schnit

I've known this for some time, and as a consumer it makes me pretty frustrated.

Why?

Because I like rye and 1/2 of the stuff on the shelf at the liquor store all comes from the same barrel. I like to try new brands and I don't know if the $45 bottle of X is the exact same product as a $20 bottle of Y.

Distilled water is perfectly safe to drink. People (most likely NOT from a science/biology background) argue that distilled water is so pure that it will pull out all your electrolytes due to the "desire" for the two substances (the water, and everything in your body) to equalize.

The difference between tap water and distilled water isn't that profound in most areas, the dissolved minerals in the water are miniscule and compared to what is in your body already there might as well not be any. It most likely wont leach calcium from your bones (a common myth), because the amount of calcium in your blood contains somewhere around +10x the levels of calcium of tap water. Blood (normally) contains >100mg/l of calcium while tap water normally contains 1-100 mg/l. By this logic most people's tap water would be "robbing" them of calcium and other nutrients.

If anything, too much calcium (and other minerals) in drinking water can be more of a health concern especially to those who are prone to kidney stones.

tl;dr as long as you aren't chugging like 5 gallons of distilled water a day without any meals, you will be fine.

I would agree that $500 seems reasonable, but you still need to have a "local" copy of it on your machine and be able to print. If for some reason you cannot connect to the internet when TTB wants to review your records you would be screwed. Back up to the cloud is a nice feature,

"The cloud" always scares me. Personally I'd prefer to have backups on my own drives and a cloud service. If the cloud server crashed or the host company went out of business it could cause a lot of problems. At home I keep my data backed up on multiple computers and then multiple drives put in small fire safes which are put inside larger fire safes. It's a bit ridiculous, but my data is safe from just about anything short of a direct nuclear blast

I'm wondering the same thing. I understand the mash goes in one end and drains through a screen--but what keeps the solids moving once the liquid drains out?

Are those ethanol furnaces vented? Reason I ask is that my state strictly forbids "ventless" natural gas/propane heaters (and I'm guessing ethanol falls into that category as well).

Good to hear!

There seems to be a few people lately having to contact supervisors to get things moving. It's sad that a business can be hampered so much by one person.

I think aging whiskey in a wood barrel is the most ecologically friendly part of the production process.

Growing trees consumes CO2 and produces O2. People need to plant trees to have a continuous source of wood, and I'm guessing the air "filtered" over the lifetime of a tree outweighs the carbon output during the wood/barrel processing?

The key here is physically isolating retails sales and service from manufacturing, to "protect the revenue".

Would this need a separate "outside" (in terms of the bonded/general premise) entrance from the distillery? Or can it just be a locked door separating the two?

http://www.medallionlabs.com/

You might try Medallion Labs at General Mills? I don't know exactly what they test for with toxicology as I've only had samples of my future product tested for any types of growths.

I am of the same ilk, Schnit. I think that advertising thoughtfully with a target market that matches your product's image well is a sure way to help versus competing.

But since I haven't been through the process of submitting a spirit to a competition before, or winning an award, it's still a great unknown to me whether or not this actually assists the sales of those who perform well (e.g. Double Golds or Best in Show, etc). I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath-water.

Here's my general outlook on advertising (I was in the business for a couple years). I sometimes had clients who were struggling small businesses, they were profitable but still didn't have a lot of disposable income. Oftentimes a client would be interested in joining some association (like the BBB for example) where they might spend $500-1,000 each year hoping it would generate them more business.

I look at it like this. For a small business that $500 could probably be better used on some targeted advertisements (liquor store posters/fliers) which would generate much more revenue than the affiliation. Once you have begun to exhaust the advertising and you have a steady flow of liquid cash, then put it towards the contests, memberships etc.

Others may see things differently.

I think it depends on how it's marketed and how knowledgeable the customers are.

If it's not marketed well, even the highest, most respected accolades in the industry won't matter very much.

Just curious, do those of you running an agitator see a noticeable decrease in production times on your runs?

Thanks.

Same.

If it's a simple yes/no, fine. If it's a "enter the date" (especially those which require you to click through a calander) I don't proceed unless I absolutely have to.

Sometimes it's the little things which cost a business sales and traffic.

Alibaba is the world's leader in e-commerce for a reason.

With that being said, make sure you do your homework before ordering. Understand that one major risk is that if you are unhappy with your product, you don't have as many options/ways to settle a dispute as you would with a seller in your country.

I'd say it's impossible to predict. I did the same as OldSpye and left it as a zero, that way if there's a surprise it comes in the form of dollar bills going into my pocket vs going out.

There's also all kinds of variables out there such as:

Are you going to source the cheapest shirts possible and try to get the most profit?

Are you going to source quality shirts and get minimal profit?

Odds are when I get to selling merchandise I'm probably not going to earn much profit. If I can give them a quality shirt which they are going to proudly wear once a week for 3 years I think that's better than the $5-10 I might have earned. Heck, I should be paying them for being a walking, talking billboard!

It depends on the state laws . Interestingly enough in for example NY, it appears that the law says that while you are not a distillery, you can sell all the distillery branded merchandise you want. But once you become a distillery, you can't.

Roger,

That is quite an odd law! I would have never thought a state would impose such a restriction.

I'm starting up as well so I have limited experience to offer.

However, make sure you read up on the TTB rules on logos and bottle decorations (I can't recall their exact terminology). There's some general rules such as you can't use any state or nation's flag on your product.

This is a type of self cleaning centrifugal filter. It is designed to prevent any buildup of solids so it should never?? be able to build up 1-2 pounds.

My juicer is designed to be self "cleaning" but occasionally something small sticks to the screen. When this happens it goes from a smooth, steady sound to a very loud vibration until the jam clears itself.

Check out this calculator to see the forces involved at those speeds. 1 gram traveling in a 6" radius at 13,000 rpm has an awful lot of power to it. I have yet to take a college physics class, so I'll leave that to the more experienced.

http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/newtonian/centrifugal

I think the most efficient way would be the same way a centrifugal juicer works (without the cutting blades of course).

Grain gets dropped into the middle of a spinning, angled screen which separates the liquid as the forces push the grain up the sides and into the hopper.

I think the major problem would be the speeds necessary to dry the grain to the same extent my juicer does would mean absolute catastrophic failure in case something went wrong. I think my home juicer spins at 13,000 RPM--which wouldn't be much of a problem with a few grams/ounces of pulp inside. However, those speeds with ~1-2 pounds of grain at any one moment would be like a bomb going off.

From my very limited experience, meaning that I've been planning out a distillery over the last year and if all goes well I hope to be signing a lease and spending money within a week.

The biggest problem you will encounter is going to be the general costs of opening and maintaining a distillery. If you have a suitable building which you own in a city which allows it this will make your journey much easier and much cheaper. If you need to rent/buy a space, this is where things start getting really expensive really quick.

One problem you will have being really very small is that if there is ANY demand for your product, you may not be able to fill orders. When orders don't get filled the distributors and stores lose interest and quickly move on. So, you need to be big enough to start handling initial and future production. With that you begin to need extra room for pallets of bottles and everything else. Speaking of pallets, you need to order a couple to produce your first month's product and then also start working on month two--this increases your startup costs.

I can't share my whole story since I'm not in business and I've spent months on my plan but I will say that I am really trying to do this on a very strict budget. With that said, my startup cost has doubled and my yearly cost has tripled from what I first estimated. The sad part is that I'm still worried that I may be spending too little.

It's just a matter of time, like when the big breweries started making "micro" brew brands. The best thing the small guys can do is spread awareness about the difference between your brand and the big guys trying to look small.

The more you can laud job creation the better. Cities want businesses that will bring jobs and tourists to the community. They may not ask about it but saying that you will create jobs and bring in tourists will make them want to have you for the most part.

I have pressed tourism as one of the big things I'm trying to bring, seems to get the officials listening.

When you all approached your city and told them your ideas, did you provide any type of monetary numbers, such

as the type of revenue you plan to bring in, the taxes they will gain from it, jobs that you created... etc. or did you simply state what you were producing, how you were producing it, and what you needed to do in order to satisfy all requirements?

This is my next step, but I am having trouble with how in depth I need to go or how much information I need to disclose.

Not one of the cities I've spoke with have even mentioned any sort of monetary numbers other than normal fees for a new business occupancy/construction. I don't recall being asked about job creation either.

It took me a long time to figure out what you did. But I finally figured it out. You took the state of South Carolina and flipped it. Their logo shows both North and South Carolina in their correct orientation with the border shown.

DOH! I saw the line and just figured it was a river. As someone who loves travelling through throughout the U.S. I can't believe I didn't see that it was both states.