klattig

YES, I have been having problems with Tapi closures too! Our issue is separation of the wood bartop from the synthetic cork. Tapi claims these are 'co-molded', but the failing closures are clearly glued to the wood. We'd been seeing failure rates up to 50% during the bottling process, and have been getting customer complaints from failures in the field. We use two sizes, and they have different failure modes: the 21.5mm ones 'spin' - the cork part rotates inside the wood, making it really hard to get the cork out. The 19.5mm ones simply tear completely out of the wood part - leaving just a nub that requires a pair of pliers to get out! Most disappointing is the complete lack of response from Tapi. I called my rep several times, with no response. Then I left messages on their main number - nothing. I reached out via their online contact form - crickets. I finally switched to another supplier (ACIC), but have 10k stoppers that can't be used and no recourse. Frustrating!! My advice: Avoid Tapi at all costs!

I agree with all that Stumpy had to say, but will add this: Don't even try to run this with a lauter screen! Wheat does not filter well, no matter how many rice hulls you add. Do a grain-in ferment & strip.

Are these still available? I'd be interested in 3 pallets...

We have a similar problem in a home-brewed 550g mash tun. We installed ~60' of 3/4" flexible copper tubing around the inside perimeter of the tun, and we can run hot or cool water thru it. We typically re-heat from about 175 to 190F in ~75 minutes with near-boiling water. I can't see why you couldn't run steam through it to maintain a higher temp. You must have an agitator running while heating or cooling, otherwise on the area immediately around the coils gets heated/cooled.

Interesting, and just what I'd expect! Thanks for the feedback!

I guess I'll run an experiment and find out! We actively cool as well, and there's still a few weeks of relative cool here in AZ where I can keep my ferment as low as 80F... If I don't ping back on this in a couple weeks, bump the thread & I'll post an update!

Around the same time as we changed the mill size, we got a lot pickier about the timing of the heads cut, and stopped recycling any heads. So the final product yield actually went down, but there were multiple factors involved (as usual, we changed too many things at once!). Anyway, I think I've read that some methanol can come from one-off ferments of cellulose, but Silk City is right that the literature seems to support the idea that the vast majority comes from pectin. This is off my original topic, but what ferment temperatures are folks generally using? There's a wide range of answers on the web! We do control ferment temperatures pretty tightly, but our target is typically 87F +/-2. Any thoughts about that being too high, and producing more fusels, etc?

captnKB, Yes, that makes sense. But our OG is 1.070 or so; we never exceed 11%ABV after ferment. I think we aren't stressing the yeast, but perhaps the finer grind provides more opportunities for methanol-producing activity...

Hi All, Early this year we started milling our grains more finely in an effort to improve yield. We went from the 'standard' 0.038" we see used for malts a lot, to 0.024". Sure enough, yields improved 10-20% (we have a lot of different mashbills, and some were affected more than others). But, it seems like we are generating more heads than we used to. This is hard to quantify, as it might just be that we're more attuned to the downsides of leaving more sharp notes in the spirit than we used to be. But, it occurs to us that a finer grind might result in more cellulose getting ground up to the point that it is more fermentable than usual, resulting in more methanol. Does anyone have thoughts/experience with the idea that a finer grind might produce a larger fraction of heads? Thanks!

We have precisely the same problem with crazy foam-up & overflowing fermenters. Our mash profile is quite different (and we don't have your issue in stripping), but the mash volume expands from about 470 gal to overflow the 550gal fermenter. We lose something like 30 gallons all over the floor each batch - not a fun clean up! We start at a quite high 19-20 brix sugar content - although we never ferment to 1.000 - we always finish around 1.008. So I suspect that 2-3brix of the initial reading is beta-glucans, or some other un-fermentable. I've recently tried adding a beta-glucanase enzyme to the mash process, but it had no effect. I'm anxious to hear how others might have tackled this problem!

Well, your yield certainly doesn't get better with the second distillation, Eric! How much you lose depends on how tight your hearts cut is, whether you recycle heads & tails, and if so how much foreshots your throw out & how deep you go into tails...

This is hard to answer with precision, since we recycle some heads & tails in every batch. I agree it is the key parameter to determine actual efficiency; my best estimate is 75-80 proof gallons stripping yield from 1000# grain. I'd be interested to hear what others are yeilding...

Arizona. Maybe you have a counterpart on the west coast?

Ah, true - we use a mathematical formula that takes into account the initial reading to compute an approximated gravity. We got this from the More Beer website (I attached it here - it's cool). Brix and SG.xls

Yep, we have a 500 gal reservoir of chilled water that we circulate through about 60' of copper tube inside the Mash Tun. We can use 'cold' tap water (about 92F for about 10 weeks here) to get us to ~125F, then use the chilled water to go the rest of the way.