Day 41 & 42: Stripping and Spirit Runs:

 Day 41 and 42: We started Saturday with our stripping runs, running them in both the 450L and the 850L Carl Stills. They were run wide open with no plates engaged.  Rye is a sticky mash to work with especially when distilling on the grain.  I had the unenviable job of pressure washing and scrubbing the Pot Stills between each batch. The rye begins to mess with heat transfer if you don't keep the pots clean.  We ended up doing three of them in each still to get our low wines.  On Sunday, Justin and I hunkered down for the long day of Spirit runs.  We started out by watering/proofing down the low wines to 25% ABV and then loaded the big 850L Carl and engaged only one plate.  We ended up with 175 gallons of Whiskey around 62%ABV.  This would get put into storage for a while awaiting the arrival of barrels from ISC some time after I left Michigan.  We proofed the final spirits down to 59%ABV for barreling, and I wheeled the tote containing them into the storage area.

Picture 1 is me scraping Rye mash off the sides of the 450L still.  Not a fun job.  Picture 2 is me pushing the low wines around to the put them on the forklift to load them into the 850L Carl for finishing.

 Picture 3 is the transfer to the 850L to start the spirit run.

Day 40

 Day 40:  It is really starting to sink in that my internship is coming to end on Tuesday.  This will be my last weekend in East Lansing for quite some time.  Jake and I went to work on finishing the grain hopper.  Jake spent a good amount of the day sitting inside the hopper.  This thing has so many bolts it was crazy.  When we got down to the last section of the hopper bottom, it looked as if Jake was in a space module training simulator.

We got the thing finished in time for a late lunch.  This hopper will hold up to 2800 pounds of grain and when they start up the mill it should hold a significantly larger weight of grain.

My Rye mash was still bubbling away as we were getting ready to finish up the day.  We are most likely going in on Sunday to do some stripping, so I can be involved in the final steps of making the Rye before I leave town on Wednesday.  When we get the next set of HPLC results I will post those.  I should have some on Monday when Jake gets in.

Justin asked Jake and I to proof a small R&D run he wanted to put in a 5 gallon barrel before we headed out.  We were in a rush, so while they were looking for something to stir with, I just went for it.  Note to self: "Do not mix whiskey with a bare hand which has been scratched and cut up from putting together a grain hopper."

 Day 39:  Ari picked me up to get our day and field trip started.  We got to the distillery and got the final stages of the contract work underway and checked on the Rye mash.  It was going gang busters. I took on the exciting chore of cleaning some rye stuck to the outside of the Mash tun.  It got there when we had a slight boil over.  It was hot and sticky in the distillery so I was sweating bullets the whole time.

 We were finishing up when Justin came in.  He was up late running the mash and came in a bit later than normal today.  As soon as he showed up Ari and I packed up his car with the necessary elements to clean a still for Mike Beck at Uncle John's Cider Mill.  Mike makes some great ciders and a vodka and brandy made from apples.

Ari had to run back to the distillery to get some paper work he forgot for Mike.  So I got to hang with Mike for a few hours while we ran the cleaning loop on this older Carl Still.  As I was finishing up, Ari called me to say he was going to take longer to get out to the cider mill.  Mike is one cool guy and took it upon himself to see I had a good time while I was waiting.  He ran me out to parking lot and hooked me up with a golf cart so I could run around the farm and check out the surroundings.  I explored the whole 250 acres.  Mike has Apples, Sweet corn, blueberry's and pumpkins.  He's got a great place and you can see much of it in the pictures.  Mike keeps a small quantity of aged brandy in this stack of barrels.  He was asked to take part in a project put together by another winery in the area to get barrels made from Michigan Oak.  I got to try a bunch of these brandies, taking samples from a  barrel made with french oak, and one from the Michigan oak.  I truly favored the Michigan oak.  You can see my hand holding a glass of it.  Great stuff.

Here is a picture of the runway going down between two fields of corn.  This should give you an idea of the size of operation he is running.
On the right is his rack for tri-clamps and hose parts.  I'm guessing this a manufactured thing, but I am planning on building one for my place when the time comes.

 Mike paused for a photo with me after the cleaning was done.  On the right I blew off a little steam on this bouncy balloon thing Mike has for the kids.  Ari tried to shoot me when I was up in the air but no luck.

On the left Mike and Ari are talking about different marketing concepts for Mike's products.  They are standing in front of one rack of Mike's products.  Incidentally, one of his ciders was just awarded an honorable mention from the Queen of England at a cider competition in Great Britain.  According to Mike he is the first American cider maker to get any award at this event.  Mike sent us home with boxes of different ciders and he gave me a bottle of both his apple brandy and vodka.  Can't wait to try these in the comfort of my new place in Minnesota next week.  You have to watch out how you answer when Mike asks "Hey, you want some sweet corn?"  If you answer "Yes." he might just drop a bag of 72 ears in your lap as he did for Ari.  Luckily Ari has a big event going on in form of a bachelor party for his brother.  So the sweet corn will go to good use at the party.

 Day 38:  The beginning of my last week.  Arrived this morning to see this crane already in action.  I really wish I could show pictures of the process involved installing this continuous still.  It is something to see.  If you can take the time to come and see this facility, and meet the team that runs it, it is worth the trip.  The top two sections which include a dephlegmator and refraction column were hanging in mid air from the cable attached to the crane.  The entire still is made of stainless steel except for this copper 5 place refraction section.  The Crane came in through a small hole in the cupola on top of the distillery.  The top two sections got lifted all the way up and the rest of the still slid in underneath.  Once it was all attached the plumbing began.  Nick had left the day before and Klaus stayed to complete the basic install and construction, before leaving to head home to Germany.

 While the side show continued, we got started mashing in a 4000L contract run of my rye whiskey.  I did a cleaning loop on the Mash tun which took most of the morning as the steam didn't heat it up as fast as we thought.  After the loop we put in our base water and got ball the ball running.  Jake, Justin, and I worked for quite a while loading the bags into the mash tun by hand.  80 of them to be exact.  Here is Justin taking his turn at the loading end.  This took the whole

day and Justin stayed late when the last cool down to pitch yeast went late into the evening.  I got word around 11:30 it finally got cool enough to pitch.  We are cooling with city water which is around 70-75 F and takes a long time cool the mash tun.  The crew is definitely looking forward to the arrival of the heat exchanger and a chiller.

The bags were piling up down below.

Final bag going into the mash tun.

I got a face gull of Rye flour dust.   Added a few years to my age for a few minutes.  My whole face was sticky by the end of the 80 bags.  Jake and I had made a run to the hardware store to get some dust masks.  Definitely a smart move.

Jake hanging out below the mash tun as we put in the last few bags.  As you can see we didn't get anything new done to the grain hopper.








Gravity feeding some low wines the hard way.

 Day 37: Today was an exciting day.  The continuous Carl column still came in. In this first picture you see Nick's son, Nick Hasse, Kris, Klaus and Diane discussing what is going to happen as the day progress.  I was hoping to post some pictures of this installation, but was asked not to share any of the process photos as this industry is becoming competitive and many of the elements are proprietary.  I respect that so I will post some photos, when the install is completed, of the finished still.  I will post those when I get approval for what I would like to show you.

We spent some time working on the stills.  In the second picture I am opening up the trays on the 850L still.

Some other projects got started today as well.  A guy came in to sand and surface the concrete floor in what will become the tasting room at the distillery.  They have plans to stain the floor, and I am sorry I won't be here to see it completed.  I am working on getting all of the final pieces together so we can complete one contract run.  Barrels and barrel racks will get ordered tomorrow.

 Russell surfacing the concrete floor.

 One other thing which came in today was the grain hopper.  Jake and I spent our afternoon working on putting this bad boy together.  It will hold 2800lbs of Grain and a flour capacity is in the works.  There are more bolts on this thing than I have ever screwed together in my life.  It was hot sweaty work, but Jake found time for some humor pretending he was wearing a galvanized hoop skirt.

Putting in the last bolts to the top section.  Tomorrow the bottom cone and the legs.

Day 36:  Today was a short day.  We had hoped to run a strip on a contract job we started on Friday.  However, the fermentation still has some time to go.  It got postponed to tomorrow.  Nick Haas and one of his associates named Klaus showed up today to start working out the plan for the installation of the big still.  That will start tomorrow, so I should have some cool pictures for all of you to see.  I meant to get some pictures of the guys hanging around, but we headed to lunch and when we returned they had already called it a day.  So more tomorrow.

Day 35: We got the final runs going on the Covington project.  Once it was set up and going, we started on the next contract run for a michigan distiller.  Justin has worked for the last month and a half to get the mill and grain conveyor system designed, quoted and in.  Unfortunately, like most things in construction, it is not going as planned and the system is delayed.  So we had to load all of the grain flours by hand into the top of the big Mash Tun.  Luckily the distillery has a small raised area with a set of stairs right behind the Mash tun.  Good planning, as this may need to see back up duty should the new system ever go down for repairs.  So Ari lifted the grain up to the second deck, and we all went to work on assembly line loading.  As usual, we ran the mash and fermentation with the typical stages.  Base water, heat, add grain and more water.  Up to temp and the first enzyme is added and the rest ensues.  Followed by cooling, second enzyme,

 rest, cool, and pitch yeast.  My day ended proofing some products for the Covington guys.  They decided to begin their trip home today.  We enjoyed working with them and had some good laughs.  I'm looking forward to a trip next summer to North Carolina.  We had it planned a while ago, and now we'll add a stop to see their completed operation.  Justin, Jake, and I finished the day by heading to the Black Night Rises.

Justin, Jake, and Ari, discussing how the column still makes for the better separations in heads, hearts, and tails cuts.  They were also discussing how more efficient this is to attempting to make a 95%ABV with a Pot Still.  I know there is much debate about this, so I'll leave the topic to you discuss amongst yourselves.

I took a second to step back and take this shot of the grain assembly line.

Proofed product going through a double coffee filter.

 Day 34:  First off my apologies for the tardiness on these last two posts.  My computer (only 6 weeks old) crapped out and had to be sent off for a repair.  thank goodness for warrantees, as the repair was more than half what I paid for this thing.  Don't know how that works.

The morning started out with the beginning of the stripping runs on the Covington project.  The first picture here is Jimbo getting a basic run down on how the stripping runs work as they watch the first mash filling into the 850L Carl.  We ran strips in both the 850L and 450L.  We did enough to fill each of them three times.  The whole day of stripping took from 8am to 7:30.  As was expected the first run took about 4.5 hours.  The other runs took quite a bit less as they the equipment was hot and ready when we pumped the subsequent mash charges.

Picture 2: A few execs. from the MGP, the current company operating LDI, stopped by to meet with Kris.  They spent quite a bit of time talking with all of us about what we were doing and what our future plans were.  It was refreshing to talk with top people who really are interested in what guys like me are doing.  One can never underestimate the power of a good contact.

Picture 3: Jimbo taking a photo of the early stripping runs.  We spent some time teaching them about heads, hearts, and tails.  We wanted to give them a heads up on what would happen tomorrow when we ran the spirit run through the big column still.

Picture 4: A big pow wow in the office to discuss all of the HPLC and GC results of the project.  This mystery product went through a speedy fermentation and presented some curious results.

Picture 5: Jimbo getting a little excited about the seeing the low wines piling up.

 Day 33:  We're still in a holding pattern while the R&D fermentation for Covington is finishing up.  So today we finished a cleaning loop on the 400 liter still.  Jake and I got up inside a couple of large poly tanks which will be used to hold the low wines before getting on to the spirit distillation.  All the materials for my bigger contract run showed up today from Briess.  4000 lbs of whiskey potential are in the warehouse waiting their turn.  Sadly the big column still for working bugs did not arrive on schedule.  Apparently it is somewhere between New York and Detroit.  Can't wait to see this bad boy.

 Rinsing the poly.

 Jake all up a poly tank doing some hand scrubbing.

Briess order in the truck.

Me sitting on a pallet of Rye Flour.  As you can see the mill is unattached to a grain delivery system.  Justin has finalized the designs and gotten some quotes on the conveyers and grain holding tank.  Soon they will pull the trigger and get the system in and running.

 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.

 Day 32:  Today was the start of a product develop distillation. Three guys from a start up in North Carolina called Covington were in to watch and learn.  The main goal of their project is to do a feasibility study on the  use of one of North Carolina's largest crops.  At their asking I can't talk about the specifics of what we are doing.  However, I am sure once this product hits the shelves you will discover the important parts.  We started the morning using this diaphragm pump to move the ingredients into the mash tun.  It ended up being to small to run the pump.  We ran out to rent a bigger air compressor and even with that the pump was going too slow.  Bill, the third Covington guy, was discussing a lot of ways it was possible to get the material out of the Cardboard and plastic bag totes used to deliver the product.  We settled on lifting it up with a fork and drilling a hole in the side of the box.  This was pretty cool, as if it was not like anything you would

 have expected.  I wish I could post a picture of that whole event, but it might give away information.  We added the product with water and ran the typical serious of cooks and rests.  The big mash tun took heated quickly and ran well for its true first run.  Sadly, without a chiller or heat exchanger the cooling phases took a long time.  Our final cool from 64C to fermenting temperature took about 3 1/2 hours using 70 F water.  We finished mashing and pitched around 7 pm.  We took samples for the GC and HPLC

testing to show them how the mash process progressively changes the starches into fermentable sugars.   So It was a long day and with the heat up in the high 90s, it was not very comfortable.  During our down time we spent a lot of time with the Covington guys talking about the process and their project.  I think they are well positioned to make a go with a cool new product.  I also spent a bit more time with Justin going over the yield from grain calculations we discussed previously.  I finally got to where I feel I truly understand how to make those calculations now.  So the pictures you see here are the diaphragm pump set up we started out with.  The second picture, from left to right, are John, Kris Berglund, Jim talking about how things were going at the time.  The last picture is one of the totes being lifted up above the mash tank before it is to be drilled open.  That's about as much as I can show you without giving something away.