Day 30:  This morning I got a lesson in proofing.  We proofed a few things in the past couple of days, but this was the first where I was left to proof it on my own.  Justin has a bachelor party coming up and he brought in a gallon of a single malt whiskey he had aged in a 2 gallon barrel for 14months.  He had me use this calculator from one of ADI's companion sites http://homedistiller.org/calcs/dilute.  So to proof this down I had to change everything into liters, as we have many graduated cylinders around which make it easy to hit a more exact water measurement using metrics.  So I  took a measurement of the Whiskey using an Anton Paar Densitometer. I added 2.163 L to the ~1 3.785L of Whiskey to proof it down to the 42%ABV Justin wanted.  After measuring again with the Anton Paar, I still needed to add another 250ml of water to hit the target.  It was every easy with this fancy machine.  Most of us, including me will likely not have one of these.  So I will have to learn to use The charts at some time.  After doing that Justin and I bottled up his whiskey for the party.  I spent the afternoon at the lab running tests on all of the stages of the mashing process.  This took about an hour to set up and the tests were still running at the end of the day.  With Justin gone for the weekend tomorrow is shaping up like this.  Ari and I may do some cleaning loops on the stills, I'm going to collect my results in the afternoon, and I asked Kris if he would sit down with me and talk about the legislation he helped to pass here in Michigan.  This legislation has made it easier for craft distillers to sell their own products as well as mixed drinks under their small distillers license.  Minnesota recently changed their laws to make it more affordable to start distilleries in the state.  They lowered the fees from $30,000 a year down to $1000.00.  If you are reading this have started or are thinking about starting a distillery in Minnesota, I would like to work together to make the laws work even better for us.  So look for a post on the ADI board in August to get this ball rolling.

Taking a sample of the whiskey for the Anton Paar.

Injecting the sample into the Anton Paar.

The Anton Paar readings before the last proofing water was added to the single malt.

Justin showing me a down and dirty quick filter method using a coffee filter and a funnel.