Options are good! I ended up with Blundstones for now, and I love them for their ease and comfort, but I will transition them into more “work casual distillery events” instead of work boots. Looking into Ariat and Timberland Pro series now!

Great, thanks guys! I’ve been treating it similar to your suggestions. Thank you for the article, Colton!

Communion cups weirdly work! They look good for plastic tasting cups.

Agree that no single issue more important for all craft distilleries than preserving the FET reduction. Come to DC and help the fight!

Kinda the same problem our original still is an antique, so we had the new still built as close as possible.
https://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s278/ptwood/Mobile%20Uploads/2019-05/IMG_20190508_221503232.jpg

I’ve used buckwheat before, but it was in a larger mash of malted barley. As long as you have a beta glucanase as a part of your enzyme regiment, you should be fine.

Used to work with Capitol Eagle out there. Not much success to speak of with them.

Good luck.

Did you go with the same still manufacturer? Our 240 gallon is over 100 years old and an unknown manufacturer so we did the best we could in keeping with the shape and design but there was definitely a noticeable difference. I always try to take the attitude of as long as I make it better than I did before the drinker won’t mind.

Me as well I hate serving samples out of those little plastic cups.

Thanks Colton that has been my approach, I got to say scaling was harder than I thought!

I’m bringing back the footwear thread. This is really the content that gets me excited. I love Ariat boots -the company was founded by women equestrians, and they have a great line of super comfortable work boots. I have tried a ton of different brands over the past 10 years, and these have been the most comfortable out-of-the-box.

Knew***

Buy fifteen more 150 liter stills instead of a single 2400 liter? Just kidding!!

When we scaled from a 240 gallon to 800 gallon we new there would be kinks, especially in the first few runs, so we built up as much stock off the small still and slowly blended the new distillate in to minimize drastic flavor changes.

Thanks, Molly! Good to know!

I have no experience with them, but it seems they work with only non-Illinois distilleries and make their stuff available online for IL residents only. They don’t distribute to other retail or on prem, from what I can tell as a pure observer, and just sell to IL residents via mail. I’m sure its legit, but doubt its much volume. Probably better…[Read more]

Is it 100% buckwheat? Also is it going to be malted buckwheat or raw?
When we experimented with a buckwheat whiskey it was only about 1/3 of our mash, and the rest was malt so our problems may be a bit different. We treated the buckwheat same as we would corn and that seemed to work well.

But also, this….Optimisation of a Mashing Program for…[Read more]