Rich Morgan

For the Aussie members, We are thinking of running a series of Distilling Courses at our new distillery in the Hunter Valley, NSW Australia. We are still evolving the syllabus, but I am keen to hear from anyone interested in potentially attending. Trying to gauge numbers and potential interest. Email me if you are in anyway interested. Thanks in advance; Rich Morgan rich@hunterdistillery.com.au

Have worked in several large facilities, but my current operation is relativity modest. When I was working in Malaysia (primarily due to the ambient temperature) we used to get LAB infections, better hygiene and larger inoculations kept it all in place. rich..

Have worked in several large facilities, but my current operation is relativity modest. When I was working in Malaysia (primarily due to the ambient temperature) we used to get LAB infections, better hygiene and larger inoculations kept it all in place. rich..

We grow our own wormwood, its very hardy and virtually immune to pests. As for the others, we found a couple of local fresh herb growers that were insterested in meeting our demand. You can NOT make a decent Absinthe from 2 year old, dried, dessicated dusty herbs. I feel your pain mate. It seems that nothing of any quality gets to the Southern Hempisphere. rich..

LAB bet my cat on it.

Been thinking a lot about this same problem, as we also tie up one of our pot stills doing the beer 'stripping'. My thoughts are for a basic single column, with a minimal boiler. Emphasis is on stripping out the water rather than any considered fractions. The challenge with any small continuos column still is balancing the beer feed with the removal of the product and the tails, while maintaining thermal equillibrium. I am leaning towards a computer controlled system, rather than tweaking flows. Will keep u posted. rich..

With the return line from the base of the column to the pot, unless there is a full sump, you should have a U bend in the line to stop vapor travelling up the line. Minor issue, but all adds to efficiiency. rich..

Clever approach

Just remember it will attack the still copper pretty hard. But a mild acid/peroxide wash will have it back to sparkly new. Just do not do it over and over, or your still will become a giant collander. LOL

I would strongly reccomend against using a vegetable oil. It will crack in the still in the presence of all that heat, low pH and alcohol, potentially producing all sorts of interesting by products. A hydrolised vegetable oil theoretically could esterise into some nasty compounds. Most of the anti-foaming agents are synthetic silicone oils, which are stable ate these temperatures and pH. In the olden days (showing my age here) we used to use good old, hard cake soap (not detergent). The soap will break the surface tension on the foam. Just a 1/4 teaspoon in the wash will do. try and get an all natural, no fragrence laundry or hand soap. You know the stuff your mums washed the stains out of your shorts with. In Australia it would be Sunlight soap.

Tried Sorgum, makes a totally crap whisky, but rectifies well into a Nuetral Spirit. Some aussies here adding wheat to the mash.

General Gin caveat --->depending on your botanicals<----- Colour in the distillate is usually only carried over from the pot via vapour entrapment. Most of the colouring agents in the common Gin botanicals are water soluable, so either you boiling out too late (tails cut too late) or, your boil is so strong you are getting wash portions being (kicked or flemmed) carried through. Try the following; 1: Sample, ad compare the colour in the distillate, every say 20 mins, and try and determine if it is a fractional issues (cutting) or not. 2: Slow the boil, see if this helps. 3: Run bench trials on a lab still with any 'odd' botanical you might be using, over the standard EU top 10. 4: Dare I say..... clean the still well. This is not a rum/whisky residue? 5: Green or unripe junipers will produce a yellow tingein the distillate, but normally appears in the heads, or foreshots. rich..

Between 40-60% ABV depending on style. Most UK distilleries do it at 60%, depending on the botanicals. Personally 60% gives us the best trade off between batch efficiency and flavour profile. rich..

We inverted spray rinse with purified water at +65C, then drain, then blow out with dry air (all inverted). With spirits its not an issue of bacterial contamination, but rather dust, dirst and crap in the bottle. We buy premium glass from Saver in France and I have had glass chips, a screw, mouse droppings and bits of cardboard in the bottles. We then cap, then wash externally and dry with air knife. I think that nitrogen or CO2 purging for spirits is pointless. rich..

It appears that you cooling water feeds the top of the reflux condensor then passes to the product condensor. You need to be able to control the water flow through the reflux with a high degree of accuracy, while ensuring that the water flow through the product condensor is never interupted (itherwise you can get vapout at the output, or at least hot spirit). I would plumb the two cooling loops independantly with their own flow controls.

Hot caustic (sodium hydroxide) works a treat on sugars on glass and stainless. But it also strips flesh like crazy be carefull. But any good caustic based cleaner should work. Please get some advise FIRST if you have never used hot caustic solutions.

We use the tube in tube style, as seen in the Wine Industry, not that compact, but clear bore, and the u-tubes at each end being removable make for easy cleaning. I have shoved stone fruit mashes down mine.

I would suggest you allow the spices to settle out as much as possible first, the less you pass to the filter, the longer the filter elements will last before either cleaning or replacing. Obviously the coarser th grind of the spice the easier all this will be. To not be fooled in thinking that you need to grind your spices to a super fine powder to get complete extraction. Depending on what you are trying to make, there are various clarifying agents (flocculants) that will aid settling, PVPP is approved in most countries for use in rum. But be careful, most flocculants or settling agents will also settle out some of the key flavour and colour components. I would then look to a plate filter, they are cheap to reload, effective and can handle a wide range of particle size. I suspect you will have to do several passes, each with a finer degree of element. 240lbs of silt is a lot to remove. Another approach would be similiar to how the brewers remove the trub from a batch of beer wort. After the sparging, they allow the grains and trub to settle onto a false bottom (a stainless sheet covered with 1/4" holes), then drain the liquor from underneath that. The bed of settled grains acts like a filter membrane, progressivly trapping finer and finer particles as it builds up. This removes most of the particulate, leaving a relativly clean liqiour for the plate filter. I have seen false bottoms covered with two layers of fine muslin, to help the bed get started. The very very best option (no money spared) would be a cetrifugal spearator, but I doubt your volumes would warrant this expense. I would avoid cartridge filters as they will block up under this load very quickly. DE filters will strip too much flavour components. There are some really nice, and well priced stainless plate filters brought in from Italy for the small scale wine industry. rich..

Assuming its food grade PE containers your talking about. If the spirit is less than 50% ABV then I think you will have no taint problems. Your real issue will be the PE container taking up components from the spirit, especially if its Gin. You can never get the Juniper smell out of PE it seems. I did read there is an issue with Ethanol (>80%ABV) washing out the plasticizers in PE and causing them to become brittle, hence liable to crack, in my opinion the chemistry of plastics does not support this. I am not sure with the laws in the US, but in Australia we must have all our tanks and vessels volume calibrated (to ensure accurate excise controls), and this is impossible with a semi-rigid masterial such as PE. The more you put into the tank, it is likely to balloon out at the base, effecting the dip versus volume charts. Hence plastic tanks are specifically prohibited here. rich..

Most grain and sugar ferments will stall (stop) at or below 5C, they usually will spark up again if warmed up. But, with any slow or stalled ferment there is a risk of it stopping altogether (aka a stuck ferment), so its best to keep it warm and lively. Insulation may help, but also consider immersion coils with hot water, or maybe an electric band heater (both with thermostats of course). The thing to remember is that although the fermentation may have stopped, other reactions (autolysis) can continue, and reduce your viable cell count. The longer a ferment hangs around with low alcohol levels, there is also a chance of bacterial infections taking hold, which most are more temperature tolerant than the yeast. The general rule is always, a quick, clean and total ferment. rich..

A small organically certified distillery is for sale in the Hunter Valley, NSW Australia. Operating profitably for last 3 years. Includes 2 x 400L fully computerized and automated pot stills, one with full column. All support equipment, tanks, ferementers, pumps and chillers. Business owns solid 'Valli' Vodka and Gin brands. Current ATO 5 years license, and all calibrations current. Richard Morgan Owner and Distiller +61-(0)419-201-413 rich@hunterdistillery.com.au

We run ours through a small grain roller, with the gap set wide enough to just split the berry, but not completely pulverise it. It important to use crushed berries immediatly as the oils oxidise very quickly. rich..

Brilliant, thanks. Extremely useful data.

I assume you are referring to general distillery trade waste, not from the sinks and bathrooms. We operate in a rural area also and initially we had to truck all our trade waste off for external disposal, at great cost. We now treat the waste on-site. No septic, or air assisted bio-cycle system will cope with distillery trade waste for three reasons; The pH is way too low THE BOD is too high (typical of boiled waste) The amount of residual alcohol is often too high in 'small' distilleries (we often dump our stillage at 2% residual alcohol, as its too expensive to strip-out the remainder) We established an on-site treatment system FOR THE TRADE WASTE ONLY (all sink and bathroom effluent is treated in a standard AWT septic system) comprising of three 10kl concrete tanks. The waste is transfered on a batch basis from one to the other, and then finally sprayed out onto rural pastures. The tanks work as follows; Tank 1 takes the raw waste, and holds until we have about 10kl, we then pH adjust to 7.2 with Calcium Carbonate. Residual chlorine is resolved with H2O2. BOD is measured, as well as copper, lead and N2 levels (local EPA requirement). Calcium Carbonate dissolves very slowly so we need to recirculate this tank for about 24 hours Tank 2 has a pump over aeration system that fixes the BOD and dissolved O2 levels, this again takes about 24 hours of circulation. Bentonite is added in the last hour of aeration just before transfer to tank 3. Tank 3 is the settling tank, we settle the sludge for 24 hours, the clear water is then fed by pump to an open field for irrigation. The sludge is drained monthly, and dumped onto open compost mounds. This system has been working flawlessly for 2 years and has proved very cheap to operate.