The decision to incorporate a distillery into your brewery should be highly considered. Giving your customers multiple options not only keeps your company relevant, but also adaptable. Your patrons may feel like a beer one day, but decide to have a cocktail the next. You can provide that service to them. In an increasingly competitive market, you can distinguish your company apart from the crowd with this simple addition. We can help breakdown what you need to know to help guide you in your decision to go from brewery to brewstillery!
Overview
Making the transition from a brewery to a brewstillery has its challenges, but also tremendous potential as a value-add. The addition of a still and a few other pieces of equipment allow you to expand your offerings to a new customer base while reaching a new revenue stream that complements what you are already doing.
Consider Your Fermenters
If you are already running a brewery, chances are you have the first part of the distilling process already covered: fermentation. A key difference, though, is that a spirit wash doesn’t require the same level of sanitation, aeration, and temperature control as beer production. Using the same fermenter for both processes can work, but dedicated distilling fermenters – which tend to be less costly – can help separate the two processes.
Choosing a Still
Stills come in many shapes and sizes. Here, we’ll focus on the pot still and the column still. Which still is right for you can be determined in part by the type of spirits you wish to produce. Pot stills are best suited for spirits that you want to impart more character, and offer more control over your end product. Column stills, on the other hand, produce a cleaner, more neutral product for spirits such as vodka.
Pot Still
A pot still is a simple concept: a vessel (the pot) is charged with a wash and heated. As the wash approaches boiling, vapors rise up through a column, are collected in a condenser, and the resulting distillate is captured in a receiving vessel (the parrot). Cut points are used to separate the distillate into heads, hearts, and tails, allowing you to keep the desirable hearts while discarding or recycling the unwanted fractions.
Column Still
A column still uses a series of plates inside the column to fractionate the vapors as they rise. This produces a higher-proof, cleaner distillate in a single pass compared to a pot still, which may require multiple distillation runs. Column stills are typically used for producing vodka, gin, and other neutral spirits.
Controls and Automation
Just as with brewing, controls and automation play an important role in the distilling process. Temperature monitoring, heating control, and automated cut-point detection can help produce a consistent product while reducing the labor and attention required during a run.
Getting Started
If you’re interested in adding distilling to your brewery operation, contact us to discuss your goals and how we can help design a solution that fits your space, budget, and production targets.
