Distilling Research Grant

[Erik Owens]

In 2018 the Distilling Research Grant (https://distillingresearch.org/) was formed as a 501 c3 to advance craft distilling by providing funding for academic research. The grant is funded by an annual auction and donations. 

The basic of science is to ask a question, create an experiment to test the question, run the experiment to create data, analyze the data and then determine if you have successfully proven or disproven your original question.

There are many ares of craft distilling which have unknowns, but are gigantic topics such as "does the terroir of corn affect the final flavor of barrel aged spirit?" which would take multiple years of experiments to lay the groundwork. As a start-up volunteer run organization there is not currently the resources to fund. We are looking for bite sized questions such as "How oxygen enters and interacts with distillate in whiskey barrels aged in various locations in aging warehouses (https://distillingresearch.org/research/)".

What areas of research can help you operate your distillery and/or help grow the craft distilling industry? The request for proposal re-opens February 15-April 16 2021. If you do not have a background in science, please reach out here: https://distilling.site-ym.com/general/?type=CONTACT and we will connect you with a member of the Advisory Committee to assist in the writing of the proposal. 

[FijiSpirits]

Two things. 
 

first, the Chinese company Angel yeast has developed several distillers yeasts that do not require cooking of grain to get decent conversion of the starch to sugars.   This could reduce energy and time costs and potentially help out a lot.   Some work in this area towards refining and expanding flavor profiles could be awesome. 
 

second,  I’ve worked with raw sugar for 7-8 years by necessity. It’s cheap here and energy costs are ridiculous so sugar or molasses has always been obvious choices.  I’ve managed to come up with some Pretty good techniques to create some really really solid vodkas at tropical fermentation temps, even without carbon filtration  Some of my methods and recipies might be able to help others wishing to work with sugars. Maybe there is some way I can contribute to further research and community knowledge. 

[Erik Owens]

There are a couple of interesting ideas in here but I do not see a question being asked? One interesting topic may be the energy difference in producing vodka from sugar vs grain, but that falls more in the sustainability realm than scientific research. BTW we now have a group in ADI for Sustainability (https://distilling.site-ym.com/group/SUSTAIN), and will have an in-person meeting of the group at the conference in August. It would be interesting to trace it all the way back to farming and harvesting as well as processing to see what the energy differences are. If you would like to propose an article about what you are doing please reach out to me: https://distilling.site-ym.com/general/?type=CONTACT 

A yeast that can ferment uncooked grain is also very interesting. The cooking of grain sanitizes it, so it may be difficult to get reproducible results with all the microorganisms that live on grains. if you would like to to propose some sort of research into either topic, we will re-open our RFP Feb 15, 2021: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2m5k37II4h7KQ8ohny0-UN1KCXA3QVs8fAvk292oShZtLSA/viewform

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

10 hours ago, FijiSpirits said:

Two things. 
 

first, the Chinese company Angel yeast has developed several distillers yeasts that do not require cooking of grain to get decent conversion of the starch to sugars.   This could reduce energy and time costs and potentially help out a lot.   Some work in this area towards refining and expanding flavor profiles could be awesome. 
 

second,  I’ve worked with raw sugar for 7-8 years by necessity. It’s cheap here and energy costs are ridiculous so sugar or molasses has always been obvious choices.  I’ve managed to come up with some Pretty good techniques to create some really really solid vodkas at tropical fermentation temps, even without carbon filtration  Some of my methods and recipies might be able to help others wishing to work with sugars. Maybe there is some way I can contribute to further research and community knowledge. 

We do a no cook rice spirit.  Doesn't require any special yeast but you got to have patience as it take two weeks longer to ferment than cooking.

I may submit a proposal.

[FijiSpirits]

With the rice and angel, I beleive that preliminary results in western distilling show that using hot water in the mixing process seems to help with fermentation speed and conversion rate.  This may be due to reduction of bacteria and a partial  breakdown of starch. 
 

as for raw sugar, it too is filled with bacteria. The higher the molasses content the worse it gets. There is a pretty narrow pathway to dealing with it without using hot water. 
 

currently I don’t have a facility to do research at so im a bit hobbled there, but I’d love to work with someone interested in either of these in Michigan.