Silk City Distillers

We did some work with a number of the cream base suppliers last year.  A couple of friends asked us to help try to develop a commercial coquito.

Their product was great, but it was also completely unstable.  It was home-made style.  It would separate quickly, it would clump up.  Fat would clump at the top and block the bottle from pouring.  Spices would fall out of suspension and sit on the bottom.  It was nearly impossible to re-mix in the bottle without a jackhammer once it was cooled.

It was also not shelf stable at room temperature, it would spoil, even ferment and blow tops.

Ironically, they were super proud of all these issues, because they were all the hallmark of a home made product.  Look at how good it is!  You need to stick a knife into the bottle to get it to pour out!  (facepalm) But all of these benefits also meant that commercializing this was incredibly difficult.  Cold storage, microbiological stability, emulsion, separation, distribution, shelf-stability issues, best-buy dates, etc etc etc.  All this work for what would at best be a very seasonal product.

They couldn't accept the fact that a commercial cream liquor base was the solution to all the problems, but it meant reformulating their product into something that it could never be.  They eventually gave up.  Not sure how anyone could compete with all the coquito bootleggers out here anyway.

The folks up at Creamy Creation in Paramus are awesome - they are the leaders in the space.  They stopped in to hang out with us with one one day, and brought a bunch of incredible samples.  Their cream base was delicious.

Why not just do your final filtration on the pump to bottling?  

The filter on the bottling line is nice to have, sure, but it's more like insurance vs. production filtering - taking care of any stray dust or particulate that might have made its way into the spirit prior to bottling.

Because RO, RODI, and Distilled Water no longer contain antimicrobials, often times it's necessary to add something back to prevent growth of microbes.

You ever wonder why the distilled water in the household section of the grocery store usually has a red cap, and a warning to not drink?  It's because it's not been treated with any kind of antimicrobial - chlorine, bromine, etc - and could contain some kind of hazardous nasty.

It would be OK if these things were packed sterile, but that's not the case.

Usually, you'll see recommendations about not storing this kind of ultra-pure water for long durations without taking some kind of precaution.

Algae loves this stuff.  

Yeah, usually it's the higher pressure in the pot holding back the condensate draining.  The pressure drops as you move higher in the column.  Typically you might see something like a P trap and a dip tube on the boiler to ensure the drain is submerged.

Just my two cents on playing with malt and unmalt rye, not sure anyone else has had a similar experience.

Malt rye - spicier

Unmalt rye - fruitier

Though with enough time on oak, spice eventually dominates.

Some of our first ryes were heavy on the malt - but in a desire to work with a local farmer, we eventually settled on 100% local unmalt.

One more point, as above, 100% unmalt - we take it up to 190-200, we tried lower, yields suffer dramatically.  Unmalted grain needs time and temp.

Old thread back to life - time machine.

In terms of haze formation - RODI and Distilled are likely equivalent.  However, distillation not always better than RO/DI - like you said, devil is always in the details.  Distillation not always effective when we're talking about volatile compounds in the source water:

http://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/html/g1493/build/g1493.htm

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No one piece of treatment equipment manages all contaminants. All treatment methods have limitations, and, often, situations require a combination of treatment processes to effectively treat the water. Distilled water may still contain trace amounts of the original water impurities after distillation.

Removal of organic compounds by distillation can vary depending on chemical properties of the contaminant. Certain pesticides, volatile solvents, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as benzene and toluene, with boiling points close to or below that of water will vaporize along with the water as it is boiled in the distiller. Such compounds will not be completely removed unless another process is used prior to condensation. See the section in this NebGuide on treatment principles for further discussion of ways distillers may remove VOCs. 

 

Not sure I'm following exactly.

Are you saying that for your storage report, under the Vodka column.  You show an amount under the "2. Deposited in Bulk Storage" and then the exact same amount under "17. Transferred to Processing Account"?  Maybe occasionally (month-end) - you have on-hand amounts reflected?

If so, I'd say just change your process going forward, why bother going back and amending?

Maybe @dhdunbar can weigh in on whether or not it's serious enough to go back and amend previously submitted reports.  To me it seems inconsequential that your clear spirits reporting took a pit stop over on the production report.  The numbers are accurate, and it's certainly not impacting excise tax calculations.  Technically it's a valid reporting "path".  The only real offense is overcomplicating the storage report.  Is it worth opening a can of worms to resubmit?

I wouldn't stop reporting on the storage report after the change, I'd just submit with a few token zeros.

Given that "bulk" is considered one wine gallon and larger, we've always filled out storage reports.  Obviously everything in a barrel is going to be reflected on the storage report.  If you buy or make neutral in bulk, and draw down from that volume occasionally (small gin run for example), that's going to exist on the storage report.

Generally, for unaged spirits, our production cycle has it starting and finishing within the month.  So out of the production report, they move directly into the processing report, and don't check in and out of the storage report.

For example:  distilling vodka (production) -> transfer to processing (processing and bottling).  If it sits in the bottling tank for a few days before the bottling run - I don't reflect it on the storage report.  Occasionally, bottling gets delayed, and we'll run over the month-end.  Slap my hand, but we've still never shown this on the storage report.

I’m about an hour or so south.

Here is one of this month's experimental releases.  Even with COVID, we're almost sold out at the 2 week mark.

60% Wheat(30% Weyermann "Chocolate" Roast Wheat Malt and 30% White Wheat), 40% Corn - 18 months in a 15g.  It's amazing how much bittersweet chocolate comes through from the Weyermann malt - it's like dark chocolate brownies.

Our customer base is amazing in that they allow us to produce crazy whiskies like this.  If we had to make the same thing every day, it'd be really boring.

(We also released a beechwood smoked straight malt whiskey this month too).

On 4/3/2020 at 12:13 PM, JakeH said:

Wondering if any of you have done anything at smaller scale in your plants for R&D and pilot production?  I’m thinking of putting together that capability at something like 20-30 gallon scale so we can test out small mash bills without using the bigger equipment. 
 

Are any of you doing this?  Any recommendations of affordable and capable equipment at that smaller scale. Thinking the still part will be easy enough, but mash tun?  Could use the still for mashing perhaps. 
 

Any thoughts?

I get it, we used to run small pilot batches on our little 15g test still all the time.  We quickly graduated past that.

Consider running full size pilot batches.  That's what we do now.  Our experimental batches are sold as limited edition releases at the distillery and tend to move very, very quickly.  We generally sell out in a week or two.  Our customers love them, limited edition release days attract a pretty significant crowd for us.  We almost always sell them in 375ml sizes - which is perfect for someone wanting to be a little bit adventurous.

This also lets us gather a good cross section of customer feedback.

To accelerate the process, consider aging in barrels 1/2 or 1/3 the size of what your production barrel size will be.  So, if our target is 30 gallons for aging, we'll lay down 3 10g or 2 15g.  If our target is 55g, we'll lay down 3 15g (1 year) or 2 30g (2 year)

There are some assumptions inherent in this - that you have a pretty good idea of the target mash bill - and are likely only tweaking past the initial batch, etc.  You are also investing at least a year or two in the R&D process - but really, you are going to need to do this anyway - why not make it profitable?  The sales of the limited edition product generally helps fund the new product development cost.  So from a scale and experimentation standpoint, this takes what would be sunk R&D cost and makes it into a profitable endeavor.

Big grain cap is healthy and expected in a grain-in ferment.

Punch her down once a day if you can.  We have agitators on our fermenters so we can spin them up for a few minutes to mix in the cap (which inevitably reforms in an hour or two).

The reason you probably didn't get a cap at a 90f pitch temp, is because yeast were so stressed the fermentation was likely sluggish, and didn't generate enough co2 to raise the roof.

Winemakers deal with the same issue when fermenting with skins.  They punch down the cap to keep it moist, which retards mold formation.  Our fermentations are short enough that we aren't going to have mold issues in most cases, so if you just wait for the cap to drop, you'd be ok.

Fun for us is when it's so active, the fermentation pushes the cap right over the top/sides of our open top fermenters (Metalcraft style).  The lids don't stand chance.  Those mornings suck.

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So a temp could be dialed in where fores end, then heads/hearts transition.  Then another where hearts/tails come it.  Of course the rate would drop off which is the indication the transition is coming and you can watch/taste switch containers. 

Auberins makes a cool little "PID-Style" Distilling controller that a few folks have used with some success - it does what you are talking about.

https://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=53&products_id=559

Downside is - we're talking about electric control only here, not steam (I tried to get Auberins to produce a 4-20ma version that could be more flexible, they weren't interested).

But for something like a simple electric gin rig - you could wire up this controller up to give you a little bit more convenience - since it can control the heatup process, cut points, and shut down.  The more advanced version can control multiple elements or even control your product condenser water flow (on/off).  Running gin from neutral - once you've got it dialed in, it's as simple as filling and flipping switches.  Our gin runs are incredibly repeatable, down to a few minutes total run time.

If you are distilling all manner of whiskies, rums, washes, wines (all at different ABV) - something like this becomes significantly less useful - as the temperature set points will vary dramatically (and you won't necessarily know them before hand).

23 minutes ago, DrDistillation said:

This is what has been talked about on that site a few times but video showing how to do it get removed then admins step in with PIDs can't be used to control a still type comments.  That's what I was referring to.

Usually, when people say this, they are responding to people who are trying to use a PID to control the kettle/wash temperature - which can't be controlled with a PID.

Just to be clear - whether you are using PID or a thermostatic valve - the control is of the dephlegmator temperature by varying the coolant flow.  While vapor temp is certainly impacted through this process, it’s not directly controlled.  This is how the controller in the video is working.  Vapor temp is just being monitored, not controlled.

Vapor temp is impacted indirectly, two steps removed:

Increased Dephlegmator Flow Rate -> Increased Column Reflux Rate -> Column re-equilibration at higher reflux ratio -> New Lower Vapor Temperature (you know this, I'm sounding preachy)

While vapor temp will be held a bit more stable than if you simply kept flow rate constant, the controller won't target the specific vapor temp and hold there.  Picking a specific dephlegmator set point temperature will not always yield the same vapor temperature at the same point in the run.  I've found that the Wash/Wines ABV is actually the wildcard variable that comes into play.  At a given dephlegmator temperature set point, if you increase the wash ABV, you will decrease the vapor temperature.  Or said another way, the vapor temperature is a function of the dephlegmator temperature and the wash/wines abv.

Just sharing my hard earned knowledge.

We are lucky to have a resource like Dave Dunbar.

Good god people 

HAND sanitizer

You don’t bathe in it like champagne.

I've never really had much success in trying to directly control vapor temperature.

While controlling vapor temperature would be the ideal case, I've found that the control logic would need to be much more complex than simple PID control - mostly due to dead time and the fact that the control function is likely nonlinear.  Consider that what you are really controlling is the column reflux ratio, and it takes time for the column to equalize to the new reflux ratio - and then be reflected in the vapor temperature.  

Controlling dephlegmator temperature via flow rate is far easier from a controls perspective.  I've been running this for a few years now and it gives me quite a bit of flexibility in control.  What happens when you maintain a fixed dephleg temperature, the coolant flow rate increases as the run progresses (more coolant required to maintain the same set point) - and the reflux ratio increases through the run - so the output speed falls, but output proof is more stable.  Fairly easy to run a low temp at startup, to quickly load the column, compress heads, take heads at a very high proof (usually 190 for me).  I can then increase the dephleg temperature and drop the proof dramatically, through hearts.  Finally once we get into late hearts, I set a cooler dephleg temp, and it allows me to push back tails a bit further than if I just kept a constant temperature.  I feel the higher reflux ratios - higher proof output - makes the cut points "clearer" if you are doing it organoleptically.

Back to using the vapor temperature as your process variable (PV) - the issue seemed to be dead time associated with column equalization.  I could get it working reasonably well one day, only to have it fail spectacularly the next.  Input coolant flow rate and temperature needs to be rock solid and consistent, otherwise you have to deal with variable dead time - a complete killer for process logic.  I toyed around with the idea of a kind of simple step logic system, not PID based at all - but simple logic control - if vapor temp > set point temp, open coolant by 1% and wait 10 minutes, repeat until set point reached.  Realistically, it seems far easier to just code up the control logic in a plc or little mini computer (arduino, etc) - this way you could build in all the constraints, etc.

Back to dephleg temperature control - the nice thing about this, input coolant temperature can vary without upsetting the system.  Our rig uses recirculating coolant for the condensers.  Depending on the time of year the chillers can't necessarily keep up, so the coolant increases from the start of the run to the end.   PID easily compensates for this by increasing the flow rate.  Easy Peazy.

So after thinking about vapor control for a while - I came to the realization that it would just make more sense to use a single overhead condenser.  Run a PID on the overhead condenser and coolant tank to keep a constant reflux temperature.  And use a proportional valve to vary the flow between column reflux and product.  The home distiller guys typically call this liquid management.  I believe this is the way the Genio and iStills work.  Easier to decouple the reflux condensation process from the reflux proportional control - the control logic/process becomes far more simple - even though the physical still design is a bit more complex.

If I were to go down this path.  I'd use an oversized reflux condenser with a small ballast tank.  I'd use a PID to control the overhead condenser flow rate based on the (small) ballast tank temperature.

I'd probably use a solenoid based system to control reflux/product ratio, varying between flowing liquid back into the top plate of the column, vs exit as product.  I'd use an additional product cooler on the output, since I'd want to run the ballast tank temperature far hotter than I'd want my product temperature.

With this, I'd target vapor temperature as PV and control the proportional distribution.  Feel like with a fixed ballast tank temperature, and the ability to alter the reflux flow far more quickly, not to mention a consistent dead time - this would work far better.

But who has the time to play around with all of this stuff?

Local target was stocked full of the good stuff, the high-end boutique Purell, at a big $2.99 for 8oz pump.  Not this no-name generic stuff.  We only sanitize with top shelf.

The karmic value of giving all of ours away far exceeds any profit we could have made.

Distilled spirits are all about sharing a drink with friends and family, the very thing we can't ever do with social distancing.

So, the quicker we win over the virus, the quicker we can come together again, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be over a drink.

Vendome makes a continuous GNS redistillation rig that takes as input 95% and produces 96% as output.  Takes a tiny tails cut through the bottoms product drain.

Most folks don’t put them in the cheater camp.

Sanitizer manufacturing is sucking down ethanol now that isopropyl is hard to get.

This has forced cosmetics and pharmaceutical makers to move upmarket and buy a lot of what was in the beverage market, even though some of it was significantly more expensive.

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Does anyone have a comparison in flavor profiles from using backset vs. lactic acid to lower their pH?

Very very very different.

Backset is doing much more than just adding acidity - it's adding nutrients, carboxylic acids, heavy alcohols, buffer capacity, etc etc.  Typically, backset creates a more robust, complex, rich flavor profile in rum compared to simple acid adjustment.

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  I currently add acid to a 4.6 pH and this ferments fine, but I’ve read of folks going lower and higher (presumably to encourage or discourage bacterial growth?)

Adding acid to bring the starting pH to around 5.2 is typically enough to give yeast a head start over bacteria and prevent a pH crash.

We have a Spirax culinary steam filter on our DSI tun, however we don’t treat.

Its not the filtration that’s an issue, it’s the boiler chemicals.

It’s arguable that you don’t need filtered steam for mashing, since it’s not technically direct food contact.  Particulate won’t pass through distillation.