Silk City Distillers

The grass is Bison Grass, and I don't believe it is GRAS (pun intended) as it does contain Coumarin. I believe the export versions use processed grasses that do not contain the active ingredient (or less of it).

Coumarin also exists in other herbs that were historically used in bitters and spirits, for example Tonka Bean and some Cinnamons, which are no longer permitted.

Congrats, can't wait to see it.

While the TTB doesn't specifically use the words barrel or cask, the IFC, NFPA, and IBC do. I would think that to a new startup, losing the cask storage exemption is equally as problematic.

First wine in boxes, now whiskey, what's this world coming to.

The problem is the calculus of making a box versus a barrel. While the box is less labor and significantly less technique, the raw materials required to build a box are significantly more expensive than to build a barrel, why? Staves are relatively easy to source based on the geometry of a log, planks are not, planks will be much more expensive.

Looking at white oak, 8/4ths thickness, the material to make an approximately 53 gallon container are going to be near $150us. That's just the oak, and that is in volume pricing. Add the labor and any external banding and you'll quickly be near $300. Not even taking into account the time associated with kilning or aging.

A straight sided 6 or 8 side container might be bit more economical, but now you've got much more complex joinery involved. The 4 sided container could be very easily constructed with gross dovetails and captive heads using inexpensive machinery. Going 6 or 8 sides is going to rely significantly more on the external banding for strength.

I have a beautiful Stickley chest of drawers, it's wonderful, quarter sawn oak, dovetails to die for. You think the TTB would let me wheel that into my place and fill the drawers with whiskey?

Since you are working on a plan, I'll play devil's advocate.

Defies economic reasoning that existing providers wouldn't scale to meet the new industry demand for the product.

A typical reason for the supply side not meeting the demand side, even at higher prices, are shortages of input materials. Generally in this situation the price of the product would rise as specific individuals from the demand side begin to pay higher prices to secure delivery. I've heard this mentioned regularly. If major buyers can't acquire raw materials, what makes you think you can, especially without paying a major premium? The cost for an existing supplier to expand is going to be significantly less than a new entrant to market.

A secondary is that the existing market is time to meet new demand. How long does it take to scale demand? What's the cost to a supplier to build one additional barrel when they are near capacity? Will you be coming to market at the same time that new suppliers would be releasing new supply, post-expansion?

Tertiary, does the supply side believe the new demand is sustainable? Investing in new capacity generally requires some years of payback, will the new demand be sufficient to reach payback or will it destroy the suppler if the demand fizzles out?

Barrel cooperatives scare the hell out of me as a new market entrant, because it means I need to secure a critical raw material of my product from a competitor, and not an independent third party. It's very plausible that a successful cooperative would close it's door to new buyers. When the going gets tight, who gets the barrels?

If someone isn't already, I'd suspect that someone is in the process of building a supply chain to ship oak from Europe across Asia into China and begin shipping barrels by the container load.

I'm impressed they raised the amount they did.

I particularly like the photo of the charred flooring planks.

I have a hard time believing it's your still, unless you are losing vapor - this is the only explanation for reduced yield during the distillation process. If it's not coming out of the still, it was either lost as vapor, or not in the still to begin with, which leads to the second guess.

Systemic infection has established itself in your process line. This would explain reduced yields and off flavors - stressed yeast, competition, other fermentation byproducts, etc.

If you are sure you are cleaning your still very well, and not leaving behind difficult to clean oils, it's going to be coming in from the fermentation side, and the only realistic reason is infection. I'd suggest taking the time to break down everything and give it a thorough cleaning and sanitizing. I assume you've tasted your wash prior to distillation? What's it taste like now? Give a good swig? Most of the common nasties will have particular off-flavor making them identifiable.

What's your CIP protocol anyway? Going deep in tails is going to need more than a rinse down.

"Cask strength" - Marketing term indicative of an overproof product, not necessarily the specific proof on a cask.

Estimate the lowest cask proof you expect.

Pick some funny decimal number near your cask strength estimate, I'd suggest ##.7 - since 7 is lucky. 59.7, 60.7, 58.7. Absolutely do not end in .4, very unlucky in Asian cultures. Bonus points for something clever like "Hard Eight Whiskey" 54.4 or "Snake Eyes Bourbon" 61.1.

Make minor proofing adjustments to each cask, or batch, to bring it to the specific product proof on your approved label.

From a consumer perspective, I would think a minor adjustment for federal reasons would be more than acceptable here.

Isn't this how everyone does it?

In the new America, where you can be sued for less, it seems much safer than selling a versions of a product with different label proofs, especially if they are being sold at the same price, someone is bound to scream bloody murder over being cheated .01.

Apologies, not following but interested, are you talking about running the agitator/recirculator continuously? On an open top fermenter? Wouldn't the gas exchange at the surface create an environment ideal for yeast propagation, but not making beer? Sounds like this is a trade off between speed and efficiency. Sure it would ferment quicker, but you'd also lose quite a bit of sugar to additional yeast growth, no?

Seems to me that unless you were able to eliminate gas exchange at the surface, this isn't much different than running a starter on a stir plate. Even with a tiny amount of surface area, a deep head space, and simple cover, the gas exchange is still high enough to favor yeast growth over fermentation.

Or is this just something that you run occasionally, on a timer?

I still don't understand, are you looking to use it as a mash tun or just a plain ol' cereal cooker? Are you using grain that needs to be gelatinized?

You were talking about fermenting on grain, which means you aren't going to need to do much to modify that vessel, you certainly don't need any screen, and the vessel geometry isn't important if you don't need to to shovel out the grain.

What's the rating on the heat exchanger? Do you know if it was for heating or cooling? Steam? Ideally if that was steam or hot water, it would be very easy to retrofit.

That agitator looks plenty strong to me, I wouldn't touch it.

I doubt that you'd clog up that output valve, but if you let a very stiff mash settle before you cracked it, you might plug up.

On second thought, it's a piece of junk, let me take it off your hands and scrap that right quick.

I can understand the open fermenters, but I still don't understand why to use a material like wood, negatives seem to outweigh positives unless you are weighing tradition significantly (I can appreciate that).

You guys in dairy country could make a mint driving those tanks out to the East Coast. $300-400 for that tank? I'd buy and resell that all day long, easy $1,500.

Under NJ's craft distillery permit, 20,000 gallons, the fee is $938/year. Above that a standard plenary license has no limits and comes with a price tag of $12,500/year.

We've also got an ARO 1/2 pump, model 666053-344, it's a polypropylene housing with teflon seals and balls.

Viscocity of honey is about 10x that of oil, I don't see how you'd pump honey with anything other than a gear reduced positive displacement pump with a VFD, Waukesha or similar. I'd also imagine you'd have problems with collapsing the suction hose too. Bucket brigade is probably more realistic for honey than pumping, especially if you are buying it by the bucket. Heck, even a small forklift if you are using drums is going to be less expensive, and you can use the forklift for other things.

Anyone that can afford to buy a tote of honey these days can probably afford the gear to move it. What's a tote of honey these days, $10k?

Assuming you aren't actually moving honey - something like a 1/2 or 3/4" double diaphragm pump, teflon balls and seals, body in whatever ethanol compatible material you like. Heck, you've got the air already. They are super light, and plenty reliable given you aren't pumping solids.

You could probably get by with a 1/2" pump if taking 5-10 minutes to pump your 300 liter volumes isn't a big deal. But you can control your pumping speed and output pressure with an air regulator, so there isn't any problem with running a larger 3/4" pump slower. At those volumes I don't think you need anything near the capacity of a 1" pump.

You can occasionally find a full teflon pump, body, balls, seals on ebay for around $500, something like a Yamada DP-20F. This is the cadillac of diaphragm pumps, with a list price near $4,000, so be happy they depreciate terribly. However they can't run at the higher pressures that other pump manufacturers can. I don't know how many PSI you need for your filtration, so that might push you towards something more like an ARO or otherwise.

You mention recirculating, at what temperatures?

Spectacular packaging btw.

Generating clean steam is a whole other issue.

Here is another one:

http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/articles/2005/614/

Question is, how important is mass transfer within the dephlegmator? Based on the first piece it looks like the additional rectification is minimal, likely less than adding an additional plate. Since we're not selectively removing components of the vapor stream, it wouldn't really be any different from enabling an additional plate (if you have that capability) or slightly increasing reflux ratio (by reducing the dephlegmator temperature) to yield the same output abv.

I still think the most effective approach is to separate the dephlegmator and product condenser temperature controls and run them independently. Gives you additional flexibility that you wouldn't otherwise have, and is likely more energy efficient.

Found an interesting PDF that seems to go into some of the detail around this topic (from an industrial perspective).

www.nt.ntnu.no/users/skoge/.../Trial%20_lecture_presentation.ppt

Looks like in the partial condenser, there is some amount of additional mass transfer/rectification taking place (vapor moving upward against condensate moving downward).

Pretty neat.

Really? Can you cite literature on this? Somewhat surprised, because based on my very limited understanding of the scientific principals involved, you can not selective condense substances by varying the cooling temperature. No different from looking at it from the opposite phase change direction, you can not selectively evaporate them by varying heating temperatures. If you could, you wouldn't need additional plates or distillation stages to increase purity. Isn't the chemical make up of the condensate always be based on the chemical make up of the vapor that preceded condensation?

I would think the reason why warm water condensers have larger surface areas, is because they are less efficient than a condenser designed for cooler temps, in some cases significantly so.

I hear you - had a similar scenario where we experimented with pre gelatinized corn in the same ratios as cracked corn. I don't think a cement mixer would have helped. I scooped myself a nice bowl, added some salt and a pat of butter, then proceeded to drop the temp, add amylase, thin it out, and heat it back up again to drop the rest of the grain bill.

Can you share the details on your steam coil? Have a similar need and have been struggling to find any kind of real-world details on coil sizing. Length? Diameter? Steam trap?

jb

Jesus I have no idea, I don't even remember typing this. Clearly I was on my fourth or fifth napkin at the time.

KW = (Liters * Delta T) / (790 * Heat Up Time in Hours)

10kw = (225 * 85) / (790 * 2.4)

It would take 2.4hrs to heat 225 liters of water from 15c to 100c. (I'm guessing I was using 80 and not 85 for delta T above)

10kwh is 36,000kJ

Latent heat of evaporation of water is 2270kJ/kg

At 10kw, you can boil off 15.86kg in an hour (or 15.86 liters in an hour).

150l / 15.86l/hr = 9.5hr

Get equipment specifications and provide them to the engineer to run his own calculations. It's not only the weight that's important, it's the loading, how the weight is distributed is going to make a big impact on the floor requirements. While the weight may not differ much between 7bbl fermenters, the surface area to the floor will. Something like a Conipac - low and wide, is going to be a much easier load than something tall, narrow, and on 3 feet. I suspect the engineer is not going to take napkin math as an input.

There are other practical considerations. What about a fork lift, or at least something like a walkie? You are talking an easy 1.5-3 ton here. What if you are using it to move a 2 ton sack? You've got a potential 5 ton load moving over the floor, that's more than some of the heavy equipment.

What about the freight elevator? Can it handle a pallet loaded straight in? Double stacked? A 2 ton sack?

How will you get your equipment up to the second floor? Will it go up the lift? Will you need a crane? I bet you rigging and moving might cost as much as the equipment. Or worse, what if you need to build in place, that means if you ever want to move, you'll be calling the scrap guys to bring their saws.

Also, adding floor drains after the fact will likely not be permitted, the floor needs to be built and poured with the appropriate drains in place. No cutting channels unless you want the floor to cave. While it might be possible to cut round drains, likely not going to be as effective.

What about the weight of your inventory? Grain? Fully loaded casks? Boxes of empty and filled bottles? What about trash? Spent grain?

What's the outcome if you accidentally dump a full fermenter on the floor (accidentally shear the valve with the fork lift) - is it going to get you kicked out when you ruin the first floor tenants equipment or inventory?

These are some of the items that came up when we discussed using a second floor space in an old historic factory. Surprisingly, the floors would support the loads, but only because the factory had been built to house some massive cast iron equipment, on all floors.

Impossible to describe consistency using subjective terms, everyone's idea of soup is different. I wouldn't describe it as gummy cream soup however. If you talk in grain/water ratios it's at least comparable objectively.

With rye - suggest starting with a lower initial gravity target and then working upwards from there, until you get what are looking for, and not try to go whole hog again. Something nice and thin, target of around 5%, which would be around 1.5lbs per gallon if you are using enzymes and fermenting/distilling on grain. It's much easier to get a handle on how rye reacts and differs from the lower-glucan grains by taking it in smaller steps. You might want to go with the protein rest as well as the TL.

You might want to recalibrate or at least check your thermometers and pH probes. Assuming you used the full compliment of enzymes (AA, GA, Sebflo-TL), you shouldn't have stuck your ferment and you shouldn't be looking at anything that is sticky or gummy post ferment. It's very possible that you were working off incorrect temp or pH measurements and ended up deactivating your enzymes.

You are using a steam jacket still? Also, get some anti-foam, Fermcap-S or any other silicone antifoam.

Perhaps it's time to push the TTB for changes in designations, either through altered definitions, or through expanded classes and types that allow for more mainstream usage of alternative maturation techniques.

One could make the argument that new oak is extremely wasteful from an environmental perspective, contributing significantly to deforestation and carbon emission. The manufacturing process and downstream shipment is likely just as resource intensive, wasteful. I'm sure there are plenty of environmental groups just looking for a new mission. There is very clear precedent in the industry around the "recycling" or barrels, and the benefits.

Or, look at it from another direction - do you think consumers really care about the designations these days? I'd argue that your label design is significantly more important than your listed class and type.

The way I see it, why not simply adjust the definitions of "Whisky distilled from XX mash" from "stored in used oak containers" to "stored in contact with oak". I suspect very few would consider this a major change to these rarely-used designations.

Then, screw the barrel entirely and just label as "Whiskey" - you can get a brand new 350 gallon stainless IBC for $2000. That's 5 bucks a gallon, and can be reused for nearly forever. I'm pretty sure you can find virgin, fresh cut oak to cut into "staves" and char through your local tree services. There are plenty of large mature oaks that come down every day here in the Northeast, they all go straight into the mulchers or the landfill. Stainless aging with immersed oak is relatively commonplace these days, no doubt because of the high "wine barrel" prices.