delaware_phoenix

If your water is good water otherwise, maybe a ceramic carbon filter, such as the ones from Dalton. AquaCera (sp?) was one brand of theirs I looked at.

If there are no specific regs requiring something to be a certain way, the TTB officials should have no authority to impose a set of rules of their own making without authority from Congress to do so. If you are asked to do something specific by TTB, make sure you know what reg imposes such requirements. Ask where you can find that in the CFRs so you can understand it fully. If it isn't a matter of the regs, it ain't regulated. The regs can't be arbitrarily changed or modified based on who is the reviewer.

The TTB site says the one of the goals for the various Federal legislation set up post-Prohibition was The current system at the state level doesn't do that.

The one's I use for proofing for bottling are calibrated.

People need to know that the default retailer markup is about 30%. Varies by state and store, but that's a reasonable number at least where I am. It's been mentioned here that you can assume a 100% markup by a distributor. You might get a better deal, but you also have to make sure your craft spirit doesn't end up in a warehouse forever. If in a control state, the markup the state charges is a combination of the distributor and retailer markups. So it might be a little cheaper if you can get into those if you have the production, or by necessity, because that's where you live. Now here's a selection of whiskey prices for an NYC store. Look on the internet for a store in your area to get your prices. Some of these are a bit lower than other prices I've seen for other states. http://www.chamberss...8&categoryid=27 We can see that a lot of the good stuff from the majors are going for $50-60, with a few higher than that, some lower. Four Roses single barrel is $44 (that's a good price I think). And all of this is aged 8 years, 10 years, or more. So let's say you can sell you stuff at $60 retail. That means they paid about $46. So if you're able to sell direct to them, that's great news! Otherwise, figure $23, maybe $25 to you per bottle. Before taxes, and expenses. So from your 30 gallon still, you gross $275-300 from your 5-6 wash runs plus spirit run (12 bottles at $23-25 each). Aren't you glad corn, barley and rye are cheap and your labor free? So let's say you're an industrious, sober, hard-working man or woman and can do those runs in 3 days. You can gross $3000 a month in that situation. My guess is this is a little optimistic based on the fact that other stuff comes up and takes away from plain distilling. You still need to bottle, need to deliver, do mashing, fermenting (though thankfully your yeast are hard-working and industrious). And you won't have time for TV, or Facebook, or taking your kids to the ball game. It would be very helpful if you have a partner or friend who works for free. Free child labor is valuable too. I'm sure someone can correct these figures with their practical experience if need be. (btw I didn't include the benefit of reducing to 80 proof for sale. This increases you overall yield about 30%, but it makes the product less craft-like, less artisanal, and the product may well fetch less.)

My suggestion wasn't really serious because no one is going to pull Scotch or Irish whisky from the US market or even contemplate doing so. But likewise, even if the authorities on the other side look favorably at the idea, you'll find opposition from their producers. But just as we (the US) don't have to listen to what the Swiss say can be labeled absinthe, they have the right to call whiskey what they want. Can't fault you for trying though. If anyone can institute change in this area, it'd be you. Your track record in getting laws and regulations changed is impressive.

But the Scotch and Irish distillers don't want any competition from American whiskey. Now if you can get the threat of the US limiting sales of Scotch and Irish whisky here in the US because of their unfair competitive advantage vis-a-vis American whiskey, you'll see a change. Otherwise, the Scotch and Irish distillers are very happy with the way things are.

You probably won't need a fancy bottler with that kind of production. Any of the basic bottlers will be fine. The back of the envelope calculation for production is from mash to low wines you lose 80% of the volume, from low wines to spirit run you get only a quarter of that. So 1/20th of the original mash volume as product. Your proof goes up in this process, so from 8% mash/wash you get about 120 proof spirit. So 5 gallons @ 120 proof from 100 gallons of mash; or 7.5 gallons @ 80 proof from 100 gallons of mash. Five 750 ml bottles per gallon. So roughly 35 to 40 bottles (750 ml) per 100 gallons of mash. This doesn't include effects of recycling of tails, different yeasts with higher or lower ABV tolerance, or losses through aging. So for a 30 gallon still, overall will yield 12 bottles (approx.) Without tails recycling, you need 5-6 mash runs to get enough low wines to do a spirit run. This is all for a basic pot still.

Good luck!

You raise a lot of interesting points Ralph. I went back to some of the absinthe forums where some mention was made of some of the international agreements and I wanted to reference them here for those that want to look them up. I haven't. I not experienced enough to make a judgement on such matters. The references were to • "The Swiss IGPs are also offered protection outside of the EU, since the Uruguay WTO round agreements, which have many signatories (including the US)." • The Lisbon Protocol (or perhaps it's a treaty) • A link to a Swiss government site describing mechanisms for granting Protected Geographic Indications, and including a list of protected designations in the EU. Basically this link was for the Swiss saying they were planning on extending the protected status to the included list, and you could email if you disagreed.

Congratulations! All the best to you and Brian, and all the team!

While the regs are what the regs are (for the time being), the retailer and consumer are not limited by those rules. The retailer is going to put all the whiskies on one set of shelves. The bourbons together. The ryes together. The brandies all together. The apple vodka (made from GNS and flavorings) right next to the apple vodka (made from real apples!). And that's where it really counts is in the mind of the retailer and the consumer.

I think it's something worth discussing. I don't know how other people think about it. I don't buy commercial enzymes. After all malt has enzymes When mentioning antifoam I was thinking in terms of chemicals, though vegetable oil I guess technically is a chemical. If I wanted to make alcohol for fuel or vodka, enzymes probably will be very valuable. I found it interesting that at the ADI conference, the German scientist talking about small craft distillers in Southern Germany using enzymes. It saves energy. And for them that was very important. So for some people it may well be very useful.

There's no legal definition of absinthe in the US. The TTB does not recognize absinthe as a type or class of spirit because it falls under the generic type "Distilled Spirits Specialty". In fact, Circular 2007-5 specifically disallows use of the term absinthe on a label in such a way as to imply that it is a specific type or class of spirit. Not that every distiller/importer doesn't place the word on the label in order to describe to the consumer that what is in the bottle might be absinthe. At least in the opinion of the producer/importer. I think most of the products that have the word absinthe on the label, and some that don't, all contain grand wormwood, e.g. Artemisia absinthium. This isn't a regulated plant or ingredient. Merely, any food or beverage product using any of the Artemisia spp. must meet the definition of "thujone free" which is 10 ppm or less. At the time circular 2007-5 was issued, this was also the regulatory limit in the EU (where there was also an exception for bitters where the limit could be 35 ppm; so, many absinthes containing more than 10 ppm were sold as "bitters" in the EU). There are apparently various trade agreements that the US has signed that supposedly means US producers might be required to not use a protected name even on existing products. But you can still find Wisconsin feta and California champagne. btw, at the present time, the IGP has not been granted. Only a request to grant an IGP has been submitted. It's unclear who the Swiss Agriculture department will listen to. Since they don't make it easy for non-Swiss to respond regarding claims. AFAIK, comments from the public can be made until June 30th, 2010. What happens after that I don't know. Do they meet in secret and deliberate for weeks, months, years? Footnote: The 10 ppm limit is not very relevant to describing whether a product that uses grand wormwood is an authentic absinthe or not. Some actual pre-Ban absinthe has come down to us across the sands of history, and often they were below 10 ppm, and nearly all were below 35 ppm. So the hallucinations were due to alcohol withdrawal in chronic alcoholics that were taken to a sanitarium to dry out.

So far I've had challenges with the rye ferments. You'd think they'd take off but they don't. Seems to be a couple days before the yeast really kick in. That's my experience so far. Which is limited.

My opinion is as a craft spirits producer (whatever that means) you don't use additives from the chemical industry. But that's just me.

Harmless flavoring materials are still allowed at less than 2.5% for all of the named whiskies except bourbon. (I don't have the chart from the BAM, but I think with straight whiskies they're prohibited, but don't quote me on that.) I think the regs say exactly what they say. Whiskey is going to age if it's in a stainless steel container exposed to some oxygen; the aging will be somewhat different if stored in a new charred oak container due to the many additional compounds that now interact. But I think it's whiskey based on what it's made from, not in how it's stored. Yes, but the main criteria for their differentiation is price. Also flavor, or lack thereof. Big Liquor sells a lot more of the bottom shelf products than they do the top shelf. The modern version of light whiskey is regular blended whiskey diluted with water and GNS. A lot closer in flavor to vodka than whiskey, but it gets to be called whiskey nonetheless. And since vodka is the dominant distilled spirit favored by the consumer, that class of whiskey sells the most. Many consumers have little idea that the higher priced products are fundamentally different than what they're drinking. The consumer also has little interest in the TTB regs. (I'm sure Chuck will correct me about the relative sales quantities of the different whiskies. Maybe Jack does sell more than the blends.)

If you poke at some of the "old books", the common ones published after Prohibition available as paperback reprints for cheap. Typically you see 70-90% unmalted rye, the rest in malted rye and/or malted barley. The real old recipes (assuming they're accurate) often have as little as 5% malted grain. But their expectations for yield were quite different from today. This is for the traditional rye whiskey. But even there, sometimes some corn was used. It's been said that Geo. Washington used up to 35% corn in his rye whiskey, when available. I highly recommend John Palmer's "How to Brew". While about making beer, and thus there are things that won't really apply to us, it has a lot of information about yeast, fermenting, grains, etc. All important. deKlerk's masterwork is also valuable though even Older School, but has a lot of information about how to malt. Other home brewing books may well be useful depending on your interest.

The original commercial distilleries for the product called absinthe began in the late 1790's in Switzerland. In Couvet, which is in the Val-de-Travers. Howver, by 1805, Henri-Louis Pernod had established a new absinthe factory in Pontarlier, France to avoid the French import duties that he was incurring by making absinthe in Switzerland. Pontarlier became the major absinthe producing area in the world by the 1860's, if not before. At the height of absinthe's popularity there were many many absinthe distilleries and manufacturers in Pontarlier and the surrounding area. So for more than a hundred years, there was much more production of absinthe outside Switzerland than within.

Emphasis added. Actually the regs only say is has to be placed in oak containers. No age specification is mentioned in the CFRs except regarding labeling of the spirits for age, BiB requirements. If your distilled bourbon mash sits in new charred oak containers for one day, it's bourbon. The regs don't mention one day, so the time frame for aging could be all of one minute. For the various kinds of straight whiskies, age is a requirement, but they're a different critter from common whiskey.

OK, I'll ask a dumb question. Back in the KY frontier era (circa early 1800's), what did they put the whiskey in to store it until it was needed? It's not like they were going to drink it all right then. I'm presuming that maybe on a small scale, a jug. For maybe even as little as 15 gallons I wouldn't be surprised if they had barrels. Not like we have now, all charred, but the usual toasted staves to bend them into shape. The basics of shipping in those days was you probably didn't get your barrels back once you sent them down on the flatboat to New Orleans. I understand that until recently (WW II?) barrels were 48 gallons, and half-barrels (a specific size) were 24-25 gallons. So when did the term "white dog" originate?

I didn't have any collateral with my bond and it's quite inexpensive. And why need collateral until you're up and running? There's zero liability to the bonding company until then, and the bond actually won't be valid and approved until TTB says so (when you're granted your DSP permit). Distillery bonds are minor products for most insurance companies, and so it's not surprising that many agents don't know about them and how they work.

Yes if you bottle at proof, at 5500 gallons a day you'll run into your 60,000 proof gallon micro-distillery limit in 11 days. Maybe that's not so bad: take the rest of the year off!

But regardless of the illegality of the activity, toxicity of some of the byproducts, the person in question did it anyway. And there are many other people doing the same thing. A little internet searching reveals at least four internet forums dedicated to home distilling or hobby distilling, and educating people by making available basic information on spirits, their manufacture, and safety. I don't think it should be the purpose of this forum nor ADI to provide advice on their distilling activities because our goals are towards supporting the legal craft distilleries. There's a large number of dangerous activities, some legal, some not. The illegality of marijuana hasn't stopped it from being estimated as the largest cash crop in America (over $50 billion annually). The dangers of tobacco smoking are well known, but they're still legal.

From the Concise Oxford English Dictionary: I guess someone could construe the broad, general meaning, but that's not the interpretation TTB has followed post-Prohibition. Not only in the more distant past but more recently as Ralph points out. As far as the rash of home distillers, I'd agree that they should probably refrain from mentioning that here. The unofficial TTB policy seems to be "don't ask, don't tell". They'd certainly rather have legal micro distillers rather than hobbyists, but there's little point in going after the latter given the insignificant revenue loss. There's a number of sites devoted to the hobbyist all emphasizing safety. And there's some cross-over between those sites and here. I think that's really good as some of those hobbyists may choose to become professional, and that's where this site becomes valuable.