Hello from Thailand

[jsnidvongs]

Hi Everyone,
I've been a reader for quite a few years but have decided that it was high time I get involved with the community properly. I've been experimenting for a few years now but as of last month, my partners and I are now the proud owners of Thailand's newest licensed distillery. We built it with the assistance of some of our friends who work in distilleries in Europe and the Caribbean. Some background info on the regualtions in Thailand, there are a few rather unreasonable restrictions such as we can only have a total of 5 HP of machinery in our distillery (including, still, chillers, pumps, bottling, filter etc etc), we aren't allowed to age in wood (and the spirit must be clear), we can't legally label it as rum or vodka or gin (only White Spirit) and we're only allowed to bottle at 40%.

Despite this, we're pushing ahead with our exploration of sugarcane and the terroirs of northern Thailand. We're distilling single estate rum from fresh cane, making some high ester molasses based rum for mixing and also exploring rice vodka and gins made with local botanicals (we can grow everything except juniper). We're at the tail end of sugarcane season now so we'll be moving into making rice vodka soon.

We're running a 600L hybrid still, I can't seem to figure out how to post a picture but I'll try in another post. The column has 6 plates and a dephlegmator. Our condenser uses a two stage design because cooling water in the summer can get pretty warm where we are. The second half of the condenser uses a slightly chilled glycol/water mix. Our geometry was designed by our friends in the Caribbean and built in Thailand. There are some small adjustments we need to make along the way as we figure out the character of the still.

I'm excited to get deeper into the community and learn more, and hopefully I'll be able to contribute and give back as much as I can too.