Silk City Distillers

We barrel quite a bit in the 105-110 range.

Have free seltzer or tonic on the bar, next to free ice.  As an alternative to alcohol.

Pour the patron the spirit neat in the glass.

You surely can’t be responsible.

If you can DIY - I have some extra ionizing bottle rinse parts.  I have a Simco ION power supply and long bottle rinse nozzle.  Just one extra nozzle though.  You'll need an air/gas regulator, a gas solenoid, and a timer.

Why not produce a Ready to Drink cocktail/alcopop?

1 hour ago, Alaskan Spirits LLC said:

My state is becoming non-distillery friendly.  Seems like bars are running this town.  ABC board last week decided that they are now going to interpret legislation differently than they have the last 4 years; which means NO mixed drinks.  The only thing we can do is serve our distilled booze.  I would like to make a vodka seltzer (like Truly / White Claw).  I would also like to have it on a soda gun.  Anyone ever do this?  I see I can use a soda siphon but the siphon does not mix the vodka in and I don't think I can get away with that.

Any suggestions?

Through a local firm that works with some of the rum distilleries in the Caribbean.

You need to tailor the process for what you are decolorizing.  It comes down to trials to determine the appropriate dosage (grams/liter) and the treatment time for the specific product.  You want the lowest dose and shortest contact time that gets you to the desired color, or you risk flavor impacts.  Treatment involves turning the product into a slurry, not passing it through carbon (which does not work).

I made clear bourbon once, talk about screwing with your head.

Powder.

The filtration is not a trivial matter.  Nothing else works nearly as good, not even $500/50lb bags of granular Norit/Cabot designed for decolorization.

All that said, we find that even white rum benefits from aging on oak.  Our white rum is aged on ex-bourbon oak for 6-9 months and then decolorized.

And this one (with his photo)

The-Arroyo-Fermentation-Process-For-Alcohol-and-Light-Rum-From-Blackstrap-Molasses.pdf

https://www.bostonapothecary.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/the-production-of-straight-light-rums-from-blackstrap.pdf

the-production-of-straight-light-rums-from-blackstrap.pdf

Do a couple of batches of brett and let us know.

One more note.  You are concerned about using Clostridium in the distillery for fear of systemic infection, but will use Brettanomyces?

Clostridium Butyricum is a pH sensitive oxygen tolerant obligate anaerobe whereas Brett will will very happily ferment in an aerobic environment.  It is far more probable that Brett would become a "house strain" than any Clostridium would.  There are actually very few Clostridium strains that are oxygen tolerant, butyricum/saccharobutyricum being one of them, so it's no surprise.  Look at all the effort Arroyo need to go through to mixed ferment with Clostridium, and the pitch sizes needed, the focus on keeping pH high enough to keep the bacteria active.  We pitch multiple 5 gallon bacterial cultures into a 530g dark rum fermentation, this is a tremendous amount.  Modern sanitizers and the fact that we're working with small-scale equipment (no pipelines, etc), means this is easily managed.

Also keep in mind that Brettanomyces was referred to as Dekkera yeast for decades, so not surprisingly, this is nothing new in the rum world.

Here is a good recent paper discussing the use of Brett in Cachaca.

yea3051.pdf

First off Arroyo was so ahead of his time, he didn't realize it.  What he was doing 60-70 years ago, we're just rediscovering now.  Accelerated/artificial maturation, mixed culture fermentation, you name it he probably wrote about it.  I would be so bold as to say that Arroyo should be considered one of the fathers of modern distilling, period.  We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Secondly, the work Boston Apothecary has done on pulling together PDFs and Translating Arroyos work is instrumental.  Stephen Sheltenberger probably has more insight into Arroyo that anyone left on this planet, including the distillers in the Caribbean.  Why he isn't a regular here, who knows.

We don't funk in our white rum, and I don't think Arroyo would have ever recommended that.  He did publish a protocol on straight white rum, and its LIGHT YEARS different from his treatise on the funk.  Clarified molasses, sterilized mash (reduced ester formation), no mixed culture co-fermentation (reduced ester formation), strict fermentation temperature control (reduced ester formation), high yeast pitch rates (reduced ester formation), agitated fermenters (reduced ester formation), low starting pH (reduced ester formation), extremely short fermentations (reduced ester formation), centrifuged wash prior to distillation (reduced ester/acid), no extended reflux periods (reduced ester formation).  Are you noticing a trend yet?  These are all factors that drive low ester production and make for what is a generally a very clean white rum.  @indyspirits - Suspect Arroyo might be very happy with your white rum.

Where his approach to straight white rum comes together is when you keep in mind that Arroyo was vehement on the fact that diluting distillate was detrimental to the quality of the spirit, and the spirit needs to be distilled at as low a proof was possible.  You can make a clean white rum by distilling it at 180-190 proof, regardless of the starting rum beer, funk or not.  But then you face massive dilution.  I feel that Arroyo's focus was on how to make the cleanest white rum possible, to distill it at as low a proof as possible, and to add as little water as possible, to preserve the flavor compounds created during distillation. 

New make funk is very pungent with non-esterified carboxylics, butyric and propionic, it takes a while for these two to settle down and esterify during maturation.  If you haven't yet purchased samples of butyric acid and propionic acid for your own organoleptic training, email me and I can ship you out vials.  You can't learn to love the funk if you don't know the funk.

A couple of other things to keep in mind.  Arroyo was very focused on clarifying/processing his molasses feedstock.  I think you need to put this into the context of his time and the arenas he worked in.  Starting with very high quality high test or first strike, fancy, etc molasses, generally is not going to require the types of processing that Arroyo spent so much time on.  This is only my opinion.  If you are working with low-grade modern blackstrap, feed grade or otherwise, it probably pays to pay very close attention to this part of his work, if you are working with high-quality molasses, going through the clarification process is probably counterproductive and will reduce yield.

The other thing to keep in mind is the wildly confusing nature of Arroyos "fractions", he was very focused on simultaneous production of light and heavy rums, a lot of the highly confusing nature of his "this fraction goes here, this goes there" has to do with simultaneous production.  There are other papers that do a much better job of describing his fractions in better detail than the Heavy Rum patent.  I'll write up something on this topic to make it easier to understand.  But rum oils are nothing but late tails.

What's the reason you are cleaning bottles?  Particulate or dust?

You really need to match the sprayball with the tank and pump, if you don't meet the flow and pressure requirements of the sprayball, it's going to be very ineffective.  Your sprayballs should have a specified flow and pressure requirement based on tank diameter.

FIP and Lobe pumps are both positive displacement pumps, this is compared to centrifugal (aka velocity pump).  The appropriate pump for the application is a positive displacement pump, whether it be: Lobe, FIP, Progressive Cavity, Screw, Diaphragm (aka air powered double diaphragm), even Peristaltic.

We have a lobe pump, 2" Viking Duralobe.  No problem pumping heavy settled grain.

That said, we had agitators fabricated for our fermenters as well.  This has less to do with pumping heavy grain, more to do with not leaving grain behind in a flat bottom fermenter.

Kudos to you for even trying to pump grain-in with a centrifugal.

Larry and crew at SD are good people.

https://hopsandvine.net/are-you-working-with-a-contract-distiller-or-co-packer-things-you-should-consider/

Why not just skip the small distillery setup phase and immediately move into sub-contracted production?  This way, you focus on selling and building brand, and not plumbing and building code.  If the brand takes off, and you can produce cheaper than your sub-contractor, then build a distillery to suit the demand.  To me, this feels like a good way to both mitigate risk, as well as to conserve and invest capital where it will make the most difference (sales and advertising, not stills and construction).

You don't need to deal with glycol to add a chiller to the reservoir.  If your reservoir is large enough that a near-room-temp starting point is sufficient, just plumb in a chiller on a separate loop, turn it on when needed.  Sizing will determine whether you can return the reservoir to the starting point in a few hours, or a few days.

Starting out with a very small distillery is a good way to fail.

Too low, try targeting 5-5.2 next time.

The beet pulp pellets are a pretty brilliant idea.

I thought I remember the websites staying up during the last shutdown, you could submit but if you were submitting something that required a response, you were waiting.

Suspect the timing for label and recipe approval is going to drag out longer now.

NJ guild is in the final stages of formation, we've got a great group of distillers and a pretty tight-knit community.  Drop me your email address and I'll add you to the distro.