Burnt Boiled Eggs
I have worked without a day off since Feb 22, 2022. For the record, at this moment that is 6 weeks + 3 days. I also have no option for a day off for another 11 days.
When you hear someone say something about being married to a business as a business owner, trust them!
I’m not complaining either. Anything worth doing is worth working for and I like to work.
Myself, and a small group of people, have worked our buns off to get Shine Girl open by my goal date and we did. I had plenty of nay sayers (not my inner Gladys), but a bunch of Negative Nancys who like to tell others what can’t be done. I’m very proud that we met that goal and proved those turds wrong!
Nay sayers are about as annoying as a negative inner voice.
Once the Master Distiller TV show sets were removed from the distillery, we got to work. We cleaned like nobody has ever cleaned before. Have you ever heard someone say, “Nobody will take care of your stuff like you will?” That is true!
At one point last year, I tried to set up a Contract Distilling Agreement with another aspiring distiller. We got half the contract done. I was never provided with the required insurance and a pricing schedule was never agreed to. However, while we were trying, we agreed to run a Sugar Wash to test the still and let everyone see the operation from start to finish. Once it was complete, I was assured everything had been cleaned up properly and left in order. The gentleman running the still and assuring me of cleaning protocols had worked in the distillery under previous ownership. Let me just say, as gingerly as possible, I can see why it had failed.
This is what I found in the Mash Tun. (Mash Tun is where we mix mash for fermentation.)
This is a year-old Sugar Wash that had not been cleaned up as I had been assured. Have I ever mentioned that I can’t stand lazy or lying? Let me just say, that I hope the fleas of a thousand camels infest the crotch of this lying, lazy jackass!
So, when I say we cleaned, I mean we cleaned up awful stuff. One of my team members summed it up pretty good. “Danielle, when you have to eat a shit sandwich, it’s best to take big bites.” That is a fact!
“Danielle, when you have to eat a shit sandwich, it’s best to take big bites.”
Shit Sandwich!
This got cleaned up. Myself and two other guys scrubbed sinks, toilets (I can’t stand a nasty bathroom), floors, unpacked equipment and tried to organize the hodgepodge of equipment we unpacked. Disinfected equipment. Figured out what I don’t have. What can I make do with? Oh, and we threw out at least two dumpsters full of random crap. If it didn’t have to do with distilling, I tossed.
My cousin Brent is a professional photographer and spent an hour digging out a photo booth thing from the dumpster. I guess it was worth about a thousand dollars. He came back in looking like he had wrestled an oiled pig and was very unimpressed with me. He informed me I was not allowed to toss anything else without him looking at it first! I wish I had it on camera. It was a classic moment! Lol
We also go my stills put back together. Kinda important.
Seriously, it was 12-15 hours a day of hard manual labor every day. We worked like our lives depended on it. I worked a couple of hours after the crew went home. About five days in, we had what looked like might become a distillery.
In the distillery we have a forklift to move heavy pallets of stuff. Bottles, barrels, totes, etc. I’ve grown up with plenty of redneck fixes around me. I generally don’t like to “redneck” things but I’d be lying if I say I have never done it. The forklift key wasn’t a forklift key. It was a house key stuck in the ignition. Not my doing for the record. It worked so I hadn’t paid much attention to it. One of my guys mentioned I should find a proper key because it will eventually destroy the ignition switch. I made the call to locate the proper key. I got zilch that day for a key resolution.
The next day was a big day for me. 5,000 lbs of glass bottles were coming. This was a huge expense and I was super thrilled to see things coming together. You probably guessed it, the truck shows up and the forklift decides it ain’t having it no more with this house key. It simply would not turn on.
I thought about crying for a second. The only reason I overcame that urge was I simply didn’t have time to redo my face and didn’t feel like dealing with dry, itchy cry face the rest of the day. I did have some choice words that would have made my dad proud! It is what it is. We unloaded 5,000 lbs of glass the good old fashion way with a hand pump pallet lift. Crisis avoided. Glass unloaded.
The guy I ordered the glass from, ordered an ignition switch and had it replaced within 24 hours. I am forever grateful!
We are finally at the point of making moonshine magic! We mixed our first flavor, coconut! This part is fun for me. I love the science and math behind it. We measure in pounds, gallons, ml, and liters. We have to stay within our registered formula with the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau). It’s truly a science and an art. Plus, I get to use power tools! Seriously, I don’t understand people who don’t love power tools.
We did our flavors in 200 gallons batches. There are mixing tanks with agitators installed already. I don’t own one. At this point, I’m working with the equipment I have vs. the equipment I want. So, to mix 200 gallons we used a power drill with a paint stirrer attached. Pretty dang fun! (See picture) We let it sit overnight. By the next morning, the distillery smelled like a tropical beach! When we did Red Velvet, it smelled like a bakery. Rose’ smelled like a wonderful bouquet of roses. Can’t wait to smell Lavender!
After giving it another good stir, putting me in a good mood from power tool use, we started bottling.
We have a 4-bottle filler. This was learning day on the line. One person filled the bottles, one put the tops on, one added the tamper proof shrink wrap type seal (the hardest part), one used a heat gun to seal it (Me! You know, power tools), and then we boxed six bottle cases and built a pallet. Only thing missing was Bon Bons and the theme song from Laverne and Shirley!
As we started the line, my cousin Brent started singing gospel songs. Next thing I knew, we all started singing along. I didn’t think too much of it for a minute. We were all raised in the Bapticostal (made-up word for blending Baptist and Pentecostal traditions). Then it struck me funny. I love gospel music after a couple of drinks! Maybe he was warding off the evil sin of alcohol subconsciously? I don’t worry about what kind of sin someone might think alcohol is. People are welcome to their beliefs and choices. I love irony and this one struck my funny bone. We were still laughing about it over a drink later. We sounded great!
Bottling was complete. Our best rate was 1,002 bottles filled in 1.5 hours. It was fun! Now, we must label them one-by-one.
Remember the random equipment we unpacked? In it we found a labeler. It was missing the roll bar and guideposts. This is what the roll of labels goes on in order to roll on the bottle. A couple of days later we found another labeler! How exciting!! Nope. It was missing a roll bar and guideposts. I can’t make this shit up. The labeler costs about $1,600. So, when the first roll bar and guideposts went MIA (likely due to the lack of organization and protocols) they just bought another one and then lost the same shit again.
I was in no mood to spend another $1,600. So, I took a radical step and googled replacement parts for that model of labeler. For $97, I now have two complete labelers with roll bars and guideposts. Just as busy does not equal productive, an easy solution doesn’t make it a good one. In this case, same delivery time as a new labeler but $97 vs. $1,600. Just sayin’.
While all this is going on, I have a film crew following me around filming a “Sizzle Reel”. This is what gets pitched to companies to do my own tv show. We literally were bottling, labeling, and filming the morning of our opening. I didn’t have time to stage anything. It was all my reality at the time. Including my signs going up, boxes getting filled, shelves being stocked, etc., the day of the opening. Plus, I did an interview with the paper and had to be ready for the opening myself. I could not be looking like hammered dog crap! Even if I did, I didn’t want to feel like I did.
Sign went up right before we opened the doors!
We got open and had a great opening weekend. It took exactly 30 seconds to transition from the stress of getting open to the stress of stabilizing a normal operation. Oh wait, I have to figure out what the normal operation is.
In the middle of all of this, I also completed my 74-year-old dad’s taxes. He doesn’t think he has to do them anymore. Trust me, it’s better this way. I also managed to take my mother, for her birthday, to the Apple store to buy a new phone and computer. I got both set up and repeatedly wrote down passwords and codes. It only took 27 times for her to remember I wrote them down in obvious places. Never underestimate her ability to not see the obvious! Oddly, she is no more scattered brained at 73 than she has ever been.
There is no time to rest. Literally, no time. There wasn’t much time to eat either. If it were not for friends making sure I had food, I wouldn’t have eaten anything. I ate the best a drive-through window could provide. So that leads me to eggs ….
I admit, I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest. No offense to one-legged men in butt kicking contests. It looks and sounds very busy. I’m already not a great sleeper. Probably doesn’t help that I sleep with four dogs in the bed, and I have an overactive mind. Anything wakes me up. I won’t fight trying to sleep when I can’t either. That just pisses me off. If I can’t sleep, I get up and do something productive.
I’m sleep deprived, alone-time deprived, my To Do list is endless, and I am living off drive-through food. I get the bright idea that I should boil some eggs vs. eating a sausage biscuit for breakfast. I didn’t have to be anywhere Monday morning, so I took the opportunity to do some house cleaning while I put my eggs on to boil. This is normal practice for me. I like my eggs really hard boiled like my Mamaw Avie Lee made them.
I vacuumed the carpets, steamed the living room rug, swept the kitchen floor, changed my bedding, cleaned the bathroom, and here is where things went off the rail. I started making calls.
It was between calls that I heard a sound I had only heard once before in my life…an egg pop! I made the mad dash to the kitchen where my eggs had been set to boil in my lovely soft pink ceramic pot. What did I find? A pink pot with a grey bottom with varying degrees of black eggs sizzling in the bottom. If you have never smelled it, burnt (not burned. These were burnt!) you are truly missing out. This has to be what the sulfur pit of hell smells like. It’s worse than the worse fart you can imagine. Not only does it smell bad, burnt eggs are absolutely depressing to look at. You just can’t hardly eat ‘em like that.
I did mention I have heard this sound before. In 2017 I spent six less than glorious days in the hospital with a severe case of C-Diff Colitis. If you don’t know what that is, trust me you don’t want too either. I was so weak and anemic when I was released it took about nine months to be almost normal. The week I was released, and ironically, in the same kitchen, I burnt boiled eggs. I heard that egg pop right about the time the smoke alarm went off. The pan was destroyed, my house smelled like burnt sulfur farts, and in my weakened state I cleaned exploded egg off the ceiling.
Both “eggcidents” led me to only using Crock Pots until I have gotten enough sleep to not be a complete dumbass!
Yes, I could kick my dogs out of the bed. That’s not going to happen. They are my babies so save the obvious. I could take a day off. At what cost though? Or I can buy my eggs already boiled.
I’ll buy my eggs already boiled and yes, I will eventually get a day off. After I get vodka labeled, label approved for Oat Whisky & labeled, and Lavender mixed, bottled, and labeled. Until then, I’ll keep laughing at myself … and others to keep me going!
