Silk City Distillers

I ran 4 weeks at 55-60f, using a yeast that can comfortably ferment that cold.

Incredible aroma preservation.

We tend to do the very small batch, unique, limited volume products in 375ml to allow for more people to buy and try, whereas the mainstream products are all 750ml.  We rarely, if ever, bottle the same product in both bottle sizes.

I wouldn't sell the same product in both bottle sizes, side by side, in the tasting room.  I'd wager a guess this would reduce tasting room sales revenue.

Some specific retailers carry our 375ml, but significantly less than 750ml.  Like I said above, this tends to be fairly unique product that needs to be "sold" in person, which lends itself to the tasting room, but not to retail.  Bartenders HATE 375ml, especially if it's a funny bottle shape.

We don't do anything in the bigger 1-1.75ml bottles, the pricing would end up being fairly high, the demand fairly low, and the cost to bring in additional bottle sizes and labels wouldn't be cost effective.

This is just a pet peeve of mine, nothing personal.

Just to be absolutely clear, I'm not saying 85% is "safe", I'm saying neither is "safe".  The 30% safe thing is quoted so often, it's gospel, even though it's really not really accurate, worse, there is the possibility of creating a misunderstanding in someone that doesn't quite have a good grasp of things.  Last thing we want is for  someone to misinterpret that and let their guard down, and operate in a way that's unsafe.

30% is not safer than 85%, neither is safe, at typical operating temperatures, they are equally flammable.

Here is the table I made to help better understand this:

Never understood why direct element stills never used level sensors to cut the heaters should the liquid level fall below a certain level, preventing the elements from becoming a catastrophic ignition source.

On 5/23/2018 at 4:30 PM, Southernhighlander said:

Since the spirit still is direct fire electric I would never put low wines in it over 30%.  If you put 85% low wines in the direct fire electric still the heating elements may ignite the low wines and you may die horribly in a distillery explosion. 

30% alcohol at 113 F is equally as flammable as 85% alcohol at 74 F.

Once you've gotten into heat-up, there is no difference in the flammability of the two liquids, one simply contains more fuel than the other.

Should a still lose it's contents at boiling temp, 30% or 85%, it will be equally as catastrophic, as the surface temperature of the now exposed element will easily ignite the vapor and liquid in either case.

There are no safety benefits, that is a hobbiest myth.

Collecting deep into tails might require the addition of water to ensure elements remain submerged, but that will depend on the still.

Unless it was contaminated, carbon will typically reduce color.

If it’s in bulk, you sure the lighting isn’t playing tricks on you?

We were playing around with humidification sprayer nozzles for the cold dry winters up in the Northeast.  There are systems commercially available but they are fairly expensive.  They don’t drip or make anything wet, which is a plus.

100% Rye?  It will foam and puke like no other.  Sounds like a potential puke.  You'll want to give the still a good cleaning before the finish run.

What yeast strain by the way?

You are hitting a point at which it's becoming nearly impossible to diagnose, and you've spent too much money and time to continue speculation.  Find a lab, send samples, get it ID'ed.  Let us know.

Or...  if you are a glutton for punishment.

And if you want a really crazy suggestion.  Pitch a specific strain of lactobacillus known to reduce 4-VP/4-VG (Phenolics) and extend your fermentation time slightly to allow the new lacto to do it's job.  Fight your "bad" bacteria with "good" bacteria in hopes of establishing it as a resident bacteria in your distillery.  It's the 4-Vinyl derivatives that are creating the band-aid flavor - BUT - we don't know why they are being created in large volumes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC92463/

The most intriguing observation was that the concentrations of decarboxylated hydroxycinnamic acids were consistently lower in mixed bacterial-yeast fermentations than in pure-yeast fermentations (Fig. (Fig.6).6). The only explanation for this result is an interaction between bacteria and yeast. Perhaps the rapid substrate decarboxylation effected by the bacteria results in the 4-vinyl derivatives accumulating at an early stage, followed by reduction to the 4-ethyl derivatives by the yeast. If decarboxylation by the yeast is rate limiting in this process, mixed cultures will provide rapid transformation into the ethyl forms. Alternatively, one of the major differences between a pure-yeast fermentation and a mixed fermentation with lactic acid bacteria is a greater reduction in pH due to lactic acid production by the bacteria (2, 14). It is possible that the reduction of 4-VP occurs more favorably under these conditions.

Meerkat is awesome.

Love alcodens, use it every day, can’t wait to use LQ.  Indispensable. 

Once you figure out how to remove the tear-strip on a grain bag, you'll never use scissors!

I'm stumped, phone an expert.

A 2.3 pound/gallon ferment that can finish in 3 days seems fairly improbable that other microbes are outcompeting yeast, or could even get a foothold.

The fact that it happened with a fully-boiled mash is fairly surprising.

Unless we are missing something major here, like you are fermenting in a dirty dumpster.

By the way, a sulfur fraction late heads, early hearts, this is fairly common and if it's significant is usually a sign of yeast stress or yeast nutrition issue.

The ice and salt was a tip from one of my chemistry teachers as well.

Also, if your focused on flavor extraction from the boiling flask, you can hold back some of the spirit, and introduce additional spirit as you get towards the end of your extraction.  This technique works well when what you are extracting is very expensive, and when your solvent is cheap (ethanol).  The goal being, you finish the extraction before your solvent goes to tar.  In this case you trade off additional losses for less cleaning time.

You see this on some of the Rotovap units, they have an injection port to add additional solvent to the evaporation flask.

Coarse rock salt and ice cubes.  Shake the hell out of it.

That and shut down the distillation earlier than you might like.

Oh one last thing, you might want to seek out the blessing of your local fire official for using the basement for alcohol storage before you commit.  Yes, it's a scary thought to proactively raise an issue with the fire inspector.

But, in this case...

Basement, subgrade, below grade, 'no direct exit' - these are "bad words" when it comes to fire code and storage of flammables.  In some codes, in some jurisdictions, there are prohibitions and special requirements around basements - this applies to ventilation, additional sprinkler requirements, reductions in MAQs, or even outright prohibition (most don't apply to us though), etc.

If you have an inspector that is going to nit-pick about the main floor, they'd be full-stop on doing anything in a basement.  Keep in mind, with storage in the basement, should there be a fire, with fire fighters entering on the main level - this is a death trap, and there would be no way to even attempt to fight the fire.  This would be a fairly critical piece on information for the local fire crew. You don't want to be associated with the headline that mentions 5 local guys, fathers, including one father of a newborn little girl, running into your burning building only to fall through the floor to their deaths because nobody told them they'd be standing on top of 2000 gallons of burning alcohol.

I'm not trying to be overly critical, but now is the time to get the hard questions answered, not after you've signed a lease, bought a building, and started spending real money.

Biggest issue with small spaces, you are going to hit a point where not having a forklift is a real problem.

Yeah, probably the furthest thing from your mind.

But when you start laying down 53g barrels on double racks, getting full skids of grain, or a full pallet of bottles, it starts to get really old, really fast.  What should take 5 minutes takes an hour of breaking down skids and busting your back.

While a stacker will probably work in the interim, you are going to get deliveries that are going to push the limit.  Got a full skid of bottles the other day that was like 2300 pounds.  Full tote of molasses is closer to 3000, trying to get it moving on a pallet jack takes two people.

How on earth are you going to get barrels in and out of the basement?  Freight lift or elevator is a pretty serious investment, especially if the building structural needs to be modified to support it.  I wouldn't even want to consider the potential for an accident trying to take a small 15 gallon barrel down stairs, let alone a 25/30 or 53.  If you have aspirations of cutting the floor open and using a hoist, remember that floor joists are on 16s, you won't fit a barrel through.

Share your construction methods, I'm sure there are plenty of folks with the skill and willingness to build their own.

TTB doesn’t care about sinks.

This is typically determined by your local health department and/or the FDA, along with separate handwash sinks, etc.

Buy a boat instead, you’ll lose the same amount of money but it’ll be more fun doing it.  Porsche might be a good alternative if you don’t like water.

6 hours ago, kleclerc77 said:

I also found it to reduce heat up time and reduce scorching. Maybe it wasn't a "scorch", but when we didn't agitate, some type of very tough to clean buildup would accumulate in the bottom of our pot.

Ran one rum run with the agitator off and I thought it came across a little bit more bitter than usual.  Figured it was a little bit of scorch.  Since then I don’t run without it.  

I mean a carbon that's ideal for decolorization will provide an end result with a flavor more "true" to the starting point than redistilling, especially if we're talking about non-volatile flavor components that will be lost in distillation, or destroyed by the heat of distillation.

This was based on some work I did to make a white/clear barrel aged corn whiskey.  The thought was to decolorize barrel aged corn whiskey to make a more palatable white spirit.

Redistilling the aged whiskey turned it in to something that was closer to new make whiskey.  At that point, what's the point of aging it?  But a good decolorization protocol, it worked like magic.  I even tried it on a bottle of bourbon.  You want to talk about screwing with someone's head, give them a glass of clear spirit that tastes like bourbon.

I think the same would apply to redistillation of a maceration of fruit or botanicals.  If there are non-volatile flavor components that you like in the spirit, you are going to lose them in distillation.  Did some work with a blackberry maceration a year or so ago, tasted great.  I hated the color.  Redistilling it gave me a spirit that tasted very vegetal and green, and nothing at all like blackberry (lacking the distinctive acids, flavonoids, tannins, etc).

I'm not talking about a heavy handed approach of using a large amount of some random activated carbon, use enough and the end result approaches vodka.

Oh, now we're talking.  Thanks to my wife who fixed it.