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It's 11pm, and the still is still running at 80 proof. I've been here since 6 this morning. I'll be lucky if I make it home before 2am, and then I have to be back by 6am again. Want to know how the booze is made? About 5 years ago, I decided I wanted to take the plunge and become a distiller. I'd worked in the retail and wholesale side of liquor while I was in school, and it was a pretty cool business. Microbreweries were popping up like weeds, but the while distilling industry was, and is, still pretty underserved. There's a handful of huge distilleries, a LOT of "micro distilleries" that don't make a drat drop of their own booze and just re-bottle the stuff they buy in bulk from other mega distilleries, and then there's the fringe fools like myself who are actually trying to make booze from scratch. Mix some yeast with some sugar, heat it up, and then watch high-test alcohol drip out of the other side of my rig. So if you want to know about the business side of the distilling, ask away. If you want to know about the science of liquor making, I can answer that, too. If you want to know historical trivia about hooch, there's odds are good I probably know about it. I co-own a medium sized distillery in Vermont. At the moment, we make gin and rum. Our gin will be going to market in three weeks (hence the long hours), and our rum will be released in November. We make everything from scratch, no buying neutral spirits and re-distilling here. Starting next month, we'll be making whiskey, too, once our farmer brings his grain in and we take it to the local malt house. Downstairs we've got our shop setup. We've got a "big" 300 gallon still. I say "big" because for some people this is huge. I know a guy who makes everything in a 10 gallon still. It's also loving tiny compared to some setups which have stills in the tens of thousands of gallons capacity. Here's what the inside of a distillery looks like:  The big copper thing is the still, the biggest silver thing is the mash tun (where we cook sugars to feed yeast), the two big tanks on the right are our fermenters, and the other tanks are various auxiliary tanks. We are currently getting some awesome barrels from an old man in the woods over in New York. Oak, Maple, Cherry, Ash and more woods to come. Barrels are what gives a good rum or whiskey its flavor, and so far our rum is some of the best tasting I've ever had. Probably the best. I'm biased, but it's still true.  I've also got a lab upstairs where I prototype all the different types of liquor I can make. I can make ultra small batch liquor there, as well as breed and select yeasts that I want to turn my various types of sugar into alcohol.  A quick anticipatory FAQ: Q: I want to make liquor at home, tell me how! Q: Did you ever make liquor at your house? Q: Do you watch moonshiners? A: No. No. No. Making booze without a government license is Illegal in the United States. (If you're in New Zealand, then congrats! You can make booze at home!). But for most of us this is a serious thing that you should never do. It can be dangerous, and it can land you in jail. If you really have the fever, then your best bet is to start looking around your local area and find a real micro distillery. Most of us are happy to have people visit, and even will let people try things "hands on" to get a feel for it in a safe and legal environment. Other than that, ask away!
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Aug 29, 2017 04:25
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Oh man, ground floor on a thread right up my alley. Could you talk a little bit about whiskey vaults/tax boxes? I don't see one in your pics. I'll have more questions once I dig out my notes from whiskey tastings over the years that marketing folks have no idea how to answer.
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Aug 29, 2017 16:12
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Nth Doctor posted:Oh man, ground floor on a thread right up my alley. Sharp eye. Tax boxes/spirit safes/whiskey vaults are sort of anachronisms in the US distilling world at the moment. There's generally three types of distillery you'll find them in. First, in distilleries in the UK. They actually still use these as designed, making their cuts behind glass so that the liquid falls into the proper receptacle, and is accessible only by the local tax officer and whoever is licensed to run the distillery. I was talking with the guys from Ardbeg a year or so ago, and they were bitching about how it makes it difficult to innovate. More or less once the recipe is finalized, you're relying on taking cuts at known points (temp, time and volume are the main determinants.). For a time honored recipe, that's well and good, but if you're trying to make something new then it's a real pain, because your ability to smell and taste the spirit as it comes off the still are what tells you where the cuts need to be made. Second, some older distilleries in the US will still have these. Once upon a time, if you had a distillery in the US, you had to employ two TTB officers to be at your distillery at all times. One of them sat by the still and spirits safe and recorded everything that came off the line, and the other sat by the back door and recorded everything that went out for delivery. Their pay scales were dictated by the TTB (a subsidiary of the ATF and IRS), and as a result almost no small distilleries were opened before the repeal of that mandate. Case in point, there is no way we could afford nearly $150k a year just to pay two IRS spies to hang out and watch us work. But the old, established, huge distilleries sure could. If you were Jim Beam or Jack Daniels or whoever it was a drop in the bucket. Anyway, after 1997, the TTB switched to a system of self reporting where instead of having paid spies in my shop, I can just fill out a lot of paperwork every month to report what I made, and pay taxes every two weeks(!). So there's no real need for a new place to have a spirit safe, but for an established distillery, it's already part of the workflow and process, and is kept on to ensure consistency. Third, there are some new distilleries that have them purely for aesthetic purposes. They look cool, all glass and copper, and it keeps visitors from sticking their dirty mitts into your good liquor as it comes off the still. They're /really/ expensive though. My own prejudice is that when I see someone new who has one is "what's the marketing angle?" If it's good, then in theory you make that money back, but I think a lot of these places aren't going to see a return on it. I'd rather bank that money back for a new 1200 gallon stripping still.
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Aug 29, 2017 16:49
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Isnt time and wood where most of the magic happens separating great alcohol from the bad? How long do the things you make need to age to be ready for sale? It also seems like it would make testing prototype recipes difficult. Especially for a new company. I can see the established players being able to take a longer view much more easily.
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Aug 29, 2017 17:25
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Is there any sort of hobby license available to non-commercial operations?
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Aug 29, 2017 20:38
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Weltlich posted:Whiskey Vault Stuff Thanks! I have a bunch of process questions. I homebrew and have made some of the connections between the processes I use and your fermentation side of things, but the distillation and maturation processes are stuff I'm not directly familiar with. Can you go into detail about what the inside of your still looks like? Is it a big open volume, or are there grates or some stuff at different levels like a coffey still?
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Aug 29, 2017 20:39
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How much is your stuff going to cost and do you ship out of region?
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Aug 29, 2017 21:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:How much is your stuff going to cost and do you ship out of region? Was coming to ask this.
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Aug 30, 2017 00:00
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:How much is your stuff going to cost and do you ship out of region? Morby posted:Was coming to ask this. Our gin will be $35 and the rum will be $40. Once again, I'm biased - but I think both compare favorably with competitors that are in the 50-70 price range. There's been some new "distilleries" that have been releasing their first bottles at $70+ *cough*whistlepig*cough*, and I think that's a pretty brazen thing to do. We want to establish we're better than the Gordon's and Bacardi's, but we also want to be affordable enough that someone won't feel bad about finishing the bottle - because they're cheap enough and we're making more. Whether we can ship or not is a trickier question and depends on where you live. If you let me know which state or country you're in, I'll have a better idea if we can ship a bottle. Nth Doctor posted:Thanks! I'll actually take some pictures of the still tomorrow, but here's the general gist of the setup. It is registered as a hybrid pot still, meaning that it is mostly a traditional pot still, but with a few more bells and whistles. A pot still is one of the oldest and simplest forms of a distillation apparatus. It consists of: - A big, open pot where fermented mash is slowly heated until the lighter alcohol starts to boil away from the heavier water - A lid to prevent the alcohol vapors from escaping into the atmosphere - A tube (or column, or neck) that collects and raises the vapors higher and channels them into... - A condenser that chills the vapors until they re-condense into their liquid state In a traditional pot still, there are no moving parts. This means they're simple to operate and maintain. On the other hand they're inefficient and temperamental, and the range of spirit they can make is pretty limited. It's really hard to get a pure pot still to out put liquor over 80% alcohol without doing multiple stripping runs to progressively bring up the proof. That costs time and money. A classic pot still is also prone to scorching if it's using direct flame to heat it, so it makes making whiskey really tricky. Our still, being a hybrid, has some features to address these issues. We've got an agitator, which is pretty much just a big sealed stirring system that keeps the liquid in the pot circulating so it can't scorch on the bottom. The agitator also does a good job of keeping a uniform temperature in the liquid, so it all boils at the same time, as opposed to developing hot spots. It's also steam powered, via a pressurized steam jacket on the bottom 1/3rd of the still. Since steam is powerful and gentle at the same time, it won't really get into scorching temperatures - but it does an amazing job transmitting heat to the liquid. Our column assembly has a device called a dephlegmator in it, which acts as an intermediary condensing unit. It's basically a water jacket with many small tubes in it that the distillate gasses can pass through. As they do, they're cooled by the water on the other side of the tubes, and condense, falling back into the column like rain. This in turn cools the distillate gas rising through the column. What this effectively does is force heavier molecules like water and fusel oils to condense and fall back into the pot, while the lighter alcohol is able to push through and continue onto the primary condenser. The guy that built our still was the former welder at the MIT physics lab, so there's also all sorts of little safety features he's thoughtfully built into it. Let me tell you, after hearing some horror stories like this one, I'm glad we went with this guy. http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2015/05/owner-and-injured-distiller-sue-still.html I may end up breaking it down for maintenance tomorrow evening, and if I do I'll snap some photos of the various bits. tokenbrownguy posted:Is there any sort of hobby license available to non-commercial operations? Short answer: no, there's not really a hobbiest licence. Long answer: There is a thing called a research and development licence. It's designed for someone who wants to test a new type of still, but doesn't really want to run a full time distillery. (NOTE: This is for serious, real engineers. Read the article I posted above to see the consequences of having someone unqualified building stills.) Anyway - some people who are in it for the hobby do actually get this type of licence, and then just have someone qualified build a still for them. Here's the catch though: A R&D License is only good for a set term of time, meaning that it will expire sooner or later. The paperwork you have to do to get this permit is no less arduous than getting an actual Distilled Spirits Plant licence, which means you have an actual distillery, and the DSP license doesn't expire! So if you're going to get an R&D licence, might as well just open a distillery. honda whisperer posted:Isnt time and wood where most of the magic happens separating great alcohol from the bad? How long do the things you make need to age to be ready for sale? Oh man, tell me about it  R&D is at once the most gratifying part of my job and the bane of my existence. At the moment, we're having to re-tune our gin recipe because it turns out gin doesn't scale properly. We've got our nice 15 gallon lab still and I made a gin that was just heavenly. Starts off with sweet juniper, evolving to lemon-basil in the mid-sip, and then fading into a tropical fruit finish that leaves a refreshing linger that lasts over 10 minutes when sipped neat. We took it down to the big 300, and ran it and it smells like someone dumped a bag of skunk weed into the batch. One of the herbs we used, when exposed to heat for over an hour, develops a smell that is right out of a stoner's stash. The test still wraps up a run in about 45 minutes, so it never came through until we went ot the production line. Thankfully, I think we can pull it out and while we'll lost a nice little counter-note in the gin, it will still be exquisite. (But I'll always know what it could have been  )On the subject of aging, it's also difficult to gauge what you'll get when you start looking at timeframes of months or years. This is a really subjective part of the job that relies on a distiller being able to "cut" his or her liquor as it comes out of the still to suit what it will become. If it's going to be a white spirit (white rum, gin, vodka, etc) then a distiller needs to "cut it clean" meaning taking a smaller discrete portion of the center of the run of alcohol where there are no off flavors and a very pure alcohol is coming out of the still. If a distiller is going to make an aged spirit then he or she needs to "cut it dirty." This means that some of what might be considered "tails" or the later runnings off the still get added into that pure heart cut. Sounds crazy, but a good distiller can taste the tails and find good flavor potentials in it. And knowing how much of the tails cut, and when to stop collecting is is also critical. (This is why I don't envy the scotch makers at all, with their spirits safes. I have to smell and taste tiny drops of the stuff to be able to pick my cut points when collecting for an aged spirit.) Anyhow, the magic of wood isn't that it separates good alcohol from bad, but rather it effects chemical reactions in the booze that cause certain fusel oils and hangover inducing conegers to decompose into delicious esthers. A spirit that might have smelled a little like a wet dog spends a year in a barrel, and suddenly it's got a pleasing stone fruit aroma with hits of butter toffee. There is some science behind this, but largely it's subjective and a distiller learns what will make good liquor by. You can sort of fake the funk. If you overload a liquor with wood surface area, you can "quick age" a spirit to get a pretty good preview of what it might be like in a barrel. We took mason jars and filled with toasted wood chips provided by our cooper, and used that to approximate what our rum would taste like over the course of a few weeks. In reality, our youngest rum will age six months in 15 gallon barrels (still pretty small in the barrel world.) At the moment, we're loving the results. I stole a little from the barrels we put on in May last week and it's just wonderful. It's got some sweetness from the maple, some good smoky notes out of the oak, and some really delicious cherry notes. The ash wood is sort of the wildcard - it causes the rum to finish like a really good highland malt scotch - earthy and round. The plan is to blend these woods together to get our final rum. But you are right, there is no substitute for time. Rum is generally good to drink right off of the still, so it really doesn't need much time in a barrel to "clean it up". Whiskey on the other hand needs years. I know there are some bourbons out there that are 3 month, 6 month, etc. If you like that, then by all means enjoy your drink. Personally I think that most US whiskies don't really get good until about 3 years, and 5 to 8 is the sweet spot. Scotch is sort of a different animal, due to the climate in which it ages and the types of barrel they age in, and it's in it's prime from 8 to 15 years. Also, to each his own, but I always caution people from joining the cult of the age statement. Older is not always better, and it is possible for a whiskey to become over-oaked to the point where it ruins the spirit. You can't taste anything but the barrel anymore. For people who really only enjoy whiskies in the 18+ age range, I recommend trying Armagnacs. They're wonderful spirits, smooth and flavorful, and they don't cost $400+ a bottle for the most part. Edit: To answer the other question. OUr first rums will be 6 months old. We'll be stretching that out to one year for our "standard" rum once we move to 30 gallon barrels. At that point I'll start holding some in "reserve" to be 3 or 5 year rums. Our whiskey will be no younger than 3 years, and most likely 5 years on release. I'll go into our whiskey practices in another post if you're interested. Gin is a strange thing in that it doesn't age in a barrel, but needs to "rest" at bottling proof for 4 weeks before it's ready to be bottled. Gin contains lots of volatile oils and flavors that don't fully mature until they emulsify, and that just takes time hanging out in a stainless steel tank. Weltlich fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Aug 30, 2017 |
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Aug 30, 2017 00:42
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Great to see this thread, and good luck on your launch. Ten years ago I was at a juncture in my life and trying to decide where to make my fortune. It was a toss up between a distillery and a jewelry company. I went the other direction, and it worked out well. But you always wonder "what if."
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Aug 30, 2017 01:38
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Awesome thread. I'd love to hear about the whiskey too, definitely my preferred drink. Sorry about your gin. Can you ship to Ohio? In states that don't let you mail alcohol can you do it like firearms and ship it to a liquor store for pickup?
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Aug 30, 2017 13:23
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honda whisperer posted:Awesome thread. what this guy said but Jamaica or Kentucky
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Aug 30, 2017 13:39
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N. Senada posted:what this guy said but Jamaica or Kentucky Same, but GA
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Aug 30, 2017 15:30
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How much barrelhouse space are you expecting to use? I'd imagine that the aging lag time is killer for a startup like yours especially if and when you bring your whiskey aging pipeline online.
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Aug 30, 2017 17:34
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JohnnyRnR posted:Great to see this thread, and good luck on your launch. Thanks! For me it was either be a distiller or an poetry professor. Some days when I'm here at 11pm and still have four hours before the spirits run finishes, I sort of wonder what it would have been like to have tenure. N. Senada posted:what this guy said but Jamaica or Kentucky Morby posted:Same, but GA quote:Can you ship to Ohio? I'll check on each of these. Unfortunately, the industry is still living in the shadow of prohibition, and as such there's no national policy on how to ship booze. Each state decides. Some are easy to ship into, some are really hard. I wouldn't doubt that it'll be easier to ship rum to Jamaica than it will to Kentucky. I'll find out, though. honda whisperer posted:Awesome thread. Nth Doctor posted:How much barrelhouse space are you expecting to use? I'd imagine that the aging lag time is killer for a startup like yours especially if and when you bring your whiskey aging pipeline online. Doing both of these together since they're whisky centric. Aging of whisky is def. a thing that weighs heavily on us, and a lot of the planning of our plant revolved around leaving at least half the floor space open to house barrels. It still won't be enough, but it will buy us enough time to get a second building constructed to be a dedicated barrel house. We estimate we've got two to three years before we need MUST go to an external barrel house, but maybe as many as five. The saving grace of the building we're in now is that it's got a ton of vertical space. There is a fabricator down the street that is working with us to design tall barrel that can store seven "levels" of barrels. They're arranged so we can fit up to 15 barrels per level, and there will be an elevator system to move barrels between levels without having to brute strength it or use a forklift. At the moment, the space for those racks is all taken up by sugar and molasses. The short term solution for that is to get a shipping container and toss it on the other side of one of our bay doors to use as a materials locker. The long term solution for this is to build silos to store molasses, sugar, and grain. We'll probably set up the sugar and molasses silos next year, and the grain the year after that. When it comes to aging whisky we're sort of taking a new approach, in that in addition to age statements (3, 5, 8 years old, etc) we will be putting vintages on our bottles. There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to making whiskey. The first is the oldest and most prevalent, and it argues that consistency is supreme for a distillery. A bottle made in 1950 should taste like a bottle made in 1990, should taste like a bottle made in 2017. To that end, these distilleries employ master blenders whose sole job is to pop open barrels, take little sips, and then start mixing and matching stock from the rick house to achieve a flavor that is as close to the signature flavor as possible. And this, I think is laudable, because when I pop open a bottle of Lagavulin or Buffalo Trace, I want it to taste like what I'm expecting. This works well for a setup that is using large amounts of commodity grain that remains consistent across the years. Last year's barley will taste like this year's barley because the scale of the malting operations is large enough to blend any inconsistencies out of the grain. There is a second point of view, though, that is a nascent trend. It says instead of trying to achieve consistency of flavor across decades, a distillery should source the ingredients for it's whiskey locally as possible, and then craft a mash bill that highlights that year's crop. And like wine, the whiskey should get a vintage. It's silly and unnatural to think that an agriculturally based product should be stock-standard over a century. There is so much variation in the crop, due to weather, technique, and other factors that can be distilled and expressed in the final product, so the drinker can appreciate and enjoy what made 2017 or any other year unique. The goal is not consistency of flavor, but consistency of quality. This is the view that we've decided we agree with, and so our whiskies will come both with vintages (Say a 2017 whiskey) and an age statement (3, 5, etc), meaning there will be multiple releases of specific vintages at certain intervals. And our mash bills will change each year. This year, it's going to be an oat and spelt heavy whiskey, because it's been wet and cool this summer, and those are growing like crazy. Barley's been kind of off this year, but we've found an amazing malted rye that should balance the spirit out. Some years we'll have a wheat based spirit, some years will be barley, or oats, or whatever's growing well. We'll also save back a little from each year to have a "decade" release. I.E. A bottle that has some of 2020, 2021, 2022, ...2029, so that a person can taste what the growing season of an entire decade was like. This is in large part to encourage local farms to grow cereals that work well for our part of Vermont, and offer them a good price on it. They make bourbon in Kentucky because the corn grows strong. Vermont used to be the breadbasket of New England, and we're hoping to bring that back. Though I guess it'll be the whiskey bottle. In any case, I am a firm believer that spirits are tied intimately to agriculture. Weltlich fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Aug 30, 2017 |
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Aug 30, 2017 19:50
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Is there a North American soil that could be used like the Scottish use peat?
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Aug 31, 2017 09:18
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Animal-Mother posted:Is there a North American soil that could be used like the Scottish use peat? North America has peat! It's found in wetlands throughout the world.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:32
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Well this is cool as heck, and I like the idea of whiskey highlighting growing years. Is there a less inconvenient (I mean, for you) way to try to figure out shipping and stuff other than asking in here individually? Also, I'm really curious about what an oat and spelt heavy mash bill would taste like, but I wager I'm not the only one.
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Sep 1, 2017 14:57
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 Tell me about all sorts of poo poo that can go wrong. Up to and including explosions. Also how do you test to make sure there's nothing harmful like methanol or acetone in there? When it comes to rum, do you use things like sugar cane? What makes a (light or dark) good rum good (besides barrel aging)? Do you add flavors to your rum after the distilling process, if so, what and why?
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Sep 1, 2017 15:27
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Tell us the dark secrets of your dunder.
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Sep 1, 2017 21:29
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Sorry for the delay, I've had house guests for the past couple of days. In happier news, the latest gin trials have established that we've found an eliminated the problem herb from the botanical list. Big test starts on Sunday, so fingers crossed. Animal-Mother posted:Is there a North American soil that could be used like the Scottish use peat? Jeb Bush 2012 posted:North America has peat! It's found in wetlands throughout the world. Yes! I actually have a sizable peat bog on my property in Cabot, VT, a few miles from the distillery. I'm talking to the local malt house to start some experiments with doing a Vermont Peat smoked malt this fall. Probably very small batch to start, but if it works then we'll have something special. mekilljoydammit posted:Well this is cool as heck, and I like the idea of whiskey highlighting growing years. Is there a less inconvenient (I mean, for you) way to try to figure out shipping and stuff other than asking in here individually? Unfortunately shipping is one of the biggest headaches we have. Every state wants to be a snowflake about what they allow in and out. But, it's actually helpful to me to know where demand is, so I know what states to read up on and start a dialogue with their liquor agencies. We're shooting to have more-or-less nation wide distribution by the time our whiskey is ready in 3 to 5 years, so this gives us impetus to get it figured out. GnarlyCharlie4u posted:
Distilling is an inherently risky enterprise. There's a lot of machinery we work with that can and will maim or kill a person unless they're always paying attention. Our general goal is to make sure that we not only meet OSHA requirements, but we go above and beyond them as well. The most obvious thing that can fail catastrophically is the still. The way a still works is by heating liquid that contains alcohols and water until it boils, forcing the resulting gas up through a fairly narrow tube, then forcing it through an even narrower tube into a system that turns that gas back into liquid. If anything clogs in this process of ever-narrowing tubes, it stops being a still, and starts being a pressure cooker. If there's no pressure release system, then it's not even a pressure cooker, it's just a bomb. Our still is rated to 15 PSI of pressure, and has a release that is set to go off at 5 PSI. Most stills are only rated to 1 PSI, claiming that "since they're always vented to atmosphere, by design, they're safe." I want more backup plan than that. The next biggest thing we worry about is an ethanol leak on top of the column. A distillery over in New York had this happen a few years ago and blew a hole in their roof when the vapors somehow managed to ignite. The design our our still puts silicon gaskets on all the key points up-top, and we replace and service those between all the runs we do to prevent such an occurrence. We're also working with pressurized steam. We run 12 PSI of steam off of a 650,000 btu boiler to run our equipment. All that's gotta get checked out at least weekly. Beyond those obvious things, there are some stupid tricks of physics that we have to be aware of. Probably the most dangerous of these is a temperature inversion in the still. Let's say we've come to the end of a stripping run, and we shut down the still and turn off the agitator that keep the liquid left in the still moving. The still is now full of a super hot water and molasses solution, and while nominally "off," there is still heat from the steam jacket being imparted to the liquid. But this stuff is very dense and viscous, so unlike water where convection would just carry the heat up in the form of boiling liquid, the heat is now trapped under a cooler layer. If the hatch gets opened, then someone not in the know turns the agitator back on, it can pull that super-heated liquid to the surface, and trigger a runaway boil. I've seen videos of this happen at a couple of Caribbean distilleries, and it's like geyser of boiling dunder comes rocketing out of the hatch. If that hits someone, they're screwed. Total skin-graft on 90% of their body, assuming they survive sort of thing. When we wrote our safety and operating procedures, we made sure to put "The agitator is never turned off until the temperature in the still drops below 140." It's total overkill, but I'd rather that than actually killing someone. We do most of our testing in house in the lab. I can test for methanol by doing progressive distillations with the lab still. Methanol boils off significantly sooner than Ethanol, so it's pretty easy to isolate. How much is made in a given fermentation depends a lot on the type of yeast being used, and the type of sugars and chemicals in the fermentation. Fruit brandies tend to make a lot of it, rum makes almost none. Things like acetone are a little trickier, but I've got an outside lab we sent samples to, and it's all come back clean. Though with acetone, a good distiller ought to be able to pick up unacceptable levels just by scent and flavor. So far, so good. Our rum is made from cane products made in Louisiana. There's a company down there that both farms and processes cane into molasses and a very raw turbinado sugar. In my opinion, that's the first part of making a good rum. The molasses we're using have an almost chocolate like flavor to them, none of the bitterness of a usual "blackstrap" that most people get at the grocery. The sugar has a vanilla and allspice note to it that's really wonderful. The next component of making a good rum is the yeast. We're using a strain specifically developed for rich flavored rums. It makes a lot of esthers that are fruity and sweet. And finally a good rum is made by taking cuts at the right spots. Don't allow too much of the harsh heads to get into it, and cut the tails at the right time to correspond to whether you're going for a light rum or an aged rum. I'll go into all of this this more when I have some more time in a couple of days. And we add no other flavors to the rum after distilling, other than what the barrels impart. It's a hotly debated topic in the rum community. Some distillers will blend sugar, molasses, or caramel coloring back in after it's been distilled to add body, sweetness, and color. There's no rules that say you can't, but I refuse to do so. I'm not against the practice itself, I'm more against the fact that it's never disclosed to the consumer. Adding coloring to a rum to make it appear "aged" when it's never seen the inside of a barrel (like nearly all big name rum distillers do) is a deceptive practice. We're considering making a maple-flavored rum (because lol Vermont), but you can be sure it'll have "flavored and colored with pure maple syrup" on the bottle.
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Sep 2, 2017 15:54
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This is a very cool thread, thanks for taking the time to answer questions. Would you say you have an extraordinary sense of taste/smell, or have you just been into this for long enough to be able to discern all these things? With the gin on the small still vs. the big still, do you think a layman could taste the difference if it was pointed out?
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Sep 2, 2017 18:32
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Weltlich posted:Unfortunately shipping is one of the biggest headaches we have. Every state wants to be a snowflake about what they allow in and out. But, it's actually helpful to me to know where demand is, so I know what states to read up on and start a dialogue with their liquor agencies. We're shooting to have more-or-less nation wide distribution by the time our whiskey is ready in 3 to 5 years, so this gives us impetus to get it figured out. Well, I'd like to be able to buy your products in Wisconsin if saying that helps anything. That's interesting, thinking about balances of what non-ethanol byproducts you're looking for in the rums for example. I don't have much in the way of specific questions (as you point out, it's not really something one can easily try on their own) but I'm interested in hearing any more that you have to say.
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Sep 2, 2017 18:45
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Weltlich posted:Yes! I actually have a sizable peat bog on my property Haha, talk about making lemons into lemonade!
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Sep 2, 2017 19:55
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I've recently tried to do some homebrewing. What types of alcohols are easy to do but high reward besides beer? I've started a small batch of cider and would like to do some mead after some research.
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Sep 3, 2017 03:15
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Have you tried ginger beer? Also I run a still now, just a sugar wash moonshine. In Australia it's kinda legal... As in every homebrew shop sells the gear and ingredients, there's some still specialist shops and you can buy a still even on ebay. there's government warnings about large stills and using them for alcohol, but it's easy to buy one from a commercial shop. I think legally we are allowed to own stills, may even be allowed to distill a 2-5L wash for personal use. E: Over 10 years ago our shores got flooded with NZ products. First was the little 2-5L ones, then 25L ones and these days local home brewers handy with silver solder and stainless steel or copper and knocking up bubbler stills and setting up shop. Besides the government notice they're obliged to put on their website or hand you in person when buying a large still, the law is turning a blind eye to it all as long as you aren't selling large boilers to go with the condenser (but people are using 20-100L boilers). Fo3 fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Sep 3, 2017 |
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Sep 3, 2017 15:28
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Do you really breed your own yeast? I had thought it was too genetically unstable and had a tendency to spontaneously stop being what you want it to be. (But maybe that only applies to beer yeasts and not distiller's yeasts)
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Sep 4, 2017 10:18
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Weltlich posted:Making booze without a government license is Illegal in the United States. (If you're in New Zealand, then congrats! You can make booze at home!). Distilled booze, you mean. Homebrewing beer and wine is legal most places. Most people reading this thread knew that already I'm sure, but just sayin' 
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Sep 4, 2017 14:24
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Weltlich posted:And we add no other flavors to the rum after distilling, other than what the barrels impart. It's a hotly debated topic in the rum community. Some distillers will blend sugar, molasses, or caramel coloring back in after it's been distilled to add body, sweetness, and color. There's no rules that say you can't, but I refuse to do so. I'm not against the practice itself, I'm more against the fact that it's never disclosed to the consumer. Adding coloring to a rum to make it appear "aged" when it's never seen the inside of a barrel (like nearly all big name rum distillers do) is a deceptive practice. We're considering making a maple-flavored rum (because lol Vermont), but you can be sure it'll have "flavored and colored with pure maple syrup" on the bottle. My question is related to this. I have celiac disease and for years have tried to reconcile my love of booze with my inability to consume anything containing wheat, barley, rye, or spelt. I've read enough articles and had enough anecdotal experience to know that many distilled products (even those made from the previously listed grains) are safe for celiacs to consume because the gluten protein is too heavy to make it through the distillation process. The documentation on this is somewhat sparse and inconclusive though. We're generally left to try things "at our own risk" or to avoid the product entirely. The real concern, is what happens to the product after distillation. Best I can tell, there's no way for the consumer to know what a distillery does to its product between distillation and bottling. They're very tight-lipped about it, for understandable reasons, but it makes it hard to gauge how pure the end product really is without knowing how it was made. So I guess my question is, is there any way for the consumer to know, generally, which spirits are more pure and which ones have a bunch of stuff added in before bottling? For brands that add stuff in, how often do those ingredients contain gluten vs how often are they some other substance like a food coloring or flavoring that may or may not contain gluten? Some of the Texas vodka distilleries have been labeling their product "gluten free" because they make it from corn and, I presume, don't gently caress it up after distillation. However, the definition of gluten free for labeling purposes still allows for some gluten content, and the amount needed to trigger the immune reaction in celiacs is variable and poorly documented.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:10
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Archenteron posted:Tell us the dark secrets of your dunder. Oh man, dunder. Well the darkest secret of our Dundee, so far, is that it' gets pumped into a truck and hauled off to a Bioreactor down in Randolph, VT. They turn it into electricity. We've been batting back and forth on if and how we want to start a rum dunder program. For those not in the know, dunder is what you have left over after you strip the alcohol out of a batch of fermented rum mash. In the islands, they take this and just dump it in a big pit out behind the distillery. They also dump whatever left over fruits and vegetables into it. Sometimes they even put things like dead goats in it. No kidding. Then magic happens. Various bacteria and wild yeasts colonize the dunder. Most of them start making chemicals that will make a person very sick or dead should they drink the dunder straight. But, they're also making crazy esters other chemicals that taste wonderful if they're distilled correctly. Now, when the distillery goes to strip the next batch of rum mash, they'll add in some of that funky dunder to it, and the process of distilling will kill the bacteria, cause the really toxic stuff to separate from the good stuff, and add in some crazy, often fruity flavors. So far we haven't done any "aged" dunder. About 1/10th of our fresh dunder is recycled directly back into making the next batch of our rum mash, but this is coming straight out of the still, so it's pretty much "pasteurized" and sterile. What it does have is lots of nutrients that yeast love to eat (thus helping the next batch ferment) and acid that helps to invert the sucrose to glucose and fructose which the yeast can metabolize into ethanol easily. (This also helps reduce funky stuff like acetone developing in the mash, since it reduces yeast stresses.) But, we're considering doing the dunder thing, at least at a small scale, just to see what we can come up with. There's tons of apple orchards around us, so we're thinking of going to some cider mills this fall to get some of their cider pressings (the spent apple peels and fiber, after cider's been made.). We would set up a dunder tank that could vent to the out-doors, and toss the cider pressings into the fresh dunder, and let the yeasts that sit on the apple skins act as the wild yeasts that can colonize the dunder. Depends on if I've got the time and inclination to do it, but I'll get around to it one of these years. Odddzy posted:I've recently tried to do some homebrewing. What types of alcohols are easy to do but high reward besides beer? I've started a small batch of cider and would like to do some mead after some research. Mead and cider are both pretty simple to do at home, and legal if you're in the US. I'd also recommend trying to make some other fruit wines if you've got access to cheap fruit. Berries are hard, since they don't give much juice and the sugar content is pretty low (great if you're diabetic and like eating fruit, though.). Pears and apples are awesome, so are grapes. Peaches, and nectarines make good wine, but are a bitch to juice. Plums are awesome as long as you've got a good way to strain the pulp out of the juice. Make sure you're getting the right yeasts though. Never use turbo-yeasts, they'll end up tasting awful. For wines, I recommend a strain like Wyeast 4242 to keep the flavor of the fruit bold. As long as you aren't making brandy or distilling them, you're free to do whatever you want! bolind posted:This is a very cool thread, thanks for taking the time to answer questions. I think it's a little of one and a little of the other. I've always been able to pick out smells and tastes that other people couldn't. It helps that I don't smoke or drink to excess. But a lot of it was being exposed to the wine industry and expected to just stand round sipping-and-spitting whilst learning the ins and outs of wines. I honestly think most people /can/ taste and smell these things, but just don't necessarily know the words to express the senses. And Ironically this is a profession that really limits my drinking. I have at most one or two drinks a week. I find it mutes my taste buds and after the second drink, it all tastes pretty good. Not a good think for a person who should be making discrete cuts between good liquor and bad liquor. I think that most people who take the time and effort to keep clear pallets can pick up on these differences, with some easy tutoring. If you're interested in such a thing, a lot of wine shops will offer wine tasting events. Just start hitting these. Wine's a good place to start, versus spirits, because it's lower in alcohol, and you can taste a lot more before absorbing enough through your mouth to wreck your tastebuds. Wine snobs also have a good vocabulary and jargon set that can pull over into spirits. mekilljoydammit posted:Well, I'd like to be able to buy your products in Wisconsin if saying that helps anything. There's a ton of fusel oil and esters that I want to express in the rum. There's also a bunch that are awful and best avoided. I can't find it online, but there was a thesis paper written by someone at LSU that went into about 30 or 40 different chemicals in rum that range in flavors from banana, citrus, apple, cardboard, vinyl, grass, etc. Some of those I obviously love, some of them I want to avoid at all costs. Thankfully Lallemand makes a really good strain of rum yeast that spits out the esters I want. Isoamyl Acetate is one of my favorites, it's the one that gives a faint banana aroma and flavor. In a rum it's a nice counterpoint and gives the spirit a defined "fruitiness" without ever having to use fruits. And the names of the good ones are often pretty scary. Lots of Methyls, Butyls, Amyls, and various Acetates. All of those are harmless in the quantity present. Acetone (the nail polish remover smell) is usually a sign of contamination in the mash, and that a species of acetobacter has set up shop, eating my alcohol and spitting out acetone. I've never had it happen in anything I've done professionally, but did have it happen once when making hard cider a few years ago. Generally in the distillery, we ferment for a few days to a week or so. Short ferments on sterile equipment is pretty much guaranteed not to "turn". But if you're home brewing and haven't sanitized things properly (I didn't pasteurize the cider well enough), and taking a long time to ferment (two months for the cider), then it can happen. There may be some more scientific way to do it, but to develop our rum, I just kept making it, using different combos of yeast, sugar, and molasses, until I found a batch that had the stuff I liked in it, and lacked the stuff I didn't. Fo3 posted:Have you tried ginger beer? I have made a ginger Meade way-back-when. It was pretty tasty. We've considered getting a setup that lets us do canned mixed drinks. I.E. A can of ginger beer with some of our rum premixed into it. I think that's still a couple of years down the road, though. The Lone Badger posted:Do you really breed your own yeast? I had thought it was too genetically unstable and had a tendency to spontaneously stop being what you want it to be. Another topic of great debate and many opinions. Some say that you should only ever use fresh yeast from a. yeast plant (Like Lallemand, Wyeast, Star Labs, etc) and that failure to do so invites disaster. I think that's a stretch. Honestly I've found that yeast are pretty hardy and stable as long as you don't stress them. If the yeast get all stressed then they sure can mutate. Still, there's giant factories set up to breed and make commercial yeast. If they were that unstable, how would those places ever be able to consistently sell me the same yeast strains over and over? Keep the yeast in environmental conditions they like, grow them responsibly, and they should stay stable over multiple generations. I don't do our rum and gin yeasts, at the moment, though. I can buy them from Lallemand easily and economically, so it's not a real issue. I have done some experiments in the lab to make sure I /can/ make more yeast from our current stock as a failsafe. What if they have an emergency at the plant and we can't get it from them? We're covered now. The yeast I am most interested in working with at the moment, though is a sub-strain of Kluyveromyces Marxianus that can process lactose straight to ethanol. We've got tons of creameries around us that pump out some amazing cheeses, and they also have tons of whey as a byproduct. I think I can do something with it. But K. Marxianus is tough to get and when we do it's in very, very, small samples. I've made sure that when I can get it, I know how to take slants, do nutrient plates, and then have a lab reactor set up to propagate more of the yeast so I can get a commercial dosage out of a sample as small as a tenth of a gram. feedmegin posted:Distilled booze, you mean. Homebrewing beer and wine is legal most places. Most people reading this thread knew that already I'm sure, but just sayin' You are correct. Whenever I use "booze" I'm always referring to a distilled product. The Ferret King posted:My question is related to this. Yeah, this is something that we are looking into ourselves. I can give you a general rundown. In a clean, sanitary distillery, all spirits should be gluten free. Gluten should never survive the distillation process - it can't vaporize and be taken up through the still column. Furthermore, that spirit should never touch anything but the barrels and bottling equipment in the interim. Now, the reality is that you have to treat spirits like you would any product that has "MADE IN A FACILITY THAT PROCESSES WHEAT, CORN, RYE" etc on it. Distilleries are clean for a given value of clean, but in a lot of places (my shop included) we also mill our grain on site. That means that grain dust gets in the air, and then it can settle on equipment that will be used to store and transport spirits between distilling and bottling. We always wash out our stuff before and after use. But some places don't, especially if they're only making one sort of spirit. ("Why wash a hose that just had 180 proof spirits running through it?" the logic says. It's as clean as it's going to get.) As for additives, unfortunately you'll have to do homework on it. Generally speaking, whiskies will never have additives to them unless they're like Fireball or something. (Cinnamon Flavor added, etc). Rums are all over the place. We refuse to put additives in ours, flat out. 95% of the rum sold has caramel color to it to make it look aged, though. Do you have any specific spirits you like, or would like to try? If so give me a list. I'll see what I can find out about them.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:34
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Dead goats? That's disgusting. Last I heard, it's supposed to be dead bats to add the right flavours 
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Sep 4, 2017 19:07
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Archenteron posted:Dead goats? That's disgusting. Fruit bats, fruit flavors? Rite?
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Sep 4, 2017 19:14
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Weltlich posted:Do you have any specific spirits you like, or would like to try? If so give me a list. I'll see what I can find out about them. Thank you very much. Yeah I think the Fireball guys say straight up not to drink it. I don't know if it's the cinnamon flavor or what else they do to it. We like to keep some whiskeys around the house. Makers Mark, and Bulleit specifically. I like my vodka/tonics so I feel reasonably safe with Texas' own Tito's. I don't mess with gin too much. I love rum, though. I haven't bought it in a while but I used to keep Zaya around the house just for sipping. If I go to a friend's house for a party they're almost always going to have Bacardi or Captain or Kraken, which I think would be iffy due to additives after distillation (I'm guessing, I just assume because they're mass produced and popular). So I guess Makers and Bulleit are my primary concerns. It's a shame what's happening to the GF beer market. As tasty as they are, a lot of breweries are making beer the proper way and then denaturing the gluten before bottling using some sort of enzyme that keeps the beer from showing up on whatever tests they do for gluten. There is a lot of debate about how effective it is for people with celiac (whether it removes enough of the gluten, or even the right part of the gluten protein in the first place). I can say that none of them are close enough to keep me from getting a reaction, and because of their popularity they are driving out all of the products that are made completely GF in the first place. Yeah, those beers suck, but at least they're safe (RedBridge, Bard's etc) for me.
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Sep 4, 2017 21:47
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What's the process like to make your product available for purchase in other states? I assume it varies by state - have you arranged to distribute to any other states yet?
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Sep 5, 2017 02:37
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if you're not going to be back until like 2 am and you have to get up at 6 why not just sleep there. please respond asap. thank you.
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Sep 5, 2017 03:06
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The Ferret King posted:Thank you very much. Yeah I think the Fireball guys say straight up not to drink it. I don't know if it's the cinnamon flavor or what else they do to it. I poked around a little. Before you take any of this as gospel, just be aware that there is no standardized testing of these products for gluten. If you are death allergic to it, my best advice is to stay clear of anything that has wheat, barley, or rye in it, or is made by a distillery that uses wheat, barley, or rye in their products. If you have a milder case of Celiac's and you are willing to risk it, then I'd try sipping the whiskey in quarter-ounce quantities, then waiting to see what happens. That said: Bulleit should be safe. They're a rectifier, not a distiller, so they order all their spirits in bulk and just bottle it. There's no grain being milled at their facility, and due to the way liquor is labeled, there should be zero additives in their bourbon and rye. Maker's Mark will be a little riskier, because they do mill grain at their facility, but their production and bottling buildings are separate, so I think the chance of cross contamination is pretty small. Anything like Fireball, Captain Morgan, Kraken, etc is really risky because the additives for that may well contain some sort of gluten. Not so much for flavor, but as a thickener. Steer clear. Have you tried brandies? If you like a good whiskey, then I'd really suggest you look into good Armagnacs and Cognacs. They've got a similar flavor profile, and they're purely fruit based. Zodijackylite posted:What's the process like to make your product available for purchase in other states? I assume it varies by state - have you arranged to distribute to any other states yet? Distribution is the single biggest headache we have as a commercial distillery. Every state is different. We were going to go into Connecticut early, but it looks like our distributor contact there fell through. (This happens a lot. THere's a super high turn-over rate with distributors, and all too often you call back to get told "Oh, he's not here anymore...") Generally speaking, our plan is to start moving into smaller metro markets like Kansas City, Charlotte, Providence, etc before banging our heads against the brick wall that is NYC and LA. But, generally speaking there are three types of states that we have to deal with when it comes to distribution: The first is called a "Control" state, and the state runs liquor sales itself. New Hampshire, Vermont, and a handful of others are like this. From our end this is a blessing and a curse. On one hand we have a single customer - the state. All orders go through the local equivalent of the Liquor Department, and once we've negotiated a contract with them, it's pretty much guaranteed sales every month. The down side to this is that with most control states, we have to show up in person to multiple committee meetings to get our product on the roster that liquor stores and bars choose from. And once we're in, most of the marketing is "on us" so to speak. The second are states that have liquor distributors. This is most states. In this case, we are courted by a distributor that thinks they can make money selling our stuff in that state. If we like the terms they offer us, we sign on, and they make monthly orders for our spirits. It's not as "guaranteed sale" as a state liquor department, but on the other hand they do a lot more marketing work for us. Provided we pick the right distributor to sign on with. I've heard horror stories of other distilleries getting on with bad ones, then disappearing because they wouldn't push the product to any stores or bars. The third system is direct sales. We can do these all over Vermont because we have a license issued by our state control board to do so. But, in some cases there are other states that will let us do direct sales via mail or other carrier (FedEx, etc). This is more work on our end, and often consumers don't want to pay the premium that this entails (the bottle, plus shipping), but for those who really want a bottle, it's a possibility depending on what state you're in. The big downside to all of this is that we have to do research on every state individually before sending stuff. Sometimes that state wants extra excise tax money for any liquor sold in state, even if it's shipped in. Sometimes a state has one set of rules for some makers, and another set of rules for others. It's maddening. your friend a dog posted:if you're not going to be back until like 2 am and you have to get up at 6 why not just sleep there. please respond asap. thank you. I've got a cot here that I've slept on before, but some days I've got my dogs with me. They enjoy being fed and sleeping in their own beds, as do I.
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Sep 6, 2017 19:16
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Weltlich posted:Have you tried brandies? If you like a good whiskey, then I'd really suggest you look into good Armagnacs and Cognacs. They've got a similar flavor profile, and they're purely fruit based. Also there are a handful of good brandies that come from non-premium regions that you can find for less money, so don't think it has to be Armagnac or Cognac in order to be worth drinking. Torres 10 and Lustau Reserva are both nice. Oloroso sherry is also something that usually hits the right notes for people who like whiskey, and it's made from 100% grapes as well.
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Sep 6, 2017 21:29
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PT6A posted:Also there are a handful of good brandies that come from non-premium regions that you can find for less money, so don't think it has to be Armagnac or Cognac in order to be worth drinking. Torres 10 and Lustau Reserva are both nice. This is certainly true. There's even a lot of domestic made stuff that's really good. Germain-Robin out in California is putting out some outstanding brandy and apple brandy. One reason I usually go to the Armagnac and Cognac is because they're fairly easy to find in most liquor stores. Unfortunately, brandy as a type of liquor has been pretty neglected in the US for the past 50 years, with rotten stuff like "Blackberry Flavored Brandy" being the easiest to find in a lot of locations. Both Torres and Lustau are really nice, but depending on where you are, you might not be able to find them.
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Sep 6, 2017 22:31
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Would you be willing to export to china? I have a good friend that is living there and made a business of importing American beer and spirits to China. There is quite a boom in the market there right now for the imported stuff. Not just imported, but small batch craft styles tend to sell the best.
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Sep 7, 2017 04:41
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Do you need to take care to keep the methanol content of the ferment low, or is that pretty much handled in distillation?
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Sep 7, 2017 09:38
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