glisade

55 minutes ago, geraldmarken said:

Thank you both for the help. I'm gonna sit with it a while to make sense of it, but I have one more immediate question. What happens if the TTB detects an unacceptable thujone content in my sample? Do they close the formula application or just return it for corrections?

Do either of you know any strategies for reducing the guesswork in determining thujone content before sending it to the TTB, or is it entirely trial and error? Obviously the thujone content of a given specimen is variable so that seems to preclude any predictive thujone management. On the other hand I'm not aware of any ways to measure thujone content without gas chromatography. Maybe I could buy some relatively pure thujone to acquaint myself with the aroma.

Geraldmarken,

Search "thujone content" there's a thread with similar issues about how to estimate the amount of thujone content in spirits.

1 hour ago, bluestar said:

Not quite right, glisade. The actual boiling point of immiscible liquids are not really affected if they are truly immiscible. Miscible liquids will have a depressed boiling point from the value of the weighted average of the two constituents. In addition to the affect I described above, however, there is also the fact that it can be energetically favorable for an immiscible liquid in a poor solvent (like oil in water) to be in the vapor (steam) rather than the boiling solvent, at the boiling temperature of the solvent. In that case, some of the oil will be carried with the steam, even though it is not soluble, and then will separate out again as the steam condenses. This is common toward the end of tail runs of oil-containing mashes, like corn, for example.

Bluestar,

Not sure if there's a misunderstanding of what I wrote but check out this link: http://www.separationprocesses.com/Distillation/DT_Chp01m.htm

Key point from the link:

For example, the 2 liquids A and B are immiscible. At equilibrium, they each exerts equilibrium vapour pressure PVP,A and PVP,B respectively. Thus the total pressure exerted is

P = PVP,A + PVP,B

The equilibrium vapour pressures of water and benzene at 100 oF (37.8 oC) are 0.95 and 3.30 psia respectively. The total pressure exerted is therefore (0.95 + 3.30) = 4.25 psia. Note here that in the calculations of total pressure, the actual amount of each is immaterial.

An important outcome is that the boiling point of an immiscible mixture must be lower than that of either of its components. Again, using water-benzene mixture, we note that the mixture will boil when the total pressure exerted by the mixture equals the atmospheric pressure, 14.7 psia.

This temperature is 156 oF (68.9 oC), when the equilibrium vapour pressures of water and benzene are 4.45 and 10.25 psia respectively (thus, total 14.7 psia). Note that the mixture boiling point is lower than that for pure water 212 oF (100 oC) and pure benzene 176 oF (80.2 oC).

Many other botanical's essential oils also have high boiling points but they all come over into the distillate when you make gin. It's because oil and water are immiscible. And when you have two liquids that are immiscible (they do not dissolve in one another, they separate) but they can and will both still boil...and the boiling point of the immiscible liquids will be lower than the lower of the two boiling points!  The temperature to boil will be when the summation of the vapor pressures of the two liquids is equal to the atmospheric pressure, which will end up being slightly less than the boiling point of water (the lower of the two boiling points). So the oil will end up in the distillate...the alcohol present will even further reduce this boiling point.

Dried botanicals in half pint, wide mouth jars of our specific botanicals and other common gin botanicals.

I've done something very similar at a distillery. It was a 1.5 hour private class and we went over:

• History of gin
• Explanation of different types of gin
• Botanicals review with many of them laid out in jars to smell/taste
• How gin is made with a demonstration in a 2L lab still and we had a production batch going at the same time
• How to setup and distill on a small lab still
• Gin Tasting

We gave them a booklet we made that included most of the above along with the GRAS table, water-ethanol equilibrium curve, where to buy a lab still, etc..Both classes we did sold out with 15 people per class.

What's the overall height of the tank?

Yup, sorry my bad. Bluefish_dist fixed my numbers. Though I will say you may have some room to negotiate. Distributors have offered 25% margin depending on the market you're in.

Also, bluefish_dist gives a great example of your baseline, non-distilled vodka at about $5/bottle. This is basically your minimum unless you can buy in really large quantities. 

From what I've seen in TN, which is a 3 tier state; wholesaler and retailer markups are about 25-30%. So in your example, the $24 bottle of vodka assuming a 25% - 30% markup:

Retail shelf: $24

Retailer pays: $19.20 - $18.46

Wholesaler pays: $15.36 - $14.20

It might.

I've been in distilleries with zero walls, markers, nothing between the tasting area and the stills (New Deal Distillery in Portland, OR); with a ~3' high iron fence between the tasting area and distillery (Thunder Road Distillery in Kodak, TN). I don't know if the first one ever had a TTB visit but I do know the second one did and was never asked to fix it. But the only answer to your question is: it might. Whatever you come up with "might" be ok for the TTB.

One thing they may notice right away though, is there is not a unique or separate distillery entrance. I think if you had a "separate" tasting room entrance and a separate distillery entrance they may not notice. Maybe run a dividing wall or fence down the right side of yellow entrance area to the purple tasting area. Mark that area is non-dsp. It may not have a fully separate entrance but may look better on the drawings you have to submit.  Good luck, it's a crap shoot.

StonesRyan, I sent you a message with some examples.

I didn't make an absinthe but a version of the yellow chartreuse in that book, pg 114 of my version. It was within the TTB limit. My version used wormwood and was made by pure maceration and barrel aging (no distillation) then diluting with GNS, water and sugar to taste. There are some good papers out there on thujone content in wormwood and rough calculations you can make. By some references I calculated I would be about 6-7mg/L before proofing and adding sugar and they give you to 10mg/L. If I remember, the paper I read said distillation can dramatically reduce the amount of thujone.

Yes a simple weighted average will give you 486 L at 72% ABV but only if you know what's left in the pot is water at 0% ABV then you will have 486 L at 72% ABV plus about 514 L of 0% ABV of stillage leftover. Otherwise if your stillage is not 0% ABV then you will need to know it's volume and ABV%.

1000 liters at 35% = (volume X at 72%) + (stillage volume at stillage%) 

Or if you are only distilling ethanol and water and are using a pot still you could estimate the volume x from the water-ethanol equilibrium curve. If you took the ratio of the integral of the vapor curve from the starting ABV to end ABV of your cut to the total integral of the vapor curve from start ABV to 0 ABV, and multiply by the starting volume, you should get an estimate. 

See B11: https://www.ttb.gov/beer/beer-faqs.shtml

I'll let you calculate it but give you the tools: https://www.ttb.gov/foia/Gauging_Manual_Tables/Table_5.pdf

then you can google what is the weight of an empty 53 gallon oak barrel. Most likely the shipping company would want them palletized. 

That's the easy part but I would suggest another alternative: if the distillate supplier is not aging at all, then why not ask them to ship the high-proof distillate in 275 or 330 gallon totes and you buy whatever barrel you want separately? Then you just pump into the barrel from the totes, that way you have control over your barrel source, barrel proof, shipping may be cheaper though you will have to buy totes but you can re-sell, re-purpose or even ship back.

You have to register every label/COLA you plan to sell with TN, BUT you only have to pay per brand. Example: You sell three types of gin, you have to submit and approve each label but only pay one for the one gin brand per year.

I don't have any experience with them but their prices seem similar with: https://milehidistilling.com/ and https://www.distillery-equipment.com/

Everything you sell, even if you sell in your tasting room, has to go through a distributor in TN. You can also not own or be part of another company that distributes or sells (on or off premise) alcohol, due to the tied-house laws. There is no self-distribution for spirits in TN, though you can if you're a brewery or winery. 

300 gallon quasi-homemade custom still.

Also, should have posted it's sold.

I am in TN and we first got a distillery license to operate in TN then a distributor then registered our brands with the state. Of course, you don't need a TN distillery license but you have to have a distributor before you can register your brands with TN. But I am not 100% sure it's the same for out of state distilleries, so I would suggest you find a distributor first and then they can help you negotiate the TN process and probably do some of it for you with the state.

4 minutes ago, Northern Waters said:

Nice - worth a try!  Mind letting me know a good source for these bags that have worked for you?  I will look as well!

We've bought mostly from diesel filtering websites, sounds weird but most are food safe and reusable.  The last one I got was a 32" long, 0.5 micron, welded Teflon bag for $12. We filtered 20+ gallons of a liqueur in about one hour.  https://www.dudadiesel.com/search.php?query=%2Bfilter+%2Bbag+%2Bweldbags

Also here are good options too: https://utahbiodieselsupply.com/ 

When we do liqueurs with a high amount of dissolved solids, we pre-filter the whole batch first before bottling. You can get a large 5 micron bag filter for fairly cheap and pump into it and filter your batch first then nothing should clog the bottle filter. 

This can definitely be done. We do it on multiple products and specifically told the TTB during COLA we would be doing this according to the range specified in our formula. They do need you to put an ABV on the label when you submit so they can see what it could look like and it's size but the ABV can be hand-written.

Our false bottom came with 0.5mm slits though we took it our and are on-grain. If you are going to lauter and then cool through a plate heat exchanger, make sure you don't go with too big a false bottom gap or you will clog your heat exchanger.

We do a cold brew coffee liqueur, about 50 proof. Keeps a very big coffee flavor with no issues. Has some fines that settle to the bottom but not enough to worry. Adds additional richness and mouthfeel.

It all depends on the agent you get. I've seen distilleries with no wall at all and some with just a metal fence where you can almost touch a still with a bottle for sale in your hand.