Silk City Distillers

We run UV plus the Carbon to try to eliminate chloramines as much as possible without having to use meta.  We run a tight sediment filter - 5 micron - before the UV just to ensure maximum effectiveness.  As soon as we see any change on the test strip, we change carbon tanks.  We are on muni - but we do pick up some sediment and particulate.  We are in a pretty urbanized area outside of NYC - so VOC and other contaminant is always on our mind.  Chalk it up to being obsessive more than anything else.

What I really want to see is a cost effective nanofiltration system for mashing water.  Something that removes all of the nasties but keeps the salt and ion concentrations relatively similar to source water.  And something that can do it without me using 1500 gallons of water to make 500.  Today, mash water is just sediment, big uv and big carbon.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between a low-end and a high-end system, as either system is only going to be as good as the cartridges and membranes you run.  A high-end system that hasn't seen a filter change in 14 months is going to be significantly worse than a cheap eBay system.  Likewise, re-filter that high end unit with cheap filters and membranes, and it's exactly the same thing.  Maybe the finish on the cartridge housings is a little bit nicer, but really, the unit is nothing but a housing for filter cartridges.

I use a small 5 stage - basically a hot rodded residential system with a few more stages.  A prefilter, two carbons, RO, and then a mixed bed DI stage.  I use a Dow Filmtec 75gpd membrane.  My water has never tested over 0 TDS, despite my source water being as high as 300 or so during the winter (when they are dumping salt everywhere).

As I understand it, many of these very high GPD commercial units actually see lower rejection rates, and lower product water quality than what you might get from a high quality residential setup.

Realistically, adding a tank like @Mulderbri uses gives you plenty of RO water, on tap.  So even with lower GPD numbers, you can still pull off the gallons you need when you need them.

If you need 300 gallons of product dilution water every day, you probably aren't worrying about the cost of a RO setup anyway, so it's moot.

34 minutes ago, fa20driver said:

Silk - when you mention cutting down esters for Vodka by dropping the yeast - would you say that those same esters 9from yeast) would be beneficial in a malt whiskey?  Under pitching yeast usually enhances esters - I have heard (at least in beers like hefeweizen) so I am wondering if my over pitching yeast for whiskey is counter-productive... I am aging the malt whiskey in 30 gallon medium char barrels for probably 2 years.

I think so, yes.  With a lautered wash and conicals, you can even be selective about the amount of yeast you are letting into distillation.  If you aren't including yeast today, try easing into it (because you have the luxury of being able to).

We're on the same page with underpitching yielding greater ester formation, but temperature is a big factor too, especially when you start pushing outside normal beer ranges.  For example, I love Nottingham or US-04 pushed into the low 80s, big big esters.  I've run batches with 500g and 1000g, and haven't noticed much of any difference, other than maybe another day of fermentation.  However, ferment it at 72 vs 82, and it's night and day.  At 72, it's nice, but boring.  At 82, big floral and fruit esters (and a bigger heads cut too).

I think the bigger concern is going to be a change in the character.  If you and your customers are liking what you are making - going to something like EC-1118 fermented in the low 70s is going to be very different from an Ale yeast in the mid 80s.

Given you've already got the yeast from the brewing, I think you are on the right path, try dropping the ferment temps with the ale yeast.

Also, if you are fermenting in your conicals.  Try cold crashing for a day before distillation to get all that yeast to floc and fall out.  That'll give you a slightly cleaner distillate (fewer volatile esters).

Agree.  Funny story.  I've got a little lab setup with a number of different alcohols, esters, aldehydes, and other chemicals, and often times run two-component distillations to understand the esterification that takes place during distillation (Fischer esterification takes place in spades during refluxed distillation, even with no inorganic acids present).  So anyway, I spilled a tiny bit of butyric acid on my pants, no more than a few drops.  It smelled awful, but after an hour or two, I didn't notice it anymore.  When I got home, I just threw the pants in the wash.

The laundry room smelled like vomit for a month.  My wife was not impressed.

Interesting anecdote about butyric acid - if you've ever watched the show Whale Wars - it's what the anti-whaling protesters throw onto the decks of foreign whaling ships.  I can't imagine how awful an entire glass vial of that, smashed onto a deck, would smell.

Most books on distilled spirits are worthless, except for the technical references, which tend to be heavily theoretical textbook or journal articles.

Some of the best stuff has bubbled up from the hobby community. 

Crozdog's gin manual is a good start if you are interested in vapor distilling - https://www.stilldragon.org/uploads/manuals/StillDragon.The.Gin.Basket.Operation.Manual.v1.1.20140116.pdf

Odin's post and video from the other day was very good as well.

I'd wager a guess that both of these are better technical guides than any published book.  Although I really do like The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart (this is a lay book).

I gotta say though, kudos on your very novel approach.  I had to read the thread 3 times before I finally understood it.  It seems like it would be an interesting way to make a vodka while still carrying through a considerable amount of character.

Just a comment from the peanut gallery.

Concur on the fermentation temperature and yeast suggestions, but I will suspect that it will manifest itself as a slightly wider hearts cut on the 3 plate distillation.  So yes, an increased batch yield, but I don't think it is going to significantly improve the ability to recycle the heads and extract additional ethanol using the 20 plate column.

The concept of being able to 'recycle', I think, has it's roots in pot still distillation, where the heads/tails/feints are at a higher alcohol:congener ratio.  By the time the heads cut is being made in this example, they've already going through the equivalent of 5 "distillations" worth of compression.  How many plates are required to further fractionate that already tight fraction?  Clearly the 20 being used in this example isn't enough.  We're talking about congeners that have a odor and flavor detection thresholds that are absolutely tiny.  If we were talking about redistilling the heads from a single pass pot still distillation, I think the discussion would be very different.

Based on @fa20driver original post, if 20 plates couldn't clean the heads up before, I don't think it's going to do it after a cooler ferment with a cleaner yeast either.

Realistically, if increasing the product yield is the goal, the better approach is to perhaps take a wider/dirty hearts cut on the 3 plate, and use more passes on the smaller 20 plate (with cuts) to yield the finished vodka.  Yes, it's more work, but if you were running an additional "head cleaner" distillation, why not run another product distillation instead?

I think @JustAndy suggestion of further dilution might be a good approach, but if that means having to make 2 or 3 more "heads cleaning" passes on that small 20 plate, I'd still argue that you are better off making additional product passes on the little still, and just dumping the heads.

If you have hydrometers with third-party calibrations - keep them locked up in the office.

Write an SOP that has you calibrating your on-the-floor production hydrometers against your standards when received, and recalibrate annually, or any time it may have been roughly handled or if physical damage is visible or suspected.  Keep records of testing and calibration.  Buy calibration stickers and put them on the hydrometer cases when you test/retest.  If you have single-point calibrations, test at the single point and record the offsets.  If you have two-point, it'll take a bit more time.

I can see using an externally calibrated hydrometer for final proofing, but for all other purposes, why wouldn't you use your house-calibrated units?  Breaking a $40 hydrometer vs breaking a $200+ hydrometer?  If you have the lab skills to gauge and proof to TTB standards, you have the skills to verify a hydrometer against a reference hydrometer.  Calibrating a hydrometer against a reference hydrometer takes absolutely no more time than gauging and proofing a batch for bottling.  I think it also demonstrates a significantly higher sense of laboratory rigor.

Your externally calibrated hydrometers should be good for a decade (or more) if only used as calibration references.  Then, it becomes relatively trivial and inexpensive to keep full sets of stems on hand.  Break one?  No sweat.  Hell, I tipped over an empty graduated cylinder the other day, and it fell onto a closed hydrometer case.  Nothing broke, didn't suspect anything, opened the case to find the stem cracked.  I swear someone else broke it and put it back in the case.

It's known that hydrometers in heavy rotation can lose mass just due to wear, wearing down from wiping, and especially when roughly handled and dropped into cylinders (and hit the bottom) - as they are known to lose mass through chipping.  Likewise, I don't particularly have much faith in that little slip of paper staying in the same place forever either.  So even if you are adamant on using third-party calibrated hydros on the production floor, are you using a third-party to validate them every year?

Or, if it's too complicated, just buy two full sets of calibrated stems every year.  But, how do you know that it wasn't damaged in shipping?  Or that the lab messed up?  Or that the tech was hungover and his dog died the night before?    Or that he wasn't rushing because he was late for a date with this really cute girl Tina from Milpitas.  Or the one-point calibration just so happened to be dead-on, but the rest of the range is significantly off?  UPS driver saw "Glass Fragile" on the box and punted it to the back of the truck.

Big difference between propane and natural gas.

At $5 an MCF and $0.64 per liter of propane, the cost to run on propane is about 6x higher.  So that $450 month on nat gas would be $2,700 on propane (at the prices above).

Maybe my math is wrong.

Why aren't you calibrating in-house against a calibrated standard?

@Shindig - Replied up above - honestly, it's just the White Labs recommended nutrient profile for rum.  

@whiskeytango - I'd add DAP at 1lb per 500 gal.  Fermaid O is great stuff, but if you are using the wine dosage on sugar, you might be coming up on the low end of YAN/Nitrogen.  Try adding the DAP/Inorganic Nitrogen at the start - it's going to be more cost effective.  

I believe Fermaid O has about half the nitrogen of Fermaid K - Check out page 28 in the PDF.

Brett is easy to pick out - phenolic and band-aids.  Almost tastes/smells like you are running a peated malt wash.  Absolutely ruins rum, IMHO.  Significantly more obvious on grain than sugar.  Also known as Dekkera in the rum literature.

Yeah definitely sterilize a few containers and keep samples, if the result is great you are going to kick yourself for not attempting to culture it.

I think there are lots of clues on the specific bacteria in the late heads.  Typical acetic strains will just result in a larger than usual heads cut, nothing particularly interesting.

But strains that generate higher amounts of butyric and propionic acid esters are where it's at - you'll get these in the late heads.  

Propionic and butyric esters - tropical fruit, bubble gum, rummy, pineapple, strawberry, apple, etc. 

Low acetic lacto strains are harder to pick out, slightly pineapple in the late heads, but without the juicy-fruit gum, slightly buttery early tails - but broadly contribute to the buttery/rich descriptor, absolutely - creamy, caramel, buttery, nutty.

It's very difficult to identify the specific bacterial strain from a pellicle photo, it could be a half dozen different bacteria.

Can you describe the smell?  Is it more acetic than usual?  Do you smell any rancid, butter, body odor, or vomit?  Any slime or ropiness if you stir closely below the surface?  Just keep an eye on it and see if it begins to appear to be a mold, in which case remove it.

I intentionally pitch specific strains of non-yeast bacteria in my rum fermentations to encourage specific ester formation, and I'm starting to work on mixed culture whiskey fermentations, with very good results.  There are a handful of lactobacillus strains that I absolutely adore in whiskey and rum.  Yes, I said that, and yes I intentionally "infect" fermentations.

Every whiskey fermentation that doesn't boil after mashing is "infected" with numerous strains of bacteria.  Grain is incredibly filthy from a microbiological perspective.  Even some strains of Streptococcus can survive lower-temperature cereal mashes.  Same for the rum distilleries, just a different set of bugs.  In addition, you'll develop your own mix of strains that define your house/colonial bacteria profile.  What I do is force a specific profile to match the outcome I am looking for.

Let it ferment out, run it, it may be the most interesting rum you've made.

Here are two of my favorite papers on the prevalence of specific bacterial strains in whiskey distilleries:  

http://www.microbiologyresearch.org/docserver/fulltext/micro/147/4/1471007a.pdf?expires=1483011394&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F2159A77F8BCEB870E570C224754586

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC126549/

And Rum:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1046/j.1365-2672.1998.00380.x/asset/j.1365-2672.1998.00380.x.pdf?v=1&t=ixabpopp&s=5841ec634998983c0b050add5b2dbeba52bd555c

On a 2000 liter batch - 18-20 Brix, 5% backset, 1000g yeast - rehydrated with Go-Ferm(1250gr), 1lb Fermaid-K, 1lb DAP, 2oz Distilavite VM.  I stagger nutrient additions, 0hr, 24hr, 48hr.  Usually 82-84f on the temp.  I also agitate once a day, maybe 5-10 minutes, just to keep the yeast in suspension and mix in nutrient additions.

This is on high test molasses.

Just for the sake of discussion.

Distilamax LS - EC-1118

Distilamax RM - EDV 493

Distilamax SR - 46 EDV

My EC-1118 rum ferments on molasses are 5 days max, I feel it's a pretty fast fermenter.  No different from RM in timing really.

What's your nutrient protocol and pitch rate?  It's getting cold up here too - what are your ferment temps looking like?

Ping me details on the alternative product.

You still distributing the betatec products?

On 12/15/2016 at 4:59 PM, RCHagemann said:

Has anyone used or heard of Park Street?     http://www.parkstreet.com/

Apparently they are able to serve as an in-between option that is sort of a hybrid of self-distribution and classic distributorship.  They handle all of the delivery/warehousing logistics, paperwork, and back office detail, but the distiller is still responsible for making the sale.  They charge a much lower percentage compared to a traditional distributor.

Given that the liquor brands still need to foot their own marketing budget and maintain account contact because traditional distributors DGAF about the little guys, this option seems like a great alternative.

Thoughts?

You are Jersey correct?  Why not just do all that yourself?

On 11/9/2016 at 5:38 PM, Adam said:

Has anyone tried using a glucoamylase enzyme in rum ferments?  Would that work to convert the unfermentable sugars in molasses?  I have no experience with it, but I would think it would help to lower the finishing gravity and boost the overall yield.

The journal literature says there may be some benefit in increased fermentatibility utilizing glucoamylase, dextrinases, cellulases, etc etc.  Your mileage will probably vary.  Whether or not there is a realistic ROI needs to be looked at, as the benefits are not astronomical.

https://www.worldwidejournals.com/indian-journal-of-applied-research-(IJAR)/file.php?val=August_2016_1470034210__86.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253643971_Enzymatic_hydrolysis_of_sugarcane_molasses_as_pre-treatment_for_bioethanol_production

Enymatic_Hydrolysis_Molasses.pdf

Traditional balsamic vinegars are usually aged in a progressive series of barrels including Acacia, Mulberry, Oak, Juniper, Chestnut, and Cherry.  In some other cases I've seen alternative fruitwoods.

What size pump?  What kind of mash volume you dealing with?  Do you have air/compressor, or electric only?  Single or 3 phase?

I've got a few pumps laying around.