SlickFloss

I've been consulting in med/rec mj for over a decade and I have been doing Bev eth now for a few years. Disclaimer, I am a consultant. Even I have consultants. There are levels to this. My experience is really valuable for certain levels of both industries, it isn't for other levels, and it's different in each industry. But my time is still worth a fixed rate. As a consultant you need to decide what your value and worth is and who your clients are. I work with craft distillers for one rate on setting up distilleries, I work with mj customers at a much much much much much higher rate because I understand my value there differently and those projects are much more time efficient. I set up a lab in a day but its worth more than a days labor to someone. I set up a distillery in a few months because rigging equipment takes time etc but my work and experience is a lot less valuable in that industry, mostly because that industry tends to have less in the budget. More owner operators trying to figure it out etc. Also less compliance liability. Anyways, define your worth and ask for it. for instance I'll do product development on distillates (gin, brandy, etc.) for 1% equity in the project as a whole if I believe in it or an hourly rate that pays for me not to be in my own distillery (only one brand have I actually taken equity on but I have asked for it on several). Thats a lab recipe through scale up into package with an established QC. Connecting people to packagers and distillers is additional cost. Consultants are expensive because they can revolutionize businesses. Make sure you're a worthwhile one.

Personally I like my Dixon centrifugal pumps. They pump hot and room temp mash faster than the PD pumps we were recommended to use because of our mash thickness, they disassemble and clean easily, have a few on carts exclusively for different purposes. just my .02

Sounds like its not just a clever username then

IS your molasses in suspension or does it separate out from your ferment?

Most fleshy berries are best represented in vacuum distillates

Consultants are great KB above is a great Consultant in the Great state of texas

What size is your still? Hybrid pot, alembic pot, or Column? Whats your cleaning protocol? List it in its entirety.

If you extend your geographic limitation we are taking customers for next year new fill bourbon and rye out of WI

I'm assuming you're running these in a pot? Whats your grist ratio? Are you brewing with city or softened water? Roller or hammer milled? What kind of screening done to your grain? Whats ash content of grain? Organic or commodity Rye? Do you know the varietal? How does your PH track through your ferment?

PMd

How far? Diff state? Changing company and lisences sat all?

You for sure need a consultant. Some digital desktop solutions as mentioned above will work but the cheapest solution at the end of the day is always a bench top distillation.

We use cooling towers glycol and city water for cooling in different places were basically in Canada , we are near superior

If you are stateside try searching for Canola oil instead

If it makes you feel any better you're not alone. Stocks older than 2 years old have essentially ceased to exist with the markets warped speed acceleration creating a multitude of speculation and MGP starting to focus on their own building following the luxco acquisition Things will not get better either. On the earnings report call today MGP announced they will be closing books and entering contract relationships with existing customers to try and accommodate necessary demand. q4 earnings through the roof, their entire year was atmospheric. We are predicting another record breaking, potentially even 50-75% increase next year for them based on our own existing customer sourcing volume projections we do through them. Sorry you're having issues, usually at this point in time I offer myself as a conduit for aged whiskey stocks through them but I was also forced to close our books here on aged stock customers for now.

Note: I deleted a post from years ago in the initial conversation of this thread because things have changed I have learned and I would recommend different things now. If anyone is trying to get into column distillation feel free to PM me for my unabridged thoughts. I have dirt. On eeeeerybody.

Non GMO GNS $2.00/PG loaded. Will get competitive on multi tote orders. PM for details.

I think it’s entirely appropriate to monitor a distillation off site and even control a distillation off site if you were running something that required a ton of tuning at large scale IF there is a qualified operator on-site. If you’re pot stilling I don’t think there’s a lot of soul in making heads and tails cuts from off site and I hope your whiskey sucks if you’re doing it that way, sorry not sorry : /. I don’t hope you have an accident though that’s not what I’m saying at all, that should also be done with an operator on site. A few things which I think are pretty big deals but you may not be tracking. Your zoning and ratings do not take into account unmonitored automated operations, this will come into play if you ever try and rebuild what you’ve lost or start a new business in my hypothetical situation. if there were to be a hazardous incident created by the remote operation of a still that caused any damage, hope you don’t have neighbors, you would have zero insurance-property fire liability business medical anything you purchased- zero. Also for that damage to your neighbors property or maybe multiple properties you could also have civil liabilities. If you have code violations, which sorry but to be frank people who want their cake and eat it to are the the type that may have a few, in certain places in certain circumstances then there can also be criminal liabilities. Extent of civil and criminal liability aside you will be audited. You will fail that audit because of the code violations discovered in the investigation of your hazardous incident which triggered said audit. Consequently your DSP will be revoked. We call that the straight fucked down here in ole kentucker.

We do all types of shit depending on what we’re doing, dry pitch, propagate, slurry pitch, kettle start, etc. We’re very keyed into our yeasts behaviors it’s needs wants and wishes and most importantly it’s generational differences and we like how it behaves in certain ways depending on our goal. My advice would be dry pitching is fine if your mash PH is in the ideal zone for your yeast, you have a grist ratio that isn’t too dry, you are pitching hot (90-97 f for me personally with our strains) while you’re still cooling to lower temp to start ferm. One thing you can do too is dry pitch and give it a sprinkle on top, just make sure it’s not RO water, and if your city water coming in is high in iron hardness or other violent undesirables then not that either, if it’s not it’s probably perfect.

I know I’m just going through it again trying to put all the pieces together I wish I could try and run that column, what abv are you hitting on yourself ferment? A lot of columns rate at a maximum abv to warn operators at what rate they’ll be pushing alcohol out the bottoms but some columns depending on their design require minimum amounts of alcohol and water to function appropriately, the reflux of water and alcohol help regulate the equilibrium of the column

Are you saying grist ratio of four as in four pounds of grain/gallon of water?

I know I just said that. I feel like we're not on the same page. If you want help post a picture of your still or even better a video of it in action.

Continuous column and batch column are no where even close to the same in operating premises, pardon me if I'm over assuming but your column doesn't even have vents so you can't do what I said so we cannot agree. Our disagreement is a fault of semantics: column on a batch distillation system is still a pot still even if you're running a packed column on it. The premise of stripping is a batch distillation premise/function, even though some people do have continuously run stripping columns. Stripping from a batch perspective works really well in the craft model because depending on who you are and what you're working with you can turn two strips a day, so if you had four fermenters it could actually take less time (taking into account actual shift work, working days, and turn over) to strip twice a day and run it all in one finishing run then to fractionate every run individually. Most people wouldn't be able to even get 4 fractioning runs off grain in a week I think they'd go bananas because they'd have like no yield. Come to think of it none of my lecture has even mentioned positive effect on yield of stripping and finishing wines vs fractionating on grain run. As the amount of water in your batch decreases so does your tails purgatory. A pot still is a pot still is a pot still. A column powered by the individual heating of a single batch is a pot still. I think the name most often used for the pots with the 4-5 plates on them and a depgh is a "hybrid potstill." Continuous columns, in short known as columns, are continuously fed wash and work very differently than a hybrid pot.

we source all types of spirits for customers feel free to PM me whenever we just cleared 270k gallons of 2 year old rum from Barbados in tankers sow e always have something if you're looking just depends if we got what your looking for!

Do you have head space above? you need to build up. you don't have enough room for all the activities you want to do. I would clear some floor space too, as earlier mentioned ditch the desk. You need space for a pallet jack to wheel around in there, you're not going to be able to move tanks full of liquid your self. Also, you may want to get one fo those slime line almost a fork lift (idk the name or term to describe them). Without a lot more context this looks like a lot of hosing and pumping, which is fine, as long as you have the space for it, you're going to be dumping a lot of hose. And doing a ton of stripping runs. Packaged spirit out is a concern. Hopefully you can use gravity to your benefit here and build a mash tun above your fermenters, but then youre carrying your grain bags...... you are choosing an arduous path my friend!