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I AM SHAMED INTO POSTING. Sorry, got busy yesterday. Anyway, the thing about fancy bottles is pretty true as well. There are some really odd bottle designs out there, and conventional wisdom says that the stranger the bottle design, the more mediocre the liquid inside. Also, from personal observation "novelty bottles" rarely are repeat sellers. You get a person to buy a bottle shaped like a penguin, a dick, or a skull once. Unless that liquor was amazing, they're never coming back to buy it again. Even if the liquor was simply good, their inclination will be to buy something else when they come back to the liquor store. My hunch is that's because the market for novelty bottles has a pretty big overlap with the market for low-end product. You can get a splurge for a fancy bottle once-in-a-while, but then they're going back to the Popov and the Clan MacGregor. What we struggle with is the label. Because on one hand, we always want to stand out on a shelf. Getting someone to pick your bottle up and look at it is literally 95% of the battle. Statistically speaking, if someone picks up your bottle (assuming it's not a novelty bottle), they're going to buy it. So you want a little bit of flash on the shelf. At the same time, you don't want to be so outrageous that you risk Guy Fieri'ing yourself off the shelf with crazy label designs - because those will eventually steer you back into novelty territory. There are some "winning" looks though: - The Old Fashioned: A look that says "I've been around since the Civil War" even though it's being made by companies that were found in the 2010's. Bulleit is a good example of this, they commissioned some nice bottle molds, and really nailed the look-and-feel of late 1800's label design. - The Helvetica: These labels really let the font do the work, and they're usually minimalist and classy looking. Normally found on some permutation of a nordic-style bottle, or some sort of highly angular, usually tall bottle. Hudson Whiskies went this route. - The Handlebar Mustache: Neo-Victorian/Edwardian styling is huge for some reason, and gins in particular are cashing in on it. Hendricks, etc. - The Super Folksy: An attempt to look like the bottle was hand crafted in a barn or some sort of timber-framed structure. Usually tries to get a bottle that would look at home in an apothecary or herbalists shop. Art-in-the-Age has made a lot out of this aesthetic. But now, as an industry, we're starting to come to a point where finding a good design aesthetic that doesn't seem derivative of another label is getting difficult. At my distillery, we're trying to sort of walk a classy/folksy line with ours. It seems to be working out well so far, but it's always a matter of being willing to tweak the look of a label and not feel to sentimental about one that I might personally like, but doesn't preform well on the shelf.
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May 16, 2018 19:03
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Everyone going for the bespoke hand crafted small batch ancient recipie my grandpappy used wrapped in paper with twine look is driving me nuts. I don't have any answer to that problem or ideas how to get around it though. One thing I haven't seen yet is whiskey in a tiny wood barrel. I bet 750ml barrels would cost a fortune but i would probably try it once (novelty bottle). If it was good and cheaper in glass next to it I would probably pick up the glass version next time.
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May 17, 2018 23:45
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honda whisperer posted:Everyone going for the bespoke hand crafted small batch ancient recipie my grandpappy used wrapped in paper with twine look is driving me nuts. This is a legit fantastic idea. How realistic would it be to be a local small distillery and do a mini-keg sized wood barrel deposit/exchange? The main problem I see outright are ensuring barrel quality and safety. At least with glass milk bottles you can clean and disinfect them absolutely. I don't think that's necessarily the case for wood barrels.
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May 24, 2018 19:58
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:This is a legit fantastic idea. It's an awesome idea, but the problem lies in bottling regulations. The first hurdle is size standardization. In the US, there's only a small selection of highly standardized bottling sizes (50ml, 100ml, 200ml, 375ml, 750ml, 1l, 1.75l), and you're not allowed to use something that doesn't conform. So you'd have to find a cooper who's amazing in both his math skills, and his carpentry to hit 750ml volume each and every time. For reference, I have an amazing cooper - like a legitimate wood wizard who blows sailing ships from his pipe smoke whilst carving staves - and even his barrels have some degree of play in the amount they hold. And small barrels aren't even easier to make than big ones, they become increasingly fiddly to build the smaller they get. (Our cooper charges the same amount for a 5 gallon that he does for a 30, just because it's annoying to build.) The second, and probably the most daunting hurdle is the regulation surrounding proofing. The TTB is very anal about getting proofing right. If you say it's 120 proof and 750ml, then you had better pray that it's actually 120 proof and 750ml when they come testing. If it isn't then get ready for fines and possible recalls. In glass, it's annoying enough, but a barrel is way worse because as soon as a barrel is filled, the volume and proof starts changing. Was it stored in a hot warehouse? Then it probably wept and lost volume. Was it stored somewhere that the humidity was unideal? Then it probably lost proof as the wood wicked alcohol away. A mini-cask would be a nightmare for distillers on a regulatory front. But! There is a work-around! Some other distilleries already do this, and we're looking into it as well. In short we bottle cask strength white whiskey or rum under our label and sell it you unaged. We also sell you a bespoke small barrel. You take an empty barrel and full bottles home with you. After that, what you do with them is your own business. Unless you start mixing sugar and water into the barrel (don't do this) there's no contamination issues to worry about with 120 proof, cask strength alcohol. No need to turn it back in, just buy more cask strength white spirits when the time comes.
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May 24, 2018 20:25
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This is interesting, Woody Guthrie talking about making home made whiskey in the depression. Starts at about 10:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlgXghaJCK0&t=655s Basically he says that heard the directions were to get one cake of yeast and let it ferment 3 days, but he decided to get 3 cakes of yeast, some malt, barley, and hops, and kept a hot fire under for a day. Said it did the job, but also said he got horribly sick on drinking it. SimonCat fucked around with this message at 03:15 on May 25, 2018 |
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May 24, 2018 22:21
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Glass container with wood strips around it so it /looks/ like a tiny barrel?
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May 25, 2018 03:17
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Weltlich posted: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. So you wrote this on the first page in response to a question I asked and I just now thought of a follow up. How much effect does an individual still have on the final product? Could the Ardbeg guys trying to innovate go to another country, do their work on a still over there, and either bring the resultant spirits back over for aging, or just generally use a still other than their main production still to dial in a new recipe and bring it back over?
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May 25, 2018 03:29
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This is a neat thread and I don't even drink.
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May 25, 2018 10:05
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SimonCat posted:This is interesting, Woody Guthrie talking about making home made whiskey in the depression. Starts at about 10:55 Sounds like they were making beer, as opposed to whiskey - but some of the same general principles apply. It's also very anecdotal, but really interesting just due to the history of it. He's right that adding more yeast will speed up the fermentation time. I use a staged fed-batch style of fermentation. That means instead of just dumping a set amount of yeast into my mash all at once, I separate a mash out into progressively larger volumes, and start with the smallest. I'll add a 250g of yeast to that small portion, let it ferment between 8 to 12 hours, then pour the whole thing into the next volume of mash, which is about 6 times greater than the first. I'll let that ferment 18 to 24 hours, then put the entire volume into the final fermenter which is the full 600 gallon batch. Yeast has two basic phases of metabolism, aerobic and anaerobic. In the aerobic phase, the yeast consumes nutrients and uses the nutrients and free oxygen to make more yeast - and it's a. whole lot easier to keep a small batch of mash oxygenated. So in those early stages, I'm actually growing yeast instead of making alcohol. Once that yeast flips to the final fermenter, it's moving into an anaerobic phase where the yeast isn't budding into new yeasts nearly as fast. Instead it's consuming those nutrients and making alcohol instead. And there's a whopping great amount of yeast in that 100gal "starter" that gets poured into the fermenter, so it ferments fast. The whole 600 gal batch will be ready to distill in 5 days or so. Yeast is super expensive - a 500g package of yeast can cost us upwards of $50 to $75 depending on the strain. If I was pitching directly (that is to say, adding the entire amount of yeast necessary to ferment a batch of mash) it could cost in upwards of $300 to $400 per batch depending on the product I was making. So by using a staged fed-batch process, we can cut our yeast costs by 80%, and more importantly ensure that we get a vigorous and complete fermentation every time. As for getting really sick - who knows? Could have been that they just brewed a really potent batch of beer and managed to get a rocking hang over. There's also the reality of stressed yeast, which produce a lot of non-alcohol compounds that can get you really hung over. Diacytl, acetates and acetones, etc. Yeast are autophages, and once they start running out of the sugars and nutrients you provide them, they start eating dead and weak yeasts and metabolizing all sorts of fun molecules. In some cases those are terrible (acetones), but in some cases distillers and brewers will intentionally stress certain yeast strains because we know they'll produce a certain chemical like ethyl or methyl butyrate (pineapple and apple smells). The Lone Badger posted:Glass container with wood strips around it so it /looks/ like a tiny barrel?   Nth Doctor posted:So you wrote this on the first page in response to a question I asked and I just now thought of a follow up. Stills have an an amazing impact on the end product. It's part of why "knock off" spirits are so hard to perfect. If you manage to get the mash-bill just right, and you even source your barrels from the same supplier, then chances are the still will be the give-away that you're making the product somewhere else. The geometry inside a still influences things like reflux and condensation, and variations in those processes will naturally cause certain molecules to vaporize at different times inside different machines. When Glenmorangie brags about having the tallest stills in Scotland, they're not just talking for nothing. It's debatable whether or not it makes better scotch, but it 100% is what makes Glenmorangie scotch unique. The mash bills in Scotland don't vary a lot from distillery to distillery, compared to the variation between bourbon mash bills - peat levels seem to be the largest differentiating factor. But the variation among scotch stills is pretty amazing. Some use squat things that look more like brandy alembics, others (like Glenmorangie) are using tall, high necked things. At the end of the day, even for distillers with in-house labs, the movement of a product from R&D to the production floor is a nail-biter. You can come up with some really good educated guesses as to the outcome by using a smaller still, but until it hits the production still, nothing's a sure bet. Ssthalar posted:This is a neat thread and I don't even drink. Thanks!
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May 25, 2018 16:56
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Great thread. I posted back ages ago about yeast and doing my own (i'm in australia). I haven't had much luck with good, cheap and readily available yeasts. You mentioned EDV46 back then but haven't been able to find it or any similar alternatives locally. I mentioned before that I've tried a few plain/bakers yeasts, and ec1118, and a beer kit yeast (coopers - that's loving awesome for washes but it's not available publicly) which is my problem now as I've run out of that old saved kit yeast (I always saved them and made my beer with us05 instead) Being out of good yeasts and not finding a suitable replacement I've done a couple of washes in turbo yeast (still spirits brand- NZ ) and alcotec (europe) and those brews certainly had some acetone! Lots of wastage on heads and the using carbon filtering to get something drinkable. E: on the upside those brews only took 4 days rather than 2-3 weeks. But that's the only upside E: and I think that's only because of nutrients and a ~200g pitch - I think my bakers, e1118 and coopers yeast washes took 2 weeks due to only being 20g pitching and me not adding enough nutrients. lovely thing is I can go to any homebrew store and buy 200g of turbo for $8, but they only sell the other yeasts in 5g,7g or10g packs for $7ea  Even if I made a starter I think 20g and a starter would be required for a nice tasting and 5ish day brew for 23L and 5kg sugarGoing on a big yeast hunt for something good that's available here at a fair price soon but not much hope locally as I have asked around at every beer/spirits homebrew shop while picking up the turbo yeast and none of them had a viable alternative excepts multiple packs of $7x 5 gram ec1118. I'm going to have to cast the net further to other states or international and score something big in bulk somewhere I think, or try another bakers brand here that is big on beers anyway and maybe worthwhile taking a gamble on (like mauri) Anyway just dropping in to say it's interesting reading even though I already know a fair bit and have spent months reading home distilling forums before my own purchase of gear. Fo3 fucked around with this message at 19:30 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 19:07
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Fo3 posted:Great thread. I posted back ages ago about yeast and doing my own (i'm in australia). I haven't had much luck with good, cheap and readily available yeasts. You mentioned EDV46 back then but haven't been able to find it or any similar alternatives locally. Ugh, sorry you're having such a tough time finding suitable yeast. Here's a couple suggestions - 1) If all you can find are the 5g packs, try doing a fed-batch process. Instead of making the full ~30L batch (or whatever size you're going with), and dumping 7 packs of yeast into it, make a few "staged batches" over a couple of days. For the first batch, do a single Liter of water and 200g of sugar, and a teaspoon of tomato paste (more on this later). Then once it hits ~30 degrees centigrade, mix in a single packet of E1118. Let that ferment for 18 to 24 hours. Then make up a batch that is 5 liters of water, 1kg of sugar, and a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste. Once it's ~30c, tip that previous 1L batch into it, give it a good stir, and let it ferment for 18-24 hours. On day three, make a batch that's 17L water, ~3.8kg of sugar, and a full can of tomato paste (170g to 200g). Cool to 30c and mix in the previous day's batch. This should give you a much more vigorous ferment using much less starting yeast, and it should mature much more quickly as well. Just be sure to use good brewing hygiene (sterilize all equipment before use), and oxygenate the first two batches well. You can do this easily by pouring it back and forth between two containers 9 or 10 times. (Pro-Tip, you can dissolve more oxygen in a liquid, the cooler the water is. So wait until it's 30c or under. You can oxygenate it after it's been pitched.) 2) Switch to making grain mashes instead of sugar washes. Most home brew stores are set up for beer makers, and they're going to have a better selection of yeasts (usually) that prefer the sugars in a grain mash. In your case, I'd even go for malt extract (dried or liquid) instead of all-grain brewing, because once it's distilled you'll never even know. Don't bother with hops, but do keep adding tomato paste. Here's why: yeast like an acidic environment with lots of micro-nutrients. You can do that with hops for big money, or you can just add in a can of tomato paste for every 25L of water you use. And it might sound weird, but you'll get no noticeable flavor carry-over. Tomato paste doesn't seem to have many or any volatile aromas that make it through distillation.
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May 28, 2018 19:58
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I might have to give the staggered starter approach a try when the weather warms up. It's getting cold at night here and I have no heating (or power for a heat belt where the fermenter is). All I have is fermenter boxes covered with blankets and ice bottles for when it gets too hot. It's getting down to 5C ambient at night now and that doesn't seem a problem for a hot yeast like turbo yeasts (they stay so exothermic throughout the process that they keep themselves warm overnight). But beer and champagne yeasts might drop out because they aren't so vigorous. I might give it a go with some cheap/older yeast I have because there's nothing to lose, but I doubt it will ever hit 30c. E: Question: If I get this method working do you think I could get at least 1 more wash out of it by pitching on top of the trub, or would I need a starter every time? Yeah I know about the tomato paste and I was planning on trying it next. The two wash types I know are lemon and yeast nutrients, or tomato paste; and I'm out of yeast nutrients anyway Fo3 fucked around with this message at 00:47 on May 30, 2018 |
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May 30, 2018 00:07
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Another homebrewer here, I recently came across a good article on maintaining a yeast bank. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/maintaining-healthy-yeast-bank-long-term.html Hopefully this helps your situation a bit Fo3, If you have some good yeasts then you can use fed batch process or just make a starter. Haven't tried it personally yet mind you, but I don't see too many reasons why you couldn't make it work.
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May 30, 2018 00:57
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I use an aquarium heater to keep my wash warm, seems to work fine. And from reading round, any "Turbo" yeast produces lots of nasties. Most of my stuff is aimed towards distilling the wash, but the same (and probably nastier) would apply to a brewing run - you don't get ANY chance to distill the good bits out, whereas with a still you can at least cut the worst bits out. Though I think Turbo yeast is known to produce chemicals very close to the boiling point of Ethanol - so you end up getting a lot smaller "cut" of good stuff, and even that will be a bit messy if you don't do things exactly right. Have a look at this (meant for producing a neutral wash for later watering down after a second distillation, or just drinking straight as it comes out). Then search for turbo yeast on the same site - I don't think you'll see a good word about it. https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5018
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May 30, 2018 18:26
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Fo3 posted:E: Question: If I get this method working do you think I could get at least 1 more wash out of it by pitching on top of the trub, or would I need a starter every time? Trust me on the tomato paste - if it was within the regs to use tomato paste instead of nutrients in my rum mashes, I'd be doing it even on a commercial scale. Yeast fukkin' loves it. As far as pitching on the trub, I've had mixed results and I don't do it on our commercial batches. If you're super anal about your brewing hygiene, you can sometimes get away with it, but if you really want to do something like that, I recommend getting a washing cone and learning to acid wash your yeast. Otherwise it's a crap-shoot that can end up with an infected mash (usually with something that makes it smell like vomit or poo poo.) Yeast can survive though some pretty extreme low pH environments, but other bacteria can't, so an acid wash will do two things - it'll kill off any unwanted bugs, and it'll also flip yeast from anaerobic metabolism back into aerobic metabolism. Also be aware that you can generally only get away with doing this five or six times before you end up with weird, mutant yeast. Sometimes that works out in your favor and you end up breeding a strain that's super adapted to whatever mash bill you've been working on. Most of the time you just end up with sickly yeast that doesn't preform nearly as well. Ohyesitsme posted:I use an aquarium heater to keep my wash warm, seems to work fine. And from reading round, any "Turbo" yeast produces lots of nasties. And you're spot on as to why turbo yeast sucks - the bad esters and other chemicals it produces tend to vaporize too close to the boiling point of ethanol, and it makes a TON of those chemicals to boot. Fine if you're going to burn it as fuel, awful if you're wanting a smooth drink. Also, I use aquarium heaters in the lab during the colder months. They work really well for propagating batches of yeast - you just have to remember to sanitize them really well between runs. A good dip in Star-San or similar acid-based cleaning agent, and a tooth-brush to scrub out any little nook and cranny will keep them clean. Don't use an alkali cleaner on them, though - the polymer parts might not withstand it.
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May 31, 2018 00:38
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Weltlich posted:Also be aware that you can generally only get away with doing this five or six times before you end up with weird, mutant yeast. Sometimes that works out in your favor and you end up breeding a strain that's super adapted to whatever mash bill you've been working on. Most of the time you just end up with sickly yeast that doesn't preform nearly as well. Also I know turbo yeast is bad, I've tried it. I just posted how much wasted heads and acetone result. I made do with it a few times due to desperation, many local homebrew shops offer it as the only distilling yeast they sell. So I've been there, done that, read years worth of poo poo about it previously anyway and I know from experience how many down sides it has, like it doesn't ever clear up, you need to distill it at least twice, better 3 times, and carbon filter 2-3 times. The New Zealand still spirits brand is the most sold here since they make and sell most distilling parts and stuff for sale here - it is bad. The alcotec 48 with carbon seems less bad - still doesn't clear up easy but it's a little less offensive after a filter, pot still stripping run and then a reflux run and then some aeration and carbon filtering. But obviously that's not what I want as I'm following this thread for yeast advice mainly. No need to tell me turbo yeast is bad, I started my posts here looking for a cheap viable yeast alternative after I got sick of the slow ferment and poor floccuation of generic bakers type yeast (it's not made for sugars, fermenting or flocculating), and while ec1118 made a nice wash, it was slow and expensive to deal with 5g packs, and then I ran out of coopers kit beer yeast that I had saved over the years and is not for public sale (shame, that yeast is poor tasting for beers but likes sugar and flocculates well so it's great for a wash). My season is pretty much over due to cold ambients and heating is impossible. E: But once it warms up again I'm going to do the starter and staggered ferment with tomato paste you recommended for sure Weltlich. Fo3 fucked around with this message at 14:51 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 14:07
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Fo3 posted:Oh yeah, I did it with beer but only once as a general rule. Sometimes it was just good to have a quick follow up brew if the first batch went really well. I didn't push my luck past one re-use as I know yeast mutates and anything nasty in there gets extra time trying to grow too I hear you, man. I tried Still Spirits' rum yeast early on. Never again. Don't be afraid to branch into ale yeasts if the home-brew store stocks them. Ask them for one that will do a high-gravity imperial style ale. (10 to 12% abv). In addition to the tomato paste, ale yeasts tend to like raisins for some reason, so if you toss 100g of raisins when you're doing your boil, the yeast will appreciate that. If they're still no help, you can order direct from White Star labs. I have no idea what the shipping price would be, but White Star makes some great yeast and they've got a number of Rum strains that would work well with your sugar mashes. I'm not sure what their retail rates are, but it's $20 (US) for a 500g container of their rum yeast at my wholesaler price. I'd imagine it's probably between $25 and $30 retail. If you keep it in the 'fridge it'll last forever. https://www.whitestaryeast.com/yeasts/rum
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May 31, 2018 15:10
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I checked your link and whitestar only ship to north america, and $60 minimum orders too. Late edit: It's $12/100g gram, and $40/500g. (I'm not bitching just letting you know because you wouldn't know otherwise.Weltlich posted:Don't be afraid to branch into ale yeasts if the home-brew store stocks them. Ask them for one that will do a high-gravity imperial style ale. (10 to 12% abv). In addition to the tomato paste, ale yeasts tend to like raisins for some reason, so if you toss 100g of raisins when you're doing your boil, the yeast will appreciate that. The coopers kit yeast has really good longevity, was designed for any temp, and was designed for kit beers with a lot of sugar and alcohol. What I had stashed away for 4+ yrs worked really good for me last year, it's just not available for sale. I'll take the raisin tip on board too thanks. *E: Tried to find some maurivin 514 ale yeast in bulk supplies but looks like it doesn't support more than 9.5%. Meanwhile I've found a shop that has ec1118 5g packs for $2.95ea, so when the weather is good I'm going to buy 2pcks of them for a tomato paste starter and staggered ferment. Fo3 fucked around with this message at 18:22 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 17:16
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Fo3 posted:I checked your link and whitestar only ship to north america, and $60 minimum orders too. Nice. I wasn't familiar with coopers, so I wasn't sure if it was a strong ale yeast or if it was made for fairly low abv's. I hate it when something I used to be able to get suddenly disappears. Unfortunately that seems to be frequent in home brewing. Edit: And Aaaargh about NA only shipping Most yeast (assuming it's a dried yeast) will survive for years if kept cold and sealed. So if you finally find something that works, don't feel bashful about dropping 50 to 100 on good yeast. If you use the staged-batch method, 100 to 500g of yeast will last loving forever at the scale you're working on.
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May 31, 2018 18:21
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Live baker's yeast seems to work fine for me, as in the neutral wash recipe I linked before - apparently you can get in health food shops. As for shipping, aren't AUS customs seriously hard on anything you want to import, due to the risk of invasive species of anything entering the country? Not like you don't have enough deadly things running around anyway, but I've read that they pretty much open any package, and if in doubt, they bin it...
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May 31, 2018 19:48
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Weltlich posted:Some other distilleries already do this, and we're looking into it as well. In short we bottle cask strength white whiskey or rum under our label and sell it you unaged. We also sell you a bespoke small barrel. You take an empty barrel and full bottles home with you. After that, what you do with them is your own business. Unless you start mixing sugar and water into the barrel (don't do this) there's no contamination issues to worry about with 120 proof, cask strength alcohol. No need to turn it back in, just buy more cask strength white spirits when the time comes. That's loving genius. OH gently caress I CAN EVEN BLEND MY OWN WHISKEY! This sounds like a really fun idea.
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Jun 1, 2018 20:27
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My best foray into brewing was still the first, all you need is a 3 gallon carboy, 10 pounds of honey, spring water and red star champagne yeast and about 4 years
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Jun 1, 2018 20:41
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shame on an IGA posted:My best foray into brewing was still the first, all you need is a 3 gallon carboy, 10 pounds of honey, spring water and red star champagne yeast and about 4 years I have brewed some amazing stuff with red star champagne yeast.
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Jun 10, 2018 08:17
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shame on an IGA posted:My best foray into brewing was still the first, all you need is a 3 gallon carboy, 10 pounds of honey, spring water and red star champagne yeast and about 4 years Applesnots posted:I have brewed some amazing stuff with red star champagne yeast. I my first attempt at alcohol making back in ~1997 or so was also a honey mead, and I'm like 98% sure that it was also red star champagne yeast that was powering it. I was using 1 gallon glass jugs to ferment in, and I thought the fermentation was done, so I corked it up tight. A couple weeks later I awoke to what I thought was gunshots going off in the closet - turns out a radiator pipe ran through the closet and had heated it up, reactivating the yeast, and causing the corks to pop out. I wired them on after that, moved them to a closet without a pipe in it, and 18 months later had 4 or 5 gallons of a sparkling mead to show for it.
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Jun 11, 2018 19:53
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Weltlich posted:Trust me on the tomato paste - if it was within the regs to use tomato paste instead of nutrients in my rum mashes, I'd be doing it even on a commercial scale. Yeast fukkin' loves it. Is there a reasonable law that prevents you using tomato paste - like it's not an approved ingredient or something? My bakers yeast mashes with dextrose and tomato paste go great - though people do look at you a bit oddly when you say it once contained tomatoes, when they are sipping on the hard stuff... neutral wash flavoured with novelty flavours, watered back to about 70% ABV. What nutrients do you use instead. I presume they end up a load more expensive? One of the nicest but most head-loving ones I have had was flavoured with sweet chilli and peanut sauce from the Asian supermarket. Went down as easy as orange juice, then when I stood up I realised how obliteratedly drunk I was. About 70% ABV again, given to me by a friend. I still have letters I wrote that night, glad I didn't post them....
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Jun 11, 2018 21:47
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Whether or not I can use tomato paste is sort of a grey area. It would end up being a question as to whether or not the regulator who got the formula decided to call tomato paste a nutrient, or a substrate (a fermentable). Unfortunately much of what they decide depends on their own biases and predilections, and honestly what kind of day they're having. So for that reason, we err on the side of caution and use custom made nutrient bases that have no fermentability on their own. I tend to stick with lallemand brand nutrients, as they've given me the most bang for my buck. I forgot the exact designation for the nutrient, but it's basically the commercial version of Fermaid K, which is often available in homebrew stores as well. It's not terribly expensive in the long run, but it's about $50 for a 2lb canister of the stuff iirc. I use about 50g of the stuff in a 600 gallon mash, so it lasts a while and is pretty cost effective. And totally, if you make a good neutral (or even flavorful) spirit, and cut it really clean you can get a really dangerous drink. I have been doing prototypes of a coffee rum that fall into that category - a nice smooth aged rum on the entry, and a delightful coffee finish. Self control is key in the lab, haha.
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Jun 12, 2018 02:13
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Ah, it's a bit like Building Control over here - one guy says "Yeah, that lintel would be fine", and the other guy says "You CANNOT put that in as a lintel, I know it's 3 times as strong as it needs to be, but it's not galvanised - or painted the right colour!" I was wondering about this stuff I found on Ebay - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wheat-AL...6kAAOSwiBJaCDrl "Wheat alcohol, 95%, not denatured". I know alcohol above 96% begins to absorb moisture from the air, so their claim of 95% ethanol and 5% water sounds reasonable - is this basically Everclear at 95% ABV, or is it likely to contain nasties? And if it is basically Everclear, why don't the 'shine distillers just buy it in bulk, cut it with 50% water, flavour it and sell it? It's not like they maintain they are selling the finest whiskey or anything, just "something to sip from mason jars and then drive home drunk on". Couldn't find an MSDS sheet for it, I'd be interested to know what the make-up is...
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Jun 12, 2018 18:22
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Ohyesitsme posted:Ah, it's a bit like Building Control over here - one guy says "Yeah, that lintel would be fine", and the other guy says "You CANNOT put that in as a lintel, I know it's 3 times as strong as it needs to be, but it's not galvanised - or painted the right colour!" Yeah, who knows what's in that other 5%. It's got Cyrillic writing on the label, which isn't an automatic red flag, but it also means that I have no idea what it says. It says something about 73ml of some such, and 100ml of something else, but unless someone who speaks Russian/Ukranian/Belorussian and also knows about chemistry is around, good luck! And it also says no shipping to the US, which would put a damper on moonshiners here - but the Brits can go hog wild. And I've usually tried not to do any sort of product placement here (for a host of reasons) but I'm going to have to do a brag. The gin I make, Joe's Pond Gin, is unique because it is built on top of a super smooth white-rum base. The result is a gin that is really shippable and has a sweetness without any cloying nature. Anyhow, I've been tinkering around with it, trying to come up with a cocktail list that I can hand to prospective bars to give them a reason to sell my stuff. What I'm finding is that because it has that rum base, Joe's Pond can be used in all sorts of tiki drinks. Here's a punch I made earlier today, and it took a force of will not to make a full glass of it: Joe's Pond Punch 3oz JP Gin 1oz Lime Juice 1oz Pineapple Juice 1tsp Grenadine 1oz Cherry Syrup (can use the syrup maraschino's come in) 3 shakes Angostura bitters Club Soda Shake everything but the soda over ice until the shaker feels frosty, then strain into a highball glass filled with ice, top it up with club soda and give it a gentle stir. Garnish with fresh mint sprig. It's dangerous. I think I've finally found our marketing niche, so fingers crossed.
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Jun 12, 2018 21:28
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Weltlich posted:And I've usually tried not to do any sort of product placement here (for a host of reasons) but I'm going to have to do a brag. The gin I make, Joe's Pond Gin, is unique because it is built on top of a super smooth white-rum base. The result is a gin that is really shippable and has a sweetness without any cloying nature. Anyhow, I've been tinkering around with it, trying to come up with a cocktail list that I can hand to prospective bars to give them a reason to sell my stuff. What I'm finding is that because it has that rum base, Joe's Pond can be used in all sorts of tiki drinks. Here's a punch I made earlier today, and it took a force of will not to make a full glass of it: Oh man, get over to the GWS Cocktails thread, there's a few posters there who are absolute wizards with tiki and/or punches, and could probably brainstorm you some magical things to try out. Also, once you have the leeway to play a bit, why not consider trying Archenteron fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jun 12, 2018 |
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Jun 12, 2018 23:37
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Ohyesitsme posted:Couldn't find an MSDS sheet for it, I'd be interested to know what the make-up is...
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Jun 13, 2018 04:16
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I've been a brewer for the last two years and a homebrewer for about 10 years before that, and I remain very interested in learning more about fermentation science. You keep going back to how tomato paste is a weird grey area, but also how beneficial it is to your yeast culture, can you go into detail behind the legality and science behind that? How would they find out if a can of tomato paste accidentally falls into your fermenter? While I understand cross contamination is a big concern in any fermentation application, my understanding is that some of the esters that would come from a lactobacillus, brettanomyces or even pediococcus fermentation would be destroyed by distillation, or would be isolated in the heads and tails of the run; therefore your wash fermentation vessels don't necessarily need be as aggressively sanitized as my conical tanks. At least that's the reasoning my (legal) distiller neighbor gave me when I called out his gross tanks when he was showing me around his workspace.
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Jun 13, 2018 06:13
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Aunt Beth posted:The photos are bad but it looks like the first couple lines on the back of the bottle are “each 100 ml contains 95 ml ethanol and purified water,” but I am not a scientist or any sort of scholarly translator, I just took some Russian in college. Yeah, I found that on their website - but then being Russian, who knows? It could be anything in the 5%, or could have been brewed using a turbo yeast or whatever - all the "reagent grade" ethanols I found are big money, so they must be doing SOMETHING wrong to make it that cheap!
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Jun 13, 2018 08:43
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Archenteron posted:Oh man, get over to the GWS Cocktails thread, there's a few posters there who are absolute wizards with tiki and/or punches, and could probably brainstorm you some magical things to try out. Thanks for the tip! I'll wander over there later this morning to poke around and post. And an absinthe or absinthe-like is also on our radar. One of the things I'm hot about is using as many local botanicals as I possibly can, so at the moment I'm lining up farms to provide herbs. So far with the gin, I've got 7 out of the 10 botanicals coming from a 50 mile radius around the distillery, which I'm pretty happy about. I've got a few farms interested in wormwood, anise, and fennel as well, which form the trinity of absinthe - and then various other mints and sages to round it out. I'll probably start tinkering with that this fall. The_Hatt posted:I've been a brewer for the last two years and a homebrewer for about 10 years before that, and I remain very interested in learning more about fermentation science. So on the legality side it really boils down to not giving the enemy ammunition, and distiller's paranoia. This is very subjective and you should take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. We have a good working relationship with the TTB, and honestly I've found them very helpful (if a little slow to respond.) But, they're still a little - for lack of a better term - weird. Conversations with the TTB often feel like they could veer from a friendly chat into an interrogation. For instance I was recently on the phone with the formulas department, asking about the legalities of adding cold-brew coffee to rum as a flavoring agent, and what started as a "Hi, I've got a few questions" on my side sort of developed into "And we have some questions for you..." on theirs. (Bear in mind, we're fresh off of the Four Loko debacle of a few years ago, so they're really touchy about how anything caffeinated is introduced into liquor.) I guess my point is that for distillers, we always feel like the microscope on us is dialed to a slightly higher magnification than Brewers and Vintners, and it doesn't help that the agency we have to turn to for regulatory guidance is also the agency that has the power to quickly enforce what their interpretation of the regs - shutting us down first, and asking questions later. And I freely admit that most of that is just being paranoid, but there aren't many distillers out there that don't share my feeling. And that's sort of how tomato paste fits into this, and how the science of it muddles the legal aspect. The way the regs read, the only fermentable that should go into a rum mash should be sugar, or sugar cane derived materials (cane juice, molasses, etc). We can add powdered nutrients, because those really aren't being fermented. They're just like a multi-vitamin for the yeast. But the difference between nutrient and tomato paste is also the difference between multi-vitamins and eating vitamin-rich food. Most doctors agree you're better off eating an orange than swallowing a Vit. C tablet - and the reason is because the Vit. C present in the orange is more "bioavailable" - that is to say that there's a lot of other nutrients in an orange that are in tiny trace amounts, but help with your body's uptake of the vitamin C. (And vit. C may be a bad example because it's readily absorbed no matter what other trace elements are around, but roll with me for sake of argument.) And it's the same with tomato paste - because it's got all sorts of minerals, vitamins, and other trace elements just like the yeast nutrient has - but it's also got lipids, fatty acid chains, carbohydrates, and all sorts of other things that a "nutrient blend" doesn't have. And that bioavailability seems to translate into more vigorous mashes. Unfortunately I don't have the equipment to really do organic chemistry on that level here, but just from doing side-by-side tests where all variables are equal but one batch gets nothing, one gets nutrient, and one gets tomato paste, the batch that got the tomato paste almost always makes it to full attenuation first. So back to the problem - what makes tomato paste such a viable and desirable nutrient source is that it's also a substrate. At some level it's being fermented, too. And back to distiller's paranoia: If I've got something fermenting in my rum that's not sugar (or whiskey that's not grain, etc), then there's a potential conflict with the TTB, and sure I could plead a case that the tomato paste is a nutrient, not a substrate - but they're still the final authority. And in the meantime, while they're deciding, and while any appeals are happening, I'd have to pull all my product from the shelves via a recall, and possibly pay fines, and have them going over everything with a fine-toothed comb just looking for more infractions. And true, maybe they never find out - but, if we ever had a full audit, then cases of tomato paste laying around the plant would be hard to explain. And if the TTB takes a dim view of questionable things happening that they know about, then they take an even dimmer view of questionable things that they find out you've been trying to hide from them. I'll just use yeast nutrient and have my mashes take an extra day to ferment. As for cross-contamination and general brewery/distillery hygiene I think that you're right in that distilleries appall most brewers. That's not to say that we don't maintain standards of sanitation - I use caustic on my tanks at regular intervals via CIP systems, I take care that things are rinsed out and hosed down promptly after use, my fittings get soaked in buckets of StarSan before use, everything is stainless steel, etc. But, we don't worry nearly as much about cross contamination for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that distillers' yeasts tend to be very vigorous and fast acting (even when they're not "turbo" yeasts), and that as soon as fermentations are complete, they go directly to the still for processing into spirits. Unlike brewing, our mash isn't our final product. I even know many distilleries who are still fermenting in open-top fermenters. And dunder. Oh man, dunder.
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Jun 13, 2018 14:31
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How do you recommend storing opened yeast packs? I was going to have a go with fresh yeast like someone else recommended because I just realised I drive past a bakery supply shop where it's $3 for 500g. Cheap enough to take a gamble for a cold brew experiment But then again, I'd rather get a yeast that's more specialised and flocculates well, so I kept searching and found a brew store at the other end of my city that sells 125g ec1118 for $25. I might get some to try, but if it is too cold to brew then I need to store it well until the weather gets warmer. I'm debating whether to bother trying it at all but I've read ec1118 is good for at least 15C ferments, and others say 10C should work. (it rarely gets below 10C during our winter but can drop to 6C for a few hours before dawn. It's our spring that is a cold bitch, no rain, no clouds, 3C nights - so temperature wise it's only going to get worse before it gets better). I've done dried bakers yeast before, but once that large pack is opened and air gets in it deteriorates pretty quick. EG 1st dried bakers yeast brew for me was 10 days, 2nd was 2 weeks, 3rd was 3 weeks. So if I get a large pack of ec1118 and it ends up being too cold to brew I will have to find a way to store a opened 125gr pack until summer. I'm thinking put in ziplock, suck air out through a straw and store in freezer or fridge. How viable will opened yeast stay like that?
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Jun 21, 2018 04:06
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Weltlich posted:And dunder. Oh man, dunder. Are dead goats still de rigueur?
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Jun 21, 2018 08:32
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Fo3 posted:How do you recommend storing opened yeast packs? For small samples that I'm storing for less than a year, a Ziplock bag in the refrigerator works just fine. (I prefer this to the freezer, unless you've got a bunch of desiccant packets to toss in with it.). If you want to get fancy, a vacuum sealer is better - but only marginally so. I started out vacuum sealing it religiously, but soon realized I couldn't really tell much of a difference in performance vs. yeast that I'd just put in a ziplock. (And a note that baker's yeast is a different animal - even with vacuum sealing, I've noticed it degrades rapidly.) I think the most important thing is keeping it dry. As soon as the yeast starts to hydrate, it's going to start losing potency. For my environment, ziplock in the fridge work just fine. Your milage may vary depending on your local humidity. And wine yeast variants (to which EC1118 belongs), are generally pretty tolerant of cooler temps. The yeast tends to slow down instead of shutting off completely. Most of these were selected with French wine cellars in mind, and they can be somewhat chilly depending on the time of year. It wouldn't surprise me if you got more "winey" flavors out of your wash during the winter, and more rummy notes during the summer just do to temperature variation leading to yeast stressing. The Lone Badger posted:Are dead goats still de rigueur? Where available. I really want to start a dunder pit here, but we're still trying to figure out how to do so in a way that doesn't make the board of health poo poo themselves and die.
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Jun 21, 2018 15:12
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Weltlich posted:Where available. I really want to start a dunder pit here, but we're still trying to figure out how to do so in a way that doesn't make the board of health poo poo themselves and die. Oh jesus I googled it. 
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Jun 21, 2018 15:39
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Nth Doctor posted:Oh jesus I googled it. Yuuuup. The real secret to dunder pits is that they attract fission yeast. Most of the yeast that gets used for primary distillation is some strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It's well known, easy to work with, readily available, etc. But, it also reproduces by budding - that is to say that the yeast grows an appendage, and then that appendage breaks off and is it's own independent baby yeast that then grows up, buds, and continues the cycle. Fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe is the most well known, is a little more archaic and weird. It reproduces by splitting down the center, linearly. It tends to be a little slower at fermentation than S. cerevisiae. It also tends to ferment from the top-down, forming a "cap" on top of whatever mash it's in. It also produces it's own host of esters and other flavors that S. cerevisiae doesn't. But dunder pits are sort of a weird Zerg spawning pool for these (and other!) micro-organisms, and by tossing in more biological matter, it just feeds the process. In the worst case, you find goats and dead owls and stuff in them, but most modern dunder pits aren't nearly that bad. They are still gross and weird, though, which makes starting a new one really problematic because they scare the poo poo out of local health authorities (with good reason).
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Jun 21, 2018 16:35
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Weltlich posted:Yuuuup. What's a good brand of rum to buy if I want to taste rotting goat head esters?
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Jun 21, 2018 18:45
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I've been messing with the stuff I distilled - it came around 96 percent after 3 runs though the still, and a really nice neutral taste (once watered down). You know the way Smirnoff etc. feel oily when you rub it through your fingers? This is the opposite, it leaves them dry as anything. So naturally, I have been experimenting with flavours - Cardamom pods, cloves, and traditional UK boiled sweets. So far, "Butter balls" (no butter involved) are a firm favourite, followed by clove rock, and then brandy balls. All mixed down to about 70% ABV, and Jesus, they can leave you incapable of walking if you aren't careful. I drank about 400mls of 70% clove stuff - could hardly even see myself in the mirror the next morning before work after 3 hours sleep. Just a mad thirst though, drank a load of water and was fine, a lunchtime pint session brightened the day up - in the sun, on the shore. And all for the cost of some dextrose, baker's yeast, and tomato paste. And the juice of two lemons. 4 hours at the still and it is pretty much all spoken for by friends and family (traditionally it is bad luck to take money for Poitin) - favours are fine but no cash. And the next wash is ready, I'm going to have to buy more bottles!
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Jun 21, 2018 19:04
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