"Delamination" Issue (almost looks like a layer of glass has peeled off inside the bottle)

[tgif]

Hi All,

We distill various gins and overtime, we've noticed very thin flakes of "glass" floating around inside some (not all) our bottles. Happens with every flavour and seemingly random bottles (so not every bottle from the same batch will have them for example). Has anyone experienced a similar issue?

After some research, we found that it is possible due to a reaction called "delamination". Not 100% sure but this is the closest thing we could find.

Does anyone know 1) the real cause 2) how to prevent this from happening and 3) a reliable glass manufacturer in Asia that has experience and knowledge in this area who can help mitigate this issue?

 

 

[Kindred Spirits]

Are you sure they are flakes of glass? What type of water are you using to proof with? Sometimes minerals can come out of solution and bind with some gin oils creating "flakes" in the bottles.

[tgif]

We are using RO water and we find there are two types of sediments that we find occasionally in our bottles. One are almost like tiny salt crystals, which may be the minerals you are mentioning, though I am not sure why that happens since we are not using mineral water.

 

There is also another type of sediment that look like thin sheets or “flakes” of fibre-like material and if we shine a light on the side of the bottle, we can just barely see the spot where these flakes may have seemingly “peeled” off from the insides of the glass. 

 

Scratching our heads on this!! Any help is appreciated.

[jocko]

I would shake the bottle, then pour through a coffee filter and let dry. I would expect that pieces of glass would be quite obvious when dried. 

We have had some of our pilot gins have a tiny amount of crystal-type fuzz form in the bottom.  That was when using well water for distilling.  Proofing was always done with distilled water. Only a brush would remove it, but it came off easily.  I never isolated it, as just assumed it was the water.  

Interestingly not all bottles had it, even from the same batch.