Skaalvenn

This pricing is beyond ludicrous.

There has to be something better out there.

We did many tests back in 2019/2020 with Cannon and their ProPak column packing https://cannoninstrument.com/distillation-packing.html

Cut up springs, rasching rings, and scrubbers are NOT the same, in any league as SPP packing, and SPP is not in the same league as ProPak.

I don't have the data in front of me, but *true* ProPak provided a much higher distillation quality than any other packing material (or combination).  We did many tests on proof and flow rate, and nothing really compared.

The only problem with ProPak was that it is EXTREMELY expensive. (about $350-400 per liter if i recall)

Don't confuse cheap little springs with spiraled prismatic packing.  Just the name "prism" should mean triangle, which is not what is pictured above.

49 minutes ago, Silk City Distillers said:

We got a skid of 375s that had the wrong neck diameter entirely.

We found the same thing. The necks had suddenly shrunk about 1mm which was enough that the corks we used wouldn't fit.

Thankfully we moved away from  375s. Have not seen any quality differences with our 750 Jerseys from India...yet.

I might have done something wrong, but I never liked the operation of the danfoss and when we ran one it always seemed to be open a little too much or too little too closed.

We switched back to metered needle valves and it works very well for us.  We have them on our single column still and two column vodka still.  For the most part we turn the still on, set each meter to whatever flow rate we know works best, and have to make very few adjustments between the beginning and end of the run.  Our cooling is a constant temperature, so our setup might not be ideal if you have coolant temperature creep.

MN here.

Have not run an electric boiler, but we used to have 2x electric stills. A ~130 gallon and a ~65 gallon.

Our electric bills dropped by about $700 per month by going to natural gas fired steam boiler.  I think our most expensive natural gas bill has been $130?  That's with a 300 gallon and 100 gallon still.

I don't know our unit cost of natural gas, because really, it's a drop in the bucket.  For electric during summer months we're about $0.14 or $0.15/KwH out the door after all taxes/fees.  I think in winter we're about $0.11?

I've said it before and I'll say it now.  The initial costs for electric were relatively inexpensive, but the UPGRADE costs for electric were $$$$$$.

Another plus about upgrading to steam is that I now 600 hundred amps of electrical panels with plenty of room for other equipment =D

Started with electric and moved to steam.  It's been years so my memory isn't clear, but we had a ~120 gallon still powered by 80 amps and the heatup time was 2 hours, so running twice in a day was 4 hours of heatup--lots of wasted time.

Do everything in your power to be steam right off the bat. The boiler will be expensive, but the equipment will be much easier to source, typically cheaper, and cheaper to install. 

Steam: (assuming your boiler is oversized)  Want to upgrade your still?  Disconnect the old one and install a bigger one.  Want to add another still? Plumb it in.  Want to add a mash tun? Plumb it in.

Electric:  Want to upgrade your still? The panel probably needs upgrading too.  Want to add another still? You'll need to wire it, possibly get another panel or service run.  Want to add a mash tun? You'll need another panel/wiring/service for that.  Plus there's the cost of running electric vs natural gas, that saved me about $600-700 per month alone.

At this point we’re hiring someone to convert all our TTB tracking to spreadsheets.   Whiskey Systems just announced that credit cards are an additional 3% fee, which as a business owner I do completely understand.  However, the sudden increase on pricing and then CC processing tells me Whiskey Systems is in trouble and may not be around too long.

4-5 years ago $450 in labor was absurd, but now after Inflation and higher cost of business it’s just a full day of labor or so to dedicate, which is probably Less than. Internal excell spreadsheets here I come!

Just an update on bottling speed with the Mori 6 spout.  During last nights bottling run we used a stopwatch and clocked 768 x 750ml bottles filled in 60 minutes, or 12.8 bottles filled per minute.

we did “cheat” a little bit by manually breaking the seals between the bottler and bottle allow them to fill a littler quicker, especially in the last moments of filling when it goes in quicker.  It’s an added process but the speed was noticeable to everyone on the line.

We did have a slower start and a couple hiccups during that hour, I’m pretty confident that we could potentially hit 800 filled per hour, but no more.  It’s also not realistic at all for humans to sustain the 750-800 per hour speed, but it is achievable for a sprint.

3 hours ago, SlickFloss said:

in chemistry anhydrous is a chemical form containing no water. Anhydrous ethanol is very rare (nonexistent?) in nature hence the use of the sieve to produce it for ethanol. 80% of the time in chemistry we are referencing crystalline solids when speaking about anhydrous chemicals. Anhydrous ethanol and many other anhydrous liquids are very difficult to keep stable, for instance in this case anhydrous ethanol can and will absorb and bond to water from the air to make it no longer anhydrous. This can even occur in it's own storage containers after opening it for initial use. The tendency for certain compounds to absorb ambient moisture is a property known as being "hygroscopic." Hydrates or compounds with woc in their structures have water bonded to their cations.

This is true, 200 proof is basically 199.9# but for most of the world's applications, it's dry enough for us to say it's anhydrous.

As for it absorbing water from the air, I have run some basic proof tests and it's not nearly as fast as many people think it is, to the point where it's not even worth thinking about for anyone outside of a strict laboratory environment.

Our shrink seal/labeling line is fully automatic, but right now we're filling with a Mori 6 head from TCW and then a CCR semi-automatic corker.  With 3 people working at a decent pace we try to hit 600x 750ml bottles cased and on a pallet per hour.  We can do higher numbers if we want, but 600/hr is pretty manageable with the current manual stages.

I should note that we use a larger AODD pump than what came with the Mori as we were able to outpace it.

*shrugs*

Proper brand creation is all about creating a product that will move off the shelve, and what segment of the market is rather irrelevant

A premium branded table saw requires the exact process as a premium branded engagement ring. It's not like you're building a structural bridge and need a company that has a solid track record in bridge design. You need a company with a solid track record in creating a design which appeals to whatever market the widget is sold in.

Also, Shinebox has done other alcohol branding/packaging, it's just not on their website.

https://shinebox.com/

I won't discuss pricing, but we're very happy with our choice. But I will say a true premium brand costs premium money, how premium do you want to be?

Email sent, very interested in the filler.

6 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Crazy anecdote about water consistency.

Our water is from a large regional provider (aka municipal water).  
 

Late every winter into early spring, we would notice TDS of our input water spike, considerably.  From a baseline in the 100s up to the 400s.

Got talking to the water department and what they told me made me do a double take.

TDS rises because of the amount of salt added to the groundwater as a result of salting the roadways in the winter.

We happily use RO + DI and target a tds of 0-1 for our proofing water.

You'll also see a difference between summer/winter due to the amount of water being pulled from the ground. Summertime = much higher rates of water due to lawn watering. We see pH  fluctuate substantially (not much with TDS) between summer and winter months and had some meetings with the public works managers as I was thoroughly confused when I first noticed it.

If you are asking if it's for sale, It's not mine, so it's not for sale.

9 hours ago, Bronfen said:

yes, its very expensive but much less. So i understand that you discontinued using it so what did you do with it?

The thread actually reminded me that it’s boxed up in the warehouse. I was going to send it back right as the pandemic started up, then 2020 went into full effect and I completely forgot until now.

We worked with propak to do some testing right before the pandemic as we were interested in using their packing in our vodka still but wanted to find out if it was worth the extreme cost or not.

the results were that it was an extremely good packing for achieving neutral, but it does require that you run the still considerably slower to avoid blow-through/flooding as it’s perforations are incredibly good at holding liquid.

We tested their smaller size stainless variant, can’t remember which off the top of my head, maybe 5mm? in our old electric vodka still with a 5” column. We tried many variations of pure propak, propak in just the bottom of the column, and propak in just the final 8” of column. Bottom only showed no improvement. Top only was a slight improvement, of course best results being the entire column.

Our final verdict was that for laboratory distillations where the utmost purity of whatever is being distilled is the goal, it’s a great packing. However, for a beverage alcohol distillery that needs to make money it’s probably not worth the $40,000 cost to fill a small column.  I want to say it’s around $350 to $450 per liter of product, again just trying to remember off the top of my head. If you want easy math, an 8” diameter column is about 1 liter for every 1.25” of height, so about $3350 for every foot of pro-pak.

again, full disclaimer on the cost and numbers, I’m going purely off memory from over a year ago.

Call a Brawn mixer dealer.

Many spirits brands that were using imported glass switched to domestic, so domestic is getting beyond hammered. I'd be quite surprised if a major glass company like Anchor went under during these times. What's probably happening is they're getting so flooded with emails and calls that they don't have time to respond. might have disabled their website for the time being just to hope people don't call?

It's going to be rough getting glass for quite a while.

8 hours ago, Minnetonka Dan said:

That is physically not possible.  There is no way the methanol won't come out sooner than the ethanol.  Maybe they are confusing some other tails component for methanol?

Incorrect.

Just look at water with a boiling point of 212, yet we have it coming off through the entire run from heads to tails.

Get some nylon stock from McMaster and have a friend with a lathe and/or mill make you one?

Hot water will work, kind of.

Why "kind of"?  Water of course boils at 212, but as your 211 degree water circulates through the jacket you'll have a heck of a time transferring enough heat through the jacket to say raise 190 degree mash water to 200 degrees since there's not a large difference in temperatures between the liquids to have a fast energy flow. With cheese hitting 145 degrees is not a problem with hot water, it's actually a pretty good energy source for doing that...but not for at or near water boiling.

With steam you have 250ish degree steam hitting a 211 degree inner wall, which is of course will cause the steam to instantly condense on the jacket, and since the energy in that 250 degree steam can not be destroyed, only transferred, that extra energy basically gets 100% instantly transferred to the inner wall, which you won't get with hot water.

I've had baine a bain marie style still and tested out heating oil, water based heating fluids, glycol, and water. Oil provided the best results since the temperature could be brought up to over 300 degrees, but changes to the heat input were delayed by 10 or so minutes due to the large thermal energy present in the oil (along with being a  relatively poor thermal conductor).  The water based heating fluids kind of worked, but suffered from rapid breakdown from oxygen in our open air system. The glycol, water, and mixes of the two were basically complete failures since they could not provide a high enough temperature to provide adequate heat transfer into the still, and the result was basically boiling of the solution inside the jacket instead of boiling inside the kettle.

You can do things like raise the pressure inside the jacket to achieve a higher boiling point, but it's still not using the right tool for the job.  A vice grips on a bolt kind of works, but everyone knows a proper wrench is a far superior tool. Steam is the far superior tool for working with temperatures closer to the boiling point of ethanol or water.

With it being harder and more expensive to startup a *profitable* distillery every day, you need to start out on the right foot. Having the wrong equipment could doom an otherwise flawless business plan.

Thanks for everything and happy retirement!

I wouldn’t be in this business or where I’m at with the business without this forum and some of your posts. THANK YOU!

-Tyson

We are also looking for a replacement for Whiskey Systems due to the pricing.

11 hours ago, Southernhighlander said:

 

 

We have a system that gives the best of both worlds: a vacuum still for stripping and a conventional spirit still for the final run.  Our vacuum stripping stills are fast and cost only a little more than our conventional stills.  Our vacuum stills can be fired by a hot water heater, hot water boiler or wood fired hydronic boiler.  If you are in the right area, firing a vacuum still with wood is the most economical way to go.  paul@distillery-equipment.com

 

I have one of your regular stills. I appreciate the technical support you gave for what was wrong from the factory, but I'm good on future purchases.