COLUMN STILL FOR SALE: I´m a distiller from Germany and its really interesting how the American distillers do business.
I want to sell one of my copper- distillery, the columns, diameter is 60cm (23,6"), it was used to distill 1500-2000 Liter grain-mash per hour and to concentrate it up to 85%vol alcohol.
If you know someone who could have interest to it please contact me.
Georg Honsel
Tel +49 172 5810267
==================

Nebraska: Alcohol law allows small-scale distilling
Source: Dail Nebraska
Alex Haueter

Zac Triemert is pretty excited about starting his new job. He'll still drive to the same place and work closely with many of the same people, but Upstream Brewing Co.'s current brew master is only months away from pioneering a new industry in Nebraska: hard liquor.
Last March's passing of LB549 has opened the doors for Triemert's new venture in Nebraska. The law allows for the establishment of microdistilleries, previously illegal in Nebraska. Licensed distillers will be allowed to produce up to 10,000 gallons of spirits a year and sell the alcohol directly to the public, allowing locally-made liquors to be made and sold similarly to wine and microbrewed beer.
Triemert helped State Sen. John Synowiecki, promote the law, and Triemert and other brewers at Upstream are taking advantage of the new law. Triemert said he and his associates at Upstream are the only people in Nebraska he knows of to have made plans for a distillery.
Even though many Nebraskan breweries have restaurants and distributors in place that could help them establish spirits brands, the lure of distilling isn't that strong among most brewers.
"We just don't have any interest in getting into that part of the business," said Jim Engelbart, the marketing and production manager at Lincoln's Empyrean Brewing Co. because distilling is a different, and potentially more dangerous, process compared to brewing.
"You have to have people who are interested in doing that to get into it."
Triemert is into it. In 2006, he completed a master's degree in brewing and distilling in Scotland at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University.
"What really got this off the ground is my passion for a single-malt whisky," Triemert said.
Triemert's new venture, Solas Distillery, will operate in an expansion of Upstream's West Omaha location, and its products will be sold alongside the brewery's beer in the restaurant. Triemert said he expects the construction of the new distillery to begin in May, and he hopes to be pouring his first liquors by next fall.
"We're going to be able to make premium spirits right out of the gate," Triemert said. "We're not going to need time to figure it out."
Solas will initially release a vodka and a light rum, which will be followed about a year later by a brandy, whisky, dark rum and gin.
Triemert cited his plans for high-class alcohol as examples of Solas' commitment in making quality spirits. The gin could be ready from the onset alongside the vodka and light rum, but Triemert said he wants to take a year to make a well-balanced gin that won't be dominated by a juniper taste.
The distillery's dark rum will be a Cuban-style rum, which Triemert said a lot of Americans haven't been exposed to. For his new brandy, he will start with a French wine.
"It'll really set us apart from other brandy makers in the U.S.," he said.
Given Triemert's affinity for fine whiskey and his time spent in Scotland, Solas' crown jewel will likely be its single-malt whisky.
Triemert's time in Scotland yielded not only know-how on distilling but also connections with equipment makers. The stills he'll be using at Solas are being constructed right now by the same company that builds industrial-sized stills for Glenrothes, a Scotch whisky Triemert called his favorite.
Holding a small glass of Hanger One vodka to the light in his laboratory at Upstream, Triemert explained the standard he'll be holding all of his microdistilled liquor to:
"If you can drink it straight and warm, that's a great spirit."
===================

Moonshine moves out of Mason jar and into martini glass We asked Atlanta mixologists to put an urban spin on 'shine

By MERIDITH FORD, RICHARD L. ELDREDGE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The sensation starts with a slight burn at the back of your tongue. An innocent tingle that quickly builds into a slow- burning, skin-removing inferno in the back of your throat.
By the time it hits your stomach, you're wondering if your esophagus remains intact.
The flammable stuff is in a reflective Mason jar sitting on mixologist Lara Creasy's bar at Shaun's restaurant in Inman Park.
It's cold outside, but inside the closed eatery the warmth of this white lightning provides little comfort. Creasy has been given the task of creating some mixed drinks from, yes, moonshine.
Which is a little like asking a bartender to make gasoline taste good.
"This doesn't suit my palate, to be honest," concedes Creasy. For weeks, between bartending shifts, she's been experimenting with corn liquor to create cocktails. She's utilized both the legal stuff like Georgia Moon and the real stuff she obtained "from a friend of a friend."
Over the past few years, legal brands of moonshine have quietly crept onto liquor store shelves across the South.
Piedmont Distillers founder Joe Michalek started making his Madison, N.C., company's Catdaddy brand of flavored moonshine in 2005. Last year, he followed that up with the debut of NASCAR legend Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon, based on the former 'shine runner's "family recipe."
"Making moonshine legal was really as simple as just paying the taxes on it," Michalek said. "We also triple-distill ours to make it smooth, and we also took the proof down to improve its taste and to make it easy to work with."
Midnight Moon is even being marketed "as smooth as vodka."
Given moonshine's new air of respectability, we asked some talented local mixologists to work with a variety of corn liquors to see if crafting cocktails from the high octane booze was really as simple as working with the highly malleable fermented potato juice. Why not see what kind of craziness we can concoct with corn likker?
Legality of the once bootlegged alcohol was news to Trois mixologist Eric Simpkins, who's been mixing drinks for 12 years.
"I didn't know you could buy the stuff," Simpkins said. "But, of course, I knew how to get it." He used both the store-bought Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon and Georgia Moon along with real 'shine to create a few corn liquor cocktails for this story.
Everyone knows how to get it, it seems. It's the old tale of the rural South: Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody else who has a Mason jar of it stashed in the back of a liquor cabinet, refrigerator or basement paint shelf.
And it's not just used for cleaning brushes. Folks really do drink this stuff, and 'shine is just as popular today as it was 50 years ago, when it was being "run" all over the South. According to Matthew B. Rowley in his book "Moonshine!" (Lark Books, $14.95), "independent distilling is alive and well and enjoying a spirited renaissance in modern America."
Distilling illegal liquor to avoid taxes is a big part of American history, but it takes particular hold in the South, where rural, rambling backroads made moonshine's distribution a challenge. Runners became very good drivers. By 1949, car mechanic and racer Bill France had co-founded the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. NASCAR's earliest drivers were moonshine runners.
Rowley points out that in addition to the modern day commercial moonshiners who might also deal in other contraband just for profit, there is another "new breed" of distillers who have "grafted" onto the traditional whiskey-making culture. They borrow from beer-making, develop their own recipes, design and construct their own stills and take artisanal pride in their efforts.
Back at Shaun's, Creasy's experiments have had an almost immediate effect. A half-ounce of moonshine, even cut with Creasy's Southern lemonade, made with Tupelo honey, can rush straight to your bloodstream.
"Our bodies adapt to what we normally drink," Creasy explains. "If your body is unfamiliar with something, it can go straight to your head." Plus, this stuff is 100-plus proof.
While products like Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon Carolina moonshine one of the legal products with a much lower proof is touted as triple distilled in tin copper to make it as smooth as possible, Simpkins isn't totally sold.
"This is a really rough-around-the-edges vodka," he says, making a moonshine martini with Johnson's moonshine, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, Angostura bitters and a pretty lemon twist.
But the deceptively lethal drink tastes like a very good vodka martini.
"I like to make Bloody Marys with it," says Johnson, who spent a brief spell behind bars after he got caught at the family still, decades before his legal version would end up in stores. "The girls also like to make cosmopolitans with it, and the kids like to mix it with Red Bull."
This trend toward flavorless alcohol is nothing new in the bar business.
"Anytime you triple distill anything, you essentially strip it of its flavor," explains Simpkins. "Vodka is huge right now because people don't want to taste the alcohol in their cocktails. For me, it's like 'why bother?' I want a drink that tastes like something."
That wasn't the approach at South City Kitchen in Midtown, where bartender Chris Dean and beverage manager Vajra Stratigos have taken a college mentality toward creating corn liquor cocktails.
Made with ingredients that include Sunny D, Rock Star orange energy drink and Mountain Dew, the pair have come up with punchlike libations perfectly suited for frat house red plastic cups.
"The idea was to create some party drinks," says Dean, "where you could get all of the ingredients at a convenience store. I had no idea moonshine was legal in this state. We treated it the same as the grain alcohol we all used in college. It's so high octane you need to go sweeter in order to mask the harshness."
While Dean's drinks are less complex than Simpkins' or Creasy's, the sweetness takes the sting out of the 'shine.
And bartenders aren't the only folks experimenting.
The kitchen folks at Noble's Grille in Winston-Salem, N.C., feature Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon in their shrimp and grits recipe, and Blue 5 in Roanoke, Va., uses Catdaddy as a "moonshine glaze" for the joint's ribs and chicken.
Piedmont Distillers' Michalek says his consumers live as far away as Australia.
"They'll pass through the South, grab a bottle, try it and like it," explains Michalek. "Then they'll call up and ask us to send them more, which legally we can't do [because of state and federal laws]. But they find ways of getting it!"
And while products like Johnson's, Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey and Catdaddy are available in liquor stores, corn liquor still carries a Mason-jar mystique of mischief hidden under the kitchen sink.
Even with some serious marketing behind it, the legal products are hardly mainstream.
Dean explains: "Working with 100-proof is really hard to mix down. You've got to be careful with this stuff. You're going to need a cab after even one of these. The trend right now is lower-proof, flavored liquors. People can drink a lot more of those than a cocktail made with moonshine."
For Creasy, the approach started with cachaca (a fermented sugar cane liquor) but her tastes moved quickly to tequila-type drinks like mojitos and margaritas she felt mirrored the taste of corn liquor. For Simpkins, the canvas was wide open; he used everything from fresh ginger to muddled Fuji apples.
"Real moonshine is very esoteric but I didn't find it all that difficult to work with," Simpkins said.
Creasy and Simpkins agree that the real stuff makes a better cocktail.
"I liked working with it because it actually has a flavor," explains Simpkins.
And if you taste a whiff of the real stuff, you can usually sniff a bourbon lurking somewhere in the jar, even though most true 'shines, unlike bourbon , are aged for less than 30 days (which is even a selling point on the Georgia Moon label).
And while some legal 'shines come complete with recipes like Johnson's Pole Sitter lemon drop-esque shot, don't expect moonshine to bask in sunlight anytime soon.
Because of its high proof and murky mystique, moonshine may forever be restricted to the back of the refrigerator in an aged fruit jar.
More info go to: piedmontdistillers.com
=======================

Small distiller touts unparalleled vodka
By Mark Multer
Wausau Daily Herald

Cutting across north central Wisconsin, the 45th parallel is known as the midway point between the equator and the north pole.
Paul Werni has lived near the latitudinal line most of his life, from his formative years in Merrill to his college days at the University of Minnesota, and he'd like to make it known regionally for its vodka.
Werni, 42, is embarking upon his second career, distilling and selling hand-crafted vodka through his business, 45th Parallel Spirits.
He recalls seeing a sign along the highway marking the invisible line around the globe while driving between Merrill and Wausau for shopping trips, sporting events and orthodontic appointments. His distillery in New Richmond in western Wisconsin is a few miles off the line, which cuts right through the farm where he purchases all the corn used to make his liquor.
"My farmer is smack dab on the 45th Parallel," said Werni, who purchases his grain from farmer Arlen Strate. "If you Google his address, he's right on it."
The process Werni uses to distill his vodka is unique, he said, in that he distills all the alcohol from scratch. Most vodka producers, he said, purchase large quantities of neutral grain spirits from companies in Iowa and then add flavor by blending in small batches of their own alcohol or using sugar or artificial flavorings.
"We decided to be different, we'd do it all the same way from scratch," said Werni, who runs the business with his father, Paul Sr., and college roommate Scott Davis. "Every drop is made the same way, so the sweetness comes from the grain."
That sweetness, Werni said, is evident in his vodka's aroma, unlike typical vodkas that have a medicinal scent.
"There is a slight variation from batch to batch, but we try very hard -- because of our grain source and the way we filter -- to keep the flavor consistent," he said.
Werni knew next to nothing about the process until a couple years ago, when he sold his successful landscape construction company in Minneapolis and began to research the industry.
He said he visited small distilleries in the United States, Germany and Austria, asked a lot of questions and read as much as he could. Now that he has learned how to make vodka, he's getting a crash course in marketing and distribution, as he meets with liquor store, tavern and restaurant owners to pitch his product.
45th Parallel Spirits is available at Crossroads County Market in Wausau, and Hereford & Hops Steakhouse and Wagon Wheel Supper Club appear willing to carry it, Werni said. It will debut in the Madison and Milwaukee markets in March.
"Making it is a lot more fun," he said. "I can be in that still all day, working and creating. The getting out and selling, that's the work part of it, but it is necessary."
==================

I am interested in selling a small bottling plant.

My name is Mike Vick and I am currently from Midland,Texas where I had a bottling business called Rio Grande Spirits where I bottled water,vodka and
tequila. This was in operation for five years. All the equipment is in good running condition for 1960's equipment with spare parts available. This plant is food grade (FDA) approved that was used to bottle beverage grade alcohol and water. I have the equipment in storage at the present. This equipment is rated for 60 to 70 bottles per minute. I bottled 1.0 and 1.75 liters only,but has capability for other sizes as well. If you are interested in pursuing this or have any ideas how I could go about selling this, please contact me at
mav19581@yahoo.com
or(432)354-2305 home or (432)238-2684 cell.

================

American Distilling Institute:
--The 2008 whiskey conference will be April 6 (reception) 7,8 & 9th in Louisville and the Stralight Distillery in Bordon IN.
- Conference Application will be mailed in late February and is posted on the website www.distilling.com br>--The 2008 Scotland whisky tour will be May 6-10th.
-- Details on the whiskey conference and Scottish distillery tour will be mailed to everyone.
Bill Owens
=================

To read back issues of DISTILLER newsletter?
Go to:
http://distilling.com/backissues.html
====================

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.
=====================

===================
--To obtain a distilled spirits permit go to:
">http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/index.shtml

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

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

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