Still Choices

[David@IFD]

I am looking to upsize our still to 1000 gallon from a current 250 and 500 gallon.  We have a 250 gallon Kothe still and a 500 gallon still from Paul at Affordable Distillery Solutions.  We have looked at Carl, Paul's, Vendome, and Kothe's.    Any guidance out there from other's past experience?

[Sudzie]

We went to a 750 gal striping still and we’re changing it out to a continuous striping column.  Much shorter run times and a boat load less but’s of heat. 

[SlickFloss]

We run a 2200 liter CARL pot a 25 inch diameter CARL stripping column a 240 gallon specific pot a headframe cf1000 an 18 inch diameter vendome column with doubler and I have a small shine rig coming from Paul. What questions do you have specifically? Do you want me to just shit on everyone? What are you making (everything you want to make) and how much do you want to scale to? How many shifts and working days do you wanna run? Multiple employees or are you solo? 
 

I have a post where I kinda shat on people I’ll see if I can find it to link it to you. 

[Stumpy's]

1 hour ago, SlickFloss said:

We run a 2200 liter CARL pot a 25 inch diameter CARL stripping column a 240 gallon specific pot a headframe cf1000 an 18 inch diameter vendome column with doubler and I have a small shine rig coming from Paul. What questions do you have specifically? Do you want me to just shit on everyone? What are you making (everything you want to make) and how much do you want to scale to? How many shifts and working days do you wanna run? Multiple employees or are you solo? 
 

I have a post where I kinda shat on people I’ll see if I can find it to link it to you. 

Look at this freaking arsenal...impressive man!

For what it's worth, I think big pot stills can run you broke if you don't have enough sales to leverage it across. We ran a 12" continuous column and its utility inputs were 1/3 the $/PG than our 500 gal pot still was and our consumers tend to think the column made better whiskey. It takes a lot of $$$$ just to heat 1000 gal up from 80 degrees to boil. Just my 0.02.

[David@IFD]

We use our 250 gallon Kothe still for mostly gin these days.  We have it set up with 2(2) 8 plate columns for use in the little vodka we produce.  We make whiskey on both the 250 gallon Kothe and the 500 gallon still from Paul.  The 500 gallon still would be replaced with a new 1000 gallon pot still.  I am leaning toward the Kothe as we have experience with the company and equipment and have had no issues with quality over 6 years of use.  This 1000 gallon still would be used 7 days a week with one shift to start.  I would entertain the idea of a  continuous column still but we have building constraints on the height we could fit. (28' ceilings at peak)

My main question is on equipment quality and whiskey quality comin g off these stills.  I know this is based a lot on opinions and has a lot to do with predistillation and distillation experience, but it would be good to hear from a number of different players on their experiences.