Silk City Distillers

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?

1 hour ago, Foreshot said:

How does it come across? Concentrated horse?

 

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.

On 1/31/2022 at 11:55 AM, JustAndy said:

but if you have a choice I think it makes a better product from clear wash.   

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

Has the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission done a survey of members?

A good starting point for bench trials is 5 grams a liter for darker aged spirits, 2.5g/l for lighter aged spirits.  This will give you a good idea why the holding capacity of the filtration is important.  A 500 liter batch of spirit might require 1.2kg (2.7lb) of PAC.  

I've decolorized bourbon using this method, just to screw with peoples heads by pouring them a glass of ice-clear bourbon.

You need to use a carbon that’s almost exclusively high mesopore.  This is probably going to be a wood based carbon, powdered, and steam activated.  Color molecules are large, flavors are small.  Use an off-the-shelf carbon and you’ll remove more flavor than color.

You are going to need to do bench trials to determine both the grams/liter dosing rate, and the treatment times.  You need to balance these two variables.  The more you dose, the faster you remove the color, but the more challenging to filter.  Dose too little and you may not hit your target color, which will require starting over, and it will have flavor impacts if you need to repeat.

You are going to need to be sure you can filter out the powdered carbon from your spirit at scale, because to dose it, you’ll be pouring your powdered carbon directly into your spirit, mixing the slurry, and then filtering.  Your total treatment time, including filtering, needs to match your bench trial target times.  This is critical.  Get it wrong and you’ll ruin the batch.

Your filtration needs to be able to carry the full volume of your dosed carbon.  You may need a large plate and frame or other large capacity filter.  You will require sub-micron final filtration to polish and remove carbon fines.  When you are done your filters will be caked with mud.

I would decolorize the aged spirit alone in this case, then blend.  Do not shoot for pure white in this case, as further dilution will lighten the color.  It will be easier to partially reduce the proof before filtering.

No, just the usual stuff - Difficult to fill, drain, clean (assuming a closed top drum).  As long as you can control temperature externally, you’d be fine.  200l is still small enough that passive cooling is possible.

Always worth reading the wonderful 1959 USDA Molasses standards guide, which is still the current version.

https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Sugarcane_Molasses_Standard[1].pdf

This table in particular is great:

3 minutes ago, Thatch said:

He wrote plastic "We a few plastic IBC totes"

I keep trying to nudge the conversation to stainless.

There are plenty of guides to bonding and grounding available, find one applicable to your jurisdiction.  The principals are broadly applicable, this isn't something unique to spirits.  For example:

https://www.justrite.com/media/2019_Justrite-Guide-to-Safe-Grounding-and-Bonding-Practices.pdf

Stainless IBC usually have 16-18" manways.  1000l ibc are manageable from the manway, any larger and it becomes difficult without a ladder or steps.

Consider blending sugar sources to dial in your rum flavor profile.

There is no rule that rum needs to be made from a single sugar type.  Think of it like building a grain mash bill.

Keep on mind that as sugar technology has improved, the quality of molasses has declined.  Older molasses would have had a far higher fermentable sugar content, less ash.  Something to be said for replicating a profile that gets you closer to evaporated cane syrup.

What Pete said - These tanks typically have multiple ports.  Drain port at the bottom and often one or two additional for racking or sampling that can be used to recirculate.  

If you plan to have multiple tanks, it's going to be far easier to just get a standalone EX pump and use that to recirculate to mix, since you'll probably have one anyway.

Something like a Letina closed top forklift tank or similar is probably the easiest to use from a workflow perspective.  There are a number of companies that make iso or equivalent 1000l shipping tanks that could be easily repurposed (like a stainless IBC).  Many of these are made to fit a standard pallet footprint, meaning they'll easily fit on a pallet scale.

Agitators add lots of complexity, especially to thin wall wine-style tanks that are not built to handle the weight and stress of an agitator.