Here is Ansley's Coale open lettter to the ADI membership

Dear Bill,
This is about our trademark, Craft Distillers. Early in 2002, looking for a name for the marketing company I was starting up to market Germain-Robin, St George Spirits, and Hangar One, I came up with "Craft Distillers". At that point, to my knowledge, no one was using the term (people, including us, were then calling themselves "artisan distillers"). We applied to trademark the name Craft Distillers for 2 reasons, the first one being the normal commercial purpose of having a trade name that no one could copy. Still, I can imagine a bunch of hands-on distillers reading this and thinking: "who do those jerks think they are?" But we had a second and very important purpose: to prevent an unscrupulous marketer from using the phrase to misleadingly name a product made with non-craft methods.
Unfortunately, in order to maintain a valid protection of the trademark, we are required to protect the trademark Craft Distillers from all commercial use by others, no matter how mellow/low-key/small-production someone might be who wanted to use it. We have in fact twice prevented other producers from making commercial use of this trademark. At the moment the trademark has been in continual use in use for 5 1/2 years - among other places, on the bottles of the brands we market - and it has been registered since early 2004.
I'm writing this as an attempt to prevent an unfortunate situation in which someone might - in good faith - use the phrase Craft Distillers, or some other phrase or variant close enough to the trademarked phrase to allow a consumer/tradesperson to confuse it, for commercial purposes. As I said, for the reasons I mentioned in the first two paragraphs, we would of necessity proceed to prevent that use, a situation we would much rather avoid.
Bill, I would be grateful if you would print this. Hope all is well.
Warm regards,
Ansley Coale
Craft Distillers
=======================
Blow back from Ansley's letter
======================
In American Distiller Issue #96 you published a note from Ansley Coale of Craft Distillers (refer also to Caddell & Williams of Ukiah, CA) regarding the use of the term "craft distillers" and the trademark they currently hold.
While I'm not an attorney, I have successfully registered a number of trademarks for companies that I've been involved with and do have at least a limited amount of experience in the area. With that in mind I wanted to offer up a few comments for the overall community of "_____ distillers" and to the companies using the name Craft Distillers.
If you go to either website, www.craftdistillers.com or www.caddellwilliams.com you will notice that they frequently refer to the "process" of craft distilling.
For instance, in referring to Hanger One they mention that their vodka shows you what is "special about craft distillation." Another example is a sentence which reads "Craft distillation is an antidote to all those commoditized large-production spirits you see advertised."
In one of the current Caddell & Williams brochures they state that "Hanger One shows you what craft distillation is all about." In the same brochure, discussing St. George Spirits and Jorg Rupf, they state that "In 1982, he brought a tiny Holstein pot-still to the San Francisco Bay Area and began to use craft distillation methods on the region's world-class fruit."
I'd also take special note of the following excerpt from the Craft Distillers site at www.craftdistillers.com/html/CraftDistillOverview.html which reads "A craft distiller cares deeply about quality. That's why he's a Distiller. He's operating a special piece of equipment, namely, a small copper pot-still. That's his craft, and he's a craftsman."
Importantly, I don't see use of the trademark symbol applied on either of the websites nor in their current brochure.In American Distiller Issue #96 you published a note from Ansley Coale of Craft Distillers (refer also to Caddell & Williams of Ukiah, CA) regarding the use of the term "craft distillers" and the trademark they currently hold.
While I'm not an attorney, I have successfully registered a number of trademarks for companies that I've been involved with and do have at least a limited amount of experience in the area. With that in mind I wanted to offer up a few comments for the overall community of "_____ distillers" and to the companies using the name Craft Distillers.
If you go to either website, www.craftdistillers.com or www.caddellwilliams.com you will notice that they frequently refer to the "process" of craft distilling.
For instance, in referring to Hanger One they mention that their vodka shows you what is "special about craft distillation." Another example is a sentence which reads "Craft distillation is an antidote to all those commoditized large-production spirits you see advertised."
In one of the current Caddell & Williams brochures they state that "Hanger One shows you what craft distillation is all about." In the same brochure, discussing St. George Spirits and Jorg Rupf, they state that "In 1982, he brought a tiny Holstein pot-still to the San Francisco Bay Area and began to use craft distillation methods on the region's world-class fruit."
I'd also take special note of the following excerpt from the Craft Distillers site at www.craftdistillers.com/html/CraftDistillOverview.html which reads "A craft distiller cares deeply about quality. That's why he's a Distiller. He's operating a special piece of equipment, namely, a small copper pot-still. That's his craft, and he's a craftsman."
Importantly, I don't see use of the trademark symbol applied on either of the websites nor in their current brochure.
I'm not a distiller, at least not yet, but as an interested party it seems that any or all of the above actions on the part of Craft Distillers would potentially jeopardize their continued claim to a trademark. Interestingly, from a business perspective it might actually be advantageous for the company Craft Distillers to encourage wide-spread adoption of the term "craft distiller" but obviously that is a decision that is theirs to make.

Tom Lix can be reached at mail@lix.org
He has a doctorate in marketing from Boston University, was the founder of a series of successful ventures including Public Interactive (www.publicinteractive.com) and is currently a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Lake Erie College in Painesville, OH
==================


Bill,
In case you did not read the text of one of the articles in your last newsletter, here is a guy that agrees with me about the non-use of craft distiller. His suggestions included mine... artisan distiller:
"By the way, using the term "craft distiller" is a no-no. One crafty micro-distillery has trademarked the name and successfully won a couple of legal battles over the terms use. I won't make any comments on that at this time, but I expect to see some major battles come up over appropriate use of the various terms associated with micro, craft, and artisan distilling over the next few years. So for now the appropriate terms to use are micro-distillery and artisanal distillery."

Cheers!
Eric
====================

It was the drink of choice for 19th century painters, poets and writers.
Vincent van Gogh sliced off his ear while sipping it, Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso painted it, French poet Paul Verlaine cursed it as he lay dying in his bed.
For nearly 100 years, the United States and many other nations banned it.
Absinthe. "It leads straight to the madhouse or the courthouse," declared Henri Schmidt, a French druggist urging his own countrymen to outlaw the green liquid in the early 1900s, which they did.
Now it seems that no one can remember exactly why it was prohibited. Some say it was the chemical thujone found in the herb wormwood, used to make absinthe, that affects the brain. Others say it was a plot by the wine industry to put the popular spirit out of business. And there are those who believe it was a case of baseless hysteria, not unlike "Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda film about marijuana.
Earlier this year, a lone Washington, D.C., lawyer took on the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau in an attempt to lift the ban. After some legal wrangling, the agency agreed - with some limits.
Last week, St. George Spirits of Alameda received the news that, after seven applications, the federal agency had approved its label, the final obstacle before going to market. On Monday, the small artisan distillery sold its token first bottle, becoming the only American company since 1912 to sell absinthe in the United States. Then the staff took a moment to celebrate. "We made champagne and absinthe cocktails, which rapidly degenerated into just sipping absinthe out of the bottle with crazy straws," said Lance Winters, a 42-year-old master distiller at the seven-employee company.
For 11 years Winters experimented, adding a little of this and little of that. No matter how close he came to perfection, each new batch had to be dumped down the drain to comply with federal dictate. But come Dec. 21, St. George will begin selling 3,600 bottles of its Absinthe Verte. That's too few to distribute to big chains, so for now the company will offer it at its Alameda tasting room and at limited liquor stores for $75 for a 750 ml bottle.
The 25-year-old company, started by Jorg Rupf, a German distiller who moved to the Bay Area to attend law school, is most known for its Hangar One vodka, but it also makes single-malt whiskey, grappa and a number of eau de vies.
From the beginning, absinthe was Winter's baby. The brewer-turned-distiller liked the challenge of blending his grape-based brandy with locally grown herbs like wormwood, absinthe's most important - and controversial - ingredient, plus tarragon, basil and mint. Winters also uses anise and fennel.
"Absinthe is really complex," he said. "There are a lot of powerful botanical ingredients all fighting for dominance. So you strive for balance."
St. George will compete with three other absinthe distillers - the Swiss Kubler, French Lucid and the Brazilian Absinto Camargo. All have begun importing the licorice-flavored spirit into the United States in recent months. It was the Kubler distillery that hired attorney Robert Lehrman to end the prohibition, while Lucid was the brainchild of Ted Breaux, a New Orleans chemist who reverse-engineered an old bottle of absinthe to devise his formula. He worked with a French distillery to reproduce it. All have paved the way for U.S. distillers to sell their own perfected versions of the drink, which are likely to hit the shelves soon. Lehrman said Yves Kubler, who produces a few hundred thousand bottles of absinthe a year, saw a real market for the spirit here and was eager to tap into it. So in 2000, Lehrman started making inquiries of federal regulators only to determine that the fight would be a tough one.
"When something has been banned since 1912, it's hard to get it undone," he said. But Lehrman persevered. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officials said they were willing to accept absinthe formulas that fall under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations that the drink contain no more than 10 parts per million of the chemical thujone, but the word absinthe on the bottle's label had to be small and used with a qualifier like St. George's Verte or Kubler's Swiss Absinthe Superieure. Lehrman said thujone in mass quantities "is bad stuff," but small amounts are found in a number of herbs, ingredients and materials, including sage and cedar, and are considered fairly harmless. More notable is absinthe's high alcohol content, typically 120 proof or more, about 50 percent higher than vodka and whiskey. "Look, absinthe is bad the way Jack Daniels is bad, the way Skyy Vodka is bad," says Lehrman. "The worst component is the alcohol. If you drink too much, something bad will happen."
But in 1905 the Swiss government was convinced that it was absinthe alone that turned a law-abiding citizen into a homicidal maniac. After Jean Lanfray, a 31-year-old laborer, killed his pregnant wife and two children, the Swiss government banned the spirit. Although Lanfray had sampled a bottle of absinthe before breakfast that morning, officials failed to take into consideration that he had also consumed Creme de Menthe, cognac and soda, more than six glasses of wine and a cup of coffee laced with brandy, says Barnaby Conrad III, the San Francisco author of "Absinthe: History in a Bottle" (Chronicle Books, 1988; the publisher is not affiliated with this newspaper). Conrad, an artist and journalist who traced the downfall of absinthe in his book, says the drink became synonymous with the degeneration of the world's most famous bohemians, from Van Gogh's infamous ear cutting to Verlaine's debaucherous sprees of sex and rage.
Even Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying "After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world."
But Conrad says absinthe was probably the least of these artists' problems.
"Van Gogh suffered from schizophrenia, a disease that went way back in his family, and Verlaine was a raging alcoholic," he said.
The author believes that absinthe merely became the scapegoat of politicians. Its controversy was probably fueled by the wine industry, which was threatened by the popularity of absinthe.
But the mystique of the famous liquid only adds to its allure, says Conrad, who has sold more of his books in the last five years than in the first 15 of its existence. Many young enthusiasts entranced by its folklore have tried ordering absinthe on the Internet, hoping not to get caught. Some modern-day moonshiners even tried distilling it at home.
"It's the forbidden fruit factor," says the author. And that, he says, will certainly help sales. "Just because you drink absinthe doesn't mean you're going to become a creative genius," Conrad warns. "But it will tickle your imagination as it tickles your brain cells."
Why the mystique?

Modern absinthe got its start as a medical elixir in the late 18th century but became immensely popular as a drink in the mid-1800s, especially among the avant-garde.
Edgar Degas created his famous painting "L'absinthe" of a woman sitting in front of a glass of absinthe, and Pablo Picasso painted "The Absinthe Drinker" during his blue period. Ernest Hemingway is said to have been a consummate absinthe drinker and was known to have a glass or two before running with the bulls.
Freelance writer Camper English contributed to this report. E-mail Stacy Finz at sfinz@sfchronicle.com.

Distillers help Great Lakes State get a little wetter
Written by Eric Gallippo
Wednesday, 05 December 2007

In an industrial park about 20 miles east of Lansing, a group of entrepreneurs, artisans, teachers and students awaited the fruit of an age-old chemical process last Friday afternoon. Gathered around an impressive piece of German engineering in a Webberville warehouse, the faithful watched as gauges climbed and fell and valves were opened and closed, causing a vat of raw materials to bubble and froth.
The dozen or so students gathered at this two-day workshop, organized by MSU chemistry Professor Kris Berglund, listened as the instructors explained how the copper pipes and columns could turn some of Michigan's abundant natural resources into a high-priced commodity.
After about an hour, a clear stream flowed from a spout as freely and inconspicuously as water.
But a cursory whiff served as a pungent indicator there was more than hydrogen and oxygen at work here. Some remarked that it smelled like methanol, others dirty dishwater. For some, as the crude tributary of freshly stripped alcohol poured forward, it undoubtedly smelled like money.
Already home to several microbreweries and as many as 50 wineries, Michigan has also seen a growing number of microdistilleries pop up since state lawmakers dramatically lowered the cost of manufacturing spirits in the mid-1990s.
Thanks in part to Berglund, there are as many as 10 artisan distilleries in the state today. From fortified wines and brandies to vodkas and gins, Michigan spirit makers are looking to carve out a niche market for their local flavors.
MSU chemistry Professor Kris Berglund catches some of the freshly stripped alcohol. (EJ Jocque/City Pulse)
Proponents say the industry offers yet another boon to the state's growing agro-tourism industry and shows promise to be a piece in fixing Michigan's troubling economic puzzle.
But there's still a ways to go before Michigan's small-batch distillers are moving large quantities of hand-crafted spirits. As they hone their new craft, many beverage makers say it's time to rewrite the law again, leveling the playing field for Michigan distillers so they can not only compete with national brands, but also other states whose thirst for a drop of the spirit pool has them keeping a close eye on our next move.
Getting started
A university distinguished professor of forestry and chemical engineering, Berglund has been with MSU for 23 years. In the early '90s, he started thinking up ways to help Michigan growers produce more value-added, or marketable, agricultural products. Berglund's background coupled with the state's burgeoning wine and beer industry and diversity of available fruits and grains presented an obvious option: start making liquor.
"I'm a chemical engineer," Berglund says. "We all know how to do distillation - normally it's petroleum products."
But a hefty state licensing fee of $10,000 and rules against serving spirits in tasting rooms prevented the notion from moving past the idea stage. That is until 1996, when state legislators voted to reduce the cost of producing fruit brandy to $200 and grain-based spirits, including whisky and vodka, to $1,000.
Workshop attendee Eric Hall takes a whiff of the crude spirits that will be redistilled to make whiskey.
Shortly after the law changed, Berglund sent out feelers to see if there was an interest in the university's helping wine and beer makers get their own stills off the ground. After sitting down with folks from Michigan wineries, the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the Cherry Marketing Institute, the Michigan Apple Committee and so on, Berglund realized the university's help would be more than welcomed. The idea was to work with wineries and breweries to extend their existing business.
Along with winemakers from Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay, St. Julian's in Paw Paw and Chateau Chantal near Traverse City, Berglund traveled to Germany to meet with Christian Carl, which has been manufacturing stills since 1869. Impressed with the fourth-generation, family-run company's products and practices, they bought in bulk, purchasing four pot stills. "We had a container come over from Germany, and we had an industry right away," Berglund says.
The German connection didn't end there. At Friday's workshop, Alexander Plank, director of operations for Christian Carl, discussed the still's different parts and functions and explained how much heat should be applied when trying to break down or maintain certain flavors.
"They've become partners in all this as well," Berglund says.
Nicolas Haase, director of technical sales at Christian Carl's North American office in Philadelphia, travels the country spreading the Carl brand. He says the work Berglund and MSU are doing has helped spur microdistilling ventures across the continent.
"There's an uptick. Mainly because the laws in many states are changing," Haase says. "The post-prohibition laws are being modified and remodified."
The right ingredients
Although micro distilling is on the rise nationwide, Berglund says there are nowhere near as many stills in operation today as there were before Prohibition. "There were several tens of thousands," Berglund says. "Today there's less than 100 of them."
In Michigan's case, Berglund says when the United States went dry, the big distillers jumped the Detroit River to Windsor, Canada. "During Prohibition you could almost get run down in the street going from Windsor to Chicago," Berglund says. "There's a reason I-94 is where I-94 is."
The business is making a comeback largely due to changes in state laws, as well as growing interest in artisan beer and wine and higher demand for local flavors.
Berglund says production of craft brewed beers is growing about 15 percent each year and distilled spirits at a rate of about 5 percent.
Michigan is home to 50 wineries and more than 50 microbreweries, with a handful of them scattered around the greater Lansing area. Webberville-based Michigan Brewing Co. expects to sell 5,500 barrels of beer for 2007 and has its sights set on 15,000 barrels in 2008. The 76,000-square-foot facility just north of I-96 has also housed MSU's still for the last year and a half and was the site for Friday's workshop.
Berglund says adding distilleries to the mix will complement and promote the good thing Michigan has going with its destination wineries and breweries, as well as generate tax revenue, jobs and uses for Michigan crops. "This fits nicely with the agro-tourism in the state," he says.
Berglund says the state imports $800 million in hard spirits annually. Keeping only a fraction of that money in the local economy could have a dynamic impact, especially considering that Michigan takes about 60 cents on the dollar in taxes on hard liquor sales. "From a tax standpoint, the state should promote the highest product possible," he says. "I don't want this to sound like Mother Teresa, but this is a solid source of income for the state."
Citing a study by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., Berglund says spirit production by small distillers has the potential to create up to 14,000 Michigan jobs.
Uncle John's Cider Mill co-owner Mike Beck got into distilling a few years ago to produce spirits from fruit to fortify his port-style dessert wines. Beck's father and mother opened the mill just north of St. Johns in 1972 on a farm that has been in his family for 120 years. In 2003, Beck opened the farm's Fruit House Winery, which produces close to 20 varieties of wine and hard cider sold on site and at more than 80 retailers statewide.
With the addition of a still, Beck started making brandy, which he then adds to some of his wines to make port wine. The sweet wines with high alcohol content can be served with or as dessert and have been a hit for the winery. "The fortified wines sell like crazy," Beck says. "They pair so well with food."
Now he's preparing a calvados-style apple brandy with a distributor waiting to take it online once his label is approved by the state.
Beck says Michigan's highly diverse agriculture makes it the perfect place to make spirits. "Only California grows more specialty crops," he says. "We've got a real advantage over other places."
If Michigan consumers' taste buds are ready and their wallets are willing, Beck says they'll be rewarded for trying something other than established brands. "This is something that's so much more special than what you can buy off the shelves right now," Beck says. "It's all about high-quality fruit and beautiful presentation and it follows through right down your throat."
Heads, hearts and tails
Some drinks are tougher to swallow. While many Michigan spirit-makers are firing up the still to make fruit brandies, some say the state could go further to make sure it can keep up with other states cashing in on the local liquor phenomenon. A recent front-page story in The New York Times stated that 10 to 20 small-scale distilleries are opening each year across the country.
Don Coe, partner in Black Star Farms winery in Suttons Bay and a Michigan Department of Agriculture commissioner, explains that the original law change in Michigan was made in favor of wineries producing brandy to fortify their wines.
Round Barn Winery's DiVine Vodka, as seen above at Goodrich's Shop-Rite, is available in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Unlike spirits distilled from fruits, hard liquor made from grains, like whiskey and gin, cannot be served over the bar or in a tasting room on site, but must go through a distributor.
Coe has been in the spirits business 40 years, working as president of Allied Domecq Spirits before retiring and starting Black Star. He says the state distribution system is not set up to handle small orders of specialty products and most of the small distillers get dropped because they can't move enough volume.
Unlike his old job with "mass push marketing creating major brand names," Coe says sales of small-batch, handcrafted products are built "consumer by consumer."
"That's why it's so important to have a tasting room," he says.
Coe is in the process of drafting and finding sponsors for a piece of legislation that would allow grain distillers to sell spirits in tasting rooms. But the state has been a little preoccupied with budget concerns. "It's not the time to get a small piece of legislation through the legislature," he says.
Back at Michigan Brewery, owner Bobby Mason says he would love to be able to distill spirits from corn, malted barley and wheat to sell at his brewpub. "Hopefully the law will get changed," he says. Michigan Brewing Co. owner Bobby Mason hopes by the time he's finished getting licensed to make spirits the law will allow him to sell you a martini at his bar with gin made from Michigan wheat.
But even it doesn't, Mason still has plans to produce and wholesale his own line of gin by June. Looking into the jug of clouded spirits at the end of the still on Friday, Haase explained that this first run was meant to strip the alcohol off of the Celis White beer they had started with. Once more of this raw material was ready, a second run would further purify the spirits, which would then be "cut" into "heads," "hearts" and "tails." The first part of the pour gets dumped, the middle is suitable for drinking and the last can go back through for another run to be further refined. If all went as planned, the group would have a nice, white whiskey by day's end.
"Now we've got a big chunk of meat with all the fat, and so now we're going to trim it," Haase said.

Black Star Farms 10844 E. Revold Road, Suttons Bay. (231) 944-1273. www.blackstarfarms.com.
This northern Michigan winery produces several Eau de vie-style clear brandies, including Spirit of Apple, Spirit of Cherry, and Spirit of Pear. Select products available at Goodrich's Shop-Rite, 940 Trowbridge Road, East Lansing, and Dusty's Cellar, 1839 W. Grand River Ave., Okemos.

Chateau Chantal 15900 Rue de Vin, Traverse City. (231) 223-4110. www.chateauchantal.com.
This northern Michigan winery uses distilled tart cherries blended with a cherry wine to produce a cerise dessert wine.

Grand Traverse Distillery 781 Industrial Circle, Suite 5, Traverse City. (231) 947-8635. www.grandtraversedistillery.com.
Michigan microdistillery dedicated exclusively to making vodka. Products include True North Vodka, distilled from locally grown rye, and a cherry flavored version. Available at Goodrich's Shop-Rite and Oade's Big Ten West, 314 S. Clippert St., Lansing.

Leopold Brothers 523 S. Main St., Ann Arbor. (734) 747-9806. www.leopoldbros.com.
This family owned and operated small-batch distillery produces liqueurs, flavored whiskeys, vodka and gin in downtown Ann Arbor.

Liquid Manufacturing 6150 Whitmore Lake Road, Brighton, (810) 220-2802. www.liquidmanufacturing.com.
This Mid-Michigan distillery has been specializing in vodka distillation since 2005.

Michigan Brewing Co. 1093 Highview Drive, Webberville. (517) 521-3600. www.michiganbrewing.com.
Mid-Michigan microbrewery housing MSU's research still and in the process of getting licensed to manufacture and distribute celis gin.

New Holland Brewing Co. 66 E. Eighth St., Holland. (616) 355-NHBC. www.newhollandbrew.com.
This West Michigan microbrewery recently introduced a line of fruit brandies sold at its Holland brewpub and plans to begin distilling whisky, rum and gin for distribution in early 2008.

Round Barn Winery 10983 Hills Road, Baroda. 1 (800) 716-WINE. www.roundbarnwinery.com.
This southwest Michigan winery and distillery has been making dessert wines and brandies since 1999 and released a line of vodka distilled from grapes in 2005. DiVine Vodka is distributed in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. DiVine Vodka available at Goodrich's Shop-Rite, Oades Big Ten West.

St. Julian's Winery 716 S. Kalamazoo St., Paw Paw. (269) 657-5568. www.stjulian.com.
This is southwest Michigan winery produces three fruit brandies and four fortified dessert wines, including the popular Catherman's Port. Select products available at Goodrich's Shop-Rite, Dusty's Cellar and Oades Big Ten West.

Uncle John's Fruit House Winery 8614 N. U.S. 127, St. John's. (989) 224-3686. www.fruithousewinery.com.
This Mid-Michigan winery opened in 2003 is a branch of Uncle John's Cider Mill and produces fruit brandies for sale on site. Uncle John's Apple Brandy will soon be available for distribution.
=================

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

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