tellner

Have you tried the usuals - Star West, Mountain Rose, Bulk Herb Shop, Glenbrook, Bear Mountain?

Bear Mountain only sells (high quality) extracts, but they have good sources and are often willing to help you find things.

Very interesting paper. Thanks you.

Is lactose a suitable sugar for beverage alcohol production? I've had trouble finding examples of it's use for this purpose. Any knowledge anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Lactose is not directly usable by the usual yeasts. That's why it's used to sweeten milk stouts, for instance. With enzymes such as lactase it can be converted into fermentable sugars. There are microorganisms which can use the sugars in milk. I'm not sure if it's ever been done on a large commercial scale. Malted grains, cane syrup and grapes are much more straightforward and cheaper. The Alaska Bootlegger's Bible mentions a priest who made fermented milk beverages. Kefir is very slightly alcoholic. Koumis is somewhat more so. I do not think either has ever been distilled, nor would I want to taste the results.

Wow, what's with the hostility? This company isn't treading on your holier-than-thou craft/artisan/micro spirits production. Are you pissed because they got great press? Do you really expect any news article to be completely accurate regarding technical details?

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First thing I thought when I read this article was "that's sounds cool". A man much smarter than me has perfected a technique to improve spirits without lengthy aging; terrific. The folks who are buying it are apparently happy with the products. I hope the people who (finally) buy my products will be just as pleased.

Amen to both of those points. Every innovation has met with resistance. Some things were tried and died out because they just weren't improvements or were introduced at the wrong time in history. But some things really are improvements. This sounds very promising. The basic idea has a long and distinguished track record. If this works as well as it appears at first blush it could be one of those things that revolutionizes the industry like activated charcoal or column distillation. Maybe, maybe not. But it's certainly worth investigating.

Third, the idea of using some form of energy driven oxygenation and filtration to improve the taste of spirits is not new but we perfected and patented a process that does just that. In short, we react away a substantial amount of the minor alcohol congeners and the free radicals that are a by-product of distillation while at the same time creating some glycerides from the acids that are present. The result is that, in the case of neutral spirits, we improve the taste better than multiple distillation or filtration can, and, in the case of young whiskies, we can replicate in a few weeks the effects of barrel aging over many years. It is true that we cannot replace the mystique of "old" but if you want the taste for a fraction of the cost of "old", we can do it.

Most of us resist change, particularly technological change, but we should think about embracing efficiency and economics when they make sense.

I really couldn't care less about mystique. I'm more interested in quality and the science. A few years back I experimented informally with charcoal, mild heat, circulating pumps and air. Even those rough kitchen table trials gave good results.

How have your products fared in truly blind taste tests?

How do the chemical profiles compare to what you're trying to replicate?

For spirits like rum and whiskey, how much of the process goes on before the product is barreled, and how much when it's on the oak?

Do you have a patent number so that I can look at it and get my geek on?

This really isn't anything new.

Sitting here on my bookshelf is a copy of Hirsch's 1937 Whiskey, Brandy & Cordials. Chapter XVII Artificial Maturing of Spirits includes among other things "sound waves" and oxygenation.

Warning: Trespassers Will Be Violated!

Tonka beans have been a stumbling block for bitters manufacture for a long time. A number of people in the cocktail community have been wanting to revive a lot of old bitters recipes and hit that wall. There are rumors that cheap vanilla extract from Mexico is adulterated with Tonka Beans ( home of the much cheaper substitute) but so far no seizures or arrests. The amount of coumarin in bitters is minuscule and how much is used in each cocktail ?

It is simply a NO, NONE, NOT ANY, drug of any kind can be in a food (except of course antibiotics,growth hormones,etc., as they have better lobbyists than the Tonka Bean producers )

Safrole is because of the rats and Sassafras is also problematical because they worry that it is a precursor to Ecstasy (MDMA) or so I understand, same for calumus

Even Angustora bark is not allowed to be in am IMPORTED product - (read your bottle of Angustora Bitters carefully) but is allowed in domestic bitters.

There seem to be separate lists for imports and domestic ( not that this is a problem for anyone here) just another twist to keep you guessing

Sweet woodruff and bison grass contain coumarin. They are, if memory serves, legal.

Safrole and sassafras oil are illegal because safrole may be an extremely mild carcinogen, but sassafras root is once again legal to sell. I'm not sure if it's legal to use the root itself rather than an extract.

Catechu is an ingredient in a number of old bitters. The nut itself is legal in the US as far as I know, but like Peru Balsam and a couple others it's very difficult to find.

By the bye, if anyone knows where I can get ahold of either of those, angostura bark and a couple others in small quantities for experimentation - and for comparison so I can come up with reasonable and less problematic substitutes - please let me know.

Is it just me, or are we seeing a growing number of home distillers coming out of the woodwork? Absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's just an observation. In fact, that's where most of today's new distillers are coming from, truth be known.It would also explain the growing trend of small artisan distillers which are also popping up though.

It would appear that the TTB would also be interested in getting control of the this growing home group, more on a control and helpfull basis than a punishment one.

Distilling today is where brewing was in the late 70s. Almost everything in the US was produced by a few big players. There was a growing illegal craft movement going on in homes. A few of the home brewers had the money to make the jump to legitimate production and jump-started the microbrew revolution. Eventually the government came around, and the hobby came in from the cold when President Carter signed a Bill into Law legalizing it.

I see it as part of a more general food movement. Home brewing, commercial craft wine and beer making, cooking shows, brick ovens, "locovores", cheesemaking with its own sub-rosa trade in raw milk, the legalization of absinthe and so on are a definite trend.

The main impediments I see are lost tax revenue and the inherently more hazardous process of distillation. No, it doesn't have to be dangerous. But the worst you can do with beer or cheese is make a mess or cause a couple cases of tuberculosis with bad milk. Careless or ignorant people mixing open flames with real quantities of nearly pure ethanol is a much more explosive problem.