Craft Distillery Resources

This is where misinformation rears its head and confuses so many. Continuous stills in the traditional sense have never been used just as so called stripper stills. Period. Even in KY when most did not double nor thump, they never finished as some like to call it in a pot still. A good running, balanced column running good mash with or without, most of the time with a rectifier will produce a good heavy bodied or light bodied whiskey. Suitable for a barrel the time is comes off the still. The only product that must be finished would be vodka as the cuts would not be clean enough to make a good vodka. Vendome hands down is the leader in continuous stills. The German stills are just not built right to be able to work right. They need to be redesigned.

I have never seen anybody filter their steam. Use food grade boiler treatment and get the piping so the steam is saturated but clean, no issues should be had.

The most efficient way to cook mash is steam injection. For some reason the large distillers and even moonshiners used live steam to mash and distill, but it has not caught on in micro distilling. Think about it, no jacket needed unless you want to cool with a jacket. Most cookers made for live steam have a cooling coil inside or the mash is cooled with a tube in tube or shell cooler. In a pinch you could convert a tank easy. Just have a check valve between the boiler and the cooker.

You should not have to worry about it. If they are cooling off then you have very small fermenters or a poor fermentation. Up your set temp on your fermenters make sure the yeast is happy and there should be no problems.

There are lab tools to measure va and so2. high va makes vienegary spirit. Do not mess with it if has sulfites. A total waste of time if trying for a nice product.

Does not say proof or wine gallons. Most industry texts use proof gallons to a bushel. If this is proof gallons, its off. Yield is lower on a potstill because of heads and tails.

You would not get proper aging if you top it up. You need that air space to create esters etc that make whiskey taste right.

Those numbers are way off base. If you are doing everything right, corn based products should run 5 to 6 gallons per bushel, rye is lower, 4.5 to 5.

I like copper in the vapor phase and the condensor. EC was mainly caused by the common practice of adding 13-13-13 to the fermenters as a yeast nutrient. Plain and simple. Whiskey distillers then were not chemistry majors like most today. All they knew was to increase the proof off the still and it would lower ec levels. A lot of producers started doubling then and those using thumpers added doublers. It really effected the flavor of bourbon as we know it now. It used to be a heavier, richer product.

Sulzer sells them buy the cubic foot. Nutter rings

If you are giving your spent mash away then I would worry about that. Hate to make a hog or cow sick and loose a good farmer. It can build up in your mash if you are sour mashing. Making the problem worse. 2 ppm is the limit I was told last.

Best thing is keep the ends of the barrel wet. Twice a week, alternating ends. Soaking barrels takes out too much flavor, and technically if a ttb agent wanted to get picky, after a barrel as been used to hold water, it is no longer a new barrel.

If mashing is done right, nothing should stick to the coils. But to help heating, pump the mash out of the still and back into it to keep it moving. If it sticks to the coils, there is starch in the mash.

I have become aware of 5 tons of organic rye from cayuga pure organics in Brooktondale NY. Their contact is on the internet. I am helping them as they are needing the rye sold soon to keep operating.

Thanks for the glowing recommendation. Southern accent poke and all. I have decided I will do it in my spare time, so it may take a while. Maybe by months end you will be able to purchase it. I am thinking about doing a series of papers if you will on different aspects of distilling. This will be the first real info published. I know there are a lot of how to books if you will out there, but they are full of misinformation. It is sad. Some are endorsed and published by the very groups setup for microdistillers. I will keep you posted.

Just how many heads and tail you guys making? You should not have much. I know from reading here, it does not seem popular to do what is usual in a big distillery, which is redistill them. But just reading this thread, sounds like you all have too many heads and tails. Maybe that is what needs to be addressed.

No need to be famous. I have looked into it, and have just about decided to do it. If I can justify the time. If there is interest, I will do it.

Rye is not easy. But not a nightmare like some think. What would you be willing to pay, now this would be reasonable, but if a rye recipe was published, say a how to manual, on amazon, that works, if you do everything right and have good mashing practices, what price would you pay. I would publish one if there is interest.

Backset buffers your ph. It helps keep bacteria at bay, holding your ph up.

I am looking for stuff like that. Can you give me pricing? How are the heated? How are cooled.

Please post the info for us. There is only one reliable supplier I have ever had luck with. Kelvin cooperage. They have none to spare.

I am working on a book on sour mashing to clear up the myths. The regs used to not tell you how much backset to use, but, it spelled out what was sour mash, and how long the ferment was, etc. 25 percent is about the normal amount used in KY. They all set fermenters around 5. If you keep lactobacillus out, your ph in the fermenter will not drop too much and the ph of the backset will not be to low. The only thing that should drop the ph is carbonic acid. If you have rapidly falling fermentation ph or you finish way lower than you started. That is indicative of a bacterial problem. The common method to sour mash today is with screened stillage. Added to the fermenter. Sour mashing is key to the right flavor of bourbon and rye. If anybody is having low ph, pm me. I can help fix that.

As of right now, all used bourbon barrels are spoken for. There are none to be had for new distillers.

Can you get your water up to 190 degrees? Corn is cheap if you source mill and cook.

There is the modern way of sour mashing, the old way of sour mashing and a mix of the two really. Depends on what style of bourbon or rye you are aiming for. I know of no small distilleries sour mashing the way the big distilleries do it. They sour the mash by screening the stillage to get backset which some add to the cooker and the fermenter, some just to the fermenter. 4.5 used to be the norm, around 5 is the normal ph now. If you are doing your job right on keeping lacto at bay, then your ph of your stillage should not be a whole lot lower than the starting ph of your mash. Years ago, 50 percent was the usual amount of backset, going way back, some used close to 100. In my opinion this is a big problem in the microdistilling industry. Nobody wants to sour mash, understands it, seems interested in finding out about it, and this is a main flavor component of good bourbon and rye white dog. Not to mention ups your yeild and keeps things clean and makes for less waste to get hauled off.