Ryan Hembree from Skip Rock Distillers is the interview and we discuss how they make their variety of products. We also talk about different sources of sugar and how they change between different fermentation base materials.
Ryan Hembree from Skip Rock Distillers is the interview and we discuss how they make their variety of products. We also talk about different sources of sugar and how they change between different fermentation base materials.
Welcome to Distilling Craft episode(12):"Breaking Chains" with Ryan Hembree from Skip Rock Distillers out of Snohomish, Washington.
Podcast Promo:Distilling Craft is brought to you by Dalkita, a group of architects and engineers who specialize in designing craft distilleries across the U.S. More information is available at our website, www.dalkita.com[ d a l k i t a.com].
Colleen Moore:Hello 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. Today, we revisit Episode(12) with Ryan Hembree from Skip Rock Distillers. Ryan is the co-founder of Skip Rock Distillers, and he's going to talk with us about their product line and production methods. Later, our radiogenic part-time distiller, DJ talks about the sources of sugar and how they change between different fermentation based materials. Welcome to our show, Ryan.
DJ for Dalkita:You do a whole wide variety of weird products up there, and there's so many of them I want to talk to you about. I'm not even sure where to get started. Let's start on the most normal end of the spectrum, which is your potato vodkas. What kind of potatoes are you using?
Ryan:We use Yukon gold potatoes for our main flagship one. Vodka is normal, but everything we've read in research over the years, potato vodka is actually less than 1% for all of the world's production. So it's pretty rare. And from what we know, we are the first ones to use a Yukon gold potato. It just lends it a nice creamy Ruthie sweet flavor profile, and it gives it more of an old world style flavor to it. And something we really enjoy, it's got a little bit more of a structure to it.
DJ for Dalkita:How did you select that Yukon gold?
Ryan:My background was in agriculture economic development. So I actually, in starting looked into doing a distillery, I talked with a number of different agricultural scientist and stuff, looking for a full flavored potato, we're up in Washington state, we grow just about anything up here. And there's actually some really good potato grounds, and it's called the Skagit Valley, just about 45 minutes north. And I wanted something that had full flavor, but also was economically viable, and that I could get, not necessarily on a year round basis because that's pretty tough to do with potatoes unless you're just doing a Russet, which is pretty more of a drier, I'll say dirt type vodka, produces just a dried nondescript. But with the Yukon, it just gives us a nice great flavor profile. And we probably tried about five or six different varieties before we said,"Yeah, this is the one that we really like".
DJ for Dalkita:Well, what other varieties did you try?
Ryan:Russet, like I mentioned earlier. Burbank, and then we've done some reds and different whites. We do make a Black peppercorn, potato vodka as well, and for that one we actually use mostly all Skagit Valley red potatoes. It gives a little bit lighter flavor profiles, so it's not going to have the richness and the butteriness of the Yukon. But for the Black peppercorn Vodka, it allows that kind of pepper corn flavor to be the feature, not necessarily potato vodka.
DJ for Dalkita:How are you processing your potatoes, getting them ready for mash? Is it just like a ricer?
Ryan:We put them through a 10 horsepower hammer mill, and it will do about a 24 to 2,500 pound batch, and it just just destroys them. It's like this giant container of mashed potatoes, but it's really soupy, running. And then we go ahead and mash them, just like we do grain. We'll probably go through the mash tun with heating and everything.
DJ for Dalkita:Do you have a dedicated potato mill? Are you also using the same mill for your grain? And if so, how are you cleaning it with it being so kind of soupy and mashed potatoey?
Ryan:Yeah, actually we do use the same one and it's super easy to clean, able to hose everything out. And we are able to hose it out, clean it out, get in there when we need to on a regular basis.
DJ for Dalkita:That's pretty cool.
Ryan:We've tried different mills, I think this was our third mill to figure out and to get the right consistency, but also just enough horsepower to be able to power through it.
DJ for Dalkita:What kind of horsepower do you need?
Ryan:Ours is 10 horsepower.
DJ for Dalkita:How many pounds of potatoes can that thing process in an hour?
Ryan:In an hour, I'd probably guess, about 3,200.
DJ for Dalkita:So when you are using potatoes in your mash, how does it compare in terms of grain? How many pounds of potatoes are you using for your fermenter size? For that matter, what is your fermenter size?
Ryan:Our Mash Tun is 1500 liter, the fermenters are 1000 liter, so we've got 6,000 liter fermenters. They're non jacketed. So for us up here in Washington, it allows us to run the fermentation without cooling which definitely saves a lot of money on equipment costs. We'll do a batch size of about 2,500 pounds, in the 1500 liter Mash Tun, add water. It's not a lot compared to a grain mash bill, but just a little bit. And then on the fermentor side, we split that into two different 1000 liter fermenters.
DJ for Dalkita:Do you have to add a lot of water or is the water intrinsic in the potatoes, helping you out?
Ryan:Yes. So Potatoes have got anywhere from 75 to 83% water. So, there's already a lot of water going into the Mash Tun when we grind them. And then, we go ahead and we do add some water to it. Not a lot, but we do.
DJ for Dalkita:Are you doing any enzyme treatments?
Ryan:Well, absolutely. That's the only way to do the potatoes. We do electrification and a scarification at times.
DJ for Dalkita:That wasn't true if you had some small percentage of malt or something you were tossing in.
Ryan:Yeah. That's that's really the only way. We keep it 100% potato, that way.
DJ for Dalkita:Are there any other real tricks to making potato vodka, or does it turn more into a normal whiskey process at that point or a grain neutral process?
Ryan:We've made a lot of grain vodka as well, we do a contract for somebody else and we've done it in the past. I think, potato vodka is a lot harder to make, it's messier, it's definitely a lot more expensive. You're talking up to, depending on potato variety, you can be looking at 13 to 18 pounds per bottle. And then, it's just that you have to watch your fermentation. It gets quite aggressive on fermentation, so we have to watch our nutrients going into it. Because you are fermenting on the solids, so you've got all the CO2 rising up with the solids of the potato, and there's potential for spillover and bubbling over and everything.
DJ for Dalkita:So you said you put 750 odd gallons in a 1000 liter fermenter. Is the remaining portion there your headspace?
Ryan:Yeah, exactly.
DJ for Dalkita:And, you can still have a boil over with 30% headspace?
Ryan:Yeah. We've had it go crazy. It's definitely some of those lessons learnt. You don't read about it anywhere,and it's made for some interesting cleanups in the morning, in the past. The learning.
DJ for Dalkita:With it being so vigorous, how fast are you doing your fermentations?
Ryan:For the potatoes, it ferments in about four days. It kicks off really fast and hard, and then it just slows down after day two.
DJ for Dalkita:So you're just carrying it out to a completion at that point. Are you good doing 10% alcohol?
Ryan:Anywhere from 8 to 10. Those are good numbers for potato.
DJ for Dalkita:What are you doing after distillation? Are you doing any charcoal filtering or cold filtering, anything like that?
Ryan:So we distill twice. And on the filtering side, we chill filter. We do an activated carbon filter, but it's not like a charcoal or the cartridge. So it's a free flow type system. It works really well, it gives us soft and consistent results. A couple of more minutes here and there depending on the batch, gives us that flavor profile we're looking for. So, we're able to make adjustments as needed, pretty easily.
DJ for Dalkita:That's cool. So, it's basically just a loose bed of carbon that you've packed yourselves and you're just putting your hearts over it?
Ryan:Exactly. And we re-circulate in the system. So it allows us to keep really nice control of that, Versus a cartridge filter, I'm going through it once, and then if you want to run it again, it has a potential for totally changing it. Whereas we can just go ahead and say,"Okay, 20 more minutes on the system," and then extracted out. Then we do a play frame filter to get any particulars and things like that out as well.
DJ for Dalkita:That's actually really cool way, we would have it set up.
Ryan:Yeah, it's worked out well. It was one of those necessities, because that was the equipment we had, and we figured out the best way for what we had.
DJ for Dalkita:Moving on from Vodka, this is what I wanted to start with, mainly because it interests me more so than it probably interests the audience. But you have a whiskey that shouldn't legally be a whiskey, that Triticale that you are using, isn't that one of the ancient grains where it's not actually considered a grain?
Ryan:No, actually Triticale is a wheat rye hybrid, developed in Scotland back in the 1880s, in my understanding. No, It's 100% of grain.
DJ for Dalkita:For some reason, I was thinking it was in that buckwheat family.
Ryan:No, buckwheat is not a grain. But Triticale is a grain, it grows. It's actually one of my favorite grains to use. Our Triticale whiskey is triple distilled, and it's the only triple distilled spirit that we do. And it's just something that, in working with the grain, we just found that we like that better in the style that we wanted to go for that. When it's ferments, it smells like apples and pears, it does not smell grain at all. And then it gets a little bit of a sweet note on the whiskey side, a little bit of nuttiness. It's a little smoke in the background, I love it.
DJ for Dalkita:You said your vodka was a double distilled, your whiskey is tripled distilled. I'm guessing that means you have two different stills or how are they set up?
Ryan:No, we have a Kothe, it's a two column still that we can basically run the columns completely open with no reflux. So when we do the whiskey, that's what we do. Beause we have a rye whiskey as well, our main flagship is our rye. We can run it completely open, no plates engaged, and so there's no reflux or anything.
DJ for Dalkita:That's how you're doing the triple then?
Ryan:Yeah. When we do on the triple, we were only running one column as well.
DJ for Dalkita:How much are you seeing on each step? I'm assuming you are fermenting to about that same 8 to 10%. So what, first passes and you jump to 20%, or what are your steps on that distillation look like?
Ryan:Well, on the grains, we get up to about 11 to 12%, so we do a decent gravity mash. And the first run through, we're looking at about 30 to 35%. second time through, we go to about 50 and that's on the average. So we drag it out to the end pretty well. And then we do all our final, usually no higher than 120.
DJ for Dalkita:Where are you making your cuts in there?
Ryan:Honestly, it's less about the percentage and it's more about the flavor profile. So we do monitor it and we track it, but when we do it, we've been doing more just on flavor. So tall would be off top of my head, I can't remember.
DJ for Dalkita:Are you doing your cuts on the third distillation or are you doing smaller cuts all the way through?
Ryan:We do cuts throughout. And so, the first time through the still, we do a heads cut and a small tails cut, and just keep bringing it down, that way. Absolutely.
DJ for Dalkita:With using a grain that's slightly different, is processing it and getting it ready for mashing different than using a weeder or rye?
Ryan:Well, Triticale, it does have the, in other words, goopiness, that a rye does where it just goes with really thick and gooey. It does have a higher diasporic power than malts, all the research is out there. So it's an interesting grain. For being a 100%, we do utilize a little bit of enzymes for that as well in just helping that process, and it's great because they're organic kosher enzymes and they're nice to use. But that's pretty much the biggest thing. The mills are quite similar. It's easier to mill than rye, that's for sure. But it's pretty similar in our hammer mills.
DJ for Dalkita:What does your aging program look like for both of your whiskeys?
Ryan:Well, right now I've got 30 and 53 gallon barrels. Not nearly as much as we'd like, Of course. I think every distillers is in that boat, always looking for more barrels and be able to put more whiskey away. But, we're finding anywhere from 2 and a half years to 15 months on some of the smaller barrels, depending on placement in our facility, that they really coming on into their own. And then we do have some other 53, that we're hoping to let go for, at least, the four year timeline.
DJ for Dalkita:That would be awesome, if you can start getting some of the older ones out.
Ryan:As long as we can hold onto them, we can. It's tasting great and I'm extremely happy with it. And we use the Triticale and our regular Rye whiskey too. Quite a bit.
DJ for Dalkita:That's interesting. So tell me a bit about your rye since it's your flagship.
Ryan:The rye has been our main whiskey. We started making that in, I guess, 2011. We started making some rye, and putting away a little bit here and there when we could. It's a high rye, a little over 70% rye, a little over 20% Triticale, and the rest is Washington malt, and it's got a lot of great spice notes to it. It's definitely sweet a little mint, a honey baklava type note in there too. I think our first major note of accomplishment is in 2014 at beverage testing institute. We threw it in there in competition, he ended up getting a 94 points for our barrel proof and 93 points for our 86 proof, and we never thrown any competition there or anything. So that was kind of fun. Double blind and we took first and second place. So I was pretty excited about that, got some pretty major whiskeys.
DJ for Dalkita:That's not a bad way to start out at all.
Ryan:No, not at all. The stock we had on hand went really fast afterwards. So the other goal is just always hit that flavor profile and what we're looking for in the production of everything, and keep it going.
DJ for Dalkita:What do you do to maintain your flavor profile?
Ryan:We have some standards. We always keep couple, a case or two of whiskey away from each batch, we can pull out as reference later on. But we have a look at past tasting notes. We run a full barrel log, every time we do a tasting, we log in our tasting notes and compare it to other barrels of similar size and placement, the distillery, age, those kinds of things. And then we do have a barrel proof program that we do, and it's basically cherry picking the best of the barrels. Something that may either could stand on its own, or maybe taking two or three barrels and blend them together. And whenever the proof ends up coming out, that's what it is. And so it's a fun way to highlight something that comes straight out of the barrel and our barrel proofs have gone anywhere from 114 to 103 proof. And the last one we just have, we sold out that right now, but it was 103.6 and that was because we put it in a lower proof, it was a little test batch, we put in the barrel at 100 proof. It was one of those,"Okay, let's try it and see how it goes". It's a 53 gallon barrel and normally we put in the barrels at 110.
DJ for Dalkita:You said, your highest gets up to 114. So, do you typically see an increase in proof during aging?
Ryan:Yeah. So up here in Washington, it's interesting. We'll have a nice real wet humid fall through spring and then our summers, I think we had over 90 days with less than 0.02 inches of rain. So it's been a good hot dry summer. And with that, it's been real dry in here in the facility, and then we get the north foreign production, we were adding humidity to it to open up the still, those kinds of things. So good cycling is important.
DJ for Dalkita:Very cool. You said, you were taking notes and one of them was about where it was in the warehouse. Can you share what you found about which part of the warehouse, what it's impact on flavor is?
Ryan:Yes, it's interesting. We've got some barrel racks up near our main big double door entrance. And then those are like the one extreme. The other extreme is we've got this knuck, back and above, behind the still, we are able to to load barrels up in there with a forklift. So it's like this little alcove loft area, it gets pretty hot and warm when the still is running, cause some of them are only 10 feet away from the still in the back, behind it. But it's up high at the tops of the columns. And then it cools down real fast too, in the evening. So we found that the area behind the still is where our barrel program spirits, definitely is the fastest and developed a richer profile. And, I think, it's just that constant heat-cool, heat-cool cycle versus any barrels up near the front, with the big double doors, carriage doors, they're developing just a little on the slower timeline because they are a little cooler, they don't get the heat like it does up near the still. But then it's also just a little higher humidity too. So just a little bit more stable environment.
DJ for Dalkita:Does that impact where you put your barrels based on size? Are you trying to take your 30 gallons and put them in the faster area or put them in the slower area?
Ryan:Exactly. Just depending on what we want to do, and we rotate it as well. And so like, we've gotten rum barrels. Particularly we like to rum barrels that we'd make up behind the still and they just seem to develop a nice rich profile. And even in that loft, we'll rotate them through. So like the barrels up front, take that heat the first and they've developed a little richer, faster profile. So we'll just rotate through depending on what we're seeing. If we've got time, then we maybe able to just move them around a little bit, or we will let them stay over near the big carriage doors as a way to just let them mature slower, which is great too. And, blending all that together adds complexity.
DJ for Dalkita:That's cool that you have such different environments to do that in. What does your blending program look like, or how do you do you're blending, is it in a big tank on load cells? What are you doing?
Ryan:Well, we've made it mostly blend. We've gotten a couple of blending tanks, anywhere from 500, a couple, 800 gallon tanks depending on what we need to utilize them for. But it's just tasting through the different barrels, and do really small blends, and percentage of what we have available, and what's coming online, and making sure everything works together, and then go ahead and empty the barrels, and pump that into the the bigger blending tank.
DJ for Dalkita:That makes a lot of sense.
Ryan:Yeah. We're still quite small, so it's definitely a slap your hands on approach to it all.
DJ for Dalkita:At least, you're large enough that you're not just doing a single barrel batches because that's all you have. Getting past that is the first hurdle.
Ryan:Usually for the single barrel batches, it's only going to be our barrel proof, because we only do that about once a year, we got to make sure we keep the 86 proof barrel or 86 proof rye lined in supply as we're growing. I see our future crux, If you would be able to still do a batch of barrel proof every now and then, because it's fun way to do it. I love it.
DJ for Dalkita:I always enjoy the single barrel, barrel proof stuff. It's a little bit more of a connection to the distillery that way. So the last one of your products, I want to talk about, that's a bit unusual is your Nocino.
Ryan:Well, it's called Nocino. And so that is actually, oftentimes, I always say it's my favorite spirit that we make, especially going into the fall, cooler months on winter time. It's just a nice, rich, flavorful spirit. We use immature green walnuts, English walnuts. And all start to finish, it's a two year process to make, for us.
DJ for Dalkita:How do you do it?,
Ryan:So we first go out, I've got walnut trees on my property in Snohomish. We've got five acres, throughout our area, it's an older farming community. There's only 9,000 people in the town, but there's a lot of 5 to 10 acre type properties around, even in town, there's quite a bit of walnut trees. And so we literally go, we've knocked on doors and asked to harvest their walnuts in the summer time. They stay in aids, people don't do anything with them. The squirrels get them, they make a mess, and they have to clean it up. So we get access, I could probably pick 20,000 pounds of walnuts, locally within a 10 mile radius, if I want to. It's a lot of work, because you have a quick window when they're ready too. But, the most we've ever harvested is about 4,000 pounds, in any one year. And we harvest some in the middle of summer time, between midnight of June 23rd and the 24th, it's when they want to do it, at Saint John's night. It's an Italian Digestivo, after dinner type drink. And we harvest them, we chop them up, we soak them the alcohol, it's a high proof rum that we utilize. And then, we do blend in some brandy that we distill as well to make it a little unique, and let that sit for a couple of months, and then we extract that. We actually have a bladder press, so we run the nuts through, to further extract the juice out, and then slowly bring it down to proof. We add citrus, we add a couple of different things there. And just the big thing is, we take about a year to bring it down in proof, all tall. And that's the special part where the flavors combine, you don't add too much water to shock it, and it changes that structure. So that's probably the one of the biggest things that makes it unique.
DJ for Dalkita:Is that color natural or is that an additive?
Ryan:It's the oxidation that walnut. So you cut open one of these walnuts, and you can still cut them open, they're immature, and you cut them open and if you don't have gloves on your hands, they get stained brown for about a week.
DJ for Dalkita:Why did you use a rum base? Is that just traditional or you were trying to add a little sweetness to the product? What was your thinking there?
Ryan:We make rum and we're utilizing Louisiana cane sugar for that, which is turbinado sugar. It's one of those where we had quite a bit. I think our first Nocino batch, probably, was actually a Triticale base, when we were playing around different things. My first ever, I made it at home, eight years, nine years ago. I just used like a high proof, 151 neutral spirit. But then, we went ahead and tried some different things, it's that high proofed rum, it's a neutral enough products, with nice Vanilla notes and everything to it. And is something that we really enjoyed working with.
DJ for Dalkita:And then you said you're cutting some brandy in there. Is that a fruit brandy or a true grape brandy? I guess, I didn't even know you made a brandy.
Ryan:It's a grape brandy, utilizing washington wine that we distill. And for us, it gives a little bit more of a body to it. The rum has got that nice natural vanilla sweet notes to it, and it just makes it really nice liqueur. For a lot of people, it also rides a little bit in the moral realm, because it's got some natural bitter notes to it too.
DJ for Dalkita:With it being a liqueur, how are you adding your sugar? Can you talk a little bit about the sweetening process?
Ryan:When we do the sugar, it's part of our dilution process. And so, we'll go ahead make a kinch, we use our turbinado sugar from Louisiana and we make basically batches of simple syrup with that, all pre measured with a recipe. And that's part of our dilution is, adding that slowly over time as well. And then we do zest, a couple of hundred oranges, a couple of hundred lemons, with a zester, and then we actually press the juice as well. So it gets really a complex citrus note added to it, that in any cocktail work, even just a tiny little bit of orange zest just brings it all out and makes it pop.
DJ for Dalkita:How are you handling the proofing aspect of this? If you're adding simple syrup, you're adding a little bit of juice, you've already got some solids from the walnuts. What does proofing this look like?
Ryan:Well, when we first started, we were sitting down to a lab, each batch. We were doing the math going slow and it got to expensive. So we have a little glass one liter still, so we do the proof by distillation method and that's just made a world of difference for us, being able to get really nice and consistent results. And we always know exactly the proof for every batch, and being able to make sure everything matches, really makes it perfect for consistency and accuracy.
DJ for Dalkita:Yeah, that does help. Are you doing that at the end, because you said you're taking a while to do this proof down? So, I guess, you're doing it by recipe and by touch for the first year and a half, and then you're using the still there at the end just to get it dialed in?
Ryan:We know that we use such a natural product. There are definitely natural variations moisture content, those kinds of things are going in with the walnuts. But we go with the recipe that we follow, and the formula, and then when we're getting close, we just monitor it. We'll take a sample, and really make fine tune it, as we can progress with the process. So, we bottle at 33% for the Nocino and it's dead on 33% every time. So we're able to naturally just monitor that. We're using this little glass still, and we're proofing our raspberry liqueur today as well. So we use that for the different liqueurs.
DJ for Dalkita:Since you mentioned it, are you harvesting raspberries yourself for your liqueur or are you purchasing those?
Ryan:The raspberries, we purchase there at the local farm up in Northern Washington, and Northern Washington is known literally as absolute best raspberry growing areas in the world in Whatcom County. So I've teamed up with the one of the farmers up there, I met him almost 8, 10 years ago. My previous life in agriculture gives me a lot of benefit of knowing amazing growers, getting really good quality fruit and just developing some solid relationships with them. But the walnuts unfortunately, we actually have to go and we pick all those ourselves. I've rented a 55 foot man lift, getting up in the trees, knocking them down into tarps and harvesting all those to eat up.
DJ for Dalkita:You may have to invite me along here this summer when you do that. Sounds like, it'd be really fun to do once.
Ryan:It's fun. It's hard work. It's usually just the first week of August up here and it's hot. This year, we had some good 90 degree days, but then last year I remember it, we had thunder and lightning and pouring down rain, we had to stop and get out of the field. So, they can be crazy, but it's fun. We get out and enjoy lunch, and there might be a bottle to nip on occasionally and we are out there in the field enjoying it.
DJ for Dalkita:Of course, it's the only way to make it work. So with your other liqueurs, the raspberry and the spiced apple, are they also rum base or are you using your brandy base for those? How do they work?
Ryan:Yes, they are. The raspberry started out as Triticale and then became the rum, high proofed rum. We do a spiced apple liqueur. We're in Washington, this is apple country as well. And that used to be, I think when we started it was high proof, like a high corn whiskey. But now, we moved everything to the rum and just really happy with it. We're able to control it, We distill it, so it just makes it really nice base for the liqueur. The raspberries, it's all just local Washington grown, raw materials.
DJ for Dalkita:If you were going to start your distillery again, what would you do differently?
Ryan:I think, I'd definitely start with more money and I'd probably, I paused, I'd hold on to that day job as long as I could. It takes a long time to build up the product, to then sell and get that rotation going. Here in Washington state, we get hit pretty hard on taxes, compared to some of the other states. It's ridiculous what we have to charge for our products because the taxes are so high, yet you don't get to enough revenue to cover bases and everything. We used to be a state run liquor system with the state run liquor stores and everything, but when it went private, the prices definitely went up, and we're the highest taxed in the country. I think first and foremost is, start with more money, and really plan for that long-term. What products you want to grow? I would probably have started doing some of the liqueurs earlier, and especially nowadays, the idea of starting off of distillery with vodka and gin, it just doesn't cut it anymore. There's too many out there. So you got to be able to find opportunities to differentiate yourself, or just jump in and start putting whiskey away and don't raise your head up for another couple of years. Any of the late comers, if you would, that's probably one of the better strategies. If you get a couple of partners, each one takes a day, running the equipment, making some product, putting it away and just rotate through like that.
DJ for Dalkita:Speaking of where everything's headed, where do you see the industry going in the next 5 to 10 years?
Ryan:I definitely think there's going to be continued innovations, some new types of whiskey or new finishes, but also I think just the classics, Rye whiskey, Bourbon, and then American single malt. I see it is definitely an emerging category that'd growing more and more. There's a ton of opportunity there, we grow amazing grain here in the US and there's no reason why that can't be further developed and explored.
DJ for Dalkita:If you were like most distillers and you had a limited supply of money when you got started, where do you think that money should be focused on to get the best result for your distillery?
Ryan:Really top quality branding. Labels, make your design work, pay way more attention to that than might think. There's a lot of really good juice on the market, from big distilleries to small distilleries, so your product needs to stand out. So don't skimp and save, we definitely did when we started, it hurt us later on. But just really high quality design on labels, marketing, graphics, that kind of stuff. Because, honestly, there's a lot of really good whiskies and spirits on the market, from big brands to small brands. So, really putting your best foot forward that way and your packaging to stand out, and then the raw materials side, is just good quality raw materials. Take your time developing a recipe and put away as much product as you can.
DJ for Dalkita:I think that's great advice. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Ryan:Absolutely. I definitely appreciate it amd enjoyed it.
Podcast Promo:Today's interview is brought to you by the team of architects and engineers at Dalkita. Dalkita has been serving the craft distilling industry for over 13 years, and are committed to production facilities that work. Now, Let's get back to the show.
Colleen Moore:A special thanks to Ryan Hembree for taking some time to talk with us on the show today. Up Next, our intern thinking about a career in distilling and his speech on the sources of sugar, and how they change between fermentation based materials.
DJ for Dalkita:Basically, at the end of the day, we ferment sugar in this industry and typically the yeast only eat simple sugars. As I'm sure everybody who's ever been on a diet knows there's complex carbohydrates and simple carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are your things like your grains or your starches and these long chain molecules, but they are all made up of the small blocks of sugar, that repeat through and through. Generally speaking, there's three types of base sugar. You've got Glucose, Dextrose and Fritos. There's a couple other smaller varieties that are combined in different ways, but those are the three main ones that effect us. And these little molecules are then combined together to create longer chains. These are the ones you might be more familiar as Sucrose, Maltose. And then from there, they get combined out to create the really long chains that we're familiar with it starch. That is the true base of fermentation are these sugar molecules. Now, the different sugar molecules react with the yeast in different ways. As we talked about a little bit in our yeast episode, certain types of yeast really only can process or preferentially process the lactose molecule. The yeast we're most familiar with, particularly coming from the brewery world or the bakery world, or obviously the distilling world are the ones that preferentially eat glucose and dextrose. That molecule then gets combined with frutose and get sucrose, which is our table sugar. So going back to basis, we're going to look at the different way of these molecules combined, and then how that is affects the different ways that you're going to need to do your mashing to get the sugar into the form that is necessary for the yeast to then act on it and fermentation, and it will also impact your fermentation in different ways. Again, lactose in milk and basically you're going to need a special yeast to attack your lactose. It's a pretty niche case, so we're actually working to get somebody on the show who will talk about lactose fermentation, but it'll probably be a combined episode cause they also do a bunch of other stuff. The simplest way to do a fermentation is with putting straight sugar into your fermentation. This is either your white table sugar, this is honey, this is molasses, this is maple syrup. These are already forms of sugar that are broken down into the form that the yeast can readily consume. The downside, particularly with white table sugar, is that these sugars don't have anything else with them. White table sugar is basically pure sucrose, and it needs to be inverted, which is broken in half. Basically, it's slightly more technical met down into the the glucose and the fructose molecule. This is where when you get your analysis reports, they'll talk about sugars and then inverted sugars. The inverted sugars are those that have been split and that are readily consumable by the yeast. These two have enzymes if they can produce to break down those complex sugars. They even have enzymes that can break down the really long chains as well. But the more time they spend doing that, the less time they're spending converting sugar into ethanol for us. So in white sugar, that needs to be broken down into the two molecules, the vet, the yeast can eat. Now the issue with honey, you see it particularly in meat basis, is that honey has such a strong sugar concentrate. We're typically talking about 75% sugar, that it actually creates an environment that is dangerous to the yeast. So honey needs to be diluted considerably before it is fermentable. And then due to the form of sugar in the honey, it tends to have longer fermentations and take longer to convert. A molasses is almost the opposite of honey in that, it has a lower relative sugar concentration. Typically, molasses is going to be somewhere in the 50% sugar range depending on what grade you're getting. And the reason this is, is molasses is the, let's call it gunk, leftover from the sugar creation process. So, our sugar slurry is going in from the beats or the cane, it's cooked out, and the sugar crystallizes. The liquid that runs off from that first round of crystallized sugar is our molasses. Now, it can be treated more to remove more sugar, and the more sugar that's removed, that create the different grades of molasses. In the case of beet sugar, the Stephens process is commonly used. And it's a sulfuring process that chemically treats the molasses to remove a large chunk of sugar from it, but it also makes the molasses, so it's virtually inedible by humans. So that's one of the problems you run into with beet molasses. If you can get non Stephan's beet molasses, it actually makes a pretty good product. The other monosaccharide comes from fruit products. In fruit fermentation, this is going to be your grapes, your apples, and your beers that kind of stuff, that's already in the simplest form. Frutose is, like I said, a monosaccharide. And so yeast can consume it directly. This is also the sweetest perceived sugar. It doesn't actually have more sweetness than table sugar, but it tastes sweeter on your tongue and your brain. So this is where like high fructose corn syrup comes from. By having that higher frutose level, they can use less of it, but still make you think it tastes sweeter. All that being said, it has nothing to do with fermentation. The nice thing about fruit though is that juice is readily fermentable. You don't need to do any conversion to it, even, if you would white table sugar to break it down into a form the yeast can eat. Fruit is about as good as it gets in terms of readily consumable by the yeast. Now, grain on the other hand is about as far away from readily consumable as you get. The grains themselves are made up of long, complex carbohydrates that need to be broken down considerably before they can turn into sugars that can then be consumed by the yeast. This is where our mashing process comes in. Generally speaking, what we do is, we use enzymes that are either intrinsic in the grains themselves from our malting process, and these are grains that typically have a high Daya static power. And that means that, they have a lot of the Emily's enzyme that we need, that will break down these longer chains into shorter chains. Now, there are other enzymes out there are Beta Emily's that will actually take those chains, and then chop the ends off of them, to make them even more fermentable. Not everybody does Beta rests when we're doing our mashing, but everybody at least as the alpha rest. There's a couple of different ways we can get these enzymes in. Obviously, we're looking at malted wheat, malted barley, or some of the highest content Emily's. We can also look at things like oats are fairly high. Those things, once they're malted, do a great job of then converting our other starches. If we don't have those in our fermentation, then we're going to need to use enzymes from a manufacturer or somewhere. And that'll do the breakdown for us, and so we'll be breaking down the long chains in the shorter chains. One of the shortest chains that these things break down to is maltose. Maltose is also a dye saccharide, and it's made from the combination of two glucose molecules. Maltose, obviously, is contained in malted starches and just as a different sugar in this short sugar chain that I'll help affect our flavor profiles. So those are the kind of the three main sources of fermentation that we see out there. We're going to get into some of the other ones that are a little bit weirder. We're going to talk about our ancient grains. These are things that look like grains, but aren't technically grains. This'll be stuff like buckwheat, Kainoa, sorghum. And all of these things. basically, they get treated very similar to true grains. In that, we're going to have to mash them and do a a sugar conversion on them. Sorghum actually can be processed directly to release sugar, so it's in a kind of a weird category in and of itself. The last thing we're going to talk about are other starches. This is our potatoes, rice, or sweet potatoes. In some cases, particularly in Saki manufacturer or Soju, if we're going to be distilling it, their conversion has done differently than what we see on the grain side of things. They're actually using mold to do that conversion. They're adding aspergillus. This is a mold that is native to Japan, and it will actually convert the starch in rice into sugar, and then that can be fermented. It's actually pretty sweet. In the weird starch category is sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes have a really interesting characteristic. They actually have a really high diallastic power, in that they convert starch readily to sugar. They also have a nice starch based themselves. So, a sweet potato base can actually do pretty much everything internal to itself to create a spirit. We're trying to get some people on who will be able to dig into each of these different categories and give you some more information. But today, we just want to let you know what's coming. And if you have any suggestions on either grains, we can get into, or other categories of fermentable is that we should talk about, as always, please let us know.
Colleen Moore:Are 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 i.e. 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 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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