Distilling Craft
Distilling Craft
The Proof You Need
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Adam Spiegel from the Sonoma County Distilling Company is interviewed about making old school whiskey in wine country. The sources of error and methods for proofing spirits are discussed along with various ways to overcome them.
You're listening to Distilling Craft, Episode (10), "The Proof You Need". Today, we're going to be talking with Adam Spiegel from Sonoma Distilling Company out of Rohnert Park, California.
Podcast PromoDistilling Craft is brought to you by Dalkita, a group of architects and engineers who specialize in designing craft distilleries across the US. More information is available at our website, dalkita.com [d a l k i t a . com].
Colleen MooreHello everyone. Welcome to Distilling Craft. I'm Colleen Moore. Hey, just a quick thing before we start today's show- while we're hard at work, lining up new interviews and producing new shows, and you are so kindly waiting on us, we're going to reissue a couple of our episodes from Season (1), with some previously unreleased material mixed in. We revisit Episode (10) from Season (1), with Adam Spiegel from Sonoma Distilling Company. Adam is going to talk with us today about making whiskey the old fashion way. Later in the show, our radiogenic part time distiller DJ, is going to talk with us about proofing and gauging spirit's errors in measurement, and the ways to minimize them. Welcome to the show Adam.
Adam SpiegelThank you. I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here.
DJ for DalkitaSo you are making old school whiskey. That's not the normal distillery that you think of coming out of Sonoma county?
Adam SpiegelNo, we did that on purpose. We focus on making whiskey in the heart of wine country, but most people don't realize the reason its wine country is, because the weather is great for making whiskey, it's hot and cold, and hot and cold. We're 15 miles away from the coast, so we get a ton of coastal influence. I cannot think of a more picturesque place, not just because it's aesthetically beautiful, I just can't think of a better place to actually make whiskey. And again, we're coastal, so we have less humidity influences on the whiskey. I'm a happy camper. I think, it's a really cool area to make whiskey in, and the stuff we've got coming out of barrel these days, it's just show stopping. And, we've been evolving I think over the last seven years, pretty well.
DJ for DalkitaBeing that close, are you getting lots of fog into your barrel warehouse, keeping everything nice and humid?
Adam SpiegelYeah. Every morning. Every morning, we get fog that settles in the valley. I take a lot of photos of it on the way up just to show people. I tell people, we throw it on our Instagram page and I'll say "Flavor"! It really is, it's no BS. It's really just the value of producing product this close to the coast, that lets me take a little bit of Sonoma County with me wherever I go. So, we're for sale in 7 states and 15 countries. So pretty much when I'm pouring booze all across the shelf or across the table, I'm talking about Sonoma County and the coastal influences, and the fog, and the heat during the day. Today's going to be extraordinarily hot, it's going to a 100 degrees today, which we normally peak in the 90s. If you go farther north in Sonoma, it can certainly get up to the low 100s, but now I'm in Rohnert Park, which is dead center of Sonoma County, and I'm a pretty happy camper here.
DJ for DalkitaYou've been open for seven years now. Are you primarily putting out straight whiskeys or you doing any bottled in bond stuff? How old are the whiskies you're putting out?
Adam SpiegelYes, we primarily bottle product that's between two and three years old today. We use small cooperage to make that happen. I like to look at the first seven years of our existence, it's a little bit of a R & D project here. So our goal was to always make whiskey, since day one. We originally were founded as is 1512 spheres, myself, my old business partner. Then I bought him out in 2013, I really started ramping up production. For a long time in our existence, we were producing less than a thousand gallons a month, in some cases less than 500 gallons a month. We don't really have a ton of stock at that point, so we're using small cooperage, trying to keep the lights on. And then as we start to really hone in the recipes and the flavors and the blending techniques, I've begun to start going to bigger and bigger cooperage. So I have 53 gallon barrels, I have got a lot of them up. The goal is to let those things go for plus years. So, we use three different size barrels, we are using 15 gallon barrels, 30 gallon barrels, and then the standard 53s. So a 15 gallon barrel, as it gets close to about two years old, really becomes too oakey for me. I look at whiskey in a little bit of a different way, I'm not trying to give you an an oak bum, I want my whiskey to be balanced. So to do that, you need to really take a more finessed approach in your barrel management. So, a 15 gallon barrel will go about 15 to 20 months. Once it's done, I'll do what's called a double barrel process. So typically what I'll do is, I'll proof it down from the original entry proof. So let's say, we're talking about Rye whiskey, Rye whiskey can go to barrel at about 116 proof. After about 15 months, 16 months, it's pretty much done, it could probably go to bottle tomorrow, but I'll do a blend of the barrels, and then I'll proof it down to 109, which really does a good job of stabilizing up the whiskey. I always tell people, it's like taking a nice piece of sandpaper and sanding off all the rough edges. It's going to do a really good job of allowing us to get the whiskey older, but not have it taste more oaky. So this is a process that we're going to use in our 30s, which we only do use in our 30s. Our 30 gallon barrels, go two to four years. Once it's oaked up enough and has the roundness and flavors, I'll proof it down as well, and I'll plan on doing that with my 53s. So our whiskeys are not going to get more oaky, they're just going to taste older, so that's been the balancing act. What I try to tell people today, is that our whiskeys tastes good, they just don't taste super old. You want super old tasting whiskeys, there's plenty of them to choose from. We do have stuff that will be coming out in the next three to four years. I want to bring back the bottled in bond, I think that's really important. I think just that four year denotion on the bottle is really important, so I'm striving towards that. And eventually, we'll do away with small cooperage, we'll be straight whiskeys only. Most of the stuff I'm flooding in these days, is over two years old. So, age to me is not as important as the actual whiskey. But ultimately speaking, since we're producing a premium spirit, I'd like to get to it straight and then I'd like to get it bottled in bond, and I'd like to be in 53s only. But since I didn't make gin or vodka, this is the best way to make this happen, and to learn a lot from the small barrels. Small barrels have taught me a lot, over the last seven years. When the whiskey's done, what does it taste like, what does it need, what sort of environment, either the height of the barrels, or where the barrels live in the barrel room? Those things all affect the flavors, and so I've learned a lot, and I think it's really being reflected nicely in our whiskeys.
DJ for DalkitaNice! We just did an episode, a couple back, on the barrels, just briefly covering them. What have you learned from your barrel warehouse so far? What sides of the warehouse, packing mechanisms? What are you learning as you go?
Adam SpiegelWell, number one, we're an earthquake country. I only go so high because, unfortunately, you may or may not be aware of the earthquake that hit Napa a couple of years ago. The devastation there in the wineries, you can't get that one back. So tall as we go right now, it's about 18, 20 feet tall. They're all on approved barrel racks, that stack one on the other. The racks themselves don't physically hit metals, so they shouldn't slip off one to the other. From a flavor's perspective, typically what I'll do is, I'll go ahead and try and keep the lots together. So if I produce a product and it goes to barrel, I'll stack that up 18 feet tall and that's all going to be ideally the same juice. So some stuff on top might be a little bit more oaky than others, and stuff from the bottom might be a little bit less. But the goal at that point is to have that sort of stratification of flavor. So you're going to have some stuff that's gone a little farther and it tastes a little bit more well done, it's like making a good steak, the middle of it's going to be nice and red, a nice medium rare steak. So, that's what I'm going for, I really want my whiskey to affect that. And the other part of this whole thing is, we leave the doors open during the days, a lot of the day, to let the barometric pressure changes and humidity changes of the day take full effect in our flavors. And again, some of counties see some amazing temperature swings, on any given day what we're looking at a 50 degrees swing top to bottom; so middle of the night, 45 degrees, during the heart of summer, 95, 100 degrees, at the end of the day, drops back down to 40 or 50, those sorts of movements in whiskey is unheard of. In Kentucky, it's hot, real hot, and stays hot, and it's cold, it stays cold. So, I think, we're bringing something a little different, I think it's something that really lets us talk about the terroir of our area and talk a little bit about the place where the whiskey comes from. And, I think. That's ultimately what I think you want to do. There's 1600 distilleries out there, each one of them are going to have to have their own signature.
DJ for DalkitaWhat are you seeing effects of the humidity on your angel share? Are you seeing more evaporation and less preferential evaporation of your ethanol? What does your angel share look like?
Adam SpiegelOur angel share is pretty much on average. Luckily, we're not super humid, just due to the fact that we get a lot of the coastal influence on there, it swings a lot. The most it usually gets to is about 40%, 45%, usually lives in the 15, 20. So we're pretty low humidity. We do get some flavor extraction there that definitely helps. For a long time, it wasn't raining in California, so it was just dry. So some of the whiskeys I saw coming out back then, really tasted dry, really tasted the way it tastes. The angel share at that time was a lot higher. But in the last year, in the last 52 weeks, we've seen some amazing rain, we'd be able to fill up our reservoirs here in California. So I'm seeing some less angel share than I've seen in the years past. So, percentage wise, we're somewhere between 8 to 10% year over year, especially in our small cooperage. That's an average over the course of both, 15 gallon and 30 gallon barrels at this time. It may go down or up, depending on a lot of factors. Some of our colleagues over in other states and even other cities in California, they see much higher, especially if you go further inland. And some of our good friends down in the center coast, it's dry down there, it's hot and it's dry, so they're going to see some interesting flavors coming out of that. And again, that is the denotion of where the whiskeys coming from. I think, that's always a fun thing to think about.
DJ for DalkitaYeah. Originally when we were talking, you were saying, you are a fairly low tech distillery. How does being low tech affects your Milling and Mashing?
Adam SpiegelWe don't use any special equipment. When I say we're old school, we don't have a donkey going around in circles crushing our grains.
DJ for DalkitaI think that would be a great tourist attraction.
Adam SpiegelListen, we bring the donkey in for the photo show, and then we pull them out. You're going to laugh at this, for a long time we used what would be otherwise characterized as a mill, you would see for a humber. I had a drill attached to a mill and I would, by hand, just mill up the grains, and take a bucket, and bring the bucket up to the top of the Mash Tun and drop it in. It was a little bit of a passion project I would say, the early years of us just trying to figure it out what we want to do. Nowadays, we use a standard hammer mill. We bust our grains down into dam near a flour. It's good that we do that because, nowadays, we're using more local greens. And so historically, we had to use flaked grains because we just couldn't get the particle small enough to really make a good mash. But since we're now using local raw grains, the majority of our mash mills typically use somewhere between 60 to 80% raw, it's allowed us start sourcing a lot more stuff locally. I've got a group of farmers up near Sacramento and the Dixon area, they're growing some great rye and wheat and we're trying to source some corn locally as well. But, going old school is easier now than it's ever been before. As much as everyone likes the new age technologies, to me, I think column stills are great. I think if you want to run things on machine, have at it, but we caught all of our stills by flavor. We use all of our senses to make that determination. You see the flow rate, you see the temperature, you feel it, you taste it, you smell it. If it doesn't pass the nose, test it, doesn't go in your mouth. It's just a really good way to make whiskey and to always keep that sort of artsiness in our whiskey. Certainly, we use the approved TTB stuff, the hydrometers and things that we need to actually have. And we have Anton Paar that allows us to do really nice determinations, I'm not doing a plug for Anton Paar by the way, but we do have this opportunity to be able to use technology to benefit us. But again, our goal is to keep all the distillers that I've trained here, I've got five guys working in production right now. At any given time, those guys can jump in there and cut a still, any given time they do a head cut, they do a tails cut, they know the way I want my whiskey to go to barrel. We tend to cut our tails a little lower than I think most people do, not super low, we're not talking driving it into the ground, but we like to leave a little bit of button there, that's what I'd say. It's a nice little rounded, little bit of a round behind in the way we like to look at it, making our whiskeys. So it's part of the artsiness of what we do, that we allow the facility around us to mimic the style of whiskey that we prefer, and we prefer something that's a little rougher. We prefer stuff that's got some edge to it, but we're using direct fired alembics. So we've got the original alembic head, which typically you'd see in Cognac or Calvados. So you're looking at highly viscous, full body whiskeys, with nice long finishes. Listen, If I'm buying a bottle of premium whiskey, it sure as hell better be made with a pot still, it needs to have that sort of flavor, it needs to have that ability to sit there and just evolve and grow with the drinker. You sit there and that whiskey just opens up, you smell it, you smell it 10 minutes later and you're like, that smells totally different. You add drops of water to that whiskey and the oils just dance, that's the kind of stuff you want. And I'm constantly telling people, listen, everyone's each to his own. But, I think, ultimately, the whiskeys that we're producing today, are some of the most unique you'll be able to find, especially cause we're using direct fire. So each batch is going to have a little bit more focus burn, it is a burn that occurs in the bottom of the still every single time. That's flavor, that's nuance, batch to batch. And so, it doesn't make for whiskeys to taste a 100% the same batch to batch, and that's fine. Our goal is to meet or exceed the quality of each batch and that's the only rule that we live by.
DJ for DalkitaI like that you're using direct fire. You can do a lot of interesting flavor changes there. Are you proofing down to get into the barrel? You said, you're going into the barrel at 119, so are you collecting tails in there to get to your 119, or you collecting your heart's cut, and then just adding water to it?
Adam SpiegelWe don't distill the proof. I think that would actually be pretty stupid. What I would recommend, what we do a lot of is that we will use distilled water to proof it down. So out of the still ,our combined hearts are looking somewhere in the 140 proof range, 145 at most. So to get it from that proof to the barrel entry proof, we barrel a little lower in our proofs than others do. I worked with a master blender named Nancy Fraley, who does an absolutely amazing job, they call her the nose, it's a pretty fitting title. We go to barrel at a pretty low proof, because that's what we've determined is the best flavor that our whiskey can sit at. So to get it from 140 proof to 116, you just add distilled water to it. It has no minerality, no flavor to it. So it's literally just that we're going to let the barrel do the work that it needs to do. If you add mineralized water to something like that, it's going to taste completely different. So in the early years, we tried it both ways, determined that this was the best way to do it. So, I got a little water distiller in the corner that distills up water. I've actually distilled water myself when that distiller went down, it's just what you do.
DJ for DalkitaYou said you're collecting details to get down to that 140 range, but what are you doing with the rest of your tails after that?
Adam SpiegelYeah, we recycle back our heads and tails. We've got kegs of heads and tails of previous batches that also go back in, each time. So typically, we'll hold on to about 15 gallons worth, if we're transitioning products out, because we've got two different Rye whiskeys and three bourbons. Each one of them has their own keg of heads and tails, we'll roll those forward. But batch to batch, yeah, we're certainly recycling heads and tails, it goes right back in with the low wines. We're not the first people to do that, I would certainly say that a lot of people do it. There's no reason not to, unless you're making something that's supposed to go clear into a bottle, and then you want to be a little more meticulous about it, you really want to have a cleaner. But I'm not going for clean, the barrels are going to do a really good job filtering out all those impurities, the barrels are great coffee filter for that. So you might as well go ahead and leave a little bit of button there, a little bit of dirt in there, and it's going to do its job. So, heads and tails go right back in. Waste not, Want not!
DJ for DalkitaAre you doing any of souring process on your fermentations, you seem to like a good funky whiskey?
Adam SpiegelWe do open top fermentation, we do grain in fermentations, so we don't sparge post-match creation. Our goal, when we leave the grains in there, is to soak up the flavor of the grain. So I always tell people, the analogy is a tea bag in the glass, you're just soaking up, you're steeping a tea for three or four days. Our fermentations are lasting five to seven days, you're soaking up a lot of flavor of rye or wheat or corn or whatever the heck is in that slurry, and then the tops are left open. So you get all the temperature swings when that fog comes into Sonoma valley and hits us up with a little bit of that influence, that's going into the whiskey. So I tell people all the time, we've got a couple of whiskeys that actually have a little bit of slununy to them, and it's the flavor of the coast. It's Sonoma coast speaking to you and telling you where you're drinking from, and I think that's part of the terroir. It's not just what grows around the grains affect the flavor, it's what happens during fermentation, what happened during barreling. You're going to get a lot more out of that, and that's what I tell people.
DJ for DalkitaAre you using jacketed fermenters by any chance, or you let those natural temperature swings help you out?
Adam SpiegelNatural temperature swings! They have a jacket on them, but it's only because I'm a cheap bastard. I found an old dairy tank on the Internet, literally I was up at 12:30 at night, couldn't fall asleep, and I logged on to craigslist and I pull up this immaculate 4,000 gallon jacketed fermentation tank for sale for like $2,000. I emailed the woman back immediately saying, "I want it". So between a $2,000 tank that I then spent a couple of grand to have my local welder, put on some new legs and retrofit up and cut the top off of it. Yeah, we've got a jacket on there, but we keep it agitated. So we have an agitator on there that keeps it moving. Especially during these really really hot months, the fermentations are boiling pretty hard there in the 80s and 90s, if they get above a 100, yeast starts to die off. So we're constantly moving those things around, we'll have them agitated. If it gets really bad or really hot, we'll just run it through, and we have a chiller outback, so our chiller can run through the jacket if need be. But the open top fermentation does a pretty good job of regulating the heat. That's also a really good reason to leave your tops open, is that it really lets a lot of that heat go away.
DJ for DalkitaThat makes sense. On the back end of your whiskey, after you've got it out of the barrels, are you doing any filtration or what not to get it ready for bottling?
Adam SpiegelYeah, we do something a little different here. I worked with a guy named Hubert Germain Robin from Germain-Robin Distillery, that just recently got bought out by Gallo. First of all, he is one of the most creative and influential people I've ever met in distilling. He gave me the passion to do what I do. I was already distilling by the time I met him. I'd already been distilling, at that point, for about almost five years, a couple of years in private, and then obviously through the distillery. We talk a lot about a lot of cool people, well he should go down in history as one of the best distillers that has ever lived. But what's cool about what he imparted onto me again is, not overlooking our spirits, really taking more of a cognac approach to making spirits. But then on top of that, you're going to go ahead and you're going to take - we do barrel aged water here now, so we take water, we take a whiskey that's fully ready to go to bo,ttle, rounded, beautiful, drinkable, and we peel off a little bit of of that whiskey and we proof it down to about 40 proofs, about 20%. And then we re-barrel that whiskey up at about 20%, and let it sit in a used cooperage, usually in either our own used barrels or we even had some Rittenhouse Rye barrels or Elijah Craig barrels from time to time. And we'll let that water come together first, at least six months, but usually ends up going a couple of years. And that's the water we're using to proof it down from barrel strength to bottle strength. And so that barrel aged water is bringing the whiskey and the water together in a way that it doesn't shock the spirit when you introduce it to it. So that's the number one thing I would tell people, if they ever grab a bottle of some craft whiskey and you turn that thing over and you see a bunch of little floaties in there, not talking about the black stuff that's actually charcoal. But if you're looking at proteins that are floating around a bottle, that's because they probably use the wrong water, so there's probably too much minerality in their water, or they proofed down too quickly. A lot of times, distilleries will, in a haste, add a crap load of water to something, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to swear or not, but they'll add a crap load of water to something and proof it down, and the water and the whiskey don't have time to come together. So I learned pretty early on, if I can bring the water and the whiskey together early on, then when I introduce that and proof it down with that water whiskey, it actually does a really good job of bringing that thing, really normalizing up the whiskey pretty well. So, we introduced that barrel aged water, we call that out that it's a fortified water of sorts. Each whiskey has its own, so it's not like we're blending different types of whiskey in there, but that's the stuff I use, and then we use a local spring source as well for our water. So I know a lot of people in Cognac typically use rainwater, for a long time that wasn't even an option cause it wasn't raining here. But we use a second pure source of water in California, we get it from Mount Shasta. So I get a local guy who drives up there and bring back five gallon jugs at a time. That's the spring water that we use. When I was a kid, we used to go up there, and you'd see hippies on the side of the road selling that water because it has all sorts of holistic value to it in there. So when I decided to use that water source, I wanted to go back to that memory, that thought of that sort of good drinking water. And I wanted something that really spoke about our area. So that water, it comes from Lake County, which is the next county over. And it really represents California to me. So that's the water we use to barrel age. We also drink it here, I'm drinking a glass of it right now. It's just good drinking water and it gives us a signature of where our whiskeys come from.
DJ for DalkitaYou're one of a couple of the stories I've run into lately, that are barrel aging their water. I'm thinking that's going to be the next big trend in the industry coming up. After everything we've talked about, the last thing to talk about is, your bottling philosophy. So, what are you doing? Are you putting it into the bottle at the proof to be diluted down or are you putting it in at what you think is the proper proof to drink it at? What are you thinking for how you bottle?
Adam SpiegelSure. We proof a little high, it's exactly what you've said before. We proof a little high and it gives the drinker the flexibility. I tell people, water's like hot sauce, once you put it in there, you can't take it out, it's in there. If I proof something down to 93 or 90 proof, or 85 proof, it would taste completely different, so I like to leave. I learned a good lesson from Dave Pickerell, obviously wherever at whistle pig and wherever the heck he is, where you ideally want to bring something to where it just has a little tingle in the back of your throat, but balances the water and the alcohol really well. And so you've heard me use the word balance a bunch, but this is another area, where if a whiskey of mine is ready to go to bottle, it tastes better at 93, it's going to go to bottle in 93. It tastes better at 95, it'll go to bottle at 95. We've normalized our proof a lot. So a lot of our stuff's going in at pretty consistent proofs these days. I reserve the right as a craft distiller to decide to go lower or higher proofs, and that's part of each batch being a little different. So we put seasons on the back of our bottle as when something got bottled. We used to have bottle dates, and now we do bottling seasons. So if you try something from our fall release versus our spring, you may see two different proofs, we may not. But it's just indicative of what that whisky tastes like. We don't chill filter, we don't use anything like that. We use essentially what I call a bug catch. It's a very coarse filter that allows us to just not pull off any flavor, leaves a lot of it in there. If you see a little black thing floating in a bottle, it's actually a good thing, it shows you that it's artisan, but I'm always avoiding those proteins as I mentioned before. I think, there's other distilleries who just run into the cash flow issue, we take about a month to month and a half to proof our whiskey down. So, we're going at it from the long game because we don't want those proteins to split off. We want the water and the whiskey to come back together pretty well, and there's no real rush here. If you've done your job right, you can plan out when your releases come out, so you give yourself enough time to proof down, because I don't go as fast as others. I'm going down, essentially a couple of proof a day or every other day, these got to take your time.
DJ for DalkitaHow are you doing that proofing? You mentioned the hydrometers, you mentioned Anton Paar. Are you doing everything by volume and temperature? Are you doing it by weight? How are you doing that proofing?
Adam SpiegelOur proofing process is that, we obviously double check everything with the approved TTB hydrometers, as per the rules. I'll do a blend, so our blend will be 4 or 500 gallons deep at this point, they're actually growing, which is awesome and scary at the same time. And then what we'll do is, we'll mix the blend up with a paddle, to get it agitated and moving, and then we'll do our proofs, and we'll do a proof of it every single day to monitor where she's at. And then we have a checklist that shows us where she's going, and we start adding the appropriate amount of water accordingly. So we're doing a lot of that by weight, to your point, we're doing some of that by calculations that you can run, that allows you to know, generally speaking, how much water needs to get out at any given time. We're being really diligent to make sure that we don't get in trouble by putting something in bottle that's either below or above what it's supposed to be. So before you go to bottlings, there's all these rules and requirements about pulling off the first couple of runs. You proof those bottles up, you make sure that you know exactly what's going on. You temperature correct for the day. So if it's a very hot day or a very cold day, you might have to underfill or overfill your bottles. I mean, how many times have you gone to a liquor store and seen bottles where the whiskey looks like it's bursting out of the seams? They probably bottled it in a pretty cold day, so that whiskey was a different weight then, then it should have been. So these are some of those little nuances that, luckily these days I have a whole team, that can take care of, but these are the things you got to think about, just to stay compliant.
DJ for DalkitaWell, thanks for walking through your process with this. I really appreciate it.
Adam SpiegelNo, I'm happy to do it. I think, it's cool to have us stand as, not the opposing force, but the polar antithesis of what other people are doing. I know of many distilleries, that they turn there still on, they program it, they go have a coffee break, they eat lunch, they come back a couple hours later and everything's done. That's another approach to making spirit, and there's nothing wrong with leveraging technology, but there's some parts of this game that needs to still stay old school. Even distilleries in Scotland, to a certain extent, do things a certain way because it's the right way to do it, not because it's the most cost effective. The only thing I'm trying to be, is just a really strong proponent of taking these old technologies, looking at the history and figuring out how to best manage a program that makes sense to the kind of whiskey that you would want to drink yourself. I want to drink whiskey that was really hard to make. I don't drink something that was real easy, that some guy does on the stage, that does it as part time. I want my whiskey blended by a guy who knows what the hell he's doing, or a girl or a woman, who knows how to blend good whiskey, who knows how to balance flavor. I just think there's a lot to this game that, unfortunately I think it's getting lost, because there's so much noise, and all these people out there are just trying to put product in market. Focus on one thing and be really good at it. If you're going to make gin, make gin. You're going to make whiskey, make whiskey. Anytime you start people with whiskey with Habanero vodka, and they also make whiskey on the side, not going through my stills.
DJ for DalkitaIf you were going to start your distillery again, what would you do differently?
Adam SpiegelI would have put up more 53 gallon barrels, day one. I would have focused on not making so many different types of whiskey, because since we were focusing on making whiskey and we didn't have direct sales in the state of California for a long time, I made two ryes and three bourbons and they're all phenomenal whiskeys. And I even have some single malts and they're not released yet, and I have a wheat whiskey which we release once a year. So we have some stuff. But, I would focus on making two or three skews and have not really be it, I think the market doesn't have room for everybody. So trying to demand a lot of shelf space from a local liquor stores, is just not fair. My recommendation would be to start off with maybe two or three skews and not really be about it, and get really good at those two or three things. And then once you're more established, you can certainly knock yourself out with all sorts of other stuff. But, I would definitely recommend making a couple of things and getting really good at those.
DJ for DalkitaIf somebody came to you and said, "Hey, I don't have a lot of money, but I'm going to start this distillery", what would you tell them is the most important thing to have to focus on, and spend their money wisely on?
Adam SpiegelThat's a weighty question. And the reason that it's a weighty question is only because, at the end of the day, we're going to have to figure out where this person is and where they're establishing their business. I think, the concern that I would have for them, well safety's the number one concern. So, following a pretty good safety program. There's plenty of people through ADI or ACSA who have safety manuals. It's definitely worth looking at other people's proprietary safety manuals, just to get a sense of, what are the things I should worry about, where are my exits? Flammable vapor sensor, making sure it's fully calibrated. We have luckily thus far had very few deadly incidents in our industry. And the ones that have happened are absolutely awful. I don't think most people know this, but pilots who fly airplanes incessantly read about crashes. They read about them to a place, where it's probably not even healthy, and the reason they do that is to avoid a similar circumstance. And I don't see our industry doing that, I don't see people going through disasters that have occurred and said, "If I do this, this is going to happen". And so, my recommendation to anybody is, look at a safety program, make sure that's a priority because if you're working there yourself, something happens to you, who are you going to call? If one of your employees gets hurt, you can always replace equipment, but you can't replace people. That would be the number one thing I would recommend, is to look at the full 360 on any project. If you're going to open a distillery up, don't just look at how cool it is to be a distiller and tell people on your business card that you're a distiller. Be very cognizant of the safety concerns that I want you to be worried about.
DJ for DalkitaThat's a great point. So where do you see the industry going in the next 5 to 10 years?
Adam SpiegelWell, part of it is already happening. There's been so much consolidation over the last two years. Some my friends, who I feel like I came up with, we all launched our distilleries in the 2010, 2011, 2009, 2008, in that sort of four year timeline, a lot of my friends got bought out in the last couple of years. So there's going to be some consolidation that occurs. I think, there's going to be a really strong localism that occurs as well. The craft market makes up 2% of the pull through on a national scale, for all distilled spirits. If that goes to 3%, 4% or 6%, you're going to have to provide your local market with a lot of juice, that is` the good stuff, like whiskey and brandy, or the cheaper stuff, like vodka and gin. So, I think, you're going to see a really strong push. Especially, I'm in the bay area, we're a little bit more pretentious than most unfortunately. But, I think, there's going to be a strong push to go local. I think, the bar managers are realizing, especially in San Francisco. The average cocktail in San Francisco is starting to trend up to $14 a cocktail. Once you get the $14 a cocktail, you could pour whatever vodka you want in that cocktail, it's still vodka. And so if you decide to use a local guy, like I have some good friends out there in Sonoma City, at Hansons of Sonoma, why not use theirs as opposed to this, it's fair enough. So, I think, you're going to start seeing a really strong push locally. And so the craft producers of every area have got to be prepared to price stuff effectively, sell product effectively, and get your ethos and messaging out there. And, I think, that's going to be the next wave that you're going to see. You're going to see a lot of people buying stuff locally, and maybe us as an industry, not having all the supply we need to actually fit that. So, I think, that's what you're going to see. You are going to see more distilleries pop up, and you'll see more localized distilleries pop up. People who sell out of the back of their distillery are going to be very prevalent, just like the wine industry. And you're going to have to see some productions that allow the local market to absorb as much as you make.
DJ for DalkitaI appreciate your time and thanks again for coming on the show.
Adam SpiegelAbsolutely. Look forward to doing it again. Next time you're in Northern California, come by and say hi.
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Colleen MooreA Special thanks to Adam Spiegel for talking with us on our show today. Up next, our field reporter and his soliloquy on proofing engaging spirits. We'll get into some of the errors in measurement, and ways to minimize them.
DJ for DalkitaThe reason we're talking about proofing and bottling today, it's carryover from our scale show. I wanted an opportunity to talk about, why we're doing what we're doing, and some of the downfalls of the current method, or maybe the historical methods is better way to call it. I know all of you are already familiar with how to do your proofing. You've obviously been doing it and getting your spirits out the door, but it's possible that you aren't necessarily aware of all the different sources of errors. I know several people have said that proof is actually one of the things that's most commonly wrong with craft spirits. People are either over or under shooting. If you're undershooting, you can get in some legal issues. If you're overshooting, you're killing yourself financially. So, hopefully by walking through some of these sources of errors and showing you ways, we can do it a little bit different or better, I can give you some ideas. Let me know what you are thinking. Some of these techniques are pretty old school, so it's probably not going to be a whole lot of surprises out there. When we're talking about proofing and bottling, the easiest place to start is the TTB gauging manuals. They specify very detailed procedure for, how to determine what the proof is of a spirit, and then how to adjust that to the proof that you want it to be. The way they do it is basically, first off, you have to get a correct set of equipment. This starts off with getting the appropriate thermometers. Generally speaking, you have to be accurate to 1 degree Fahrenheit. The correct set of hydrometers, and what we're talking about here are, generally, hydrometers accurate to a 0.2 proof. And then they're broken down, I believe it's a 20 proof or 40 proof, I think it's 20 proof, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong there. I haven't used one in a little bit. And then we're left on our own to determine the volume of our container. Once we have the information of basically what the proof is of our spirit, corrected to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, we have the volume of our spirit. We can then go into the proofing tables and look up that, "Okay, at this volume and at this proof, I need to add this many more volumes of water, to reduce the proof to where I'm looking to be". And then you have to go get those volumes of water, you need to correct them for temperature, and then add those volumes back to your original spirit. Once they combine up, we're looking to let that attenuate and mix fully. And also since adding water to an ethanol spirit is an exothermic reaction, we need to let that temperature at least balance out throughout the tank, and for most of us, we also want that temperature to come back down to room temperature, where we're keeping all of our equipment. So we don't have to do some of the more detailed procedures on, how do you make sure that your hydrometers are actually at the right temperature, and not at a different temperature than the liquid it's sitting in. So you let all that sit, and typically we're talking at least 24 hours, and then you check again, because there's all these sources of errors along the way. And depending on how you're doing your math, you may not be accounting for the shrinkage in the spirit of a gallon of water plus a gallon of 50% whiskey at a 100 proof of whiskey does not equal two gallons, so it's slightly less than that. Luckily, there's some great people out there who have built some pretty good calculators, that'll help you out with some of the bigger adjustments, the shrinkage, and whatnot. Or, what a lot of people are doing is, you just intentionally overshoot. So you mix what the table says is perfect. Say, you're shooting for 80 proof, and really you'll get 81 or 85 or whatever, and then you just repeat the cycle. Typically, it takes two, three, five days to do this proofing. Like I said, typically if you follow it straight up, you're going to be wrong every single time. And the question is why are you wrong? The easiest source of error out there, is actually in the temperature measurements. So the TTB only requires your thermometers to be accurate to within 1 degree Fahrenheit, between 0 and 100 degrees. What does one degree Fahrenheit mean? If we started off talking about proof, if you go into the gauging manuals, this is all pulled directly out of their own information. So, at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and let's say you're reading your hydrometer at 80 proof, so this is basically what in theory was a perfect spare, but obviously at that temperature you've over diluted. But really what you've got going at that point, is a 75 and a half proof. Now, if that thermometer was off by one degree, and instead of 70 degrees that liquid was really 69 degrees, now your proof is actually 76 proof. So you're off by half a proof, which is already outside of the bounds of what the TTB allows in terms of variance on final bottling proof, on top of over diluting anyhow and having to do it over again. But the question is, how accurate do you need to find your thermometer, and make sure that you're getting a good number. Temperature screws up a whole bunch of stuff because not only can you see you're off by a half a proof just from that measurement, being accurate within their bounds, it will also screw up your volume measurement. Now, how much it screws up your volume measurement depends on how accurate your volume measurement is to begin with. I know a lot of people are doing their blending and diluting in 550 gallon IBC. IBCs are better than other vessels to a certain extent, in that they are taller than they are wide. Unfortunately, they're not tall enough. Most sight glasses just aren't that accurate. So, if you're looking at a 10th of an inch variance on your sight glass in a 550 gallon IBC, we're talking almost a 0.9 gallons, but you could be wrong by being off by a 10th of an inch and measuring how full that vessel is. It's not an incredible amount. Let's say, you've got 500 gallons in there and you're plus or minus one gallon, that's certainly within the bounds of TTB measurement. But now, if your temperatures are off and you're trying to say, "Well okay, it's this full or this full," all of a sudden now adding an additional source of error while compounding that, you can be much farther off than you would prefer, when you start adding those compound errors. So proofing vessels generally, if you're using a sight glass, the taller and skinnier they are, the better. Because that is going to accentuate any volume, it's going to go up instead of out, and you'll see a greater change. So everybody is familiar with the shape of a 550. And so that gives you an idea of anything squarer than that, is really a bad idea. And then the more tall and skinny you get, the better volume measurements will be. That being said, if we start talking about weight, it doesn't really matter. The last source of error is actually in our proof measurements. Hopefully we all know, you need to get a calibrated set of hydrometers. Typically, we also want lab certification on there and tracking, so that you can say, "Okay, they were measured on this date and at this place". And then those certifications need to be maintained annually to make sure your hydrometers are correct. I don't know about the rest of you, but my vision isn't always the best. And I found that I could be off typically by at least 10th, when I'm trying to read that hydrometer, and so I always brought in my brother in law to help double check, and between the two of us, we'd end up getting the right number on there. But I've found that visual acuity is probably one of the larger sources of errors on your hydrometer, and one of the reasons I'm not a huge fan. So, temperature affects both the volume and the proof. Getting the right equipment affects your proof measurement, and then getting the right tank also affects your volume measurements. We've got basically two sources of errors on volume, and two sources of errors on proof. Then, when we start talking about the next step in this process, which is adding water, those two errors than compound again. Now, we need to correct the water, so that it is corrected to the right volume and temperature as well. You can't add a gallon of a 100 degree water, and assume you're going to get the same dilution as a gallon of 60 degree water. Now, we have volume and temperature again that we need to correct for, and then add everything together. So you can start seeing fairly easily, why it's pretty hard to be accurate, because you have to have two or three temperature measurements that are right, and then typically two volume measurements. So, what is the solution? For me. The answer is technology. Mainly because right now I'm not the one spending the money, but when I am the one spending the money I generally try to go as high tech as possible. So the first step is load cells. Once we have load cells, that basically eliminates the temperature measurement down to just what we need for proof, assuming we're still using hydrometers. And that means that all you have to do is be accurate with your temperature reading relative to the proof. Now with weight, volume goes away, and the temperature correction the volume goes away, both for the base spirit and the water. So, you're going to need two different scales because typically, let's say you're weighing a 550 IBC, that's 8,000 odd pounds, and you're going to be adding maybe 800 pounds of water. So the accuracy on your scale that you need to measure 800 pounds, is different from the scale that you need to measure 8,000 pounds. And so you want two different scales, make sure they're both trade rated, particularly for proofing. And that'll allow you to have the accuracy you need there. So what you'll do is, you'll look at, I have this weight of water and this ABW, instead of proof or ABV, of spirit in there, then you can do the calculations to the ABW you want. The big thing to keep in mind here is that then you need to correct ABW one more time, back to ABV or proof; either for paying your taxes or for selling to the general public, since they get confused by ABW, and you don't want to start trying to make them think you're selling malt liquor or something. It's pretty easy to do. Your sources of error, again go back to the hydrometer and all the calibrations we need there. Then they also go to the correction between ABV and ABW, which really isn't that hard, and just remembering to do it. And Luckily, doing this takes out one of the bigger pains in attenuation for me, which is the temperature change. So, when you do that combination, the temperature of your spirit increases, slightly. It's not a huge number, we're not talking about 20 degrees or anything. But sitting there waiting for everything to call him back down, and get back to get that temperature equalized throughout the tank, get the spirit equalized out, instead of waiting that day, you just know, Okay, the volume or the weight of your spirit couldn't change. And so now you know, the weight of the water did increase. So there's really not a lot of error there, as long as you know the original weight of the spirit, original weight of the water, and the new weight of the water. I like that, it makes me feel good that I can go home at night, and generally in the morning it is what I think it is. There is still the error on the hydrometer, and obviously, if you've got the money, you're well aware of Anton Paar and the wonderful equipment they have. I'm not aware of any competitors, if there are some, please let me know. I don't necessarily mean this is a plug for Anton Par, it's just what I know. But they do some great work that will allow you to just dip it in, and all of a sudden know exactly the proof, and it already is doing the temperature correction. So if you combine that with the load cells, that gets rid of your other major source of error. Some other unusual cases with proofing and sources of error. One of the big ones that I see is leaving your tanks open after proofing. We all know that you're getting angel share in your barrels is over time, particularly with high proof spirits, you can get an angel share just sitting in your proofing tank. And so you're going to have some level of non even evaporation between your spirit and your water content, and that will change your proof over time. So after you do your proofing, if you're leaving an open tank to sit for three days, the proof on day three, probably won't be the proof on day one. Now, this is worse in some areas than others, particularly in more humid climates, because that water will stay behind and the ethanol will preferentially evaporate. And which you'll get there is, you'll see your proof start declining, as that tank is opened. So proofing vessels generally should be sealed, after you do it. Honestly, if you're going to do it in the best possible way, you want to make sure that vessel is completely full, eliminate the head space in there. That way there really is no evaporation potential and once you set it, you know exactly what it is. Some other things to think about, we've been talking about the barrel aging or the barrel aged water. You are going to change the density of your water in that program. So you need to make sure that you check that density of the water before using the weight method, just to make sure you're getting the right amount of actual H2O and not all the other little flavor components in there. It shouldn't be a major change. Obviously, you're going to filter out some of the barrel funk, or the charcoal and whatnot, but still make sure you're checking that. Speaking of solids, and the last thing to talk about here is, intentionally obscured products. So there's two levels by the TTB, there's the 400 grams per liter, and the 600 grams per liter. Generally, I use the same procedure on both, because why not? Get a little lab still, and what you're going to be doing is, take your exact 1000 mill sample, put it in your still, distill it till you get a still head temperature of 212, or whatever the boiling point of water is in your area. You don't need to bother to dilute or distilling until you're completely dry, but you need to make sure the alcohol's out. Once you have the alcohol out, then you re-up your distillate back to a thousand mills, and then you're going to check the proof on that. That'll get rid of your obscuration, and you can get a good accurate reading. When you're going back to do your dilution, particularly by weight, keep in mind that what you've now measured is the weight of the spirit portion, and you have your obscuration plus your water as the weight of the additional portion. So when you're doing ABW, it's weight of spirit by weight of everything else, not just the weight of the water. It makes your math a little bit more complicated, but generally speaking, this isn't though the hardest thing to do in the world. Just takes a little bit of time to to run it. Those are the big points of proofing and the errors there in.
Colleen MooreAre you interested in filing a report with us? Well, we're actively seeking professionals to give us the low down on the technical aspects of distillery operations, for our listeners. Contact us via our website with your pitch. Do you have feedback on this show? Well, send us an email to DistillingCraft@dalkita.com Of course, if you want to find out more about this specific episode, go to our show notes on our webpage, that's dalkita.com/shownotes. Remember, you can subscribe to this podcast at Apple podcasts, or however you get your podcasts. Our theme music was composed by Jason's Shaw and is used under a creative Commons attribution 3.0 license. And finally, a special thanks to the Dalkita team behind this production, and the man that puts it all together, our sound editor, Daniel Phillips of Zero Crossing Productions. Until next time, stay safe out there. I'm Colleen Moore.
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