Silk City Distillers

Logistically, seems like way more work than just pumping out. You've got to pull the barrel rack, set it down, pick up the individual barrel, transfer it, drop it, dump. Seems far easier to just pull the rack, set it down, and pump out. We use a small 1" PD pump, works like a charm.

I've never found cane spirit to be truly neutral, even commercially sold neutral, or even cane vodkas. Seems to always retain that rummy top note as a characteristic signature. Always seems to come across as a very very light rum. Not saying this is a bad thing, plenty of other neutrals retain distinctive flavor or aroma based on the fermentable. Other than further processing of your cane spirit, additional distillation, carbon, you'll likely need to find a way to adjust the botanical profile to play nicely with the base spirit. What comes to mind for me, is a warmer profile gin vs a cooler/citrus gin. Might be fun to experiment with some of the warmer botanicals used in a spiced rum (cinnamon, allspice, clove, cubeb, anise, vanilla, etc) - as many of these work very very well with a rum profile. I've been dying to try a falernum-inspired gin, lime, ginger, almond, clove, allspice - a cane spirit base would be ideal here. Gin basket is the fix for delicate botanicals - if you are still feeling you are getting stewed flavor profiles as part of a basket, the next step is really complicated - vacuum distillation. We felt this to be the case with cucumber, even in a basket it's impossible to get a clean, crisp cucumber - to me it always seemed muddled - sure, cucumber, but not like biting into a cucumber on a summer day. Vacuum distillation? On boy. Talk about botanicals in high fidelity.

Grain or sugar?

Anyone following the brewing microbiology world and the growth/prevalence of Norwegian Farmhouse Yeast styles (Kveik)? Anyone using today? Fairly unique yeast "styles" compared to typical pure strains - I say styles since most Kviek are multiple strains / mutated strains blends, not a single genetically unique strain (like we use today). As a family, they are being described as a previously undiscovered branch of brewing yeasts. Working w/ one yeast lab to do some rum trials using Kveik strains, because from my perspective they seem fairly well suited for rum. High ester, remarkably low off-flavor/fusel production at high temperatures (90f+), fast fermenters, POF- (No phenolic off flavors in distillate, clove, bandaid, burnt). Hornindal is one of the more popular strains - heavy/intense tropical fruit ester profiles - pineapple, mango, citrus. Happy to about 14-16% alcohol, happy to 98f. For people struggling with temperature control w/ uncontrolled fermenters, it seems like a godsend. Typical recommendation is to pitch into 86f or higher. The home-brew market is out of their mind about the kviek strains, even seasoned home brewers are shocked at how good their beer is, without any concern for temperature control, in fact, many are saying the hotter the better, pretty atypical. Even extreme cases, pitching into 100f wort, finishing beer in 2 days. Fairly interesting stuff, domesticated yeasts that are genetically distinct from common "industrial" stains we use today. We're taught that generally, serially repitching the same strain of yeast is "bad" as mutation starts altering the strain characteristics. In this scenario, that serial repitching created a new set of domesticated strains, with unique characteristics.. From the attached: Also, analysis of the volatile ester profiles revealed the kveik yeasts produced above-threshold concentrations of three yeast fatty acid esters: ethyl caproate (pineapple, tropical), ethyl caprylate (tropical, apple, cognac), and ethyl decanoate (apple) (Comuzzo, Tat, Tonizzo, & Battistutta, 2006; Verstrepen et al., 2003). One or more of these esters was present at above-threshold levels in all of the kveik yeasts. Phenethyl acetate (honey, floral, yeasty) was also detected at above-threshold level in 5/25 kveik strains. These data suggest that kveik yeasts present a potential new option as POF- ale yeasts with a range of intensities of desirable fruity esters. 194969.pdf

Proof would need to be fairly low to be concerned about sterile filtration to prevent spoilage, but have heard of some microbes that can remain dormant in higher proofs, so ok - it's a factor. Sub micron has more to do with light scattering as it passes through the bottle. It presents more as a kind of very light opaque haze than as visible floating particulate. Not talking about floc, clouds, etc. I've seen this with carbon filtration, where the spirit on the shelf has a kind of gray tinge, due to sub-micron carbon particulate. Murky maybe? I can pick it out pretty easy when I'm looking for it, especially in a bright store, with lots of bottles side-by-side for comparison. To me, visually, sub-micron has a kind of sparkle to it.

Pediococcus - nice call

Larger is better - grain mashing is time and labor intensive. Increasing volume doesn’t linearly increase time due to the setup, rests, heat times, cool times, breakdown, cleaning, etc. Mashing more is faster than mashing more often. It’s tough for us to mash 2x a day, however, we can easily distill 2x a day. So our tun and fermenters are 2x still size. This also gives us a nice upgrade path on still size. All that said, we are currently looking at a 4x mash tun. That fits a nice 5 production day schedule when we are cranking a single product line.

Yeah I thought the same thing.

I made an edit to my post, was looking on my phone and didn’t see the relays below it clearly. It would be a simple on/off system if it was controlled.

ABB MS132 is just a straight manual motor start contactor - there isn’t any kind of SSR/Power controller that can vary proportionally that I see, the AF16z below is it a simple on/off providing remote control.

5 amp draw against 20 amps expected sound like they might be 480v three phase elements. 1/4 the current draw would be expected at half the voltage. Not an electrician, just something to check.

Yeah and expect some confusion on the formula submission. I don’t think many people are thumping through Apple sauce.

Dunbar is correct, the only extract will be volatile flavor components. No need to proof via distillation.

Smaller (tighter) the filter, the prettier the spirit looks. Something about the sparkle, clarity, brightness you get from sub-micron filtration that makes the spirit way more visually appealing. We are totally crazy, because we see nothing wrong with going as low as .22, or .1, with brown spirits.

https://bdastesting.com/services/ I suspect you are going to get even more sick of paying lab fees, when you see what a typical lab is going to charge you. Work in weight, not liquid volumes, everything by weight, get good scales. Do your gauging of your unblended source alcohol. Blend your water, sugar, flavor, by weight - be accurate, neat, no losses, no spillage. The end result, proof, will be accurate, every time. Your sanity cross-check is bottle count vs expected. You can argue that there might be unaccounted error due to process variation, but I'll argue you aren't accurate if you are holding a batch in an open tank for a week while you wait for lab results (unequal evaporation).

Also why you are more likely to see hammer mills vs. roller mills. And the concept of a beer well, a kind of surge tank used as the feed tank for the stripping column (instead of feeding directly from fermenters). Usually a beer well will have a mixer to keep the liquid/solids well suspended, but also to de-gas CO2 (remove bubbles) that can cause headaches with foaming and non-condensible gasses.

The bottoms product from a continuous stripping column (beer still, analyzer, etc) and the stillage from a batch distillation from wash are the same. There is no filtration involved in most stripping columns, they are designed to handle the solids load. You might, however, find more alcohol in the batch distillation stillage, but that's simply procedural.

CCR Engineering perhaps?

I’m beginning to wonder if strains like (Kluyveromyces) Lachancea thermotolerans were are of the overall microbiome - numerous studies citing its ability to reduce acetic acid. You know as well as I do tamping down acetic acid and ethyl acetate are critical in allowing some of the rarer - noble - esters to shine though, lest they be sacrificed as part of a large heads fraction, or even just overshadowed.

Base of it off of average botanical weight per finished bottle and work backwards from there to scale. You'll need to adjust by taste based on your first trials. Alcodens for the blending calculations. Ultimately, you are extracting a specific amount of flavor compound into a specific amount of liquid. If you have the same concentrations of the same flavors in the end-product, it's the same end-product. There is no indication that any kind of reactive distillation is taking place in gin. While people have noticed differences in scaling upwards - I think it's worth noting, the geometry of the still, baskets, vapor infusion - etc etc - these geometry differences likely play a major role - especially in the case of Carter head stills. The botanical bill likely scales linearly here, however, the impact of geometry may not. The other factor to consider, that complicates this, is time under heat if you are talking about maceration. Increasing boiler abv typically means longer distillation times, meaning more time to degrade temperature sensitive botanicals in the mix. If you run faster to compensate, you are also increasing vapor speed, which may impact vapor extraction (if you are using vapor extraction) - so see what I mean by the geometry?

Boston - I think the major clue was in one of your pieces on Java. Bingo, microbial 'terroir'. So, what's the bug? (sorry, I don't think it's pombe).

I know the rack punch history, but from a pricing side the highest prices fetched were flavor, fragrance, and blending stock, no? Like the highest ester rums, they weren't necessarily intended to be directly consumed. This one was fun - advertisement from 1760.

Historically, it looks like there was quite a bit of variation in the fermentation stocks used for these "Araks" - Sugar Palm, Coconut Palm Sugar, Cane Juice, Molasses, etc.

Not to mention, there is literature pointing to "red rice koji" in arak potentially being Monascus purpureus, and not Aspergillus sp..

I take back my earlier statement, after doing a little research, it's actually far more likely that the rice and koji represent a methodology to store and propagate yeast and bacterial cultures in a sustainable way. Think along the lines of sourdough starter cultures. Koji being necessary to hydrolyze starches into sugars to feed the bacteria and yeast. By sterilizing (steaming) rice prior to inoculating w/ mixed-culture koji - it's equivalent to step starting a liquid yeast culture. The aspergillus isn't the magic, it's the yeast and other bacteria that exist along side it. Koji is fairly portable, easily stored. While not sterile, as a thousand+ year old method of propagating yeast starters, it's a pretty good approach. Looking at a few of the current "mainstream" brands - they actually use minimal amounts of rice in their product. "By the Dutch" Battavia Arak specifically indicates it's used as a culture starter. The challenge is, you can't replicate this using only koji. The koji is only the enabler here. The important "stuff" is the other yeast and bacteria co-existing in their starter cultures. Suppose you'd need to get on a plane and ask to have some. Think of this as the equivalent of the muck/dunder pit. You can put fresh dunder in a tank, call it a pit, maybe you'll get some bacterial growth depending on the environment - but without the right bugs, you don't get the right result.