The American Distilling Institute is please to announce a new benefit for members: distillers, vendors, gov't agencies, and the readership. ADIforums.com is a bulletin board system designed to facilitate communication between interested parties in the artisan distilling community. You will find several forums covering such topics as Producing Product, Selling Your Product, Government, Marketplace and Career. I believe that through better communication we can help each other to improve all aspects of our craft which will result in better products, stronger businesses and greater public awareness leading ultimately to greater success for our industry as a whole. Success is dependent on your involvement so, if you have a nagging question and were unsure who to ask, post it in the appropriate forum- if you know the answer to someone else's question help them out with a reply.
Guests have the ability to view forums but you must register to be able to post or reply to a message. To register go to ADIforums.com the registration menu item is in the pink band at the top of the page.

-- Guy Rehorst, ADIforums Administrator
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Readership
I will be in Normandy Jan 20-23. If you know of any Grappa or Armagnac distilleries I should visit. Please e-mail me:
bill@distilling.com
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Dear Whisky Colleagues,
I am contacting you thanks to Bill Owens at "American Distiller", who very kindly gave me a list of North American craft distilleries.
I run a specialist whisky importer/distributor based in Tokyo. We represent 4 Scottish distilleries, a major independent bottler, Whisky Magazine and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in the Japanese market. Our customers are very much the enthusiasts and opinion-leaders, who are always looking for something new and different. Thanks to Bill and other writers, we've been reading more and more about some of the excellent whiskies coming out of North America recently and thought it might be mutually interesting to introduce some of them to the Japanese market.
If you have products that are not currently represented in the market over here and would be interested in discussing more, I'd be very grateful if you could send through further information to me, either by mail or to the address below.
I look forward to hearing from you.

With best regards,
David Croll

www.whisk-e.co.jp

Shibaura 2-14-13-2F,
Minato-ku,
Tokyo 108-0023
Tel: (+81)-03-5418-4611
Fax: (+81)-03-5418-4612

enquiries@whisk-e.co.jp
Whisky Live! in Tokyo<.br> 10th Feb, 2008
www.whiskylivejapan.com
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Cape Ann's first micro-distillery rings in 2008
Paul Sullivan Cheers! Gloucester once again has its very own distillery, cranking out premium vodka and soon, rum, thanks to an ambitious and enthusiastic all-in-the-family operation.
"We realize that local people work hard, are critical and deserve a world-class spirit," said Bob Ryan, president and co-founder of Ryan & Wood Distilleries, billed as "the North Shore's first small-batch micro-distillery of premium and handcrafted spirits."
The earliest known dated map of Gloucester, from the 1830s, shows a distillery on the waterfront, but Ryan & Wood is thought to be the first to begin operating on Cape Ann in decades at least legally.
"There are 72 micro-distilleries in the country, and most of them are attached to farms or restaurants," said Ryan, 53, a native of Gloucester. "But I can't speak for the backwoods.
"There are a lot of people who still do that, but it's illegal and dangerous," added Ryan, who worked for more than 30 years for his family's fish-processing business, Atlantic Seafoods and Midship Seafoods Inc., and also had a career in banking
Now he has embarked on a new adventure with his partner and nephew, David Wood, 37, a real estate attorney who has an office in his hometown of Manchester-by-the-Sea.
The dream began simply enough, when Ryan read an article on micro-distilleries in the Wall Street Journal.
"I thought it was a joke at first but before I knew it, Bob was up and running," Wood said.
Ryan added, "I was looking for a business you don't find on every street corner, and Dave had worked for me before and I knew I could depend on him.
"Soon my wife, Kathy, was on board and we went online and began looking for equipment and providers," Ryan added.
Ryan and Wood then spent the next two years in extensive training, attending industry workshops and traveling to distilling operations from Maine to Arizona, as well as working with advisers in Canada and Europe.
They also completed an 18-month federal and state licensing process.
Then the two men went searching for a location for their facility and found one in Blackburn Industrial Park at 15 Great Republic Drive. They started installing their equipment and soon were testing products.
"I was blown away by the equipment. The place looks like a Willy Wonka plant," Wood said.
The centerpiece is a 600-liter still custom-made in Germany, which will allow Ryan & Wood to produce a variety of small-batch spirits and blends.
Ryan added, "We have 3,600 square feet of production floor, 600 feet for office space and 600 feet for a showroom and gift shop."
Ryan & Wood Inc. has produced a first run of 16 gallons of 180-proof vodka.
That's right, 180 proof. Enough to knock your socks off. But before the men start to fill shelves with their potent potable, it will be down to 80 proof.
"At 180 proof you really can't drink it," Wood said. "You're testing it by putting your finger into it or by putting a drop on your finger."
Ryan said most of the world's vodka makers distill their product from a grain.
"We'll be using three different grains and rely on those flavors to come through," he said.
The men are calling their labor of love Beauport Vodka and hope to have it in the stores by the end of January or the first of February.
Wood said they are also "making" their own water to temper the alcohol from "regular" municipal water.
"Rather than import water from an unknown source, we're going to go the extra effort and clean the water ourselves so we can trust what goes into the product," Ryan said.
The men decided to call their inaugural product Beauport after the name first given to Gloucester by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain way back in 1606.
On the drawing board for the summer of 2008 is Folly Cove Rum, named after the sheltered inlet between Gloucester and Rockport that was used as a convenient off-loading spot for the rum runners sailing down from Canada during Prohibition. Other products will follow.
Oh, and about that all-in-the-family reference: Ryan said both his wife and Wood's wife, Maryann, are on board with the business. Ryan said he also will get help from his son Douglas, a senior at Fordham University, and a daughter, Carolyn Mancini, who's a graduate student at Boston College.
There's more: "My wife is one of 14 so I have 30 nephews and nieces" who can also help out, Ryan said.
So do the partners drink vodka?
Ryan said, "I'm a bourbon man." Wood is a vodka drinker.
"He has three children (between 4 years and 7 weeks) so, yeah, he drinks vodka," Ryan said.
======================
The Sipping News: The release of Anchor's Genever gin
Source: Camper English, Special to The SF Chronicle
Friday, December 14, 2007

Fritz Maytag and the team at Anchor Distilling are so far ahead of the curve they must get bored waiting for us to catch up. They've just released Genevieve, a genever-style gin they began developing in 1996, which has been sitting in a tank ever since. Genever is an old type of gin (before the modern London dry style came into being) that was used in some of the earliest published cocktail recipes currently in vogue.
New gins (including Anchor's Junipero) are column-distilled into a neutral spirit then infused with botanicals including juniper berries and redistilled. Genevieve, on the other hand, is first distilled from malted grains in a pot still, similar to whiskey, before being flavored and redistilled in another custom-built pot still. The result is a gin with the added flavor and texture of an unaged whiskey.
The first release was only 700 bottles sold mostly to cocktailian bars and a few liquor stores in order to avoid confusion with Anchor's other gin. They're currently producing more of the product for when the rest of us figure it out.
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Happy new year from the "Fruit Lab!"

Thank you so much for being part of the Modern Spirits Society. You've made our year by coming out to events around the country. By sending emails with your favorite Modern Spirits recipes. And sharing Modern Spirits with your friends. We're grateful for your friendship.
In 2007, nearly each week brought exciting new developments...we could have made a good reality TV show. Among the highlights were convincing the government to give us an artisan designation so our labels read Artisan Vodka right on the front, setting us apart from the slew of fakers out there.
We also were the first spirits company invited to host an all-vodka pairing dinner at the James Beard House. It was a sold out event. Chef Larry Nicola of Nic's Beverly Hills (have you been to his VodBox?) presented a menu that highlighted how well spirits and food work together. There were cocktails, straight pours and Madame Chocolat even made chocolates with our black truffle vodka.
And you know about our first seasonal flavor, Pumpkin Pie. It caused quite a stir around the country. And for you PETP members (people for the ethical treatment of pies), we promise no pies were hurt in the process. Does this mean there might be a cranberry vodka in the works for next year's holidays? We'll have to wait and see. In the mean time, look for the return of our Rose Petal vodka as a seasonal flavor this January through Spring.
All of this has made 2007 a wonderful year. We look forward to a great new year and wish you the very best of everything in 2008!

Cheers,
Melkon and Litty
modernspiritsvodka.com
=================

Humanity's love of booze could be in our DNA

By Natalie Angier

New York Times News Service

Every year, the average American adult drinks the equivalent of 38 six-packs of beer, a dozen bottles of wine and two quarts of distilled spirits such as gin, rum, single-malt Scotch, or vodka that aspires to single-malt status through the addition of flavors normally associated with yogurt or bubble bath.
We are by no means the most bibulous people: According to the World Health Organization, 39 nations outdrink us, a list topped by Luxembourg, where residents manage to ingest roughly 284 bottles of beer and 88 bottles of wine annually, no doubt to salve the indignation of explaining that their country isn't part of Belgium.
But we Americans can hold our own, especially just coming off the peak ethanol season. Liquor sales through December, according to hospitality trade groups, usually are 50 percent higher than in other months, and that's hardly a surprise. The holidays are a time of multicreedal spirituality and festivities, and alcohol has been a fixture of celebration and religious ritual since humans first learned to play and pray.
"As far back as we can look, humans have had a love affair with fermented beverages," said Patrick McGovern, an archeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania. "And it's not just humans. From fruit flies to elephants, if you give them a source of alcohol and sugar, they love it."
Humans may have an added reason to be drawn to alcohol. Throughout antiquity, available water was likely to be polluted with cholera and other dangerous microbes, and the tavern may well have been the safest watering hole in town. Not only is alcohol a mild antiseptic, but the process of brewing alcoholic beverages often requires that the liquid be boiled or subjected to similarly sterilizing treatments. "It's possible that people who drank fermented beverages tended to live longer and reproduce more" than did their teetotaling peers, McGovern said, "which may partly explain why people have a proclivity to drink alcohol."

Alcohol's roots go deep

McGovern and other archeologists have unearthed extensive evidence of the antiquity and ubiquity of alcoholic beverages. One of the oldest known recipes, inscribed on a Sumerian clay tablet that dates to nearly 4,000 years, is for beer. Chemical traces inside 9,000-year-old pottery from northern China indicate that the citizens of Jiahu made a wine from rice, grapes, hawthorn and honey.
Researchers caution, however, that if we humans are congenitally inclined to drink, we are designed to do so only in moderation. We are not, in other words, Syrian hamsters, the popular pet rodents that also are a favorite of alcohol researchers. Syrian hamsters are the Andy Capp of the animal kingdom. "They'll drink alcohol whenever offered the option," said Howard B. Moss, associate director for clinical and translational research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Md.
Researchers have traced this avidity to the hamster's natural habits. The animals gather fruit all summer and save it for later by burying it underground, where the fruit ferments. "That's how the hamsters find their cache of last summer's goodies when it's the middle of winter," Moss said.

Muscle cells ferment

Behind the hamster behavior is the ancient chemical legerdemain of fermentation, which by its most general definition means extracting energy from sugar without using oxygen. There are many ways to do this: Our muscle cells ferment when operating anaerobically, say, while lifting weights. The fermentation that yields ethanol, the type of alcohol we drink, is the work of yeast cells, which will latch onto any suitable sugar source and start feasting. As they break down the sugary chains, the yeast enzymes generate two key byproducts: carbon dioxide, which can be used to puff up bread dough, and ethanol. Alcohol, then, is nothing more than fungal scat.
Ah, but how that scat can sing. An alcohol molecule consists of a knob of hydrogen and oxygen linked to a carbon-based stalk, and that telltale knob, that hydroxyl group, allows the molecule to mix easily with water. "The hydroxyl group makes alcohol go to any cell in the body that has water," said Samir Zakhari, director of the division of metabolism and health effects at the alcohol institute, "which means alcohol goes to every tissue in the body."
====================

Rebel rum

Small-batch producers reclaim this spirit's American roots

By Michael Nagrant | Special to the Tribune
December 12, 2007
Rum (a.k.a. Nelson's blood, kill-devil, demon water) is no longer the exclusive domain of ruthless pirates, drunken sailors and Caribbean magnates. A new breed of American small batch distiller is staking a claim to the sugar cane-based potable.
The burgeoning growth made small batch rum the focus of the American Distilling Institute's national conference this year.
"There's a whole new generation, from the Eastern Seaboard to Hawaii, who are making great rum," said institute president Bill Owens.
The 12 active small batch rum distilleries operating in the U.S. might seem like pioneers, but rum is part of America's heritage. Though Barbados originated rum in the 1640s, the first American rum distillery was established on Staten Island in 1664.
"If you walked in to any tavern prior to the Revolution and said 'Give me a shot,' you got rum," said Wayne Curtis, author of the history, "And a Bottle of Rum." The colonial boom in rum production coincided with the wealth of molasses, a byproduct of sugar cane refining in the West Indies. Because the New England seaports were much closer to the West Indies than Europe, the Colonies got the bulk of the molasses.
Old New Orleans Rum (started in 1995, it's the oldest of the small batch premium rum producers) was built in a similar Colonial spirit of capitalizing on resources. Inspired by a Swiss friend who entertained guests with her homemade spirits, founder James Michalopoulos, a New Orleans-based artist, decided to distill rum using Louisiana's abundant sugar cane crop.
At Prichards' Distillery in Tennessee, production is also tied to history.
"I've always been fascinated by American history," said owner Phil Prichard. "Colonial rum was dry and not as sweet. No one was making traditional American rum, so I decided to do it."
Not all of the distillers opened with their eye on history. Triple Eight distillery on Nantucket makes rum to support a goal of producing 12-year-old single malt Scotch. Because rum doesn't require long aging, president Jay Harman said Triple Eight earns money on the spirit while the Scotch ages.
For some, distilling rum is also about differentiating themselves in a crowded marketplace. Eric Watson, a former brewer and consulting distiller for Green Bay Distilling (expected rum release fall 2008) said, "Superpremium and premium rums [about $30 a bottle] are the fastest growing category behind vodka. Micro-distillation is where craft beer brewing was 10-15 years ago. Distilling rum is a way for me to make a great product and to make money doing it."
Nationally acclaimed regional craft beer brewers such as Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and Rogue Ales Brewery also produce rum. "We discovered the world didn't need another brewpub," said Rogue founder Jack Joyce.
Economic considerations aside, all of these small batch distillers emphasize the importance of craft. Prichards' and Rogue ferment their rum with table-grade molasses, which has higher sugar content and a cleaner flavor than commonly used blackstrap molasses.
Large production rum houses generally use automated continuous column stills, which excel at stripping out compounds called congeners responsible for the taste, aroma and color of rum. Most domestic small batch rum producers use copper pot stills, which offer the distiller a manual opportunity to emphasize certain taste characteristics of the congeners (diacetyls, for example, which produce butterscotch flavors).
As Watson puts it, "Our strategy is tongue based."
Many of the domestic distillers offer up "crystal" or clear rums, traditionally used for mixed drinks, and dark premium sipping rums. Clear doesn't mean tasteless. Prichards' crystal is very buttery, whereas an average bottle of clear large production rum is closer to neutral vodka.
Most of the small batch dark rums are aged for at least three months and up to three years in spent Bourbon barrels, which impart flavors like vanilla and caramel to the final blends. Prichard is one exception. He uses virgin 15-gallon charred casks made from the heart of white oak trees, which he said imparts a sweet toffee flavor.
As a result of the wood aging and pot distillation technique, domestic aged rums tend to display butterscotch, whiskey and caramel flavors.
Operating on a small batch scale also offers distillers an opportunity to exercise a bit of quirkiness and variation. Old New Orleans offers a Cajun spiced rum steeped with whole cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cayenne that is more aromatic and flavorful than Captain Morgan's. Harman at Triple Eight crafts his rum to brace customers against the force of storms that come through Nantucket, saying, "The higher the wind speed [of the storm], the stronger the proof of the rum."
Despite the current growth of domestic small batch rum, craft distillers have an uphill battle against whiskey, vodka and Caribbean rums. When Prichard first started producing his rum, he got a call from a buyer in Paraguay. Prichard wondered why anyone would want American rum in South America.
The buyer told him, "You're gonna have a hard time selling American rum to Americans. We love good rum no matter where it's made. Send me 150 cases."
===================

I found a digital hydrometer at: www.sundialanalytics.com

Perhaps a bit pricey when compared to a precision hydrometer (except if you have a partner that is a butterfingers, 8 dead $80 hydrometers and counting).
Based on work similar to what Geoff Redman's "draft" has done on:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Distillers/files/ (Correction Table for Alcoholmeter Calibrated at 20 "degrees" C)
And the federalis: www.ttb.gov/foia/Table_1.pdf
I am looking to (probably via lookup tables as I can't figure out the math to programming issue) build a Temperature Compensated Hydrometer that will provide ABV values for distilled products at or close to room temperature (F). (Looking at the PICAXE microprocessor as a possibility)
Anyone interested in this bit of nonsense?
My email: Brian@tuthilltown.com
Brian
Tuthilltown Spirits
====================

American Distilling Institute:
--The 2008 membership application will be mailed in late December.
--The 2008 Whiskey conference application will be mailed in January.
--The 2008 whiskey conference will be April 7,8 & 9th in Louisville and the Stralight Distillery in Bordon IN.
--The 2008 Scotland whisky tour will be May 6-10th.
-- Details on the whiskey conference and Scottish distillery tour will be mailed to everyone.
--Application forms for both events will also be posted on the distilling.com
Bill Owens
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To read back issues of DISTILLER newsletter?
Go to:
http://distilling.com/backissues.html
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The link to DSP permits is: http://ttb.gov/foia/fri.shtml
Over 300 DSP licenses with 127 being craft distilleries. The rest are industrial distilleries and importers. Check their websites to see if they really distill.
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--To obtain a distilled spirits permit go to:
">http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/index.shtml

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--To obtain TTB list of DSPs go to: http://www.ttb.gov/foia//err.shtml

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--To obtain TTB statistics on distilling go to: www.ttb.gov then scroll down to "spirits" and then the "year".
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--To obtain Distilled Spirits Laws and Regulations go to: http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/spirits_regs.shtml

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--To obtain label regulations go to: http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/bam.shtml distilled spirits manual circular.
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