MichaelAtTCW

We sell the Mori Fillers so I'll just comment on the size & other fact-based aspects and leave comments/experiences to other folks. That said, there have been A LOT of threads on fillers over the years. Not much has changed, but there's a wealth of information here in the forum and a lot of ground has been covered! Here's a link to some past threads. Plenty of strong opinions/recommendations about fillers! For a gravity filler, it's unlikely to get smaller than either of the units you mention. I'm not aware of any 1, 2, or 3-head gravity fillers. Even if there were, gravity fillers need a reservoir that can hold a few bottles' worth of liquid, so there's kind of a minimum cost of entry with regard to size. There are some other non-gravity types of fillers we don't sell with fewer heads, though: the Enolmatic is a single-head vacuum filler, so it doesn't need a large reservoir above the filling nozzles. It's been mentioned a few times in the linked threads. XpressFill has some smaller 2-spout options as well. Both of the above use electric pumps, so you would not be able to use your in-house compressed air.

A few equipment vendors hang about here, including us. For high-proof pumps, our SimpleSpirits 12 or SimpleSpirits 49 AODD pumps are great, and in tons of distilleries. Here's an article on using pumps in distilleries, and some recommendations about how to move high-proof spirits safely. For hoses, GlideTech Distillery hose in 1" or 1.5" is a purpose-built, neutral industrial hose that's designed for moving high-proof spirits without leaching any odors or flavors, even after prolonged contact with high-proof. Beyond that, we sell a lot of filters, bottle fillers, bottle rinsers, etc. to distilleries. We've worked with tons of distilleries on equipment setups, so check out our site or give us a call on Monday. Good luck!

Yes you can. Sharp knife or box cutter.

Are you filling bottles with a carbonated product? If not, you probably don't need a counter-pressure filler. Most distilled products are flat and can use normal gravity fillers. The fillers you're referencing are on the homebrew scale, so you might get good mileage out of asking your question on a homebrewer form, or the /r/homebrewing sub-reddit or the like.

That's a 1.5" Definox butterfly valve. The "valve seat" is what you're looking for. Definox makes great (but very expensive) valves. That tank was likely sourced in the 90s, before the proliferation of cheaper valves from Asia, when there wasn't much choice but to spend a few hundo on a valve. As @adamOVD suggests, search "Definox butterfly valve seat" and see who comes up as a stocking distributor. You might need to call them and describe your valve or any markings on it to ensure that the valve seats they currently offer match the model you have, as I'm sure their parts have changed over the years. Here's one that we sell, if you'd prefer replace it, (and spare valve seats to keep on the shelf). As for the hose, sure, give us a call. The hose you're likely looking for is just GlideTech Distillery Hose. It's in tons of distilleries, and holds up very well to high-proof spirits. Sorry to hear that our website (TCW) wasn't beginner-friendly, but as others have suggested, don't be shy about calling us if you have any questions.

I wish customers would give us more feedback about exactly how many gallons they run through a filter before they need to change out, but we mostly just see buying patterns. Smaller craft facilities go many months without changing (or at least without reordering). Carbon lenticulars are used pretty heavily in cannabis processing. We saw a lot of this when ethanol extraction was booming a few years ago. The users would turn the green sludge into a clear, golden oil. Even the processors of "low-grade" cannabis oil, which is terrible stuff, get at least a few hundred gallons of usage out of a carbon lenticular before needing to swap out. Distillery usage needs are comparatively much lighter, so onstream life should be much higher. Edit: one of our cannabis ethanol extraction customers just came in, coincidentally. I asked him how many gallons he gets through a carbon filter. They're a pretty high-volume user processing stuff much dirtier product than spirits, and he says as long as they protect the carbon with a filter upstream, they can get 5,000-10,000 gallons through one before needing to change out. That's a sample size of one, though, so YMMV.

One tangible benefit that carbon cartridges have is a much lower hassle factor. Dealing with loose carbon can get messy. With a cartridge you pop it in, and pop it out when you're done. A lot of our small customers use carbon cartridges with great results in a loop with a little Flojet pump or the like. Larger customers tend to use carbon lenticular, or plate & frame filter sheets. Lenticular modules have been really popular with breweries making clear seltzers to remove colors/odors. Regardless of the form factor, lenticulars and sheets also require sufficient time in contact, but both offer much increased surface area over cartridges, so they tend to perform better even though the liquid's time in contact is about the same as with cartridges. Using plain old gravity with a cartridge might work and get you the best of both worlds. Dunno. There is usually some pressure differential to overcome in order to get through a cartridge, so it may be impractically slow. We sell small peristaltic pumps for dosing ingredients, adjuncts, etc. (think bentonite, enzymes, or sulphites). They're capable of going slow enough to reliably push in the milliliters per minute range. It would be possible to use one get gravity-like (or even slower) flow rates to reaallllly maximize time in contact, and get you "set it and forget it" results through a cartridge without having to use loose carbon.

We have Mori presses being used for herbal extraction, and even grain pressing. They're probably quite a bit larger and more expensive than the home fruit presses you're using, so will depend on your scale.

Most food-grade pumps operate with an oil-free air compressor to minimize the risk of contamination by oil in case of diaphragm rupture.

We're now making G57/G70 stands for those don't want to mess around with making one. It's more expensive than the one shown above — as long as your time has no value — but is made of stainless steel, which should make grounding more simple. People ask us pretty regularly if it's ok to use PVC hose & tubing for high-proof transfer. This has been discussed before on the forums at least a few times. Nothing much has changed. PVC still gets "fair" ratings for ethanol resistance, meaning it is at least somewhat reactive in prolonged contact with spirits. Compared to rubber-based compounds like UHMW, EPDM, and Butyl, PVC will degrade more rapidly. But there's no question it's cheaper. Usually about 1/4 the cost.

Sure. BTW, there was a thread a while back that went into further detail on this topic. You'll see that one user in particular did have some compelling reasons for preferring to pull through filters. As with many things, it can come down to personal preference, though I remain on the "always push through filters" side of the fence, myself — and if you ask people in the filtration industry, they will recommend the same except for specific circumstances.

I don't see or hear of many people using vacuum pumps in distilleries in place of positive displacement or centrifugal pumps. When cannabis was booming a couple of years ago there was a lot more interest in transferring/filtering via vacuum. Many cannabis extraction laboratory setups started off using vacuum filtration on very small scales. When they wanted to scale up, they assumed they just need to buy bigger vacuum pumps and bigger filters. It usually didn't turn out that way. Most found that it is much better to push through filters with positive displacement pumps than to try and pull through them. In terms of cons: since vacuum is just the absence of atmospheric pressure, there is a hard limit to how much vacuum you can pull without breaking the laws of physics. The maximum vacuum you can pull is 29.92 in. Hg (or 1 ATM, 1.01 bar, or 14.7 PSI), and a perfect vacuum is very difficult to pull. Most filters are considered clogged at 30-35 psi. So you'll always be leaving more than half a filter's lifespan on the table if you try to pull through it with vacuum. Conversely, even a little G70 pump can push up to 100 psi. Vacuum leaks are going to be much more difficult to detect than pressure leaks. You can see liquid squirting out of a pressure leak, or see a puddle that you can trace back to the source. Good luck finding a vacuum leak. In terms of pros: some people like that product never touches the pump when using vacuum, which may be beneficial for safety. Also, many fillers use vacuum, since viscous products will fill much quicker than with gravity, and overflow can be sucked into a secondary chamber to keep levels consistent.

This may or may not directly answer your question since I'm not sure if you got the Mori Filler. I can tell you in general that we use: 1. The Flojet Quad on our electronic Mori Fillers (not to be used with any products that have a flash point below 100 °F, which rules out many spirits) 2. The Flojet G70 on pneumatic Mori Fillers for spirits. But the pump alone may not do much, and the pump is not the expensive part of a level-control system on a filler anyway. The expensive part is the level-sensing controls that turn the pump on and off automatically. Most gravity fillers use a "toilet bowl float" to open and close against the pressure of gravity. The pressure they're designed to shut off against is, thus, usually just a few feet of head, or up to about 2-3 psi. Both of the pumps I link above (and, really, any positive displacement pump) will generate much, much more pressure. The net result is that even a puny pump will overpower the toilet bowl float and cause the reservoir to overflow unless you monitor it. You may be able to circumvent this by restricting the outlet of the pump, closely monitoring the level of liquid in the reservoir, and not leaving the filler unattended with the pump running. Or just leave the lid off and turn the pump on and off yourself, which will slow down your filling. All this sounds penny-wise, pound-foolish, IMHO. I will close this by saying that we've sold many, many, many Mori Fillers. While I've never talked to anyone who regretted getting an electric or pneumatic level control system, I've talked to plenty of people who regretted not getting the electronic or pneumatic level control. They're the ones who call back to ask us if it's possible to buy the level control system and retrofit it themselves.

Hopefully you got the groundable version of the pump, the Flojet G70. Not all of those little Flojet pumps are groundable. The non-groundable ones like the G57 will have big warning stickers on them indicating they shouldn't be used with fuel, or with any liquid that has a flash point below 100 °F. For hose, if you're using the plastic barbs we sell a light-duty distillery tubing that's been quite popular. It's polypropylene-lined, and very lightweight and flexible. It shouldn't be used for holding high pressure. We sell stainless port barbs for these pumps that will allow you to affix industrial hose like 3/4" GlideTech distillery. We've tried with the plastic barbs the pump comes with, and they'll crack or collapse when you use higher-pressure bands to affix real industrial hoses.

Enough people have asked us about this that we went ahead and made a little H-frame stand with air filter/regulator, 90° inlet/outlet barbs, and a flow control ball valve. This should make the G57 and G70 plug n' play. I'm guessing it will be overkill for many DIY'ers, but if you don't want to screw around with making your own, here it is. It keeps the inlet/outlet upright, as Flojet recommends, protects the air inlet with a filter/regulator, and lets you dial in the pump pressure/flow rate. Easy peasy. As far as grounding, what you propose will only work if the tote and barrel are conductive. A wooden barrel or plastic tote aren't conductive. You probably know that, but just saying for future readers who might not know. The barrel or tote must be connected to ground themselves, obviously. Some grounding wire from the vessel to a cold water pipe or a copper stake should do the trick. You can verify that the pump is grounded with a cheap ohmmeter/multimeter. Place one probe on the G70's ground bolt, and the other on the body of the metal barrel or tote that you have grounded. It should detect continuity between the two points.

Just a note that mounting the G57 or G70 horizontally as pictured here may work, but is not ideal unless the pump is primed with liquid flowing freely to the inlet. If mounted horizontally, the pump may air lock and stall out if air reaches the inlet. On the inlet side, we recommend using the strainer. If not the flojet one, any 40-mesh strainer. This is just to prevent solids from entering the check valves, which will knock the pump out of commission pretty quickly.

This really depends on the user, and how the pump is used. I know many customers that have been using their flexible impeller pump for years and never even knew that the impeller had to be changed. Conversely, some are lucky to get a year out of the impeller. If the pump is typically used with cool liquids and is started with a flooded inlet so that the pump never has to dry prime, the impeller should last a good long while. Even so, impeller changeout typically takes a few minutes. The hard part is ensuring you always keep one on the shelf ready to go.

You don't see much belt-driven stuff nowadays. It doesn't make sense now that electronic speed control/power tranmission is so inexpensive and ubiquitous, and direct drive is so much more reliable. If the pump is cheap, I doubt the belt is the main factor driving the cost down. It'd likely be just as cheap to directly couple the motor to the head. It's probably just a cheaply-made pump.

There are a lot of factors to consider: The main one is: do you want the pump to be self-priming? That is, do you want or need the pump to pull suction on startup up and out of barrels, totes, tanks, etc. If the outlet of your tanks/totes will always be above the pump's inlet, so that gravity can keep the pump fed with liquid, this is not really a concern. Most breweries are designed this way, since non-self-priming centrifugal pumps are the backbone of the brewery pump world. Self-priming is obviously more convenient and versatile, though. It's super nice to have a self-priming pump for pumping out of barrels and the like. If you don't care about self-priming or don't need it, the best electric choice is something like our XN 114 Distillery Pump. It uses an XP motor starter, and the pump runs at a fixed RPM. This eliminates the need for a speed control (VFD), which is very expensive to make C1D2-compliant. The XN 114 is a centrifugal pump, so it's not self-priming. These pumps are awesome for unloading tankers, where the truck's outlet is always above the pump's inlet, so liquid always flows in freely. If you need self-priming, you're limited to electric or AODD positive displacement pumps. For electric pumps, you have flexible impeller pumps or RPD pumps as the most common option. However with those, you will likely want to keep the VFD out of your hazardous location. Groundable AODD pumps offer self-priming, and can move mash when sized appropriately, but they obviously need a lot of compressed air to run. In terms of $ per GPM, they're usually cheaper than electric pumps up-front because you're not paying for the motor or speed control with the pump. You're paying for it separately with the air compressor, though. These are all common enough questions/considerations that I wrote an article about it here: Safe Pumping for Distilleries, which goes into some of the "tricks" our customers commonly use for pumps in potentially hazardous locations. Let us know if you have any questions!

For most small production facilities, 3/4"–1.5" hose will work fine. 1" hose as suggested by @PeteB is usually a good middle ground between flow rate, weight, and flexibility. You usually want your hose to be at least as big as your pump's true ID*. You definitely don't want the hose to be smaller if you can avoid it. It could lead to pump cavitation issues; particularly if you are running a centrifugal pump. If you are transferring high proof spirits, we normally recommend hose that's rated for ethanol transfer. GlideTech Distillery is a really popular choice, and purpose-built for distillery transfers. PVC hoses like Kanaflex and Kanaline are relatively inexpensive, but ethanol is usually rated "Fair" or "Good" compatibility with PVC, so it may lead to leaching or discoloration. It will certainly have a shorter usable lifespan, and we recommend reserving their use for water/drainage, etc. * NB: The true ID of the pump's manifolds may be different than the tri-clamp or NPT size. It may be best to verify this with your pump vendor. As an example, we sell the SimpleSpirits 43 with 1.5" Tri Clamp inlet and outlet. The true ID of the pump's internal manifolds, however, are 1". You could use a 1" or 1.5" hose, and would be unlikely to see any difference in performance.

As someone who sells winery, brewery, and distillery equipment, I'll give my hot take. There's a name for what you're describing. I've heard customers call it the "winery tax", "distillery tax", and more recently, "cannabis tax". The term has always bothered me. There's an assumption that equipment retailers are engaging in some kind of mildly nefarious arbitrage, buying cheap stuff, slapping a "For Distillers!" sticker on it, and reselling the same product for 3x more just because the end user is presumed to be rich—rich enough to start a distillery, anyway. And people seem to just take the idea of a "distillery tax" as a truism because…hey, equipment to start a distillery can be expensive, so someone must be getting rich from it. I see the P&Ls in equipment sales, and know very well what products cost. In my experience, if something is priced high there are usually good reasons that have nothing to do with how deep the intended target market's pockets are. Something made for commercial beverage production likely has many other more mundane factors that contribute to its higher cost: It uses higher-cost/better-quality and more sanitary components than consumer or even prosumer-grade equipment It requires user-serviceability, and accessible spare parts It requires skilled, higher-cost labor to make It has to meet industry approvals and standards It is made in smaller batches, and can't benefit from economies of scale that things like toasters and hair dryers can In short, the equipment must be made well, and last a long time because there are business-altering consequences if it doesn't. Many consumer-grade pieces of equipment don't get held to the same standards. If the hydroponic chiller goes out, so what? Maybe your tomatoes will be a little less plump this go round while you wait for the new pump. If the industrial chiller goes out, maybe many thousands of dollars of product gets ruined. Another thing that baffles me about the "distillery tax" theory is that it doesn't take into account the fact that we have a free market with plenty of companies selling the same, or similar equipment in competition with one another. Speaking again from experience, if something can be sold for less while still maintaining a profit that keeps the payroll account full and the lights on, it will be sold for less by someone looking to undercut the competition. Many times I've noticed that after adjusting the price on something in our online store, our competitors selling the same item will adjust their price within a few days or weeks. Likewise, if I don't think we can sell something at a competitive price, we're pretty unlikely to sell it at all. All that aside, I understand the spirit of your question: "does anyone have ideas about how to repurpose cheaper, lower-quality gear in non-critical applications to save money on equipment?" No shade on the question. Just offering a word of caution that there's no such thing as a free lunch—from someone who's seen many people get metaphorical food poisoning trying to find one.

That combo should work. We have tons of folks using the G70 as their daily drivers until they're able to afford larger pumps.

You definitely don't want an aluminum body pump. Ethanol will quickly corrode it. Tell 'em to go back to the drawing board.

@needmorstuff Looks like that pump you link to is a regular old Sandpiper T1F. I'm guessing Enviroflex just imports and distributes them to the UK under their own moniker. Sandpiper makes good, efficient pumps. If that price works for you, it's a fine pump. As @Golden Beaver Distillery notes, a flexible impeller pump can be a great choice if your mashes are transferred at < 180 °F.

Thanks for the article shoutout! I have a few nits to pick on this pump. I don't love clamped-body AODD pumps. They are easier to dismantle, but also fussier. More prone to leaks or mystery vacuum problems. Bolted bodies tend to be more reliable than clamped bodies. Manufacturers that make bolted body pumps usually tout the bolted body as an advantage over clamped bodies. PTFE (Teflon) diaphragms are a strange choice. As anyone who's used it knows, PTFE has poor elastomer memory. It's extremely chemical resistant, but if you've used teflon tri clamp gaskets you know it can be tougher to get a good seal than EPDM or Buna. Once PTFE has been nicked, it stays nicked, and a leak path forms very easily. PTFE is also more difficult to flex/deform, so you lose a lot of power and flow rate when you use it as a diaphragm material. On the pumps we sell, for example, choosing a PTFE diaphragm vs. a standard thermoplastic elastomer loses you about 10-12 GPM of flow rate, given the same inlet CFM/PSI. So your air efficiency decreases commensurately, and you end up requiring more kWhr for less flow rate. Not a big deal if you're only running one AODD pump now and again, but as you scale up you can easily save thousands of dollars a year with more efficient pumps. And speaking of air efficiency, the pump is really inefficient. Doing the conversions, it requires about 15 CFM @ 110 psi to get about 17.83 GPM and a potential head pressure of 21 psi. 110 psi in and only 21 psi out. That's a huge efficiency loss. You'll be running your air compressor all-out to get this pump to run at full speed. It's a very inexpensive pump (not counting the cost of shipping from the UK, of course), but depending on how often you use it, the cost to run it would likely make up the difference in short order. The equivalent pump that we sell—which is also often used for mash/high proof transfer—is the SimpleSpirits 43, which uses a 1" body. On our pump, 15 CFM @ only 40 psi gets you about 27 GPM and the same 21 psi of head pressure. 40 psi in, 21 psi out. Much better. And you still have the rest of the pump curve's worth of headroom to get up to 49 GPM. The inlet/outlet are not tri clamp, but BSP: British Standard Pipe. Good if you're in the UK. Not so good anywhere else. I'll say two things that I do like about this pump to make up for all the trash talking: 6.35 mm is a pretty large solid for a 1" pump to pass. It might be a website typo because the linked manual says it will only do up to 5 mm. Not a huge difference, but anyway… I do also like that this pump is easily flippable for draining. We actually just started making an "easy flip" stand for AODD pumps that lets users flip the pump over for draining. Here's a pic: