SlickFloss

If you are using other additions to a spirit to make a product (sugars, certain artificial flavors, CREAM, etc.) to make a cordial or liqueur your best bet long term, at least once your volume picks up (if it ever does), is doing a lab desk top distillation.

Plates on the bottom..... you can clean plates much easier than you can RAP for all grain...... Also bear in mind the more reflux the higher the proof..... theres no point in further scrubbing the packing with a plate thats not enough reflux and you will come up short...... The plates almost strip for the packing if that makes sense.... make sure you have right dimensions for plates and use RAP instead of steel wool....... Wait are you talking bout packing your plates?

can you provide picture or better describe flakes? Color size shape "behavior" in liquid etc. They could be a result of several things

^ RUTHLESS! I own one of these pots they are unbelievable. With some modifications post installation for convenience of process, it really can't be beat for your R and D side.... good luck with the sale!

Vacuum? What is boiler size?

Define "the taste of gin". It is a blank canvas waiting for you to steam infuse or macerate any expression onto it. If you don't like juniper hide it in the botanical bill completely or use it as a minority complement. Or don't make it its your distillery. How long are you aging your whiskeys for? You can be more lenient on your heads cut on certain whiskeys depending on your plan for aging. i.e. when we lay down our malt whiskeys in vintage cooperage and know that we are going to let those barrels really get gray in the beard (9, 10, and 12 year minimum plans) you can be more lenient on your heads cut because those are going to volatilize out first. Just something to keep in mind

He makes a very valid point. if you are going to bring an unaged whiskey to market you need to design a different distillation procedure. Tighter heads and tails cuts, I would be pickier about my source materials, and yeast as well would be something I would do differently compared to a whiskey that was going to age longer. I think where you are missing his point in that he agrees w me that calling unaged whiskey moonshine is kinda kitschy and lame... Gin can drive bills if you can make a good gin, bitters is another one you can utilize to drive cash flow, but if you can't make good gin you probably can't make good bitters....... I have a lot of respect for the contributions and advice you give on this forum- not just distillation but plant/process related as well. Although it appears we would not be able to work amicably in the same plant marketing the same products, I hope to share a dram with you one day. Cheers!

Fanciful name...... Sounds like foolish talk to me. "moon·shine ˈmo͞onˌSHīn/ noun informal 1. NORTH AMERICAN illicitly distilled or smuggled liquor. synonyms: alcohol, bootleg liquor, drink; More 2. foolish talk or ideas. "whatever I said, it was moonshine"" "

Okay bro. Im sick of this shit. It aint moonshine if you pay taxes on it. Its just unaged whiskey or GNS etc. Aint shine. lets stop this BS now guys it really is grinding my gears and the only people making money on it are the big boys pretending they're us. Only valid excuse for labeling anything you make shine is if you literally make it at night under the light of the waning moon for marketing purposes.

Adding it while, before, or just after you hydrate your corn helps with liquefaction but if it goes above 160 its deactivated for conversion. So make sure any pre malt is sacrificial in terms of conversion. I think mashing out enzymes etc is more of a beer brewers practice but I am not sure, I know that I like to use pre malt on my corn, cook the crap out of it, then add the alpha on the way down so it is not deactivated. You want as much conversion as possible as a distiller because that is our yield vs a brewers total yield is the fermented mass itself, they need to worry about left over non fermentable or "not fermented" fermentable (difference) sugars to make their beer palatable. Using hot water instead of steam in the jacket to actually get to temp is a very smart move. We do it here. We will mash in at a ridiculous grist ratio and then use hot water to jump from hydration temp to liq/gel temp. However, we like to make a hyper saturated cool(er) slurry with the grain first, then blast it with the hot water. So for corn we'll start at room temp turn steam on while we mash in, we will have end up with all corn and a little pre malt in at about 3-4 to 1 grain to water ratio be full mashed in at a hundred degrees about, then add hot water (boiling if possible) to slurry while we mix. It will end up around 170/174 we will use steam jackets to heat to 190 and hold for conversion. We will also use an addition of water to cool to next stage after we've hit our cooling minimum time limits. Hope this helps I'm scatter brained working on a saturday morning

Depends on your enzyme temp stability. In my experience corn can gel fully anywhere over 174 and maybe even lower temp, but your talking much much much much much longer time needed to cook the lower you are then the standard, which is already long. Stick closer to 190s, if you don't have temp tolerant enzyme use some pre malt.

That depends on the solder material. Use citric solution not vinegar to clean it up.

If you're running that much different stuff through there you gotta really mind your ps and qs with your still that coppers seeing a ton of organic matter and likely sulfurous compounds. Do you have CIP spray balls in place and the set up to allow it/them to function adequately? And how big is this thing even? First off, if you're in shut down for a while I would run water runs to keep it from getting too nasty in there- you'll know if you wind up with copper sulfate you'll get blues and greens out in your spirit. Make sure you rinse after the citric too I do a hot rinse then a cold rinse after We go off of concentration of solution then conductivity of solution for rejuvenation, for you Id recommend a 1-3% citric solution unless you're really fucked you can do the 5% and peroxide hail mary. Not using RO water will affect performance of your acid but its almost negligible depending on size of cleaning job if you do concentration on higher end A layer of organic matter is soil my friend : ) but hot PBW and hot citric may do the trick for you Read through this thread it will help Good luck bro

What do you usually run through there? What temps are your washing fluids? Hot pbw is a lot better cleaner than room temp PBW. Citric works better hot too. If you're not getting rid of soil with the PBW then the citric can't do its job. What concentration citric solution are you using? Are you using RO/DI water to make your citric solution? If not have you adjusted your mixture for ionized water? Do you have copper sulfate issues? Which part of the still needs to be cleaned? If you're kettle is dirty you probably have a Lyne arm and condenser that need restoration as well. End of the day, hot sodium hydroxide will clean any soil, but you need to be uber careful with caustic and copper, very very very careful. Most people choose not to do it at all.

Condescension was unintentional and I apologize for that. I want it on record I do not believe I know everything about canning, packaging, fermentation, distilling etc. Just have unique experience doing exactly what you're saying in this instance. Ill do my best to get rid of the snarky and put a little more aloha in my flow bra.

(I hope this doesn't come off as snarky because I'm not trying to be) 1 Fernet on the rocks isn't a cocktail 2 You cannot can anything on the rocks the ice will melt (so maybe you need to look into how things are canned?) 3 the soda options you listed are possible in some respects, but they'll be bland, people will still need garnishes, and you won't be able to incorporate natural flavorings as easily as you think. You can't just add juice to shit and hope it works in a can for a few months. 4 Canning process requires high temps and pressure for extended periods of time for sanitation. This will cook off, degrade, etc most flavor compounds like juice, natural oils, etc. 5 You would want to engineer in dilution rates etc for your serving, which means selling a concentrated amount at a premium price point (added package, effort, energy engineering etc) or purchasing special sized cans (more money) and doing even more work to make it fit in that package. I've spent 9 years making dreams realities for people at a 1.9 million cs/year custom bottling plant (we have 7 bottling lines). customers bring us their vision and we deliver them goods in package. The number one thing people do is come in with a cocktail saying they want it canned/packaged spouting off the same shit you're saying now-but people forget that we don't live in a world of technicalities limited to their own scope of experience and vision. You "seeing no reason why it wouldn't be stable" when you have no experience trying to do this for a consumer, or for yourself, doesn't mean theres not a reason it won't work. When you say G and T, vodka soda, etc these are simple mixed drinks that could be packaged with alcohol in them for sure. But when someone says can a cocktail, that implies a true cocktail, so a combination of ingredients (usually a base spirit, other spirit/liquid, an acid, and an aromatic garnish/bitter element). An old fashioned is the best example of a cocktail. I am able to can/bottle you liquid that resembles in taste and flavor an old fashioned, but it will not be as simple as putting 2 packets of sugar, some water, 2 ozs rye and 2 dashes angostura in a can. And an even bigger problem is it won't be your exact perfect cocktail. Taste will skew to the limits of manufacturing. [I contract manufacture 2 premade old fashioneds that are super successful in marketplace and ti took us forever to get it dialed in just right]. Try this. Mix 80 proof ethanol and lemon juice in a bottle and let it sit closed for two weeks. Is it the same? No. The acid will degrade and become purely bitter instead of pleasantly tart. Try mixing your perfect manhattan and put it in a mason jar with no air space for five days. Is it the same? No. The bitters leach into the rest of the immiscible fluid and there is no contrast. And depending on your vermouth (we make our own in house) that likely will change as well.

Something to keep in mind. Cocktails are a moment in time. Acidity, dilution, and oxidation all come together to form the evolving flavor of a cocktail. Packaging a stable form of that is much more difficult than many people would think. Sodas are canned with artificial ingredients because they're cheap but they're also stable in the presence of carbonic and citric acid. For instance: an old fashioned isn't just a whiskey bitters soda, ya know what I mean?

I would recommend Paul (SouthernHIghlander) highly. I also would recommend Cassell systems, Headframe Spirits Manufacturing if you got the gumption for it, and if you wanna go international get a Frilli.

Thats a pretty mark up there chief especially if its the used coop. You don't want to save it for blending stock? MGP's 21% rye bourbon is 75% corn and the remaining 4% is mb

Silk is literally the man. Great call on the parrot back fill- we actually don't have a triclamp on our pot's parrot/safe so what we do is block off the spirit outlet to the parrot and flood the condensor by taking off our flame arrestor. then to completely drain the condenser we just open up the safe/parrot and flood detergent or citric solution into holding tank for next cleaning cycle or if its a rinse we send the water where it belongs. Using RO water for final flushes have helped us a little bit with residue from drying water (we triple rinse everything after we clean and recapture- hot city water for first rinse, cold city, then cold RO for final). Pretty much no residue but might be neglble who knows. : ) good luck

Unless by recipe you mean you've come up with some revolutionary cook method for insane conversion etc your recipe (mash bill) is likely already out there being use by someone else and has been used by someone else for many years (or you're talking original gin/liqueurs/cordials/apertifs etc). Distillers are a dime a dozen, truly intuitive and great brewers are hard to come by, but excellent blenders are fucking porn stars. Good luck bruh.

I second bell flavors..... We have literally bought millions of dollars of ingredients off them at one of our blending plants and I've never had an issue. Helpful in R and D, come up with solutions for manufacturing issues (split ships, etc) and in house manufacturing of some of the largest brands in the world brings with it their top tier quality, and in my experience we have never been lost in the shuffle with the big boys like sometimes I feel we are at our own liquor distributors! Very attentive to our needs as if we were Johnson bros etc. ourselves.

If you're looking for a really clean lighter malt continue rectifying to that hight of proof but if you want a grainier more full bodied visceral substantial whiskey, which I would've wanted off that mash feed, I'd recommend pulling it off at lower proof for a more robust whiskey. This way too you wouldn't have to adjust as much with water pre barreling, Having the water come through the still grainside will give you much more congeners than adding in water later......

If you think anyone in charge around here has any interest in the success of your business other than your ability to pay for expo passes, "hands on distilling master classes", extraneous break out sessions, and books through this site you're sorely mistaken.

We run our own anti foam mixture through our DI steam column for our Rye and Bourbon (head frame- you should get one) We doctor ours up though, use half of the volume of the antifoam (usually five star or fermcap) and make up the rest of volume with corn oil (and actually wheat oil for our cheated borubon as well) No problems here.