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Stilling on the Grain with Elements


CountySeat

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I use a 26 Gallon Hillybilly Still pot still set up. It generally works great but now that I am trying rye, I am frequently burning the mash. I have always fermented and distilled on the grain and did not have any problems with similar mashes burning but not that I use rye, it burns just about every time.

For instances, a grain bill of 51% corn, 33% wheat and 16% malted barley was not burning but 51% corn, 33% rye and 16% malted barley is consistently burning. I switched to a blue corn as well but I suspect the culprit is the rye.

Has anyone else had success with using a still with an element and distilling rye mashes on the grain? Any tips? I've tried bringing the temperature up very slow and agitating before I close the unit up which works but about half way through the stripping run, the mash eventually catches the element and starts to burn.

Other than distilling off the grain is there anything I can do in terms of mashing or fermenting which would help? I get pretty good conversion at about 8% and all my grains and flour ground.

I'm planning to buy a new R&D still with steam but they are pretty expensive and it may be some time before I can get one. I'm hoping to finish my R&D with my current hillybilly still set up.

Thanks!

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Unless someone has evidence to the contrary, I would suggest that your immersion heating coils are just too hot for the proteins associated with Rye....therefore your scorching and burning.

Your answer, without continual agitation or temperature control to the immersed coils, is to not distill on the grain. You'll probably want to consider lautering and then distilling.

Anyone else?

We do 1000g Rye washes, grain on distillation with no issues. However, we don't use immersive electric coil heaters, which makes me think that is your primary issue.

Cheers,

John

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Thanks for the reply. That is my assumption. It is odd to me that swtiching from 33% wheat to 33% rye would make that much of a difference but I guess it does. I will try to distill off the grain next time but I'm not sure I am set up to do that yet. My mill can only grind to flour, not any courser than that so I'm not sure I will be able to seperate with filter bags or screens too effectivley but will try. My preference has always been to distill on the grain but I may not be able to do that right now. At this point, I'm trying to get R&D barrels filled and if I have to do a barrel with the rye mash off the grain, I'm OK with that.

Any other thoughts? Thin out the mash more with water or tails?

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We use two electric elements and have to filter our washes to remove even the yeast or we get off flavors. I'm surprised you're getting good spirits distilling on grain with elements. Every time we have distilled without filtering, even a simple sugar wash, the burnt yeast in the wash would taint the spirit. We're now fining and then filtering in order to get a very clean wash for distilling on elements.

You might do a test, do your regular formula but fine and filter the wash so it is crystal clear, then compair the clean wash spirit with the same formula that you distilled on grain. I think you might be suprised.

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We mash then lauter, so we don't ferment on grain. We use sparkaloid to fine the wash after racking when fermentation is complete. We then use a plate filter with a 2um filters to get the yeast out. It's crystal clear and makes a very clean tasting wash for element users. It's a lot of extra work, but we have to do it seeing we don't have the big bucks for a steam jacketed still.

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  • 1 month later...

We don't use electric elements (direct fire and steam injection only) but my guess would be the high protein content of the rye. You could try a protein rest or adding the barley at a lower temp (140 ish). While I'm fairly certain your culprit is the rye proteins, is it possible that it could be non-fermented sugars? regardless, I can't imagine using elements on the grain - I'd filter the shit out of it personally.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Get a racking cane and lift your fermenter above your still and recover liquids into the still by gravity syphon. I have the same still, had the same problem with corn mash, this was my method. I will be doing this from now on as it is by far the least labor intensive and easy. I also have winery equipment, an air diaphragm pump and a sight glass to do this more mechanically. However, it is harder with small volume and results in greater loss. I usually will ferment on a pallet in 55 Gallon drums and just lift them up in the air.

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The other thing you can do is buy a cheap electric diaphragm pump, they are available at tractor farm supply, etc. They are 1-5gpm and are less than 125.00. They will help draw the liquid and are positive displacement pumps. I like them, i use them for my Ag sprayers in the field applying foliar sprays from a tank on my rhino. They will be a good fit for your size application.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We've tried to get this work - I suspect you may be burning in all cases, just not noticing it in the later case (burning is worse with the sticky rye glucans). Have you had elements die on you prematurely?

If you don't want to do a beta glucan rest - try some Sebflo-TL from Specialty Enzymes. The higher the rye or wheat percentages, the more it'll help. It's not going to make a massive difference in a heavy corn mash, but it'll get rid of some of the sticky gluiness. This won't scale though.

If you are using something like a 5500w LWD water heater element, you can try welding on a few more bungs and using more elements - but running them at 120v vs 240v - this will cut a 5500w element down to 1250w - so you'll need 4 to get back up to your original 5500w. This will bring the low watt density elements down even lower yet. Scaling this up is going to require you to buy some very expensive heating elements though. We talked to one manufacturer that was looking for close to $500 per element - going to get really costly fast.

Reason we were trying the sebflo-tl was to reduce the viscosity so that we could pump easier, and strain easier.

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I saw another interesting solution to this in a home-made still. The dude stuck a tube full of oil around his element that went right across his pot, and used the oil to transfer the heat. He said it reduced the burning. His was just welded copper tube, but I imagine you could do it with triclamps....I might add that he later made a plate-shaped copper oil reservoir that sat in the bottom of his beer-keg still. The element went in the side and the whole bottom of the keg radiated the heat. I never saw that one, but he described it to me. Pretty neat solution. I think he used food-grade mineral oil.

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