Silk City Distillers

Why did you write all of that when you could have just said you agree with me?

Mashing, fermenting, and distilling in a single vessel? Bottleneck. Reconsider.

Distilling is far more forgiving than brewing with regards to negative bacterial contribution and need for sanitization or sterilization. This is evidenced by the lack of a tradition of boiling wort or wash to sterilize, antibacterials (hops), and distilling's longer tradition of open fermentation. What brewers are only today beginning to embrace about wild yeast, bacterial contribution, open fermentation - these have been standard procedures in distilling, whether the distillers knew the benefits or not ... or even knew why. Keep in mind, though something like an acetobacter infection is a disaster in beer or wine, it's a nuisance in distilling that results in a larger heads cut (lower yield). What might be applicable to brewing or wine, might not be to distilling, and vice-versa (brettanomyces comes to mind, which I think is a disaster for distillers). The exact same procedures for wild yeast capture for brewing directly apply to distilling, spend some time with brewing communities like Milk the Funk (Facebook Group). While it's easy to isolate the yeast strains out of these, it's very difficult to match the bacterial strains. There are some brilliant, brilliant, backyard biologists involved there (and plenty of PhDs too). Like Lloyd says above, and he's right, replication becomes very very difficult. During fermentation, bacteria will die out, certain yeast strains will dominate, others will die. We've fermented with lots of yeast that you would never find in the traditional distilling world. Torulaspora, Metschnikowia, Hanseniaspora, and others. We have a few test batches that were co-pitches of the above plus traditional yeasts alongside some interesting bacteria that I absolutely love. Two things I've learned that are a bit of a disappointment. Distilling is a rather coarse process, it's very easy to lose some of the subtle flavors created during fermentation. Esters tend to bunch together, meaning if you take a heavy heads cut, you lose everything you worked to create. I concur about acetic acid and ethyl acetate being a major problem. It's very easy for high ethyl acetate to "crowd out" the other esters during distillation. You are forced to take a wider cut, and by doing it, you cut away too much of many other esters. I too tend to review the literature on specific bacterial strains to understand which tend to be the lowest acetic producers, this is really really important. The other is that aging is a double-edged sword, and probably the most disappointing - subtle flavors tend not to survive aging. Almost three years back I did some incredible higher-ester whiskies using English ale strains. Fruity, floral, very interesting. By the two year mark, it became very difficult to distinguish between traditional whiskey strain batches. Based on the glide path, by year 4 it might be completely indistinguishable. They may evaporate off, they may form other more complex compounds or longer chain esters, but they don't stick around. I've considered doing test batches with miniscule heads cuts, in order to create aged blending stock that hopefully retains some of these flavors after maturation. Again, too many projects, too little time. That said, blending is key key key here. Especially talking high ester and heavy rums, back to the original topic. Keep in mind the goal of these processes IS NOT TO MAKE FINISHED RUM IN ONE SHOT. It is to make blending stock, to be blended with other, lighter, cleaner, other rums, to produce a finished product. Hell, even if high hogo funk town is your goal, you are still blending. Nobody is drinking Hampton DOK and enjoying it. The other factor that favors blending, it's very difficult to establish tight consistency with some of these bacteria. Certain strains of clostridium are strict anaerobes - good luck managing strict anerobic starters, purging with nitrogen to eliminate all dissolved oxygen is a requirement). Consistent starting cell counts would be very difficult outside a lab. The end result is going to be a fairly wide range of ester concentrations. Creating a wide range of mono-culture (bacterial) aging stock is probably the safest approach - eg. Lactic acid ester based blenders, propionic blenders, butyric blenders. Same could be done with heavier alcohols in the tails (isoamyl alcohol makes beautiful esters). Want a rum that tastes like buttery, nutty, banana bread? Lactic esters are your friend, as are the isoamyl alcohol esters. - Go ahead and build it from the ground up. Again, no lack of projects, complete lack of time.

Steam doesn’t need baffles.

Is there an air vent on the topmost port of that jacket? Air is a very good insulator. The port locations do not appear condusive to forcing air our the condensate drain.

Is the mash tun insulated or not?

And keep the mt jacket on when the hot water goes back in. This will help keep temps up, hopefully long enough to gel that corn fast. Order a pizza it’s going to be a long night.

Dump the water - or pump it over. Heat water to boiling in the still and pump it back over.

Ball trap, dang. Ok well I was really hoping for an easy fix.

Really think that trap is backwards.. Bucket traps haven't changed in decades.

I also have a similar style trap (Armstrong) - it does look curiously backwards. What’s the make and model?

Do you really think there is some sort of strain-specific phenomenon? At the time most of these bacteria were in the very broad 'bacillus' category. Clostridium is a fairly common soil bacterium, it's arguable that in the history of muck pits, there were likely multiple strains involved. Propionibacteria are every bit as interesting as Clostridium in mixed culture fermentation. I might try to argue that the propionic acid esters are more "rummy" than butyric, which are largely just "pineapple" - yawn, boring. It's fairly easy for me to create pineapple-bomb like rums with clostridium. Arguable that to some extent, many of these bacterium are producing their own unique ratio of our favorite carboxylics, the specific selection of bacteria directly influencing ester ratios in ways the old guys could never imagine. Combine this with the Rochte/Berglund approach to catalytic distillation, and can control the process in ways never before imagined.

I’ve spent 3 years working on mixed culture rum. Getting your hands on cultures is the easy part. Don’t believe everything in the old rum papers. Some theories are outright wrong, some are right but for the wrong reasons, some are right but the non-standard terminology make it difficult to understand what they mean (eg. what’s “low wines” and “high wines” mean in high-ester rum distillation), and just about everything not from a direct source is a misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or just complete nonsense. Half the fun of old rum is trying to decipher the mystery.

In obvious quantities, it's a major fault. The game is to create and capture the esters, but not the acids. You've got 3 opportunities to create esters from the acids, fermentation, distillation, and maturation. Even still, it'll be there. Spend some time with some really funky Jamaicans and you can pick it out amongst the funk. Some of the “buttery” flavor of old rums is butyric in very low concs. Butyric distills primarily in the late tails, but starts to pick up as ethanol concentration starts dropping quickly near the end of the run.

Miyarisan C. Butyricum from Japan. It’s a well studied strain from a biological perspective, used as a probiotic there - so you have no worries about botulinum toxin. Readily available, you can buy it on eBay or Amazon, ferments glucose, produces enough butyric acid to hate yourself. Most of the lab culture suppliers have numerous strains available, but you will need to propagate from slants.

You have a source for this?

Formic Acid is a carboxylic acid that can form an ester with ethanol - ethyl formate. This might have potential flavor implications for the distillate. Has a rummy, winey, cognac, heady aroma. Sulfuric may have implications as well. In the old Arroyo papers, he utilizes sulfuric acid to adjust pH for his heavy rums. I often wondered if the reason was simple economy, inexpensive and smaller quantities needed, or if using sulfuric acid drove higher levels of ester formation during distillation, as would be characteristic of the style. Mineral acids like sulfuric are Fischer Esterification catalysts during reflux, and can drive higher levels of ester creation during distillation.

Ran across this a few months back and thought it was an interesting alternative to using straight whey. The premise is to use lactose-converted whey as a substitute for a portion of water in a grain mash. This somewhat solves for the issue of very low alcohol yields. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030215009480

Yeah, I'd also assume you could infer the concentration by measuring the temperature at boiling point at a specific pressure. It might be easier to do this under vacuum. Measure the boiling point of a laboratory tested sample - and compare subsequent samples to this boiling point. The BP is not likely to be a simple linear function though, so you wouldn't necessarily be able to easily determine the concentration, unless you had a table to compare against. That said, you could just get some 200 proof ethanol, some heptane, mix them in known ratios, and test the boiling point of each at a specific pressure. Then, plot out a graph of the boiling point vs concentration. However, this is pretty crude, assumes only a binary azeotrope, adding water to the mixture complicates this immensely. So old solvent that has absorbed water, will likely read as having a higher percentage of heptane than it actually does.

I thought the cannabis extractors didn't care about heptane in their denatured alcohol, since in the rotovap or vac still it distills with the ethanol and doesn't remain in the product. It forms a difficult azeotrope, that's why it's used for denatured alcohol. Seems like heptane denatured ethanol is becoming the defacto standard for tax-free ethanol in that market. https://ultrapure-usa.com/marijuana-solvent-extraction-botanasolv/ https://710spirits.com/tell-me-more/

Cointreau is known to be made using beet ethanol. Stroh from Austria was widely reputed to be "rum" distilled from beet sugar. I hear that many French Liqueurs use beet ethanol as the base.

Nobody really considers the u-tube densitometer an analytical tool, it's a productivity tool. It does not tell you anything you don't already know, or can't determine with a glass hydrometer and thermometer (more accurately), it just does it faster. The value of the tool, and why so many people invest in them, is time savings and ease-of-use. Sure, the larger benchtop units give you a very accurate and reliable measurement, but even in this case, it's still not new information. While the expensive benchtop units are more about assurance (insurance?), the handhelds are about time, and time is always at a premium in a craft distillery. Paar probably sells hundreds of handheld units to every benchtop unit.

Call your local elected representatives and let them know it’s impacting your business.

SR/46edv was isolated in France from beet molasses fermentation. It’s goal is high ethanol yield fermentation, with low congener production. In addition to beverage production, it’s also sold for fuel ethanol. RM/edv493 was isolated in the Carribean from Molasses fermentation. It’s goal is a congener profile characteristic of rum.

Edv493 is Distillimax RM, I think it makes a nice rum. I don’t like SR - aka 46edv. You can coax a clean white rum from ec1118 - aka Distillamax LS.