access to the spirit (no smell, no taste) but only had a spirit safe to work with using spirit and water?  Do you know how they determined cuts?  What did they look for on heads and tails?"

This is an easy one, because it's a trick question.  The guys of old did a shitty job at cuts.  Not having access to the spirit meant that cuts were by temperature and or time alone.  This created massive product inconsistency, which is exactly why there was such an emphasis on blending in the scotch industry, one that you didn't see carry over to American whiskies to the same extent.  Why would it?  There was no similar legal restriction put in place.

This is one of the major factors behind the concept of the blank run, something uniquely core to scotch whiskey production.  A distillation cut so poorly, it required redistillation.

Shocked why anyone would celebrate want to celebrate a "spirit safe" - I see people asking the manufacturers to replicate them.  IMHO - it's something that should be relegated to a footnote about time when the government forced distillers to make whiskey that was clearly of lower quality.  Celebrated by the same folks that celebrate the "demisting test" as being an advanced technique - not realizing that it was at best, a stop gap measure to try to achieve a more consistent heads cut - because they were prohibited from tasting the whiskey.

Fire away boys - I love to rattle the cage and upset the status quo.

My two cents, this is completely meaningless bullsnit that is probably best ignored.

There is no such thing as heads or tails.  Distillation is a continuum.  It's far too easy to simply classify all the first runnings, to a point, as "heads", then shift to "hearts" as a distinct fraction, then flip to tails at the end.

In what we would call heads, there is tremendous variation.  In tails, there is tremendous variation.  Don't think about heads and tails, think more about how wide or narrow your hearts cut is, and whether that cut leans early or late.

Narrow cut spirits are clean, easy to drink, especially young, but can sometimes be uninteresting, or lack complexity and depth.  When aged, they tend to come across as being 'thin' or one-dimensional.

Wide cut spirits care far more complex, interesting, have more mouthfeel, longer finish, but require age, and the wider the cut, the longer the duration to 'maturation'.

Fruit-based spirits, brandies, etc - would be boring as narrow cut spirits. For very good reason, the hearts cut on a brandy tends to lean towards heads.  Without the later heads fraction in a brandy, you would lose all sense of the base fruit.

Molasses based dark rums - would be boring as narrow cut spirits.  However, the hearts cut on a dark rum distillation tends to lean towards tails.  That's where you find the molasses, caramel, darker confectionary flavors.  Higher ester, funky rums, tend to take that already wide cut, and widen it even more towards the heads side.

Unaged spirits - tend to be narrower cut, lest they come across headsy or tailsy.  Some eau-de-vies tend to be headsy, some white rums tend to be headsy (wray and nephew).  Not sure I have a good example of an unaged spirit that should be tailsy (poor quality locally made spirits, "moonshines").

What I've found, is that spirits intended for short maturation periods, should likely be cut on the narrower side.  This tends to take the harsher edge off at the distillation time, versus during maturation.  We've seen good luck with narrow cut whiskeys aged 1-3 years, smaller format barrels (but not TOO small).

However, that main criticism you'll find, is that narrow cut spirits lack real depth and complexity, especially in the finish.  A wider cut can fix that, but requires more maturation time.  Just giving that narrower cut whiskey more time on oak does improve it, but still seems to lack "that special something".  Don't get me wrong, it can be good, but will always seem a little bit boring, one dimensional (as oak becomes predominant by far).  The opposite, a wide cut whiskey aged a short period of time, likely in a small barrel - is going to be a real challenge (read: not so good).

Based on what you've said, 900 gallons of a typical rye mash, to fill a single 53 at 113 proof, and especially one that you say is pleasant to drink off the still, seems to be like a very narrow cut whiskey.  If it comes off the still more like a grain eau-de-vie, it's pretty narrow cut.  White dog is called that for what should be obvious reasons.  Caveats apply here, maybe you are just seeing really poor yield, or are mashing at very low starting gravities, etc.  

Would love some other folks to chime in here, but 900g of fully attenuated rye mash, with a wide cut, would nearly fill 2 53 at 113 proof.  Would imagine that's what the big commercials are seeing as yield.

Some more worthless "knowledge" - if you can ever call it that..

For longer aged spirits, erring on the side of a wider cut towards heads is not a major flaw.  That sharper edge can/does age out in my experience.  Fruitier whiskies tend to have leaned farther towards heads, but alas "fruitier" diminishes dramatically during aging.

This is not true for tails, going too deep into tails yield a spirit that is unrecoverable through aging, you tend to have a bitter flavor that predominates - and increases over time, a kind of back of the mouth phenomenon that carries long into the finish.  There are numerous deep tails flaws, most of them tend to be funky, musty, bitter, etc etc.  Like I said before, deep tails flaws rarely age out.  These barrels tend to be included in larger volume blends.

Here is where it gets tricky.  It's easy to distill a narrow cut spirit, it's much more difficult to distill a wider-cut spirit.

If you collect in small containers to cut, you are making the cut decision based on the smell/taste of only one container, or the transition between a few containers - but not the smell/taste of the aggregate hearts blend.  Jars are great, we use them all the time, especially with new spirits.  But the jar is only the jar, and the jars are very concentrated compared the the aggregate.  If you cut by jars, especially with a plated still, you are going to err on the side of narrow.  The challenge is, to go wider, how do you determine how wide to go?  One jar?  Two jars?  10 jars?  That requires a lot of faith.

Whatever works, works, just don't use your good hoses for dumping hot stillage/dunder - no sense in beating up a good quality hose with hot/aggressive stillage.

UL Class 1 Division 1 - Explosion proof motor. remote mounted controls w/ sealed conduit.  C1D1 temperature probes/housings, etc.  Steam-fired.  We were in a picky jurisdiction, however they were fine with the nameplate tags and didn't require any additional system documentation.  Would be the equivalent of ATEX Zone 0/1 I believe.

My point wasn't clear, but it was that pushing for higher proof still charges isn't the only way to skin a cat.  Realize all the cool cats and kittens over in Europe love that higher-proof multi-shot method though.  We charge lower than you, 20%, but this is 100% vapor distilled.

We charge fairly low, so that our aggregate product proof is near bottling proof, with minimal water additions necessary to adjust to final proof.

Very much the opposite of many folks.

Looking for the 1000 liter size mix tank on wheels.

Thanks!

Gear pumps.  Desmi Rotan, Roper, etc etc.  These are not typically pretty looking sanitary style pumps, they are workhorses that can deal with the high pressure/suction requirements.  Guys down in the islands like them, as they can easily grind up and pass a mouse or other occasional rodent.

Regardless of pump, it's very difficult to pull suction/prime on cold molasses.  Even my big Viking lobe pumps struggle to pull enough suction to lift/prime.  If you have a pump that has flooded suction (no need to pull suction to lift up, out of a container), and warmer molasses, it's far, far easier.

We use use a forklift and gravity.

Do you rinse before running?  We'll usually rinse new cartridge filters with a couple of gallons of RO water, then drain the housings.  Caveat - we do final proofing after filtration, so the small amount of water trapped in the filter is accounted for.  We don't rinse with spirit, for us it seems dramatically wasteful, especially for aged product where it means we lose a few precious bottles.  The filtration we use during bottling is only to protect against stray dust or particulate that may exist in the tanks/lines during bottling.  Really just "insurance" filtration for bottling quality only.

If you didn't want to rinse with water, I could imagine a workflow that filters back to the original tank for a few minutes, before filtering through, this would allow any trapped dust or particulate to be returned back to the filtering tank, instead of into the final product.

Still though, I'd be worried about any particular off-flavors from the unrinsed carts. 

Scratching my head at the number of folks outright advertising use of aloe...

Truth - I can't imagine doing large scale botanical extraction in the boiling flask of my Buchi, and I even have the bigger 4l flask.

If you use a rotovap for botanical extractions, gin, etc - you tend to leave a lot of “flavor” on the condenser - which has a huge surface area.
 

The product in a rotovap is usually what’s left over in the boiling flask once the solvent is removed.  Thus the solvent side (condenser) doesn’t need to be setup for easy cleaning.

For solvent extraction, no prob at all, but if you use it the wrong way, like we do for gin, it’s a pita.

On 4/17/2020 at 12:19 PM, DBlakely said:

We are using RO to cut; however, the rum is cloudy still.  Thoughts?

 

Tails cut?  Is this barrel aged spirit or white?  If barrel aged, what proof?

Spare parts is what you need to focus on.

Not that spare parts for Buchi or the other high-end brands are cheap, they sure as heck aren't, but they are widely available.

Keep in mind though, at a certain scale, straight vacuum distillation is going to become a whole lot easier.

Rotovap is cool at small scale, but you are going to hate every time you need to clean the fragile glass condenser, which is basically every time.

NJ doesn't permit craft distillers to do contract work.