Bulk proofing vs. Proofing in bottle

[Pearl_of_the_Orient]

Hey guys, new member here, what a great resource.  My partners and I are in the final planning stages of building a small microdistillery - please note that this facility will NOT be in the United States and thus (obviously) not subject to TTB regs ... the regulatory agencies in the country I'm in are somewhat more (ahem) lax than what some of you guys are forced to deal with (my condolences, btw).  As such, I'm wondering about the possibility of proofing in bottle vs. bulk proofing.  Our primary initial product will be a gin, and obviously being able to proof the product down in bottle will allow us to have a spirit storage tank that's ~50% smaller than we would need if we were bulk proofing and then bottling from that tank.  Is this something that is being done currently?  If not, is the sole reason it's not being done because of the difficulties in fill tolerances (nailing the right ratio of water to spirit), or are there other obvious unforeseen difficulties that my novice brain isn't considering?  Looking forward to your feedback - cheers!

[PeteB]

I occasionally proof (cut down with water) in the bottle but it is just one or 2 bottles.

Add the calculated weight of water then the weight of spirit. Works OK but is quite time consuming.

If you are paying yourself a wage then you would soon lose the cost of a bigger proofing tank.

[Tom Lenerz]

The list of reasons you cut to proof in the tank is as follows.

1) You only have to do it once, versus 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 times.

2) Consistent proof across all the bottles in the batch.

3) Bottlers are typically designed to fill bottles to a fill line near the top.

4) Minimize possible contamination from the bottling environment by only filling once and capping.

5) Filtering near bottling proof.

6) Reduces additional labor.

7) Probably at least 100 other reasons.

If you want to get away with a smaller bottling tank, bottle less in each batch, and bottle more frequently, but this still has many of the same disadvantages, as larger batch sizes will reduce the amount of labor in proofing/cutting/filtering, and increase bottle to bottle consistency.