Ok, so day one turned out pretty much as I expected with the exception of meeting Kris Berglund who was called out of town. I got to spend my first day with Justin Aden. Many of you may remember Justin Aden who gave the technical talk about specialty malts and their uses in distilling whiskey, with the Briess Malt Guys. He gave me the tour of MSU, helped me get settled in to my apartment and then showed me the facility. I got the tour of the facility and I have posted some pictures of the main distilling equipment which I will be working with in this internship program. From right to left there is a 180L Carl with a four plate column and a small gin basket used mainly for brandies and whiskey, a 450L Carl stripping still which has a gin basket as well, a 650L Carl with a five plate column used for stripping and and as the boiler for the combination 44 plate split column still on the right. Most of this equipment has just gotten installed, the big mash tun was the last thing to go online. The distillery is housed in a building with a business called Working Bugs Inc, Kris' wife's business, also utilizing distilling processes to create products using things like butanol. That side of the facility will be taking delivery of a continuous column still in the next week or so. So I will be posting pictures of the installation of that piece of equipment. It is a very exciting thing to get to be a part of the installation. When installed it will be one of three of the largest Carl stills in North America, with a capacity of 2000L an hour. I will also post some pictures of the working bugs equipment, mostly some large scale fermenters. I hope you enjoyed this look into the facility and I'll be back on Monday. Oh and by the way, for those of you keeping score tonight I am drinking Knob Creek's new Rye whiskey. Good, I'd give it a 7/10, but a bit disappointing.
Looks legit!
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