MGP Lawrenceburg Distillery
Currently I am working at a distillery called Midwest Grain Products (MGP). The plant was formally owned by Seagrams for over ~75 years. Recently, it changed hands to Pernod Ricard, then CL Financial. MGP acquired the plant in 2013 and here we are! They primary make Whiskey, Gin, and Vodka–mainly Whiskey and Gin though, because it has a higher profit margin per wine produced when it is all said and done. Vodka (ethanol and water) can be made faster in other plants and in much greater quantities. Since its profit margin is lower per wine gallon, the plant does not focus on exporting as much of this product.
Where they have me working currently is what’s known as the “Wine Room.” Does it have anything to do with wine? Nope! To make spirits all alcohol basically goes through the general process: Grains —> Mash (grains mixed with water)—> Cooker —> Fermentation —> Distillation —> Storage —> Barreling/ Holding —> Loading/ Shipment. Depending on what part of the product you are tracing, you can add a lot more arrows, some even in different directions! However, this is the general flow.
The Wine Room receives the product (Vodka, Light Whiskey, Whiskey, or Gin) after the distillation phase. From there it will either be sent to a large tank farm for further use, or it is off to Building 88 where it is either barreled or loaded out as product. At the plant they never cross contaminate tanks. A tank that holds gin will always hold gin, etc. This is really important in order to maintain a quality product.
In the Wine Room there are pipes–lots of pipes. Our job as interns are to label the flow of these pipes—
both where the alcohol is coming from and where it is going to. This will be done placing adhesive labels on all the pipes as well as updating the P&ID engineering drawings (P&ID drawings basically tell you pipe type, nominal size, flow of alcohol, content of pipe any valves, etc). The current drawings contain none of the above information. They only show most of the pipe connections– we are filling in everything else. The drawings we got where from 2002, so we are walking the lines and updating them as we see changes.
Spooky…
Some areas of the Wine Room are certainly easier than others. Mike and I spent roughly 5 hours tracing out all the pipes on one tank alone–probably our least favorite tank in the plant. You get pretty good at spotting pipe sizes after a while. One of the key things we learned when tracing pipes are that pumps, flange meetings, and valves can help you accurately size a pipe or identify its flow on a drawing. Of course, by now we can call a lot of the pipe sizes on the spot. We also take down any valve and motor information, etc. But it’s not all hard work, I learn of some pretty cool places to hide bodies if I ever wanted to murder someone…
My step father worked in the wineroom Dewey Craft