Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 25 - A comedy of errors

by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Nov 7th 2008 @ 9:05AM

Like usual its been a busy week. The fire grate for the copper spirits still was re-worked from square to round. I feel they overcharged me. It cost as much to re-work it as it originally cost new.

We had a few more small things to fix in the brewery. Basically, like I've mentioned before, everything that could be broken, or ruined through neglect, was. Sometimes it's difficult to order parts, they may not have been made for 20 years since the equipment was new. We had to get in touch with France and England to find new valve bodies since the rubber was fried in all the ones for the brew kettle, lauter tun, and fermenting tanks. Hopefully we can get them in the next few days and fix the valves. Otherwise they need to be replaces, at a grand or two for six of them.

We did quite a bit of work on our wine. After making wine all summer it's time to bottle most of it, so we're getting some of it ready to bottle and bottling the rest. The new batch of dry blueberry is very nice. Dry, full bodied, spicy like a shiraz, and just a hint of oak.

I have been talking to different guys about building the stripping still, but most of them don't have the skill or knowledge and I'm having to teach them what they will have to do. Finally I found a guy who seems to be the right one for the job. He had a background in distilling, as well as building distillery equipment, just the combination I need. We have chatted a few times on the phone, now I have to meet him and go over my plans and hear his thoughts.

The boiler guys, who have been missing in action for over two weeks finally showed up yesterday to finish the job. Of course they didn't have all the parts they needed with them and had to go out several times to find them. Then they power up the boiler fr a test and steam starts leaking from the pipework. of course it wasn't the majority of the pipe work that we did. It was the 5% that they did. Of course it will take us a whole day to fix their shoddy work. then the boiler kept shutting down. Our error in design or their error in work? Either way, it's a comedy of errors... and that's being nice when I want to be insulting. So I just bite my tongue and walk away.

Filed Under: Diary of a Distiller
Tags: diary of a distiller, Jonathan M. Foreste, Maine, Penobscot Bay Distillery, PenobscotBayDistillery, Winterport