Diary of a Distiller

Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 30 - Done for the Day

by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Dec 12th 2008 @ 10:01AM

Over the weekend we had a very busy time at the Winery. Saturday night was the culmination of a month of work by several dozen people from the area who entered in our Gingerbread House competition for charity. We have had several classes a week on how to make and decorate gingerbread houses and ended up with almost thirty contestants. There were five categories: Professional, Under 17, Traditional, Historical, and Fantasy. There were some absolutely wonderful creations, and I was surprised at the quality of all the entries, especially the fact that some of the best were by people who had never done this before.

Sunday night I went to a Sunday Night Cocktail event hosted by my friend and award winning mixologist, Lydia Reismueller, formerly of the speakeasy style cocktail bar PDT and restaurant/cocktail bar Elettaria in NYC. Lydia has been having these Sunday events for the past two months at the Westcot Forge restaurant in Blue Hill, ME and they have been a big success. I tried a few of her new creations and said my good-bye's for the season, as she heads off to travel the world until March with her chef boyfriend. I'm already looking forward to when she starts up the Cocktail Sundays again next Spring when she comes back to manage one of the excellent, local, organic farms.

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 29 - 75th Anniversary of Repeal Day

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Dec 5th 2008 @ 11:02AM

Today is the 75th Anniversary of Repeal Day, a day of celebration and rejoicing of the end of one of this nations debacles in judgment, Prohibition. Although Prohibition only lasted for 13-14 years on a national level, it was in force for many decades prior in several states. Here in Maine it started in 1851.

I'm starting off my day with a business meeting of the Maine Winery Guild. Last year I kick-started the association into forming and this will be our third business meeting. Owners of most of Maine's 18+ wineries will be there. I also invited the owners of the State's micro-distilleries to attend, so we can decide whether to join the Maine Winery guild, or start a separate association. I know that after-wards a few of us will be celebrating Repeal Day by tasting each others products.

After that I'll be going back to the winery to bottle Cranberry Wine. The job just got much easier. When we bought the brewery equipment a large filter was part of the deal. We never got around to cleaning it up and using it until this week. It's four times the size of the one we were using before. With that much more surface area the pump works much faster and easier. So running a 500 gallon tank of wine through the filter takes only forty minutes, compared with 1/2 a day or more with the old filter. Wine needs to be filtered sevral times through finer and finer levels until it is crystal clear. So what took three days before, we can now due in one day before lunchtime. Mike was practically dancing with glee.

In the last of the photos below you can see the old filter, without its plates, in front of the much larger new one.

Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 29 - 75th Anniversary of Repeal Day(click thumbnails to view gallery)

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 28 - Happy Thanksgiving

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Nov 28th 2008 @ 10:01AM

It's been quiet here at the winery the past week.We had our first snow and the temps have been in the 20's and even down to the 'teens at night. Mostly we have been prepping for the Holiday Season, repairing and hanging lights, bottling wine, and sprucing everything up. We're also hosting a Gingerbread House Competition at our culinary school and restaurant, Pairings, and lots of folks have been taking classes and coming by to work on their cakey homes.

I'm in NYC visiting family all week and going around meeting up with all my mixologist friends. It will take me all week to catch up on what's going on the the cocktail world. I missed all the fall cocktails and hope to try a few before the winter ones come onto all the menus. With luck I may still be able to sample the fall creations.

I have a few bottles of wine from the winery for family, and a few bottles of our new hard cider for friends and the bar crew at a few of my favorite cocktail bars. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's reactions. I've also been planning a reunion with friends from back as far as elementary school and the neighborhood where I grew up, as well as friends from college and my early 20's. It should be an evening of carousing and good, loud, fun; as we catch up on the latest. One friend of mine who I have known since 5th grade is a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserve and has been called back to active duty for his third tour of duty. So we are going to give him a wet and wild send off as well. I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and have a fun weekend!

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 27 - Getting Closer and Closer

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Nov 21st 2008 @ 1:01PM

Over the weekend we finished installing new steam pipes and condensate returns for the brewery boiler. Late Saturday afternoon we fired the boiler up and it seemed to work fine. When we got in Monday to check on things, the sight glass on the brew kettle was broken. We think it probably had the wrong gaskets or some other small problem and cracked during the cool-down. We ordered a replacement, and some valves, and then we're set to start brewing.

Later Monday we got our first shipment of brewing ingredients: crushed malt, hops, yeast, and assorted adjuncts and fermentation nutrients. So as soon as we clear up the last little things we will be brewing beer!

Much of the rest of the week was spent in the winery, bottling wine, re-arranging storage, and all kinds of things to get ready for our busiest time of year, the Holiday Season. Later in the week we found out that we still had some major problems with the boiler. Actually, not the boiler, but the configuration of the piping, where and how parts are located, steam condensate traps, pumps, etc. An expert came in and very soon was able to figure out the problems and we ordered some more parts and started what we hope will be our final re-design. Just another week or so and we'll be able to brew.

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 26 - Oops!

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Nov 14th 2008 @ 11:01AM

This week went by very quickly, even though it was a six day week for me. On Monday I went in to the winery even though we were closed, so i could do some paperwork and research. The boiler guys showed up as well, to do some more work. They had to re-do a section of pipe work near the boiler where they hadn't tightened down the pipes enough and there were steam leaks. Tuesday we were closed as well for Veterans Day, but I was back again, doing more research and paperwork. I had the place to myself for most of the day and it was nice and quiet.

On Wednesday, just before lunch time, the delivery of 6,000 pounds of peach puree arrived. Twelve drums, each weighing 500 pounds, stacked four to a pallet. As the first pallet load was being lowered on the gate lift to the ground, it started teetering, and almost fell. But made it semi-safely to the ground. The second load got out of control and came crashing down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. As you can see they were torn open, dented and partially crushed like soda cans. Luckily, the puree is packed aseptically inside very thick Mylar bags that have a breaking strength in the thousands of pounds. So with a huge struggle we were able to right the drums and manhandle them down into the winery. It took us almost two hours to get the twelve drums down the ramp and into the basement. Leaving us sore and aching in every joint.

Then on Thursday the boiler guys came to correct some other minor problems, and we powered up the boiler. Everything seemed fine, except for the cloud of smoke wafting along the ceiling. As the steam pipes heated up for the first time any oils accumulated on their surface burned off. So we walked around in a haze, and daze, choking on oily smoke. We set up some exhaust fans to vent the winery, and turned on the big exhaust blower in the distillery, which helped a lot. Then we started to have some more problems with the boiler shutting down due to pressure problems, so we spent the day re-thinking the installation. Friday and Saturday were spent adding new sections of pipe for the condensate return to the boiler. Hopefully this will be the last hurdle in the boiler drama, and then we can make beer. I REALLY need a tasty brew right now!

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

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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.

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 24 - A loooong, weak, week

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Oct 31st 2008 @ 8:31AM

Last week was a busy, busy, week. Lots of hard work that brought us much closer to our goals of opening the brewery and distillery. At the end of the week I came down with a mild version of the flu, thanks to the open and sharing nature of my friends and partners. Finally on Saturday morning I ground to a halt at work. I was feeling pretty under the weather, not so bad I couldn't work, but my mental faculties were slowed down.

I decided to do some photography of bottles of the very rare, and out of production, Tanqueray Malacca Gin in my collection; to send to a potential customer who also collects rare spirits. As I was putting things away and moving cases around, I stumbled back in forth in a daze. Then due to my clumsiness a case of empty wine bottles fell from the top of a pallet onto my big toe. Usually I have pretty fast reactions and can catch falling stuff, or at least slow down or break their fall. This time I didn't even notice it until a few seconds after it landed, directly with the pointy corner of the case in the middle of my toe. It didn't hurt at first. Mike was near me hunting for some tools and I pointed out the case balancing on it's corner, sitting on my toe. He just shook his head and shrugged with a rueful smile. I knew it should hurt, but my reflexes were so slowed down that I felt nothing.

I picked up the case and heaved it over my head and back onto the pallet. Grumbling under my breath that this was going to hurt like hell. I started to make my way up the stairs to my office and as I did so my toe started to get warm, then hot, then to burn unmercifully. By the time I hobbled up the stairs and sat down at my desk in the distillery my toe really, really hurt!

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 23 - Boiling & Foaming

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Oct 24th 2008 @ 9:01AM

Over the weekend Mike and I finished most of the pipe work for the brewery and distillery chilling system. All we now need is the pump and that project is done. I mentioned before, but we are using a 500 gallon wine chilling and clearing tank as the reservoir and cooling system for our chilling system. We had it already available, Mike had picked it up awhile ago very inexpensively, and it was just sitting there taking up room and unused. So being thrifty, we decided to make it useful once again. We ran PVC piping many months ago along the walls of the brewery / distillery; going to all the fermenters, the copper spirits still, and locations of future stills. Then we connected the brewery chilling plate and transfer system for the hot wort to the network. Finally we ran the pipe along the ceiling of the basement to the cooling tank, and prepped everything for installing the pump.

You can see some photos of this in the galleries to come. Also I show a few of our 500 gallon wine fermenting and storage tanks. The reason I'm show them is to focus on the PVC piping along the ceiling above the tanks. This is for venting CO2 from the tanks, to the outside. Each tank that has active fermentation still in progress has tubing that comes out of an airlock and goes into the CO2 vent pipe. This way the basement winery doesn't become filled with CO2, killing us. That just wouldn't be fun.

Early Monday morning the boiler guys came to start the boiler installation. We are usually closed Sundays and Mondays, but Mike went in to work with them; while I was off down to Rockport, near where I used to live in Rockland / Owls Head, to meet with a Steel Work company to discuss my latest project. The boiler guys spent several days working on the installation, and will come back next week to finish it.

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 22 - An apple (cider) a day, keeps the Doctor away

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Oct 17th 2008 @ 11:01AM

Last Friday we took the day off from installing the steam pipes for our new brewery boiler, to bottle our first hard cider. This is the first new product to be released since I joined the team, and I had a lot of input towards its design. I have had some experience in the past creating hard ciders, both as a home brewer and wine maker, as well as commercially. Right after Mike and I shook hands to form our partnership late last November, I set off to Cornell University's Agricultural Experimental Station in Geneva, NY to take a week of workshops, primarily on advanced hard cider development and production techniques. The new information I picked up helped fine tune this cider into a great product over the past year.

We started with several different batches of sweet apple cider, fresh pressed from locally grown apples. Each batch had a different blend of apples and was fermented at cool temperatures using different yeasts. After the primary fermentation, the cider was taken off the lees (old, spent, dead and dormant yeast that settles to the bottom of the fermenting tank.) Then put into new tanks to age slowly for months and months, all at cool temperatures in our wine cellar. The cool temperature and slow, slow, slow, fermentation ensure that there will be lots of fresh apple flavor in the finished cider; as well as the tones and notes from the fermentation. Since each batch was made from different apples, and different yeasts; they had a completely different character from each other.

One of the craft secrets to creating a great hard cider is long and slow aging; and this we had done. The other is blending the cider. If you just make one, huge, batch of hard cider using all your apples, it tends to taste flat and one dimensional after fermentation. But if you make several smaller batches, with different apples in each, and later blend them carefully together; you get a final cider that is greater than the sum of its parts. Really great ciders save back some of the final blend to age even longer, and this is added to the blend the following year/s to bring in even greater complexity.

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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 21 - Hangin' Tight

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by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Oct 10th 2008 @ 9:01AM

Hi Folks, well the last of the work in building the brewery, then distillery, is well under way. I mentioned that we are finally installing the steam boiler for the brewery. It's a difficult and heavy job. First we took apart all the old steam pipes attached to the brew kettle, and scavenged all the pieces that we could use. Then we cleaned them up to remove mild rust and treated them to prevent further corrosion. Many are already cut to the perfect lengths and threaded at the ends. So it will save us a lot of time and work to re-use them.

We here at Winterport Winery / Penobscot Bay Distillery & Brewery live by the New England and Maine way of thrift. As Francis H. Sisson said almost a hundred years ago, "Thrift was never more necessary in the world's history than it is today." But there are many sides to thrift. As Orison Swett Marden said, "Thrift means that you should always have the best you can possibly afford, when the thing has any reference to your physical and mental health, to your growth in efficiency and power." This holds true in business, as in personal matters. So, while we use and re-use what we can, we also make sure to use the best quality available as well. So in matters of construction, if it is good, solid, and recyclable, it's back in the game. If not, then chuck it out; and replace with the best available.

Just as a side note: the type of pipe we are working with is called "Black Pipe", the type of steel pipe used for natural gas, hot water and steam circulation in boilers, and it is made of heavy steel. It's thick, strong, but not as hard as stainless steel; and so more malleable. It expands and contracts better and is able to handle shifting; that would crack the harder, but more brittle stainless steel. You need heavy equipment to cut and tread the pipe ends. So we rented a pipe cutter/threader to do the job. This pipe is connected with even more malleable cast iron fittings. All of which are very solid and long lasting, but weigh a TON.

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