thomastew

Our distillery needs more capacity. We are looking for a 200 to 500 gallon still to strip molasses wash in. No need for helmet with plates, just something to do stripping runs in before we do our second distillations in our finishing still. We use steam at our facility so something with a steam jacket or the ability to have one installed would be necessary.

For us, the most beneficial item would be reporting quarterly vs. monthly. We received this benefit for our brewing operation a few years ago and it has been fantastic. The TTB allowed brewers making less that 60,000 bbls/year to qualify for the paperwork reduction. It has always appeared to me that the TTB is most concerned with collecting and being able to predict revenue. At the current level a 60,000bbl brewer might be expected to report around $105,000.00 ($7x15,000) of tax liability per quarter. A distiller with the same type of quarterly tax liability would be someone making around ~30,000pg /year ($420,000/$13.50). Of course, the brewer liability is based on the lower tax rate for small brewers. The same line of logic might drastically increase the distillers that qualify if a lower small distillers tax rate was created. With this thinking it may be wise to wait to see how far that piece of legislation goes. Brent Brent Ryan Newport Distilling Company Newport, RI

Thanks Melkon. We are in support of your proposal. We have been aided by the small brewers exception for years and have certainly seen its benefits for the small brewing industry. One note of caution: When the first small brewers were meeting about defining themselves they originally had 15,000 bbls as an amount of beer that they thought would be amazing if they were actually able to grow to (thus defined microbrewers as those under this number). Brewers like Boston Beer (~1,300,000 bbls now) and Sierra Nevada (~700,000 bbls now) were part of these very discussions. I'm not sure where the 100,000 pg number came from, but although most of us can't imagine this level of succes now, it may very well be the case in the future. Further, with the current small gap between the 60,000 gallons at a lower rate and the 100,000 gallons to qualify, the total tax liability for a producer almost doubles ($700K to $1,350K) when selling 99,999 gallons vs 100,001 gallons. The brewers gap of 60,000 bbls at a discounted rate for brewers making less than 2 Million bbls does not create such breaking point when a certain volume level is achieved. Brent Ryan - Newport Distilling Company - Newport, RI

I would be happy to show you around our place. We are a brewery and distillery in Rhode Island and have the first distilling license in the state since 1872. Feel free to get more info at www.thomastewrums.com Cheers, Brent Ryan Newport Distilling Company