Hello from Timber Creek Distillery - Northwest Florida

Yes, the obligatory introductions section, but serves a good purpose - like a good, soft toilet paper - used only once but truly wonderful! "Here's to you and here's to me, may we never disagree - if perchance we ever do, here's to me and to hell with you!"
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TimberCreekDistillery
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Joined: Sat Feb 27, 2016 4:19 pm
Location: Destin
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Hello from Timber Creek Distillery - Northwest Florida

Post by TimberCreekDistillery »

Hi Folks,
Capn Jimbo was kind enough to let me join this forum, so let me give you a bit of my background and interests.

I am a Silicon Valley tech start-up guy. I worked for some big guys like Intel and SEagate and also a number of start-ups, but the Valley got to be just too crazy for me and my family, so we retreated back to the Florida Panhandle to slow things down a bit....atleast that was the plan.

My wife grew up here in Ft. Walton Beach and I started my career out at the Navy Base in Panama City Beach....so this is pretty close to home for us....not to mention the small town feel and beautiful beaches. When we moved here, we knew we wanted to start a local business so neither of us would have to travel so much.....after some research and some prodding from friends, we decided the time was ripe to open a craft distillery here in the area.....so thats what we did.

It wasnt that simple, of course....I spent about a year doing research on distilling, the industry, the business model, etc.....and unlike beer brewing, you arent allowed to practice at home first. Well, that didnt sit well wtih me, so I decided to do a little practicing to see if I could really do this before we sunk a bunch of money into a new venture like this....and it turns out I figured out how to make some decent products. My neighbor was a home brewer and he helped me figure stuff out ....and did a lot of taste testing for me....and then we decided to do this together. Of course, I have to say, that before we jumped into this....I did get a knock on the door by some ABT agents looking for me. As it turns out, I bought my still head online and the TTB pulls customer lists from the vendors selling stills....so they tracked my still head back to me. When I wasnt home, so we filed for our license and they never came back.

Anyways, we built a pilot still and got our federal and florida state distilling license....once the license was approved, we purchased a full production line for beer from China and then modified the boil kettle to put a still head on it. My homegrown 650 gallon still only cost about $25,000....whereas a brand new copper Vendome still starts at about $500K.

Our still setup is basically a 650 gallon stainless boil kettle, steam jacketed with an ofset agitator. It basically looks like a Vendome still except it is stainless instead of copper. On top, we put a simple pot still bubble head with 2 bubble plates for little reflux. In order to give us a bit more control, we put a 6" stainless deflemator on top that we can adjust to give us more or less reflux....although it will never operate like a column still....we only have 2 plates....and we never wanted a column still anyways....you lose too much flavor...and flavor is what its all about. The mass produced stuff is filtered and stripped and cleaned until it is very generic....not much flavor. The stuff with flavor, tends to be flavorings that have been added in after the distillation process....things like Glycerine, sugar, etc. We didnt want to do that...unless it is a flavored product....and even then, we dont add any sugar to anything we make.

In addition to our pot still head, we have a 30 gallon thumper and also a thumper bypass....again, we use this as a tool to control the flavor of the distillate and can bypass the thumper if we need....or we can vary how much goes through the thumper vs. bypass the thumper. Its pretty slick and very simple. AFter the thumber, we have a 1.5" copper worm condenser in a 500 gallon cypress water tank. We are very pleased with our design and the operation of our system. We were both very excited and shocked that everything seems to work the way I designed it....even though I had never designed anything like this before.

Here in Northwest Florida, we have wonderful local corn, wheat, and rye grains as well as quite a lot of fruit production including strawberries, blueberries, plums, peaches, and muscodines.....so we are planning to make whiskey and some fruit brandies over time. We already have about 100 barrels of whiskey barreled and will be launching a Florida Bourbon and Florida Rye in the next couple of weeks.

Just down the road from us, we also have a bounty of sugar cane farms and sugar plants to get molasses for Rum. Today, we buy from Louisiana Sugar Refiners....which is a conglomerate of a few of the smaller refineries. We use the B-grade molasses. We did a test run with A-grade, B-grade, and C-grade molasses....and B-grade tasted the best. I know a lot of Rum distilleries use Blackstrap as it is basically waste product and really cheap. I know Bayou Rum out of Louisiana actually uses Blackstrap.....but then they add back in white sugar to dilute the blackstrap back to something a bit lighter. The blackstrap molasses tends to have pretty heavy liquorish flavors ....not my favorite. Also, I am told that the sugarcane from Louisiana is what they call Slow growth cane vs. south florida and the caribbean and central american farms that have fast growth cane.....I am told the slow growth cane has a better flavor for rum. LSR actually ships tanker boats full of molasses to Puerto Rico for rum distillers there.

Please feel free to ask me any questions about our rum, our process, our business, etc. I would love to get feedback from members so we can make our products better as we get more experience with the plant.

Thanks,

Cam
RobBosman87
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Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2016 10:12 am
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Post by RobBosman87 »

Hiya,
Thats was a great little introduction!
Must be awesome to own your own distillery, as I can imagine many people here dreamed about it once or twice. :wink:
Cheers,

Rob
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