Home Distiller

Yesterday I had a chance to do the Hali'imaile Distillery tour. I met and chatted with the owner/master distiller Mark Nigbur, he claims to be the second licensed micro distiller in the United States starting in Colorado 15 years ago and moving to Hawaii and running his current distillery 9 years ago. I do have to say that they allowed me to get up and close to all the equipment and also to take pictures. You could see from the distillery the pineapple fields where they get their pineapples for their vodka and looking in another direction the cane fields for their molasses for their rum so it was not hard to figure out why he moved to Hawaii. At the distillery they have 8 fifty five gallon Stainless Steel drums for their primary runs and 2 pharmaceutical glass stills for infusing flavor. Below are a few pictures from the distillery. Here is the glass stills, they used SPP for packing.
pharmaceutical glass stills Note how little copper is in the path (just a small 1/2" tube that leads to the collection after the product condenser. This surprised me a little. There 100 gallon fermentation vessels had a plexiglass top with a small 1/2" hole in the top for removal. They fermented in 4 days and they had a lot of these vessels, each one would fill 2 of the 55 gallon ss boilers. Also they did not have to heat the distllery as the temps in Maui kept the fermentation at a constant temp.

Love the dual Liebig configuration was there any special reason for that?

Drunk-N-Smurf wrote:Love the dual Liebig configuration was there any special reason for that?

Good question, the gal leading the tour did not have an answer and I forgot to ask Mark.

Been meaning to email Mark about the dual Liebigs too, as well as his chiller size. I couldn't find the exact model he's using...

I called back this morning asking the question and left a message with my phone number, will see if I hear back!

double the liebig, double the powahhhhhhh

Are they simple pot stills or crosstube CMs?

I knew I had seen them stills some where. 3dog did a piece on them a while back http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 44&t=53558 . I liked it then and I like it now

Crosstube CMs.

3d0g wrote:Crosstube CMs.

Yep, not sure what they are getting I think around 70% for their rum as the columns are not that tall. So I am guessing that they do the vodka on a second run or through the glass stills in which they have two.

I liked the fermenters but not sure how they cleaned them as I did not see any drain port and didn't think to ask! 3d0g did you have any info?

Bushman wrote:I liked the fermenters but not sure how they cleaned them as I did not see any drain port and didn't think to ask! 3d0g did you have any info?

I didn't see any either. Just assumed they were tossing a hose in and pumping into the drum stills. Did you happen to ask about water / waste management? I can't imagine they're on any sort of public sewage system, but I didn't see any anaerobic digester around either. Mark had to run to a meeting before I could ask.

Thanks for sharing, I came across 3d0gs thread about this place a couple weeks ago too. Looks like a cool place to visit.

Yea, 3d0g and I have been popping back and forth as I new he had already visited the distillery. I still want to take in Ocean distillery tour while here and they have a new brewery that makes a pretty nice beer called Maui Brewery. I was told by a real-estate salesman that they are partnered with Stone Brewery in Southern California.

If you started the next batch immediately, would you clean the ferment tanks?

I'd think about hosing down the sides and adding the next ferment...especially with rum.

True for x amount of fermentations but at some point you will have to remove some of the build up I would think!