mcsology

DM me if you have one to sell

For those of you who aren't already aware, there is a HUGE mess going on right now on facebook and in the on-prem 'craft cocktail' community. It has to do with 'glass ceilings' for women in the bartending world, but eventually spilled over into a boycott of the 86 co. (Tequila cabeza, aylesbury duck vodka, ford's gin, etc...) that has a huge presence in craft cocktail bars. One thing led to another, and some insensitive comments from 86 co. owner Dushan Zaric led to him being forced to step down by his partners when boycotts were threatened. Playboy.com just put up an article talking about some of the details. http://www.playboy.com/articles/employees-only-singapore-flyer-dushan-zaric It would seem our on-premise bartender sales force is getting rather sensitive these days. Probably worth sharing this link with your marketing force and brand ambassadors if they haven't been aware of what's going on.

I'd love to see your procedure if you are willing to share. Thanks!

This is universally true: if you buy anything internationally (i.e. without legal recourse) you better be willing to fly your happy ass over there to look over their shoulder during production, until they have earned your trust.

"Plates do very little to change the flavor compared to being able to change the entire shape of the column" What the deuce?

When I've let washes go wild acetobacter took over as soon as the yeast started slowing. Made killer cane vinegar. Useful stuff.

Quick question, anyone used whirlfloc on a rye mash?

I usually will put 5 or so gallons in there and check the heads, roll it around to check for leaks and use the same water from barrel to barrel. I collect the small amount of little bits of char that come out with the water at the end. Useful stuff. Straight off the truck I've rarely seen ones that need work to seal. If they have been sitting its a different story

Novo Fogo has fantastic wood aged cachacas. I always assumed that they were oak, but I guess I never asked.

I tend to one-shot pot distill gin. After heatup I give it about 30 minutes to an hour to go very very very slowly to minimize the volume of the first fraction that has all the volatile, rather bitter citrus oils that cloud up the spirit when proofed. That cut usually gets cycled into the next runs from the same batch until the batch is fully processed. At the end of the line it goes into the feints container. As soon as the first make starts running clear when proofed to 40% I kick up the heat/speed to maybe 20-30% of the production rate of a stripping run, which is fairly fast but still showing a bit of restraint. When sensory tells me that juniper is falling off in intensity a bit I go a little harder until I get the first hints of cardboard and feintyness. After that I blast feints through at stripping speed into a separate container. Feints get turned into neutral and cycled into the next maceration. Since I cut by sensory, process can vary a little bit depending on what's coming off from run to run.

You can always smith the oiliness down by adding neutral and then water. Lots of great gins are made by distilling a super oily concentrate and smithing down.

Hi Humble, Are you helping them sell their equipment, or is this yours? It would be nice to be able to chat with the people that were using it.

Your local authorities may vary, but I'm fairly certain that in most places, boilers that operate above 15 psi (or was it 30?) are classified as 'high-pressure' boilers and have much more complicated building code requirements and will likely make the local fire chief ask you to jump through some serious hoops before they'll sign off on your facility. I'd definitely look into that side of things before going that high pressure. I also did a little quick and lazy math, and to heat up an 800 gallon stripping load from 25c to 87c at 10% alcohol, and a 300 gallon spirit load from 25c to 87c at 40% alcohol, you'd need to be putting out 1,030,800 appx btus per hour to heat them up in an hour assuming a 10% thermal loss on the way to your equipment. This would be your peak load, so unless you wanted to add mash tuns or other steam powered equipment a 31 BHP steam boiler should get you where you need to go. If this is way off I'd love to know so I can update my sizing calculations.

Thanks!

Anyone smarter than me have advice on buying a hemacytometer? I have good sources on how to properly do cell counts, methylene blue tests, etc... The cheap chinese ones have pretty atrocious feedback on amazon, but since I'm just counting yeast cells and checking for viability, I would think that spending $100-$250 on one is a bit overkill. If anyone out there has one that they like and is on the cheaper side would love to know the brand! Thanks, Mike

You can also give Ryan Hembree of Skip Rock Distillers a shout. He's based in the Seattle area and has been doing a good bit of consulting lately. Pretty sure he's fee based.

I use this: http://www.amazon.com/Gilmour-528T-Solid-Brass-Nozzle/dp/B000XTMG8W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1430427781&sr=8-2&keywords=brass+spray+nozzle I really like it because you can feed a little hose inside of an IBC and point it at the ceiling of the tote and power spray the top inside. I can never get a good angle with the pistol grip type. They are super durable and you don't have to depress a lever to spray.

I've made a lot of vodka with corn GNS and never experienced anything coming close to clouding. If what you receive is actually 190 I'd be pretty damned surprised if clouding were an issue, provided you weren't using lake water to proof it. I've proofed with municipal water on an inline granular activated carbon column and had pretty good results all around.

The Distiller's Guide to Rum by ADI press is a great place to start. More technical info can be found in forums, although it tends to be from a home-distiller's perspective. Artisan-distiller.net has some great threads about all kinds of rum styles. Their threads about infected dunder pit style rums are really informative. Once you get more advanced in your study, Rafael Arroyo's patent on high ester rums is a great resource as well. Google will get you to all these items.

You might want to hit it with VinoSEB fresh and Sebamyl GL to break down pectin and other higher sugars that the pectin breaks down into. Will help the meager yields that are a part of white wine grappa production. Use about 1/4 to 1/2 of the dosage that SEB recommends.

Nice sheet! can we get the guy to alter it so that it works with decimals? I checked against table 1 and it doesn't seem to do take tenths of a degree F/proof into account. If you input 100 proof at 71.5 deg F it gives you the same reading as 100 proof at 71.0 deg F. Useful for on the go proofing, but I'd still use table 1 with manual adjustments for the 1/10th place for final proofing. If you used that sheet when bottling you'd be off to a degree that TTB wouldn't like very much. ** Correction: After a little more looking it does appear to take decimals of proof into account, but does not take decimals of degrees F into account. I'm a little too much of a caveman to figure out how to add that capability to the sheet. Any ideas? Thanks!

Our mashing partner uses rice hulls in a standard brewing lauter tun. Works pretty good for our needs, and a lot cheaper than a centrifugal separator.

Maybe? I don't think so, but I haven't done the proper leg work to give a solid answer on it. My results without chilling are pretty good though.

Ditto. Try doing a mash at 1.070. I use Sebstar HTL (high temp alpha amylase) during mashing to address gelatinization and about 80 grams of cheap bsg alpha amylase per 1000L pre inoculation. Goferm to rehydrate distilamax gw, and a half-dose of fermaid K after lag phase just to be sure that there's enough nitrogen. You didn't mention your mash volume, but a very smart person told me that you should expect 1/9th of your mash volume as finished 125 proof whiskey and that has rang true empirically for me at 1.068-1.070. I'm thinking that there's three possible reasons that you're not finaling out lower than you are: 1) your yeast can't handle the high gravity and go dormant early because they are polluting their substrate 2) your mashes are getting infected and ph drops below 3.5 at the gravity you mentioned (possibly because the high sugar is such an inviting environment for other microbes?) 3) Your materials contain non-fermentable sugars, or components that completely dissolve which obscures your original gravity readings. Looking forward to hearing that you solved the issue!

Happy to share my method from a previous job. We won double gold at san francisco 2014 for our vodka. We filtered at 81 proof on granular activated carbon at room temperature. We used an activated carbon bag filter that holds your granular activated carbon. We pumped the 81 proof vodka ( slightly higher to accommodate any evaporative loss during filtration) over the carbon using our pump at high speed, which then was pumped onto the top of the tank (and was being pulled from the bottom) for a number of hours. We repeated the process as many times as was necessary to get to desired 'neutrality' while still keeping good flavor. Our filter setup was about 2 grand including fittings and hoses and a completely reasonable amount of activated carbon used per batch.