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mikeg

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    http://www.griffodistillery.com/

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    Petaluma, CA

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  1. Hi Everyone, We have a pneumatic bottle filler for alcohol gel products for sale that we need to sell. It can handle up to 1+ gallon bottles and was manufactured one month ago, so it's basically brand new. It's a Semi-Automatic Volumetric Filler from a well respected manufacturer in San Diego with solid engineering and quality workmanship. It's all stainless steel, sanitary, and we got a set of wet-side O-rings for any product you may use (EPDM, Buna, etc..). We got this for bottling gel sanitizer but we have grown past it. We can send it out ASAP. Specs: Manufacturer: Accutek Model: SVF1-128 Filler model number: 02-006-000 Mfg Date: 4-10-2020 Description: Semi-Automatic Volumetric Filler. Can be run with automatic filling or triggered with included foot pedal. The foot pedal is great for calibrating and then the automatic is great for keeping the bottling line fast at the set pace. Recommended Uses: Alcohol, Water, Fruit Juices & Extracts, Liquid Tea, Liquid Coffee, Food Coloring, Tooth Paste, Peanut Butter, Vegetable Oil, Milk, Honey, Mayonnaise, Sour Cream, Cheese, Tomato juice, Fruit toppings, Jellies, Jams, Syrup, Molasses, Yogurt, Salsa, Salad Dressings, Soup, Chili, Perfumes, Essential Oils, Nail Polish, Nail Polish Remover, Ink, Lip Balms, Soap, Sun Tan Lotions, Shampoo's, Hair Conditioners, Hair Styling Gels, Hand & Body Lotions, Facial Mud, Mascara, Eye Liner, Makeup remover, Facial Creams, Candles, Wax, Tire Sealant, Grease, Motor Oil, Urethane, Glue, Silicone, Air Craft Paint, Blood, Urine, Alcohol, and many more. Extras: Direct from Drum or Tote Draw kit, no extra product pumps needed, just need an air compressor. Extra pack or assorted O-rings for any chemical compatibility. Price: $9,000 + Freight. Freight: We can have this on the truck to you within 2 days. Fits on a long pallet. You can also come by an pick it up, we're in NorCal. Let me know if you are interested. For reference: 1/8 gallon model for $9 - $15k: https://www.bid-on-equipment.com/fillers/paste-fillers/inline-piston-fillers/372161~accutek-svf1-16--filler.htm Thanks, Mike
  2. Hi Everyone, We've been doing custom work for people for years now and just realized that we haven't posted here to invite people to find out what we're doing. We do custom work for people doing brewing, distilling, cellaring, blending, and bottling. We happy to be any part of it even if it's just distilling or bottling. Reach out and we can talk! Cheers, Mike
  3. One side note: While thinking about this I found a paper from NIST that stated the solubility of oxygen at different temperatures and in different ethanol-water solution concentrations. While the dissolved O2 is always too low to be considered sufficient fuel for an explosion, the interesting thing is that the solubility, for high ethanol concentrations, goes up with temperature and not down. I was totally surprised. My guess is that it has to do with the oxygen getting better access/bonding to the carbon chains.
  4. My reasoning for not doing a water add was that I wanted to get as high of proof out of the still as possible because I wanted to be (hopefully) above the transition temp for the volatiles I picked up in the heads of previous runs. If I ran the still with a heavy water add, I would make cuts through the same range of proofs that I normally do, which means I would pull through the volatiles that I did on the last runs. But maybe you and jamesbedner are right that I should do a water add and run super slow with a ton of reflux and taste what I get.
  5. You have a great argument for doing a water add! You also made me happy that I have both a 4" valve and a 2" valve on the discharge pot on my still that both lock. Both would have to open for a catastrophic spill to occur.
  6. I realized after I posted most people would not answer this question due to the apparent risk. I guess I asked for this. How about if I rephrase the question, taking it out of practice and application but more of a theoretical question: Ethanol-water solutions above 50% are flammable and can cause an explosion if there is an ignition source and sufficient oxygen. Neither of these exist in a properly designed still. So, I'm at a loss as to how an explosion could occur. Thinking about this a little more, if we are afraid to distill a charge with more than 50% ethanol then we are saying there is a lot of risk in the solution itself, after all the vapor above the charge, during a heads phase especially, can be at 180 proof. So, it seems that we're afraid of the solution exploding. But the only way that could happen is if there was oxygen in the solution & a sufficient heat source. I believe with a direct fire still one could heat up the copper to very high temps that could be considered an ignition source but with low pressure steam we cap out at 250 F. The auto-ignition temp of pure ethanol is at 350 C, which is 662 F. We're no where near that. The solution has little dissolved oxygen, not nearly enough fuel to allow an explosion. A common experience, I'm sure we've all had is putting out the flame on a shot glass (statue of liberty anyone?). A flame in a glass of ethanol can't sustain itself without an open top. So, I fully accept that I could be missing something. So, if anywhere here can highlight something I'm missing, that would be great! Cheers
  7. Hey everyone, I'm curious what is the highest proof people have put into their stills. I know we have to be careful over 100 proof but have people done (or regularly do) in practice? I imagine that there is a big danger difference between direct fire and steam jacketed so I should say I'm really interested in steam jacketed. The purpose here is to take leftover feints from previous runs and try to clean them up back to neutral, or as close to neutral as possible. My thoughts here are to load up the still with as high proof as possible, run the deflegmator, and run it super slow so it sticks as high as possible. My still is steam jacketed and has 4 plates. I can keep my feints around 170 proof so if I ran that I might get 185+ proof out, and it'll taste about as clean as it can get. So, the question is, is 170 proof too high to throw into the still? Any thoughts? Thanks for any and all insight!
  8. Again, thanks for all the wisdom & insight!
  9. Lots of good thoughts here! For full disclosure, I've been doing recipe development on a 5 gal, 2" still that I welded together to have 4 plates & defleg to model the big still as closely as possible (I know the recipe will change from still to still a ton but I still want to get the best handle on it as possible). I didn't put sight glass ports on the little still and I haven't been using the defleg so I guess I probably haven't been really using the plates there either. News to me! And to be clear, this whiskey spirit run was entirely just an experiment to get to know the new still. So, basically I messed with the power and cooling setting for the whole run to watch what it would do. But I did do the second half of the run with the defleg running just enough to keep the plates full and I was able to get below 80% for the whiskey... But maybe it wouldn't if it was the first half of the run. I was thinking that I'd want to use the plates for efficiency reasons... meaning, with plates running I could run this still harder & faster and produce that much more spirit in less time. But from the comments here, maybe I should rethink using the plates at all for spirit runs. Why dilute to 22%, why not run without plates and run the still harder to get the abv down throughout the run? Are you worried about the flavor imparted by heating up charge too much? Maybe running it that fast would make the transitions too fast? So, if I can get the proof I want as the heads first come over, then why would I ever use the plates? From the discussion here, it sounds like there's only one time: when I am running through the hearts and want to bring it back up to the middle of the hearts. Is that right? Are there other times? Do you use them on stripping runs by running super hard with minimal cooling just to keep the plates full? And, yeah, I realize that we all run our stills & recipes different from each other. Just trying to get a feel for what people are doing.
  10. Awesome, thanks for the response! I was thinking that was the case. Although, I was guessing that maybe if I ran it harder, I would get more reflux.. more going up, more heat, more ambient cooling from the walls, more reflux, and so possibly the plate would fill. But it sounds like I won't be able to achieve enough reflux without the dephlegmator running. Interesting... Thanks again.
  11. So, we are doing our very first spirit run on the new still. It's been a long road but we're finally here! And now I'm stumped.. We charged our 250 gallon Vendome whiskey still with 80 gallons of 45% abv stripped beer. We let in the steam so she could warm up slowly, ~3 psi in the kettle. The distillate came over pretty high ~89. Playing around with it to get a feel for the power input, distillate flows, distillate abvs and all that I finally looked inside the column and saw that the plates had barely any liquid on them. After double checking that the ball valves were closed, i tried cranking up the power but even at almost 1/2 gal/min (1.7 l/min) of distillate flow we couldn't get them full... So, i turned off the still, connected up the deflagmator (refluxer), and started cooling the top of the still. Then we turned the steam back on and waited. Finally the plates filled and all the bubbling looked great. After a while we turned off the cooling at the top of the still and ran the still at about 0.4 gal/min (1.5 l/min) . All the bubble plates were working but a while later I went up there to take a look again and noticed that all of them were empty again.. Now I'm running it with cooling at the top of the still just to keep them full... I shouldn't have to do that. Seems like I'm not getting enough reflux in the column top to keep the plates full.. What am I doing wrong here? Am I just not running it fast and hard enough to keep them full? Do I need to really crank up the power? Do I have to run with the defl running all the time? What am I missing? Thanks for any and all input. Oh, and btw the hearts taste great! I just want to make sure we're getting the full efficiency from the plates on the still. I'll probably pour the run back in and do it all again tomorrow.
  12. Yep, we plan on it. I was looking at some 2" insulation here: http://www.buyinsulationproductstore.com/servlet/the-460/Knauf-Manville-Fiberglass-Pipe/Detail
  13. Great, thanks for the resource. I'll read through it.
  14. Absolutely. Thanks for the words of caution. Cheers, Mike
  15. we definitely plan on having a pressure relief valve down stream from the pressure regulator, don't want to crack open our new still! The still has a 15psi pressure regulator on it but we're going to put in one down stream anyway. We were thinking of going with something like: T off of steam main tri-clamp gate valve strainer pressure regulator pressure relief valve pressure gauge globe valve pressure gauge tri-clamp One of the local breweries did something like this where they put in tri-clamps around critical sections so that they could easily remove a section to replace parts. I wonder if we should have a drip leg in-front of the globe valve or if we should put this section in a section in our vertical drop with the drip leg at the bottom.
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