Distilling Craft
Distilling Craft
Milling It Over
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Jody Thorpe from Dancing Pines in Loveland, CO is interviewed to talk about their process. The methods for milling grain at craft distilleries is discussed including when to use pre-milled, flaked or whole grains.
You're listening to Distilling Craft, Episode (9), "Milling it Over". Today, we're going to be talking with Jody Thorpe from Dancing Pines in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Podcast PromoDistilling Craft is brought to you by Dalkita, a group of architects and engineers who specialize in designing craft distilleries across the US. More information is available at our website, dalkita.com [d a l k i t a .com].
Colleen MooreHello everyone. Welcome to Distilling Craft. I'm Colleen Moore. Hey, just a quick thing before we start today's show - while we're hard at work, lining up new interviews and producing new shows, and you are so kindly waiting on us, we're going to reissue a couple of our episodes from Season (1) with some previously unreleased material mixed in. We revisit Episode (9) from Season (1), with Jody Thorpe from Dancing Pines Distillery. Jody's the production manager at Dancing Pines Distillery. He's going to talk with us about their products and their production methods. Later, our radiogenic part-time distiller DJ talks with us about the different ways to get green into your distillery. Welcome to the show, Jody.
Jody ThorpeThanks. I'm excited to talk to you.
DJ for DalkitaAwesome. My introduction to Dancing Pines was a long time ago. I actually bought some of your spiced rum for a rum tasting I was doing, to approve the concept that people wanted to drink rum from my distillery. And to date it is still the best spiced rum I've ever had. Tell me a little bit about how you make it.
Jody ThorpeWell, first of all, thank you. It's a process that really begins with that initial rum, we use a black strap molasses that we get out of the Gulf. Everything we're using is organic, and it's just that initially. When you're doing our rum, that's a wash, not a mash. So we're doing a wash fermentation. It just takes the time and using the right ingredients, not overheating it, not denaturing those sugars too much. And then when you get that fine rum, you get it into a barrel, because that's a cask of rum that that spice is coming from, and then we add those ingredients directly to the barrel. So the Vanilla, the Vietnamese, cinnamon, some of the other ingredients are going directly in the barrel and they're in there for probably anywhere between three and four months. So that color that you're getting and that flavor that you're getting is a part of that barrel process. So, I think, that's unique to the rum. You can make it quicker, but if you take your time in that end process, if you've had it, you understand what I'm talking about. It's just a little bit different.
DJ for DalkitaIt certainly does make a difference. I've seen recently, not recently, recently to me, you have released a bourbon and a rye whiskey. How long are you aging those?
Jody ThorpeThe bourbon is a straight bourbon. That grain bill is 75 corn, 12 and a half rye, 12 and a half barley. It's all organic, non GMO. It's coming right down from the distillery in Berthoud. There's a couple of farms that we were working with, the farmers are passionate about providing a really fine grain for us to work with. And Colorado's special for a couple of reasons, and I think every distiller is going to say this about their region, but we're finding that these bourbons, that the grain is superior, the corn in Colorado, the cold nights, the hot days, it's like a grape; If you starve it just enough, it's going to get sweeter and sweeter. These guys are really turning out some fine grain. And then with us having access to water that was coming out Estes Park, out of Rocky Mountain National Park a few hours ago, makes it even better. So, the bourbon is a two year straight bourbon, it's been in the barrel no less than two years. We're finding that aging barrels in Colorado is a little different, because our barometric swings are so great and it's so dry. We had snow on Mother's Day, and then it was in the 90s, and then we just had 40 days of rain. And you can see in our barrel room, you'll see those barrels just start to sweat the sugar out of them. It sounds all good until you crack that thing open and you realize that your angel share was so great, so that's your trade off. We're able to age a barrel out, I think at a quicker rate, but there is a happy medium there. I was working with an old distiller in Kentucky and he said, he was the first one that got me to realize, He's like, "You're never really going to have a 20 year barrel whiskey come out of Colorado unless it's in a humidor, like a baseball from the Rockies", he says it's just not going to happen. We crack open barrels and they're dry, but 10-year barrel is going to be phenomenal. I'm hoping we can get a 10-year barrel, I'm afraid it'll be dry, from what I'm seeing. But the bourbon is exciting, it's good, it's different. It's nice to try whiskeys, bourbons from different regions of the country. Some folks are selling grain with Kentucky bourbons and 95% of your bourbon still, I think it was in 2014, that I was reading, 95% of them still came out of Kentucky. So, to provide a bourbon in a different part of the country, I think it just strengthens the national spirit, if that makes sense.
DJ for DalkitaIt certainly does. It's always fun for me to see people start spreading it around, and I don't nearly get the question as often, "Oh! I didn't know you could make Bourbon outside of Kentucky and Tennessee", It's nice that's at least going away. Are you working on a longer age product? Do you actually have some barrels set aside for 5 or 10 years?
Jody ThorpeWe do. Well, we have three barrels right now, we call them the college fund barrels, because Kim and Christian have two daughters, and I have a daughter. So currently they are the longest running barrels, they're single malt. My kiddo is nine, so we'll see how long that barrel lasts. Right now, those are the three experimental barrels that are going the farthest. But we do have some of my Rye Whiskey, which is pretty special. It's a 100% Rye, which if you know anything about mashing and fermenting with Rye, it can be difficult.
DJ for DalkitaMalted rye or is it all just straight?
Jody ThorpeThis is a straight organic rye that is the sugar, cause we do a bricks test and the sugar test, and it's just through the roof. I think, you'll see bricks test on Rye in the middle of the country that are 17 and 18 and 19, and we get 22. And the same with the corn, the bricks test in the middle of the country will be 15, maybe you'll get some good 17 bricks in there, but we get 19. So when I was talking about the grain being a little bit more special, it's definitely got a higher sugar content to it, at least the stuff we're working with. And if you look at the region we're in, we're surrounded by farms owned by Coors and Budweiser. So if that tells you anything, the big guy's doing this years and years ago, so to have the access to these grains is pretty special. Not to get too far off the whiskey track, we do have some Ryes that are approaching two years in the barrel. We really don't advertise that, it wasn't on our intent, but it's just gone that direction, and that Rye whiskey is something special.
DJ for DalkitaAre you going to do a straight rye release at some point, if you get enough barrels?
Jody ThorpeWe have it, it's available now. So currently, yeah. So I'd say, since we started in 2009, we had a number of products, probably 15 different products we've worked with. In the past year, we've went ahead and slimmed down to our top seven products, that we make available for distribution and our tasting rooms. It's a nice compliment because really it's a complete bar. You have the ability to make old fashions, and you have the ability to make Manhattans, Moscow mules, any of the rum cocktails. We have a nice vodka that we've added to the line. So, currently our number one seller is our black walnut, a bourbon liquor. And so it's our two year straight bourbon. We add a crushed black walnut directly to the barrel, and we allow it to age for several more months. And it is this beautiful, dark liquor that has really taken a lot of people who don't like bourbon or whiskey, and has gotten them to try some other products, because it just takes a little bit of that edge of that whiskey off. But it's a very popular liquor, it makes a great old fashion. That's our three whiskeys, that would be the Black walnut, the Bourbon, and the Rye, currently.
DJ for DalkitaWhat are you doing to make the liquor? What kind of sugar and how much sugar?
Jody ThorpeJust to touch, it's a pure sugarcane, raw sugarcane, that we're putting in. But it's not syrupy sweet, it's just got a nice flavor to it. And really the walnuts are what make the difference, the black walnuts are what mellow the whiskey and sweeten it up, but it gives it a real nice earthy, nutty tone to it.
DJ for DalkitaAre you getting any bitterness from those walnuts?
Jody ThorpeNo, it's really nice. And I think part of that is, it's not there because of the barrel. We're doing it in the barrel.
DJ for DalkitaHave you got any other liquors?
Jody ThorpeYeah, we do. We have a child liquor, which is very popular, it's in the top hundred spirits in the world. It's a spice tea liquor that we make, that makes a phenomenal Manhattan. So my favorite cocktail is a Rye Manhattan. She's our rye whiskey with that Chai instead of vermouth, and it's just a real popular drink. Gets at some of the finer restaurants in Colorado and in Boulder, and some of the hotels, it's on their menu as a Chai Manhattan. And again, it's phenomenal. It's a pretty special liquor that we make. The other thing that we make, is a real nice new west style gin, there again, we've converted a lot of people who just come in and they're like, "I don't drink gin". You would know. You could tell it happened in high school, or something bad happens. So when you got a hold of Grandpa's gin and got really turned off by it, but when they try our gin, they see that it's that new west style, which has more of a nice liquorish finish. It's not so juniperry, it's got herbaceous quality to it that really makes a nice summer cocktail. So, the gin is very popular, the spice rum we talked about, and then finally the vodka is the only thing that's not grained to bottle at our distillery. We get a Chardonnay grape out of a vineyard in California that we work with. And we triple distill that Chardonnay and it just makes a phenomenal vodka that's a really clean palate, for any mixologist or bartender that wants to make a great cocktail and wants to use a vodka.
DJ for DalkitaAny reason you're using a California Chardonnay instead of one of the local Colorado ones?
Jody ThorpeIt was a relationship that we started a few years ago and it was just something that, the quality that we found was just unsurpassed, currently. Now that being said, I wouldn't be opposed to try and doing some work in combination with some local vineyards. And I think that could be potentially on our horizon, some local combinations like that, like we do with our whiskey barrels and local brewers. We're always trading out some of our spent barrels to some of the local brewers for them to work with.
DJ for DalkitaThat makes perfect sense.
Jody ThorpeIt's nice to get those partnerships. Yeah.
DJ for DalkitaWell, I wanted to circle back to your rye. So you said it was a 100% rye and you weren't doing any malted rye there, so you're doing an enzyme treatment during mashing then?
Jody ThorpeYes, we do an enzyme treatment. We really try to follow the farmer and the season now. So when I make my rye and my bourbons, I like to do those in the fall and in the winter when it's cold. The heat that those fermenters put off, you can cool them of course with water, but the seasonality, after doing this for a while, it has a little role in it. The yeast and the temperature outside of that fermenter, makes more of a natural process. So I try to do the bourbon and the ryes in the winter, and that's how we manage that rye being such a problem, because when you add that yeast to that fermenter and that rye has that much sugar in it, you have to really manage that process temperature-wise and amount of yeast of course, because you'll just be blowing it up, all day long. I think, from what I've heard, that's part of the reason why folks get nervous when it comes to just doing a straight rye.
DJ for DalkitaAre you opening the doors to your distillery to do that? Or just naturally letting the temperature drop out? How are you doing that?
Jody ThorpeYeah, it is. I mean, the distillery that we're working in, it's a great facility. But we do have the ability to open some doors and adjust that airflow that way, and cool things off. But in our facility, when you're running the still, it'll heat up, it also heats up that room. So it's just that when you're working that hard, it would be a different rye whiskey if I made it in August, if that makes sense.
DJ for DalkitaCertainly, fermenter temperature matters
Jody ThorpeAdjust fermenter temperature. And even if you cooled it, even if you artificially had an ice chiller, I still feel that there's enough exterior factors involved that we're just not smart enough to understand that makes for a different whiskey. So, for me, the ideal time to make my rum is when it's warm, because that mash and that yeast is a little bit more geared towards a higher temperature, which makes sense. Because if you think about that, probably a good portion of your rum came from the equator. So at some point, if you trace back those cultures or the bacteria that they were using to start to ferment, it obviously came back from that region, so obviously warmer temperatures would make more sense. But that's if you're getting into heirloom style cultures, if that makes sense.
DJ for DalkitaRight. What are you using for your yeast?
Jody ThorpeThat's the magic question, and that's proprietary. I'll be honest, I was involved in that environment when I was in the cheese business, research and development. We developed a number of cultures and that's the name of the game. But the interesting thing now is, there's just so much available on the market, that a new distiller or someone who wants to try a new product can really be creative and have a lot of help from the purveyors of those items, because there's a lot of knowledgeable guys out there in the grain and the enzymes and then the yeast. So they're extremely helpful. But it did take us a number of years to get to where we wanted to be on the yeast.
DJ for DalkitaAre you cultivating your own yeast or you buying it from one of the white labs and those guys?
Jody ThorpeIt's something that we've put together, but I'll tell you, we are working with a great intern last summer, that worked with us from CSU. They've got a great microbiology fermentation program, distillation program going on at Colorado State University. We had talked about going out and starting to harvest some wild yeast in some different regions, in our area. So that being said, I would say that when I get to that point where I have that kind of time on my hand, that's going to be a great project to work on. But currently, we're very satisfied with the yeast that we've worked with, and it's given us the results that we've looked for.
DJ for DalkitaIt makes sense, I was just curious. I'm trying to find somebody who's cultivating their own yeast, so we can figure out how the rest of us can do that.
Jody ThorpeYeah. And believe it or not, if you have access to a local community college, local universities there, people are looking for those intern opportunities in distilleries, which opens your door up to a whole university of connections. People in the biology department, people that are going to go out and look at different grains and yeasts, and then it gives you the opportunity to give something back to them as well, as far as the lecture opportunities, and talking about small batch distillers and opportunities in the future for that. But yeah, we've had a lot of success with working with the university and with the intern program.
DJ for DalkitaI'm a little unclear. Are you using jacketed fermentation or are you using uncontrolled fermenters and using your ambient temperature to control it?
Jody ThorpeNope, they are jacketed, so I do have the ability to control them. I've just gotten to almost a rhythm, to where we have to utilize very little of that external temperature control. Yeah, it's nice. I've been in big production, we'd also keep the lights on as a startup distillery. And you're waiting for your first two year bourbon, because the owners, Kim and Christian, really went about it with integrity and said, "We're not going to buy anything else, we're going to make all our own products, we're going to truly age it out to where it's a straight bourbon". You have to be creative to keep the lights on and unless you have deep pocketed investors that trade off with the deep pocket, you know what the big investor is, they may not want to wait as long as you for that return on that investment. So as an artist, as somebody who's trying to do small batch distilling as almost a true art, you need to have that ability to have that control over your destiny. And that is the hard row to hoe, because it takes a lot of money to get a distillery up and running initially, and the payback is slow to come back. But by doing that and having that integrity, you have a really nice product at the end, and you can truly say, "We didn't buy anything from anybody else, this is our version of national spirit and we'll put it up against anybody else out there".
DJ for DalkitaWith all the grain you are dealing with, are you milling in-house or you getting pre-milled grain?
Jody ThorpeNo, I get them in 2000 pound totes, and then we mill in-house. We recently moved our facility from Loveland to Berthoud. So we have a new facility there, I think we're going to have our product milled and blended for us, because we're at that point where we can have our grain bill put together and milled for us, specifically the way we want it, and that's just going to make us more efficient. We have two tasting rooms, one in Breckenridge, Colorado and one in Estes Park. The Estes Park is, 207 Park Lane, and Breckenridge is, 201 North Main Street. They're pretty prominent in the towns, and that's where we sell directly to our consumers from. So with having those tasting rooms, you got to have, that's my labor, that's my people, those are the folks I try to put my focus on and we have very little labor in production. Christian and I try to do most of it. So if we can find an opportunity to get more efficient in the production side, we look at it, as long as it doesn't compromise that in run. We've made some moves with bottling equipment this year that really made us efficient.
DJ for DalkitaWhat did you do?
Jody ThorpeWe just got a higher quality, very nice Italian machine that could do everything we needed it to do, in one pass. So one guy can bottle thousands of bottles, it's not very difficult. You put the case on one end, you take the case off the other end. But that's those efficiencies where, being in business since 2009, we've learned, what can you do to be efficient and be able to meet the demand of the consumer as you grow without compromising your art. Truly, we talk about that, our tasting rooms are not a bar, it's not a liquor store, this is our art gallery where we display our work. And we can show you all kinds of neat things you can do with this, an old fashion, Manhattan, a mule, whatever you want. We have that ability to be creative with it. But when you go from a certain size small batch distiller, it's okay when you start out, because you can be small and not meet the needs or run out here and there. But when you get to the next level, where you're in distribution, restaurants, liquor stores, and high end bars are counting on you being there, you need to have the ability to have that just in time production mentality. I don't have a warehouse full of product sitting anywhere, I know what I'm going to need, projected out. I have my barrel house, it's stocked for what I project out, three, four years in advance, but shy of that, it's not like I have product and bottles, taking up valuable warehouse space. It's management that you really have to be on top of, because you can tie up all your cash in supplies, or in bottles, or in grain, and now you're not meeting other needs. So it's a balancing act.
DJ for DalkitaCan you talk a little bit about how you do those projections? That's something that's very difficult for a lot of craft distillers. Since you've got a pretty good system, would you mind telling us about it?
Jody ThorpeWell, I would say that it's a system that works for us. We just have to be able to manage what our projections are for the next year. So you just look at the following year, you work with your distributor, and you try to do some practical forward expectations. But that being said, we still have moments where there's ebbs and flows in the business, and so we have to adjust. We just went through a very rainy monsoon season here in Colorado, and we had 40 plus days of rain in the July and the first part of August. And we noticed it in tasting rooms, in the bottle sales. So that really affects our outlook, we weren't expecting that. So, there are still those obstacles that arrive that you're not prepared for.
DJ for DalkitaSo you're just doing a year over year basis with some analysis from your distributor, to do projections?
Jody ThorpeYeah, that's really how we've been able to do it. We've opened a second tasting room this year in Breckenridge, and so we're going into our first winter up there. Right now, we're having meetings trying to figure out, what do you think our output is going to be in Breckenridge in the winter? It's one of the most visited places in the world, in the winter, and we're at the base of the Gondola. So, our projections could be wildly off, we don't know. Hopefully, we're in a great position where we're scrambling to keep up.
DJ for DalkitaI'd like to circle back real quick. We were talking about your Rye and how you are doing it seasonally. And so you have your rum in the summer, and your bourbon and rye in the fall, winter time. I know particularly with line right now, it's crushed when a lot of it's being made. Are you bringing it to the Chardonnay right now to get it fermented out, or you bringing it in the spring to fill that gap in your schedule? How are you fitting it?
Jody ThorpeThe vodka is what's great and you hit it right on the nose. So then that's what I do, I fill in those gaps with the other spirits. So we just did a big vodka run, and we're pretty well stocked up on that run for the foreseeable, I would say six months. I'm trying to make my production as efficient as possible. When we started, we used to chase our tail, we'd get that big order and be like, "Oh, we've got to fill that order". And I'm sure anybody that's listening, that had a microbrewery or is doing a distillery knows exactly what I'm talking about. You got to fill that order, you've got to fill that order. Well, we're just kind of shifted into that next phase, we're able to fill that order out of a supply that we produce twice a year, that we bottle twice a year I should say.
DJ for DalkitaOkay. So you actually do have some amount of bottle storage, case storage, onsite, that you just build inventory into, and then pull out of over the the course of the year.
Jody ThorpeRight. One of the things we've done with our bottle purveyor is, we've made sure that we can get our bottles, we're not held hostage by any one purveyor, if that makes sense. So that we utilize that ability to get our bottle in a little bit shorter lead time, so that we're not tying up revenue with storage. Here's the catch, the 22. The bottle producer wants you to buy x amount of bottles, and you don't need that much. So what ends up happening is ,you buy that amount of bottles and you store it. Well, that has to be factored into every single bottle. What is the cost of the bottle now after you stored that bottle for nine months, or a year? And then, the liability of having that bottle on your facility or in your control, or if it gets broken or it gets dirty. So there's a lot of things that you try to factor in to production. And so one of the nice things is, Kim and Christian are the minds and the artists behind the products, but they've got a good mind for production. My background being in that, I think we've made some pretty some moves for the company, to ensure our ability to keep up with demand and keep quality in check.
DJ for DalkitaSo if you were going to start your distillery again, what would you do differently?
Jody ThorpeOh boy! God, what a great question! You know, they were such valuable lessons, everything we learned and everything that we did wrong, really got us to where we are now. So I don't know if I would. We're still in business, so it's like all right. But, was there a point where we were one mistake away from not being in business, in hindsight? Yeah. I'm sure there were, but it just seems like that natural path, that I think any business, any entrepreneur takes, is important to find in your way. I would say, you want to be afraid of making big mistakes, but you don't want to put yourself in a box because you're living in fear. I think small batch distilling. Like our approach was, it was never thought of as like, "Hey, let's make a ton of money by making whiskey". It was, "Hey, how can we make whiskey, and make the best whiskey we can make and the best spirits we can make". So if you're coming from it from that angle, then mistakes are part of that learning process. And, I think, we made mistakes in different products. We've tried things that didn't work, but out of that creativity, came a lot of stuff that really worked well. I don't know if that really answers your question. Don't mess with the Fire Department, number one. Don't mess with the ATF, Don't mess with the feds. Have your house in order. I know from one thing, that we're big on having a cleaning facility. We have a USDA inspected facility, we're proud of it, it looks nice. When you walk in there, It feels like a food production facility, because my background in cheese. I enjoy that feeling of, "Man, this place, you could eat off the floor, it's clean. And Kim and Christian are the same way. So that makes it a little easier to not have unforeseen problems from sanitation. And an EP with something in your bottle, you never want it in there in the first place.
DJ for DalkitaWhere do you see the craft distilling industry going in the next 5 to 10 years?
Jody ThorpeWell, I was at a conference a few years ago, and I think they said we have roughly one and a half percent of the market, the total spirits market. Maybe it's a little different now, but I think we're exactly on the same track that microbreweries were 25, 30 years ago. Everything I've seen statistically, it is just a dead ringer. So I see us growing at a nice clip. The nice thing about being in Colorado where we're at is, the consumer is very concerned about what they're buying, what they're ingesting, where it came from. Did you hurt anybody making this? So, to have a story like we have and have the kind of philosophy that we have as a company, really meshes well with that consumer. So I see nothing but potential and growth ahead of us. My interest will be in the big guys, the big players, and how much of a threat that they think that the small batch distiller is. The lesson that they've learned from microbreweries is not going to fall definitely, the second go around. And you've already seen that, what some of the big guys are making to try to keep up with small batch distillers.
DJ for DalkitaWhat would be your advice to a new distiller who came to you and said, "Hey, I've got a limited budget, What should I focus on?"
Jody ThorpeWow, that's really a great question. I guess, I would spend the money on trying to find a place where there isn't anybody else, which there's a lot of places still out there. There's a lot of quaint little communities, small towns that have a nice tourist season or they have a nice market that you can tap into, where there's nobody there yet. I guess if I didn't have a lot of money, I wouldn't maybe try to start in Downtown Denver, if that makes sense. But I might go and try to start in a small community that's on the verge of blowing up because Denver is blowing up. So like you see now, the microbreweries, they're popping up. They're in the warehouses, they're everywhere, and they're visited mostly by the same group of people, the same locals. It's almost a clubhouse, a hangout scenario. So like a Starbucks, almost that scenario. Bring your kids have a couple beers and you're not at a bar necessarily. I think there's a lot of potential in that area. I wouldn't discourage someone, if you didn't have all those resources, that's not to say that they won't come. It's definitely a skill set that's re-emerging. Like I said, I had that intern from CSU, and God, this kid is so smart. I can't believe that I'm working with this guy that's way smarter than me and I'm showing him how to distill. It's still a craft, It's still an art. So, that ability to be creative and do something special and unique is really - the sky's the limit right now. So if you are a small batch distiller just starting out and you thought you had something special, I'd say go for it, because it's the gold rush. I tell folks that, all the time. And in that same sense though, you got to remember who made all the money during the gold rush, wasn't the miners. It was the guy selling the shovels and the picks, and the guy in town who ran the hotel. And, I think that there's going to be a lot of ancillary business for small batch distilleries. That's going to really create a lot of business and job opportunities, hopefully in the near future.
DJ for DalkitaI think that's a great place to end it for today. Thank you very much for coming on the show Jody.
Jody ThorpeYeah, you bet. This was great and I hope if we get a chance, we get to talk again soon.
Podcast PromoToday'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 MooreThanks again to Jody for taking the time to talk with us on our show today. Up next, our Engineer intern DJ and his oration on different ways to get grain into your distillery.
DJ for DalkitaMilling is a huge deal to everybody who is making whiskey and not a big deal to everybody else. But, I think, it's a good topic since a vast majority of the distilleries out there are milling their own grain and those that aren't, they're at least using pre milled grain. And so I figured we could talk about what to look for, what's going on in the mill, and what's going to do to affect your product? So, starting off, what's the difference between buying a pre-milled grain, flaked grain, or buying whole grain? So, the easiest difference is between flaked grain and any kind of milled grain. Flaking is a process where, basically, they steam the kernels and then roll them, and you basically end up getting our product a similar to like a Quaker oats, where it very quickly turns into a mush and you can mash fairly quickly, and you can get really good flavor from it. To extend the analogy, the difference between flaked grain and milled grain is the difference between Quaker oats and a Steel cut oats, and you're going to get a different amount of the kernel. And so you're going to get a lot more husk, which is going to slow down your mashing process. The downside of flaked grain is that, by steaming it, you're actually going to slightly cook some of the grain and you're going to lose some of the flavor to that steam. In most cases, it's not noticeable, but for those of you who are really looking for a very robust product, you definitely want to look more at the milled grains. Now with pre-milled versus in-house milled. In reality, there's no difference. The closest there is to a difference is in customization. When you're getting it milled out of house, you're typically going to a large house that, unless you are very large, is milling for a large client base. And basically, at that point in time, they're saying, this is what our mill is, or what our grain size is, grist size is, and you can take it or leave it, this is what we're selling. When you're milling in-house, you can pick exactly what you want. Obviously, there's a lot of advantages to being able to select your grist size. So those are the three big categories. That being said, there's a whole bunch of small categories. So once we get into milling in-house, the first thing to talk about is the type of mill that we're using. The main categories breakdown into roller mills and hammer mills. And, basically, roller mills work by having too long steel, normally steel bars that are rotating in the same direction and they take the grain at the top and they squeeze it. And by doing this, it flattens out the grain. That grain then drops down and the husk can typically be separated off, especially if you have multiple rows of rollers. That's different , you have a single roller, a two, four, six or singles, two opposing rollers. And then there's different bypasses built in, when you start talking about fours and sixes. So that once the husk comes off the grain, it can go round and it doesn't get treated anymore, so that it doesn't break down and create weird flavors, and then you can crush the remaining particle down. Not Quite as small as you'd like, but pretty much a small as you like. With hammer mills, they're basically what they sound like. There is a big hammer that is swirling around on an axis, and that hammer then crushes the grain up against the sides of the mill, which keeps breaking it down. Then there is some kind of filter, typically on the outlet side of that hammer mill that will require the particles to stay in the mill until they're crushed down to the size small enough to blow out that. And then, typically, there's a blower of some sort that is helping those particles, make it through a mesh filter, and then blowing it out to then be treated later. This isn't always the case. You can do a gravity feed. There's a couple of different ways to handle it, but the air cycle is probably the most common, either as a vacuum or as a blower. So the question I get is, how to choose between a hammer mill or a roller mill? Generally speaking, roller mills are more expensive and require more maintenance. Hammer mills are cheaper, but they don't last as long, but they don't require maintenance. The other big difference is particle size. What size particle do you want to be using for your mash? If you are using a watering method, you need a larger particle in order to not have it bridge off and pack the screen at the bottom, you'll get a lot more efficient process, with a slightly bigger particle. Generally what that means is, If you're using a Lauter tun, we want to keep the component of your grist, that's flour, below about 25%. If you get more than 25% flour, depending who you talk to, flour's defined as, it'll fit through a 0.04 millimeter mesh. On the other hand, you're just using a conventional mash tun and you're pulling off the grain in your fermenter, you're distilling on the grain, we can have a little bit more flour in there and start seeing a 22, 25%. That's really the determining the Lauter Tun and the Mash Tun. If you're doing a mash filter, we can get a lot finer grain. In this case, we can get down, and we want something on the order of 30, 35% flour because that mash filter can really extract down to very small numbers. The next benefit of particle size is how long your mash takes. It takes a lot less time to convert a small particle than it does to convert a large particle, and that's mainly a surface area thing. In order to get down to the center of a larger particle, you've got to work through the outer area. And so what you'll see is, with a bunch of small particles, your surface area is huge compared to a smaller number of large particles. We can drop mash times down in the order of an hour to two hours to completely cook your mash if you can grind for those mash filters. But that being said, mash filters are also fairly expensive, typically in the the order of 100,000, $150,000 for a craft distillery. So that's not practical for most people. If you are working in a lauter tun range, there's not a whole lot of benefit to the hammer mill, except for the fact that hammer mills work really well on corn, and some roller mills have problems with the corn. This is a big problem in general, in the industry, particularly for craft brewers, is that we are trying to adapt technology from the brewing side into the distillery side, and all the brewing equipment is really set up around malt. I was talking to a dealer for Mash filter the other day, for one of our clients, and we were talking about what the load is in pounds per gallon for this distillery, and how many total tons of grain they are going to be using and running through this filter. And what the gentleman was saying was that, malt is considered a one and they design their filters based off of pounds of malt per batch, basically. Now, if you're using rye, the rye particles tend to be easier on the filter. And so the rye had a relationship of like 0.75. On the other end of the spectrum, corn was much harder on the filter, and so it had a relationship for about 1.3. So if your filter was rated for one ton of malt, you could only use three quarters of a ton of corn in there, or you could get up to about one and a third tons of pure rye. So this causes issues if your distillery is making a pure Rye whiskey and making a heavy corn bourbon. And so this is where we need to start talking about, not just what do you want to do, but what are you trying to make? And trying to make whiskeys is a great category, but sometimes you need specialized equipment to do well on each type of whiskey. And so I would start looking at, well, if you want to make single malt, particularly a traditional single malt, I would say, "Okay, let's get a lauter tun, let's do a hammer mill, cause that's fairly traditional". And then let's start looking at, "Let's do a larger particle size to make the lauter tun work". And then, we're going to run it through a whirlpool or a mash filter, and kick that over, rather than trying to do really large particles in a slow mash. There's just a bunch of different ways to set the system up based on what you're trying to make. The next thing to talk about is, what we're doing with hammer mills. In a hammer mill, we are crushing the grain considerably. It is possible to over-grind your grain. You'll hear me in particular, really be a fan of small ground grain, which is a terrible way to say it. But with small grinds, we will be able to mash quicker, be more efficient through our process, extract more of the sugar from the grain. Typically you'll see your mash ratios dropped from three, three and a half pounds per gallon, down to about two pounds per gallon, because you're able to more efficiently extract that sugar. But the downside, if you grind too much, is that all of a sudden you're going to start getting more husk in there, and you're going to get a lot more of that husk flavor because that husk is being crushed as well. This isn't as much of an issue in roller mills, but they don't go quite as small either. That husk puts a real astringent flavor into your whiskeys. And so we want to try to be certain that we're not over-crushing, to make sure that the husks stays whole and keeps its flavor out of our product, at least as much as possible. So with roller mills, the big downside is clearance. They have to be very close together in order to create the crushing action that we need. But when we start using different size particles, this is the rye versus corn particle that we were just talking about, we need to adjust that roller mill. So if you were doing a four grain bourbon, you're going to need to stop your milling process in there, depending on how you're doing it. Probably have three different roller settings, you could probably get by with two, but doing it on one is going to create some really funky distributions in your grist size. That's generally a pain for anybody who's trying to make a lot of product, and it's a huge pain for anybody who is trying to make product quickly. It doesn't take a ton of time to adjust a roller mill, we're talking 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. But if you just got your corn ground, and you're taking your corn and running it straight to the Mash Tun, do you really want to have to stop and then go spend 10 minutes, while that's cooking, in order to get your next malt ground? It's a pain and there's not a lot of great ways to do it. While I'm talking about getting things from your middle into your Mash Tun, let's take a quick safety break, and what we're going to talk about here is dust. By definition, almost all of milled grains is considered dust, by the fire code. And the reason this is, is they are extremely hazardous. And basically 1/100th of an inch of dust on the floor of an eight foot, nine foot room, if it's lofted up in the air, spark will explode. If you have less than that, you're generally okay, if you have more than that, it's just a bigger firewall. We need to be very careful if we're milling in-house. Dust explosions are very dangerous, when dust is combined with ethanol vapors, the limit that makes them explode drops by about half. And so we need to be very cautious, especially in distilleries that have vapored ethanol. We can do a lot of damage by milling in-house. I've got a couple of systems that I've worked on to help mitigate this problem. One of the newer ones I'm looking at, is a nitrogen blanket inside the auger system and mash tun, in order to remove the oxygen and prevent the fire hazard, that way. Obviously, this isn't practical for anything that people are going to be getting their head into, which includes a lot of Mash Tun designs. There's other things that you can do, slurry systems, hydrating at different points to basically get that grain too wet to explode. But you want to spend a little bit of time if you're milling in-house, going through the safety and making sure you understand how clean it really needs to be. Getting the right equipment, not just shot back from home depot, but getting an actual class one div two, or class one div one vacuum, that won't create a spark and explode that dust, as you're vacuuming it up and being clean and safe. There's a whole pile on dust safety, but that's a little quick brief overview. Please spend the time, go over that.
Colleen MooreAre you interested in filing a report with us? Well, we're actively seeking professionals to give us the low down on the technical aspects of distillery operations, for our listeners. Contact us via our website with your pitch. Do you have feedback on this show? Well, send us an email to DistillingCraft@dalkita.com. Of course, if you want to find out more about this specific episode, go to our show notes on our web page. That's Dalkita.com/shownotes. Remember, you can subscribe to this podcast at Apple podcasts or however you get your podcast.
Our theme music was composed by Jason's Shaw and is used under a Creative Commons attribution 3.0 license. And finally, a special thanks to the Dalkita team behind this production, and the man that puts it all together, Our sound editor, Daniel Phillips of Zero crossing productions. Until next time, stay safe out there. I'm Colleen Moore.
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