Silk City Distillers

What's your end goal - what are you making? What's your workflow for dunder additions? Are you sterilizing your wash prior to fermentation? What's your starting pH? Generally, starting a fermentation at a lower pH typically results in a fermentation that finishes at a higher pH, which might seem entirely counterintuitive, except it's not. Have you had your water tested, if so, post the numbers. Dosing anything to actively control the pH of your rum fermentations is going to have a impact on the flavor and aroma. Not saying it's going to be better or worse, but there is an impact. The more variability you see, and the variability in adjusting, is going to result in flavor inconsistency across batches. Tying up carboxylic acids as calcium salts and then just distilling straight could be entirely counterproductive if your goal is funky rum. Are you stalling? Or are you not stalling? A final pH of 3.2 with an acceptable final gravity is not in any way problematic. Yeast are very happy at this pH - look at all the sour beer on the market today with similar pH - using brewing yeasts - this is no different than a sour mash, or funky rum ferment with high acids (yes, titratable acidity and pH are different, but not getting into that here). You guys putting rocks and shells in your fermenter must not be using expensive pumps, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

What are you using for inventory in the distillery? Quickbooks? Just add another inventory location and track it there. Turn off stock tracking in square. Create your inventory transactions when you reconcile your monthly sales against physical inventory remaining. Do you really need inventory in the POS? If we run out of items in the tasting room, we'll just disable the item to turn off pickup orders, otherwise, if it's not on the shelf, you can't but it. Honestly though, sounds like a Square setup issue. Are you using multiple locations, this makes things more difficult to report? Incorrect item setup (duplicates, deletions). If your inventory is off, your sales would be off too, those two things are inextricably linked in Square.

I made a few calls the other day, it's looking pretty ugly for 53s for the rest of the year. Ended up buying all the remaining stock of 53 & 30 from one of the places I called. I got waitlisted for *2023* from another. Adirondack is doing a run of 30g in April.

Yeah, I've been playing around a bit. Mostly screwing with emulsifiers to see if you can increase oil/terpene content while maintaining a stable emulsion. Pectin, xanthan, and other hydrocolloids to enhance mouthfeel without needing to add sugar (which would create shelf stability issues). Mouthfeel of spirits is so very different than the current batch of non-alcoholics, I want a higher viscosity and a longer finish, otherwise it just seems like flavored water. Add in preservatives, and it's a chemistry set.

Oxymoron. Scour eBay for a used Anton Parr, every once in a while you can find a deal, but do not under any circumstances ever buy one that looks beat up, has any damage, or is sold as-is. There is a variation on the dma35 that's used for oil and gas - that works just fine as well, and sometimes go for very cheap, as they are avoided by the beverage folks. The Anton Paar Easydens is less than $400 new. I don't think you are going to find anything else even remotely near that price that's as good. There was a brand new one on eBay a few weeks back for $275 that sold, so you might be able to find one cheaper if you wait.

Separation would be fairly obvious as you would have cloudy gin with obvious layering. I don't think that's the case. Longer rest periods are required before you validate your flavor profile. Oxygen will react with numerous components in the gin, changing the flavor profile over the first few days. Hell, I wouldn't do a serious taste test on your recipe without at least a few days rest, then at least a week in bottle to stabilize. Of all the spirits we make, gin has the most variability between distillation, bottling, and drinking.

These things are pretty rare on the used market, rare on the new market for that matter. I can't imagine what the cost would be new, since application tends to be fairly limited - you often see them in large scale compressed gas plants and the like - areas that are known c1d1 environments. I know there are a wide range of different types (it's not as simple as just being EX). Interested to know though, is this something you are looking for proactively? Something one of your AHJ's has required? This isn't a topic that comes up here very often (if at all).

Wish the states changed rules, paying state liquor excise on RTD is brutal.

I would imagine Anton Paar should be able to provide a TTB approval letter if that's the case.

Usually white all-purpose and baking flour has the bran and germ removed before milling - so they are not directly comparable. They might also be bleached, enriched with vitamins, and have anti-caking agents added. Technically, the alcohol yield could actually be higher though, since it’s predominantly the convertible/fermentable starch. Bread flours tend to be a bit higher in protein - so they make more gluten, which would take the ethanol yield slightly in the other direction.

While we set a "MSRP", retailers are free to price it where they want, and they are frequently a bit less expensive than in the tasting room. Though, we don't ever discount off the "MSRP" at the distillery. Any small premium they pay at the distillery is just part of the value-add experience of it all. Why do you feel you need to underprice your product where it's made? This is the absolute easiest place to justify it's value, and there is no price competition. Customers buying in the tasting room are very different from customers purchasing at retail, thus any price differential is irrelevant. We're always sending customers to retail partners when we run out of special release stock, when the tasting room is closed, or if they are too far away to swing down.

Sounds like you have a problem with high volatile acidity in the wine as well.

Did you guys see that video going around a few months back? Brilliant brilliant video.

From a materials handling standpoint, a stainless lobe pump would cover all of that, something like a 1.5" could easily be used for double duty. Explosion proof electrics make it very complicated though. The juniper berry stillage could be tricky for a diaphragm pump, because they will have a maximum solids size that needs to be accounted for, and 1/4" solids handling might be a bigger pump than you need. All it's going to take is one plump berry and your day is ruined.

Wow, that’s an amazing idea.

Dewatering stillage becomes incredibly difficult the finer you mill, you'll hit a point at which you simply can't dewater the mud that will settle to the bottom of the still. So while you may have made pumping easier, you are just moving the problem to a later point. If you have the flexibility (luxury) to be able to dispose of liquid stillage, then maybe it's not a problem. I knew of one distillery that milled to flour so they could just dump all the stillage into the sewer system (even though that's a terrible idea, is almost certainly illegal, so don't do it). Ignore viscosity, just because you are milling finer doesn't mean you'll have an even distribution of solids. If you wait 15 minutes they'll settle out, and what hits your pump will be mud/sludge. Even using lobe pumps, and have no problem pumping mud, we still use agitators to keep solids in suspension.

I had it down to an art, it was so quick to get reports in, and that included cross-checking against the previous month's forms. Took at least twice as long, but this was the first time through. I did notice, there are actually more validations than previously existed, including across multi-page forms (like processing) the did not exist previously. Perhaps it might catch more mistakes up front?

Surprisingly no, it's the phenol off-flavors that dominate and smear straight through hearts in a way that's uncuttable. While there might be lots of interesting characteristics, how to access them without the off flavor? I have similar complaints with yeast strains that are POF (phenolic off flavor) positive - like traditional hefeweizen strains. In some beer styles that clovey spice is desirable, in distillation it morphs into a kind of burnt bandaid, medicinal, plastic. You might be able to make it work in a smoked whiskey style, as some of those flavors are complimentary (or characteristic) to smoke. I did notice that it does get tamed a bit on oak, but not sure if it's just being masked by more dominant flavors, still highly recognizable.

Probably not economical to try to concentrate it, by either boiling or reverse osmosis. Recycling is a really elegant solution. Brett and distilling don’t mix, sorry, and I love non-yeast microbes.

Taking another few thousand square feet in the same building we occupy, essentially the adjacent space to ours. Looking through Permits Online, not sure sure what amendment is required for this. Am I correct in assuming that if we're exempt from bond requirements, we don't need to submit a new diagram of the larger premise?

I really love putting casters on things, lets us be far more dynamic/flexible with arranging workspaces, or moving more occasional use items out of precious main floor space. We still have our semi-automatic bottling line and packing tables on casters. Working on a big bottling run, it's nice to pull it out into the middle of the floor, setup tanks and skids, and have plenty of room to work. Also gives you flexibility to rearrange floor space far more easily. Same goes for our smaller spirit tanks, most of them have matching skids to be able to move around, or have already come with casters. Pumps all have long cords to be able to be used anywhere in the production area. Obviously, big stills, tanks with cooling connections, these can't easily flex and be moved, but a lot can.

Don’t understand why they wouldn’t have let you use a fanciful name to further distinguish.

Couple of us have played around with vacuum distilled extracts, especially for more delicate flavors - things that tend to not be so thermostable and just get stewed during distillation. I absolutely love (very low) vacuum distilled cucumber and jalapeño, you can not replicate these flavors/aromas through atmospheric distillation or maceration. They are just so clean, bright, and immediately recognizable by aroma. Really wish the TTB distinguished between commercial 3rd party flavorings, and flavorings made in house like this. Making a flavor is an art, having to slap on the required (undifferentiated) flavored statement is really a disappointment. There is a huge opportunity for creativity and innovation in this area. Sit down for a little while and go through books like Feneroli's Handbook of Flavor Ingredients and your head will spin with possibilities. Tons of other amazing flavor and aroma science books, all of them far more 'craft' than we give them credit for. Not sure of all the categories where you can do this without having to disclose every "flavor" added, or have to use the lesser "Flavored X" class/type. Compound Gin is probably the one that's most flexible here. Hell, Peanut Butter and Cinnamon Whiskey seems to sell like crazy these days, maybe it ain't an issue at all.

You shouldn’t need an insulated tank, I think you’ll be fine.

Are you distilling with yeast or racking off prior to distillation?