Distilling with your Brewery

What even is distilling… and how are brewers doing it? Co-founder, Master Distiller and all around good-guy breaks it down by six simple areas of overlap.

First, you gotta know the facts. Distilling is the process of fermenting a liquid solution of sugar with yeast to create alcohol. By boiling this slowly, you evaporate the alcohol and condense it back to a liquid form.

What makes distillation overlap so closely with brewing is that fermentation/heating/cooling process. This helps us look at this commonalities step by step…

A brewery is already set up to handle many of the elements needed for a distilling operation.

• Open spaces for production

• Drainage systems

• Barrel/finished product warehousing

• Shipping & receiving

• Industrial finishes

• Regulatory considerations

The mechanical heart of a distillery is very similar to that of a brewery.

• Steam

• Glycol

• Domestic and processed water piping & storage

• Recycling & conservation opportunities

• Advantages brewers have over start up distilleries

Your existing brewing equipment is often not only functional in a distillery, but can be superior.

• Fermentors

• Brewhouse

• Pumps & hoses

• Clean in place

• Sanitary considerations

As brewers, you already know more about fermentation than a lot of distillers.

• Fermentation times, curves, yeast & temps.

• Mashing & lautering (Scotch Whiskey technique)

• Ingredient sources

• Aging

• Sanity considerations

Some things breweries will need to address…

• Stills

• Mash cooler/pumps (certain fermentables)

• Fermentation capacity

• Explosion proof pumps

• Bottle filling equipment

• Stillage/BOD/TSS

• Water usage/cooling

• Small community (home distilling is illegal in the U.S.)

DEGONG distillery equipment

While generally regulated by the same entities, distilleries follow different rules than breweries.

• Bonded areas

• Tax reporting

• Control states

• Retail limitations

• Labeling & marketing

• Alcohol measurement

• Fire suppression