Tom Lenerz

Depends on what your model/plan is, but I'm guessing that won't be enough. 

We have a 1,600 amp service for our distillery building, which is currently overkill. I was curious what our usage was at the moment, so I went to check. We are charging a forklift, operating 1 pump, our crossflow filter (which is a high-load), boiler & air compressor were cycling, and the still agitator were going. Plus lights, computers, etc we were at 235 amps. When we are cooking I have another 4 or so motors between 2 and 10 HP running. 

3-phase is really nice to have for pumps and agitators... 

We run a 250 gallon Vendome, 500 gallon cooker, a couple 5 hp pumps, and some smaller stills with no electric.

We bought a barrel washing rack about a year ago (like this one https://shop.carolinawinesupply.com/product.sc?productId=790), and put it up on legs so we could fit a screened, pump-over tank that we had underneath it. After a year of messing around with that we had our local fab-shop build a drop in tray that sits on the inside, works pretty well. The biggest thing I think is whether or not you are using racks or not for your barrels, as that will impact your design. 

We have an AROL that we added in-line after our rinse/fill/cap monoblock which didn't have a t-corker. We purchased it used, and as a result found getting change parts direct from the manufacturer quite difficult. However our local fab shop was able to do all the change parts for a fraction of the cost and time. I'm sure there are others but they are the only one that makes a standalone that I am familiar with.  http://www.arol.com/en/index.php/products/your-sector/wine-spirit

If you are looking at doing bulk (greater than 1 gallon) it is doable, although I haven't done it. You would be looking at selling tax paid alcohol and then they would register with the TTB as a "Drawback claimant" and file for a drawback to get partial tax credit since it is used for non-beverage manufacturing. 

See Title 27, Chapter 1, Part 17 -> https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=e26cfad7243d0f86927a2a105cb0143f&mc=true&tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title27/27cfr17_main_02.tpl

I imagine you could bottle 190 and sell over the retail counter, but I doubt it qualifies for drawback claims.

We run one screen for everything, 3/32, we had a 7/64 screen but were getting more whole kernel rye through so we tightened a bit. Still some, but significantly less. You might need to slow down the feed into the mill for a tighter screen. 

I would just make sure you have a healthy pitch of yeast at an appropriate temp to try and remedy. The rest overnight might work, but if the bacterial ferment is strong is possible the pH drops too much before the yeast get started, giving them a hard time.

I'm guessing your yeast didn't stand a chance. Overnight at low 100s is an ideal temp for lacto, and pitching at 92 without re-hydration you probably didn't have a good population that got out-competed by the lacto. 

Are you looking to place the sticker over the existing age statement, or have both age statements on the bottle? Changing the age on the label is an allowable revision not needing re-approval and I don't see any reason adding a sticker over the old age would be an issue. I'm guessing if you have both the old statement visible and the new sticker that they might have a problem with that, but I can't site a specific example in the CFR. 

Yup, this is correct, you can check several finished whiskey COLAs through the registry and see they required a formula.

If you don't have plumbing in your tasting room, how do your employee's wash their hands? It does not seem onerous to expect this extremely basic level of hygiene before serving the public something they will be putting into their body.

Depending on your cook process, it is likely starches will continue to break down. As a result finished gravities can and often are below 1.000.

The only way I could see a mash getting more dense (increased gravity) is if you lose alcohol. It seems more likely that your sampling procedures explain the variance. 

9 minutes ago, EZdrinking said:

I've noticed this same thing. I'm sure some of the big food companies have done market testing to see by what percentage can they reduce the volume of a container before the customer notices they are buying less. 

If the above proposal was just to add 500ml and replace 750ml with 700ml so that the US was in line with the rest of the world that would make some sense but to have no standard fill levels feels seems like it could result in a race to the bottom, but maybe I'm missing something.

I agree, adding more standards of fill options would be useful, but I would consider more larger options. 3L & 5L would allow for bag-in-box, and 19L & 20L would allow for kegs.

Having a set of standards is important though for sure.

Did you temperature correct your sample? Earlier in the fermentation it will be hotter, and therefore read lower then if the same sample is cooled to closer to the calibration temperature on your hydrometer.

Also a potential cause, were your first or second samples actually a representative sample?

We sharpie the head with the number, and then print a cardstock label with all the details from whiskey systems and staple that on. If the barrel gets wet, we can always reprint the label as the number is still on it.

I think it is going to be related to size. Larger distilleries and breweries will have a lot more process piping than smaller ones typically. Process pipe is essential for automated processes and can be used to lower labor costs. If everything is piped there is the initial investment of buying the piping, valves and manifolds, but in the long term you don't have to pay people to physically haul hoses around. Sounds minor, but if you are doing the same thing everyday, at a large scale it just makes too much sense. Also you don't have to worry about hoses splitting or having hose barbs shoot off. If you are only moving 1,000 gallons of mash, its a costly mess if that happens, but not in comparison to moving 30,000 gallons. 

This forum section was literally made for, and consists of the post that you linked in your post.

1 hour ago, Georgeous said:

i think a much more efficient design would be a 2" inner tube and a 4" outer shell ran in counterflow. You would have twice the cooling passing through. However this would be a shit load more expensive. 

A set of smaller tubes in the shell (or tube-in-shell) has much more surface area = more cooling capacity than a tube-in-tube like you are describing in the same footprint. The most efficient in surface area in a physical footprint is a plate exchanger. The disadvantage is particle size and ease of cleanliness, its easier to clean and pass larger particles through a tube-in-tube than a tube-in-shell or a plate exchanger. We use a tube-in-shell, 4 pass with 3x 3/4 inch tubes. It works awesome for 30 gallon beer, but can be plugged if you aren't careful. It would be much harder to plug a 1.5 inch or 2 inch tube-in-tube, but much less efficient and more expensive to get the same cooling rate.

Not an answer to your question, but in my opinion the warm up part of the day is when you are most prone to incident and the stills should be attended for safety. 

My biggest suggestion is filter closer to bottling proof. 

Also it is a lot of filter cartridges, are you washing them in-between uses? What type of water are you preparing them with? Hard water can put Ca & Mg ions in the cartridge which will cause problems after filtration.

I'm also not sure your temp and the time at the temp is making an impact on your filtration process.

We've in general had bad luck with cartridges for a number of products and are more and more switching to pads. However on our rye, we do a single, room-temp filtration through 5 micron cartridges with no problems.

We've done 75 rye/25 malt, and currently do a 66 Rye/22 Corn/12 Malt. For both we do raw grains with hitempase and bring to around 185 for 20 minutes, cool to 148, add malt and biogluc and amylo 300, rest for 30 minutes then knockout to fermentation temp. We've never had foam issues on rye and have never used fermcap or antifoam. 

Hey HedgeBird, we have one of these pumps attached to our Mori filler from TCW. They have the air hose going to a regulator, and the regulator has a quick disconnect on it. For the liquid side, they have two short pieces of hose, about a foot long, clamped to the pump and then tri-clamp fittings on the other side. 

There is about a page worth of information, including a diagram for "Charge Still" in Fundamentals of Distillery Practices. Also you could call Vendome and ask them to build you one.

1 hour ago, starcat said:

The " Con " of any software is people have gotten the idea that software is the answer to everything. As thus they have become fascinated and mesmerized by the artifice of it all. People who have never done a correct inventory for example need to learn how to create a fully organized stock room with a paper inventory form that runs in the exact order of the layout, and then master the process by doing it every day. We are living in an age where critical thinking is being lost. This is dangerous. People are fiddling with gadgets too much.

While this answer has a bit of a luddite tone to it, I am in agreement to some extent with this sentiment.

For my first 3 years of distilling operations I tracked all the records needed manually. I created spreadsheets to assist, but it was still a lot of pen to paper and then entering things into the spreadsheet. 

We consistently see questions regarding regulation, record keeping and other compliance issues on these forums. People often are overwhelmed by the amount of information they need to familiarize themselves with when starting a distillery, and having a one-stop shop in distillery software compliance can be tempting. The issue is it is still a tool, and you need to understand all the rules and regulations (and most importantly how to correctly read the rules and regulations) in order to be compliant. 

I always strongly recommend that you spend the first year or more learning the rules, reading the CFR and creating your own record keeping system so you have a strong understanding of all the elements before jumping into a tool.

1 hour ago, city_stiller said:

I'll try to find that article, thanks. In terms of employees, I imagine beginning with only myself and possibly a partner. Very small scale. 

I actually recently attended a "bottling party" hosted by Copperworks Distillery in Seattle. A group of volunteers came and helped label and fill bottles for a couple hours in exchange for tours and tastings. I might reach out to them to see what hurdles they had to overcome to be able to do that.

For real batches of non-custom products, the work would be done without "helpers."

 

https://issuu.com/artisanspiritmag/docs/artisanspirit_issue021_web

The article you are looking for is in this issue, it specifically calls out the legal issues surrounding "volunteer" labor. Starts on page 110. In addition to labor laws, you also have to consider insurance, food codes and occupational hazards (OSHA).

If you want to improve your yield, you should collect lower than 20% abv.

Meerkat has it covered, all the alcohol you estimated is accounted for, its just that you left it in the still because you had about 500 gallons of mash at 2.5% abv, down from your 600 at 8.5%. 

On 3/20/2019 at 10:48 AM, meerkat said:

@Georgeous What you have achieved is very close to the theoretical numbers.  The 51 gallons of alcohol you started with looks right.  If you stripped until the spirit in the parrot was at 20 abv then (assuming no reflux was being used) the theoretical strength of the spirit in the still should have been 2.5 abv.  Ignoring the shrinkage, if you took of 100 gallons of distillate there was 500 gallons left in the still at 2.5 abv.  This would make 12.5 gallons of alcohol left in the still.  If you started with 51 then the distillate should contain 51 - 12.5 = 38.5 which is very close to what you achieved.

The reason there are no easy-to-use calculators for these calculations is that the calculations are simply too varied.  You can get process simulators that are really aimed at the petrochemical industry, but would handle these calculations, but they are horrifically expensive - typically more than $100,000 and only the largest engineering contractors have them.  And they have specialist engineers to drive them.