cowdery

Shoot a note to a couple of the master distillers in Kentucky or Tennessee. They'll tell you. The last time I saw it done, at Woodford Reserve, they used a stencil and a rubber roller with an ink pad. Ask Dan Garrison (Garrison Brothers in Texas, picture attached) what he uses. The big guys may be using ink jet printers, but they can still tell you the ink specifications.

I'm not a distiller but I talk to a lot of them. Everybody I know wants a bigger still. The problem is that it's virtually the same amount of work whether your still is 50, 100, 250 or 500 gallons. Yes, a bigger still is a bigger initial investment, and will increase your materials cost, but your time and energy is the value-added and if you can produce twice as much product doing the same amount of work? Well, that's not hard to figure out.

I recently visited Koval Distillery, which is located very close to me here in Chicago. My blog post about it is here. One thing that struck me, which may be of use to beginners, is that Robert and Sonat Birnecker went into this with a very clear and well-grounded vision of what they wanted to do and they tailored everything about their operation to do that well. In their case, Robert's grandfather in Austria is an accomplished distiller of fruit and grain spirits in a very particular style. While Koval is also doing its own thing, they have that solid grounding in a specific heritage and tradition. I'm not saying you have to have a distiller grandfather, but you will benefit if you have a well-developed vision of precisely what you want to accomplish before you start.

I don't believe there are any small distributors in Texas. There's just Glazer's and Republic.

The government's preference for big producers goes back to the beginning, literally, with passage of the first excise tax in 1791. It's the same logic as requiring employers to withhold taxes from employees. It's easier for the government to keep tabs on a few big guys than a bunch of little guys. There are some big producers who get around the 3-tier system by what someone else called the strawman. The Johnson and Philips families do it in the northern midwest. The Philips side produces, the Johnson side distributes. The Goldring family has something similar in the South with Sazerac (producer) and various distributor entities. One wrinkle is that the distributor has to be incorporated in the state where it distributes, even though there are multi-states distributors, like Southern, that link them together through a holding company. Direct sales without the subterfuge mostly exist in states where there is a strong wine industry. In Kentucky and Tennessee, which permit gift shop sales by producers, the producers actually have to sell the product to a distributor and buy it back through the retail entity. It's all paper, the product never leaves the premises.

I'm joining the conversation about paying for samples from suppliers, like bottle suppliers. The only way it makes sense is if they up front agree to credit back the cost of samples against any future order, but even there if their competitors give free samples then screw them. If they are reps who want to charge for samples because they have to buy them from the manufacturers, then they have a problem with their business model and I would be wary of doing business with them just based on that.

People usually get into this because they have an irrational and unexplainable passion for it, not because they went looking for a sound business opportunity. I compare it to the Richard Dreyfuss character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For one thing, this whole craft distillery thing is so new, there aren't any good road maps. Maybe someday someone will sell an off-the-shelf "kit," like buying a fast food franchise, but it's not there yet. Probably 2/3 of the people here, who have distilleries going, are still trying to figure out out to make them profitable.

Me too!

DISCUS is an interest group and it just got more interesting.

Change them how? I can guess what you mean, but you might get a more interesting discussion going if you narrow the scope. Changing most of these laws is very difficult because there are very entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo. As Ralph and other people here who have done legislative work can tell you, it is a very detail-oriented and drawn-out process. But if you think about most trade organizations, they are primarily lobbying entities. The education and promotional stuff they do is incidental. ADI is a membership organization and what it does with its resources is ultimately up to those members.

All of the major distilleries do exactly what you describe. Glass that's particular to a brand comes in the case shipper for that brand. Generic bottles used by multiple brands come in a generic case shipper. The cases are emptied at the beginning of the bottling line, travel above the line on their own conveyor, and arrive at the other end to receive the full bottles. Tape it up and it's ready to ship. The box maker fabricates and prints the boxes and ships them flat to the glass maker. They assemble the boxes, insert the dividers, put in the bottles and ship them to the producer. I've never seen glass delivered any other way.

Many but not all of the players in Big Alcohol view micro-distilleries as a good thing, because they attract consumer interest to the distilled spirits category generally. Because some take a contrary view, it behooves micro-distillers to be involved with the macro-distillery interests just enough to keep those who regard you positively to keep thinking that way. You might be interested to know that even Heaven Hill, a giant by micro-distillery standards, considers itself too small to justify the cost of DISCUS membership. Never forget that DISCUS is a membership organization that works for the interests of its members. It only works for the interests of the industry as a whole when that interest coincides with the interests of its members, but if they ever conflict the interests of its members comes first.

If you expect to fail you'll never be wrong.

The explosion of small, legal distilleries in the United States in recent years is evidence that the legal obstacle course is not as daunting as it used to be. This came about to make it easier for farmers to distill their own ethanol for fuel, but the same rules apply to beverage alcohol makers. That's federal. State laws are another matter and, as always, they vary. The reality is that although it is illegal to distill potable spirits without a license, a person who does so on a very small scale, who doesn't try to sell his or her product, is at very little risk of prosecution.

Is sour mash even possible if you're distilling a wash? I would guess it's not.

Like I said, in Kentucky and Tennessee they've been doing it for generations. It's second nature to them. If you can, you might want to go to Kentucky, document how the farmers there handle wet slop, so you can school your farmers. It will be strange to their cattle and hogs at first too. The thing is, drying requires a significant initial investment and a significant ongoing investment and with all of that, it's still waste disposal. You'll never make money from it. So the easiest and cheapest way to dispose of it that is responsible will be the best thing for you. I would think that because you have cattle, you're halfway there. In the old days in Kentucky, the distilleries had their own feed lots a discrete but convenient distance from the distillery, connected by a long, sloping trough.

You can't make a hard and fast rule and most of the statements that have been made here that try to are overbroad. Here's an example. Let's say you are the business owner and chief distiller. You also know you have a winning personality and your marketing strategy is that you will be the 'face' of the company and its products in all respects. You will make all major sales calls, you will be featured in all advertising, you'll host all promotional events, and when you're not out doing that, you'll be at the distillery greating visitors. If that's your plan it makes very good sense for both the company name and every product name to include your name in some form or another. On the other hand, if you plan to appeal to customers on some other basis, say on your location, then a completely different naming approach would be appropriate.

What I can share is the experience of the big boys. They view stillage as a waste disposal problem, certainly not as an income stream. Drying it makes it more marketable, but drying uses a lot of energy, so you're lucky if you break even. For the most part, the two options have been to dry it to sell it as animal feed, or give it away wet for use as animal feed. At Beam Global, specifically at Maker's Mark, they're working on some new systems that are both more cost effective and better for the environment. I think there are microbes involved. At least one large distillery was dumping its slop into the city sewer system, with the full knowledge and approval of the city. The distiller told me the city told him they actually needed more organics in their sewage, so it was good for them, but I have recently been told that distillery is back to giving it to farmers. When you give it to farmers, you do so in liquid form and they provide the transportation. In parts of Kentucky and Tennessee this symbiotic relationship is well established. It's one of the reasons why those areas also have a lot of cattle and hog operations. Interestingly, thoroughbred horses do not eat distillery slop. The problem they're having now is that with bourbon doing well and production going up, farming on the downturn, and the distilleries tending to be in areas that are becoming more suburban and less rural, there aren't enough farmers located close enough to take all the stillage that's available. Another problem, for people who dry it and sell it, is that the fuel ethanol operations have the exact same by-product and they're flooding the market with it, depressing prices. The farms either feed it to the livestock as it is, ideally still warm, or let it settle so they can pump off some of the water, making a thicker gruel.

There is no right or wrong answer to such a question, at least not in isolation, as it has to be answered in the context of an overall marketing strategy. So the right answer is, "it depends."

There is almost nothing usable left at Michter's. It's some decaying buildings and rusting tanks. Anything of value was stripped out a decade ago. It's also doubtful if a buyer of the property would even be able to use the name, since Chatham Imports now uses it to market whiskey that was made nowhere near Pennsylvania. I know it seems like raining on parades is my favorite pastime, but the initial post in this thread, and the associated link, are very misleading.

Two small points. (1) Is there any reason to use "utilizing" rather than "using"? Simpler is always better. (2) Can anyone define "rectification"? Seems like it might be a catch-all that can cover a multitude of sins.

Precautions are taken when drinking or even nosing spirits, not specifically because of cancer, but because the senses of taste and smell can be damaged, temporarily or permanently. At every American whiskey distillery, for example, every barrel of aged whiskey is nosed before it is dumped. The tester uses a thief to extract a sample and adds an equal amount of water before nosing it. That means the spirit they're nosing is probably between 55 and 70% ABV. They're nosing only, not drinking. They also work short shifts, like four hours, and have some other duty for the rest of the work day. I recently learned that professional blenders typically work with samples diluted to 20% ABV. They are both nosing and tasting. Distillery tasting panel taster also typically taste at 20-30% ABV. Mostly when someone is tasting something right off the still at full proof, they're doing it for fun. You don't need to do that as a practical matter and most people don't. They certainly don't do it over and over again, day after day, because that's a bad idea on many different levels. I'm not a distiller but I know the practices the big boys follow. I know a lot of micro-distillers are operating by the seat of their pants and learning as they go, but if anyone is sniffing or sipping a lot of high proof spirits day in and day out, well, they probably shouldn't do that. But I don't believe many are.

Some people will do just about anything to get the words "pot still" into their advertising.

For obvious reasons, virtually any commercial photographer in Louisville, Kentucky, will have extensive bottle shot experience. The best trick I learned from them is the bottle-shaped reflector that throws light into the bottle from behind, especially important when shooting aged whiskey.

Because of the incredible growth of micro-distilleries, it has become necessary for Heaven Hill to add a caveat to its statement about corn whiskey, to the effect that it is the only major spirits producer that makes and sells corn whiskey. The distinction has been that several other major producers make corn whiskey for use in blends, but they don't market it.