Silk City Distillers

If repurposing tanks is an option as well, and if you are dead set about Canada manufacture, DeLaval has been making beautiful sanitary dairy tanks, blend tanks, jacketed pasteurizers, etc for decades.  Bulk Tanks are easily repurposed as jacketed fermenters.  As a bonus, they are usually insulated as well.  Larger steam jacket pasteurizers are easily converted into mash tuns.  Most all of their tanks are heavy gauge stainless and will probably last a century, no tinfoil-thin stainless here.  Just a thought.

I mean, I've blown this thing so off topic, I'll just let it ride.

The increase in amino acids in the mash are key for higher alcohol (read: FUSEL) production.  Higher alcohols are key in ester formation.  Esters formed from Ethanol are pretty boooooring, it's the high alcohol esters that are where the flavor is at.

The metabolism of Valine by yeast results in Isobutanol, the metabolism of Leucine results in Isoamyl alcohol, Isoleucine to amyl alcohol.  Look at Table IV above.

Leucine for example, metabolized to Isoamyl Alcohol, interesting, now throw in Acetic Acid, those two as an ester is Isoamyl Acetate.  That's the big banana bomb you get with some bourbons.  Look at the low Leucine levels you get mashing with only fresh water, you'd likely never get a banana aroma without utilizing backset or finding an alternative way to increase amino acids in the mash.  Just as a hypothetical, you might need to get to the 4th generation of recycling before you hit that level.

Here is a good, easy to read primer on the impact of utilizing stillage, long term.

A little context, this was during the 1970s energy crisis, and the cost of evaporating stillage for feed was getting cost prohibitive.  So distilleries were dewatering and pushing liquid stillage reuse (sour mashing) to new levels.  In this distillery, they went from 40% backset to 70-80% backset.

Can you imagine?  80% backset?

Take a good look at Table 3 - It clearly illustrates the increase in fusel oil and H2S with long-term sour mashing.  You can also see the significant increase in ethanol yield, making the accountants real happy.

In addition, you can see the significant increase in amino acids, many of which are flavor and alcohol (good and bad) precursors.

Like I said above, sweet mashes make clean whiskey.

Having done both, it’s very hard to differentiate between backset sour mash and acidified and nutrient-dosed sweet mash.  The differences are subtle.  I don’t know about non-acidified mashes, because, well, why would you?  I’ll leave bacterial souring out for a moment.

I’ll say you can distill a cleaner whiskey from a properly mashed and fermented “sweet mash” base, this is a fact.

Backset adds 4 major components to a mash:

Acid - primarily carboxylic acids and primarily acetic and lactic within that category.  Also propionic, butyric, etc.

Nutrient - Backset is very high in nitrogen and yeast derived nutrient. 

High-boiling Alcohols - This is going to be the Propanols, Butanols, Isoamyl Alcohols.

Water - Worth mentioning.

Also worth mentioning the origin has nothing to do with hokus pokus, and everything to do with saving money.  Use less water, save money on acid, utilize nutrient that would otherwise require costly wastewater processing, gaining yield along the way. From the accountant view, it’s a win win.

Except, we are adding a greater amount of high boiling alcohols and carboxylic acids that would typically exist.  Put those together and you get lots of ester-based flavors.  Some good, some bad, but most definitely more flavors than would exist otherwise.

So running tight cuts and greater separation on a Backset sour mash is going to bring you closer to sweet mash, running loose in the sweet will get you closer to sour.

Bacterial sour mashing, in particular late lactic souring will result in a similar increase in carboxylic acids and corresponding esters as dosing Backset would, so realize there is a pretty interesting relationship across all these.

We haven’t even touched on Backset ratios, which vary wildly across producers. I’ll look back through my literature but I believe it’s wider than 5% to 30%.  So do you like 5% sour mash or 30% sour mash?  Would you even know?

Likewise, wooden fermenters that many of those producers use, full of bacteria, primarily lacto.  So you can’t even pigeonhole these guys into one approach, because it’s both.

There is no black and white here.

6 hours ago, Southernhighlander said:

I really like the buttery corn on the cob flavor of a good unaged sweet mash corn whiskey.

The most interesting part of this hot buttered popcorn, corn-on-the-cob flavor, is that it actually has absolutely nothing to do with the corn.  It's diacetyl, a fermentation byproduct, while yeast an produce it, in a sweet mash, it's more likely going to come from lactobacillus and pediococcus.  This is further amplified by short fermentation timeframes.

While a lot of diacetyl is a fault (though maybe not in corn whiskey), a little bit can really emphasize flavors of butterscotch, toffee, caramel, butter, as well as enhance mouthfeel.

2 hours ago, JailBreak said:

A little off topic but how would you produce that very first batch of sour mash?

You could sour with bacteria - typically lactobacillus.

We have two approved bourbon colas that explicitly state finishing in used casks.  Both included discussions with labeling for clarifications.

One is a bourbon finished in an IPA secondary fermentation cask - that took a little bit more discussion.  The other is a rum cask that was previously a new bourbon cask.

Yeah curious how the TTB allows sorghum syrup distillate to be called whiskey.

If you were going to leave it sit for 2 years, why wouldn't you use something like a 25g or 30g?

Non-distiller producers would meet the requirements?

Ironically, they don't designate a minimum age?

Excuse the mansplainin.

Just to be clear here,  the "Single" in "Single Malt' doesn't have anything do to with the Malt.   Single designates that the distillate was produced in a single distillery, and thus not a blend.

There is almost no direct equivalent of this designation in US law/regs.  You could argue that Bottled-In-Bond might actually be the closest designation, since it requires the distillate to be produced by a single distillery in a single season, but then BIB adds other requirements that are not similar to "Single Malt".

Thus, a Bottled-In-Bond Malt Whiskey would be the actual closest comparison to a Single Malt whiskey under the rules of the Scotch Whiskey Association, EU rules, etc etc.

I concur with MG, with 75 degree water supply it's difficult to get below 100 degrees without wasting hundreds of gallons of water.  More water than you could ever realistically save, reuse, etc.  That's with full jacket tanks.

We use both water and chillers for cooling.  Cooling from approximately 200f to 150f (corn gelatinization to malt addition) for example, city water is very efficient.  Big delta T.  Very fast.

From 150f to 100f, much slower.

From 100f to 80f, brutal, we use chillers here.

And we're up here in the Northeast.  Hell, I bet we could make a business case for shutting down production in July and August, just because of the increased cost of cooling.  In the depths of winter, with 50f temp on the water supply, it's amazingly efficient, and very easy to recover cooling water.

1 hour ago, Patio29Dadio said:

Thanks MDH.  That makes sense.  It isn't that I am over extracted, just not aged enough (although my wife would say that I am plenty of both!  Ha!).  

 This brings up a challenge in gauging when enough is enough in a small barrel.  I don't think I would have helped the situation leaving it in the new barrel any more time.  There was already a lot of wood... and the char was beginning to become an unwanted "smoke" note.  But the spirit was definitely not ready to bottle.  With the small new barrel it seems that a healthy time in an old neutral barrel before bottling is going to be required.  

This may have labeling implications.  For example, if you dump bourbon into used oak, the clock stops. At some point, you are going to wonder if it just makes more economic and operational sense to move to slightly larger barrels.

Economically, the price difference between 5g -> 10g -> 15g is minimal.  If you are dumping a 5g at the 6 month mark, and letting it sit for 6 more months, why not just age in a 10?  Likewise, dump a 10g at the 1 year mark and let it mellow for 6 months, why not just use a 15g?

If you can get it to entirely dissolve in a room temperature mixture of ethanol/water, it should be stable.  You'd need to go out of your way to create a heated supersaturated solution that would precipitate out when cooled.

Sounds like something else.

What kind of water are you using for proofing and to make your syrup?  Is it at least a good quality RO or RO/DI?

Citrus_Deterpenation.pdf

There are a few different ways to remove terpenes from citrus oil.  Vacuum fractional distillation is looked as the best process if flavor and aroma are key, but supercritical co2 extraction is all the rage lately - this is mostly driven by the marijuana extracts industry.  While there is a ton of journal literature on the topic, you'll find there is an almost complete lack of practical information on exactly how to remove terpenes from essential oils, as this is generally in the realm of trade secret, and the flavor/fragrance folks are incredibly secretive, I suspect nobody is going to tell you exactly what levels of vacuum, temperatures, and fractions make the secret sauce, there will need to be trial and error.

The easiest approach is going to be to acquire a deterpenated food-grade grapefruit oil from a good flavor house, and to add that as an additional step in your process.  I'd keep doing what you are doing, and use the additional oil to boost the flavor profile you are already achieving using your own extractions.  What you want to look for are "folded" oils, the number of foldings indicating the number of distillations and level of terpene removal.  Yes, this is such an obscure corner of flavor science that they've even made up their own terminology: washed, folded, 5X, 10X, etc etc.

Otherwise, if you want to do it yourself, you'll need to drive head first into some pretty gear-heavy chemistry, vacuum stills, thin film distillation, SFE extractors, rotovaps, etc etc.

This technique is at the pinnacle of modern craft distilling.

This is a tricky tricky tricky issue.

Citrus oils are primary complex mixtures of terpenes (like gins), where the ratio of specific terpenes will impact the distinction of type of citrus fruit.  The vast majority will be d-limonene, but there are dozens additional terpene constituents.  The terpenes will make up about 95% of a citrus oil, the other 5% though, is very important to the flavor and aroma (esters, aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, etc).

Problem with terpenes is, they are easily oxidized, and they are not well soluble in alcohol.  You seem to have run into both of these already.

So, doing what you are doing, to add more flavor will require getting more terpenes in your final product.  Which means more louching, not less.

And keeping that flavor there will require you to ensure that as little oxygen as possible makes it into your final product.

You can increase the proof to increase the solubility of the terpenes, you may be able to increase your flavor at higher proofs, but this might be challenging for vodkas.

For clear citrus beverages with high water content, typically you would utilize a deterpenated citrus oil.  This would include everything but the terpenes, or sometimes less of the terpenes.  Using a commercially produced flavor might cross a line for you, but the fact is, to increase the grapefruit flavor, you need to remove the d-limonene to the point of eliminating louching, though maybe not entirely, if you like the flavor profile as is.

You can, of course, create your own deterpenated grapefruit extracts to use in your vodka.  This is going to require some additional time, effort, and equipment.

Assuming decent quality NGS, any potential spirit heads cut will be minuscule compared to your gin heads cut (initial juniper bitterness and louching) in volume.  Not to mention, there is no reason to run plates on an NGS gin run, so the possibility of making any real spirit heads cut is really just non-existent.  If you were starting from a non-neutral grain whiskey base, this might be very different.

Your overall botanical load (grams/liter of finished spirit) as well as your production style (vapor distilled vs macerated) is going to have a major factor on any initial "gin-heads" cut you are making on your finished gin run.  High botanical load macerated gin is going to require cutting a bit more than a light botanical load on a carter head still, unless of course you aren't looking to reduce louching, or you are looking for very bold (risking bitterness) flavor profile.

Assuming you've run gin before, you'll note that the first runnings of the still are very bitter, very juniper, and are very oily (will louche notably with water additions).  You'll need to experiment with where you make this initial cut, because it's also significantly high in flavor.

All that said, there are probably a hundred potential variables involved, so take any advice you get with a grain of salt, since every rig will run differently.

Did a double blind tasting of vodkas with 20-30 other distillers.  Smirnoff won.  Plastic bottle Popov commanded a very respectable position, I believe Svedka did as well.  I won’t say what the craft distillers ranked as the worst vodkas.

You'll won't laugh at my stupid examples above after I tell you that they are all real vodkas.

I didn't even mention the low-carb vodka made for bodybuilders and health conscious people.  WTF?

Or the pH balanced Vodka, better for you since it's not acidic.  Or the Alkaline Vodka, that's more alkaline than neutral, because somehow that's even better for you.

Man, you guys are TOUCHY.

The alcohol part is easy peasy, it's hard finding:

Platinum to filter vodka through.

Diamonds to filter vodka through.

An iceberg to melt down to proof the vodka with.

Thinking about sending a team of explorers to the north pole to core drill for ice to be used to dilute the vodka.

Or maybe some hidden spring in the depths of the Amazon, rumored to be the real fountain of youth.  (Note: Not the actual jungle in South America, I'm talking about just buying some bottled water on Amazon.com).

Jesus, maybe do both, and filter it through chakra stones, and have a reiki master infuse it with positive energy.

And you are calling small producers who redistill GNS charlatans?  You've actually seen the market, no?

Agricole is a very different animal than cane sugar or molasses rum.

Vacon X Series.  Nema 4x enclosures that don't need to be mounted in a large enclosure.  They are a bit more expensive, but are simpler and easier to use when you don't need to worry about mounting them in another box.

There are lots of references to 60F in the CFR, but mostly around calibration of hydrometers or for table calibrations, not bottle fill.