Day 32:  The special project fermentation continued for the guys from Covington.  We looked at how our mash was going in the morning and it was bubbling like a party was going on.  As most of you know once fermentation starts it's all a waiting game.  As soon as we get to pump all of this out, we will begin to work on my first contract run of the Rye Whiskey.  So next week will be full of some more detailed information.

 My day was filled mostly with running a cleaning loop on the 850L Carl Pot still and 44 plate column still.  In the first picture you see Justin pointing out how the water manifold cycles water to each section of the two columns and the to the pot still and 5 plate helmet.   The second picture is of Ari showing Bill from Covington how the cleaning loop works. We ran our caustic loop 15 minutes in each of the eight column sections with CIPs and two parts of the Post still.  So this loop ran for  2:30.  We rinsed/flushed the whole system and

 set up our citric acid Loop.  Picture three is me adding the caustic (sodium hydroxide) which is 14 ph so an extremely basic compound.  We ran the acid loop for 10 minutes each section.  This went only slightly quicker, and the whole process took up most of the day.

Around 4:30 we took our eighteen hour sample of the Covington test batch and sent it off with Jake to get our HPLC and GC updates.  I did spend some time working on a few things for my next run.  I looking into barrel racks for the storage here at Artisan Distilling until I get back to Minnesota and get my DSP.

 In this picture left to right are Jim, Ari, and John.  Ari is giving the Covington guys a brief talk about the cleaning loop and how this still will operate for the future spirit runs.

I would like to say a special hello and thanks to those of you from the Cayman Islands, Russia, Venezuela, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Ireland, Great Britain, and Germany who are following this blog.  It is exciting to know this project is getting attention in corners of the world I have only dreamed of visiting.  Thanks for checking this out and I hope enjoy it.