Mead

Would you consider selling to rotary table separately? What are the specs on the labeler?

Price reduced: $17,500

Price reduced: $22,500

Price reduced: $25,000

Price reduced: $27,500

Price reduced: $30,000

Price reduced: $32,500

We've made a few changes to our process and no longer need the mash cooler we've been using for nearly the past decade. There are no issues with the cooler and it does a fine job cooling. I've attached the tech drawings and will update with pictures once we get it pulled from our facility. We have some extra gaskets that will come with the cooler as well. The mash cooler was specced out as follows:

Mash in: 100GPM @ 145F

Cooling Water in: 245GPM @ 50F

Mash out: 100GPM @ 68F

Cooling Water out: 245GPM @ 80F 

Asking 35K FOB OBO, please shoot me a message if you have any questions. Cost of a new unit would be north of +55k. 

Thanks!

2007 14P.pdf

2007 14PshtT2.pdf

2007 14PshtT3.pdf

On 9/6/2018 at 2:13 PM, Sorghumrunner said:

Thank you for those links Skaalvenn, very helpful.  So my reading of the Brewers association article about Stone's practices would be that if a fermentation tank is empty, ventilated and tested for CO2, as well as any pipes disconnected or LOTO, then the space would no longer be a permit required space.  Seem correct?

The only time tanks are entered at my facility is for cleaning and sanitization, so they would not be entered when mash is present.  My goal is osha approved safety, but just trying to figure out what the simplest form of that would be.  I do CIP cleaning in our still and mash tun, though the still needs some scrubbing to remove cooked on grains completely.  The fermenters could be CIP cleaned, they are the standard Letina 1000L tanks from St. Pats.  Hadn't bought the CIP ball for them because it is easy enough to climb in and scrub and spray, but being a one man production team, it'd be hard to have an attendant present any time i'm cleaning for safety.

It's been a while since I took my class, but I seem to remember the above applying ONLY if the confined space is not vertical entry. So if you're monitoring the air and something goes south, or your attendant notices the entrant acting funny they can get the entrant out without exposing themselves to the hazardous atmosphere. The only situation that is feasible is if the attendant can pull the entrant out, which is not possible with vertical entry and is why it requires a permit as well as equipment to necessitate a safe and timely extraction. I definitely recommend taking a class on confined space, it will clear a lot of things up. It is also not something to screw around with, as if something does happen and you aren't following safety protocol, you are not only going to kill yourself but likely the person that finds you. A class is well worth the couple hundred bucks it will cost, and many places have confined space attendants you can hire out for the day (they have monitoring and extraction equipment too) which makes way more sense if you're cleaning infrequently. 

On 9/5/2018 at 7:01 AM, Lorenzo said:

Hi Everyone,

Recently received samples of aged more than four years Bourbon, sample sent tested out to be 115 proof, color is rich, when comparing color to other whiskey's that have more age, we noticed the color is not only much darker, but after dumping the sampling beaker, i noticed a coating on the glass of the sample received, yet no residue from the other whiskeys after those samples were dumped.

I'm now suspect of the aged more that four sample, thinking maybe caramel color or ?  I do not have any elaborate testing equipment, I suppose I could send a sample off to a lab, anyone care to comment on what the the light colored residue might be , or suggest a lab that could break the composition down for me? 

One better according to the TTB wouldn't the distiller or broker be required to state if the color was altered by any percentage of caramel color etc?

 

Thanks , Lorenzo

Are the casks all 53 gallons?

Jesse, 

We've had good luck aging bourbon at 43N. We typically see temperatures down to -5F in the warehouse (~-20 outside), and temperatures up to 135F (~100F outside) in the tops of our warehouses during the summer. I wouldn't necessarily call it better or worse than aging in KY or other southern states, but it is certainly different. My biggest suggestion is to track your flavor profile throughout the temperature regime it will see in the barrels, because in our experience it can change quite noticeably. That being said, I think aging in a non climate controlled warehouse will really speak to the terroir of your region. Just so you know I'm not making things up, we have nearly 7000 barrels in storage, ranging from fresh fills to 8ish years old. Shoot me a PM if you have any more questions.

-Sam

SPF

TTT

Price Drop

If given a choice and an unlimited budget -

I was just going off this. Direct Injection is a better use of heat, heat exchangers are a better use of water and treatment chemicals. Those costs pale in comparison to heating costs.

Capital investments will look like a drop in the bucket compared to running the place for 5 years.

One thing I overlooked with the comment is the size of the vessel being heated. At ~250 gallons I doubt you'd see much if any difference between the two. It looks like you guys are running ~250-500 gallon runs so it may not work well there either. Once you start going big though, jacketed vessels aren't going to compete due to volume:surface area.

Corn, barley and rye. I've seen commercial separators and that's out of my price range. No, after seeing the feedback on here and doing more research I think I'll go the extra bit and distill on the grain too. Haven't talked to the farmer but if he will accept it wet I'll just put it in a tote. If he won't I'll find another farmer LOL! I could drain it into some sort of sieve or series of plastic barrels with smaller and smaller holes maybe. I have time to keep thinking/planning. Being a one man set up, it can't be too labour intensive, dump and let it do it's thing. Too many other things to be doing.

As far as mashing with direct flame, that was my intention but I'm not set in stone now, I'll see what the still manufacturer recommends. Steam injection could be done economically but I don't have any experience. Not sure whether I'd have to keep moving the wand or would the wand be fixed permanently inside, etc.

Shouldn't be a problem giving it to the farmer/rancher wet. Our cows love the stuff. You will need to get rid of it fairly quickly if it's wet, I find it starts to get funky in ~2-3 days. Only thing to watch is the temperature, we've has cows horse around (?) and fall in the hot mash, burning themselves in the process.

I'm trying to determine the labor cost for bottling, labeling and packaging time. Can anyone give me a rough estimate of how many bottles can be processed per hour assuming a hand operated line?

Roughly 5% of our bottles cost (excluding FET/SET) is spent on bottling labor. This is with about a dozen temps, working 8 hours days, bottling roughly 720 4.5L cases/day.

Do you already have a steam boiler?

Steam injection is pretty straight forward. You put a steam pipe in the mash tun, and you turn it on. Ok, a bit more than that, but that's the basic premise.

You could look at steam injection as being safer than a jacket, as you don't have a jacket to over pressurize and burst (rare). On the other hand, you are dealing with live steam, so if you are standing in front of a steam line and open it, you are getting burned (also rare).

In my opinion, either of the steam options are safer than having an open flame in a distillery, but that's just my 2 cents.

If given a choice and an unlimited budget - jackets win. If you own a tank you are planning to use, and that tank is not jacketed, or you wish to use the jacket for cooling, steam injection might be a viable option to make good use of an existing tank.

I would respectfully disagree. DIS is going to transfer heat more efficiently than a jacketed system, which means you can get to temps more quickly. Time is money, especially once you start scaling up.

Steam is certainly going to be safer than an open flame, provided you are using and maintaining your equipment properly.

As a check I crunched some numbers last night to try and get the viscosity of the mash. I assumed the mixture was a slurry exhibiting Newtonian behavior (unlikely but only formula available in literature). Would the above mixture at a temperature of 60C (4l:1kg) having a viscosity of about 2cP (centipoise) seem sensible to anyone? As a reference water at 20C has a viscosity of 1cP and 0.467cP at 60C.

My aim is to size the mixers today somehow once I confirm the viscosity. Also I've run the idea of using torrified wheat or some other pre-gelatinized adjunct past my group members as I believe this is what an actual commercial distillery would do. The heating costs to cook the wheat just seem astronomical to me in the long run and money may be saved this way.

Vessel sizes are fine.

We've gotten samples back from the mash coming straight out of the cook. We use a grain to water ratio of roughly 3:1 ratio. This size operation I'd assume you'd want to run either 3" or 4" pipe, I certainly wouldn't go smaller than that.

I imagine a big plant would be crashing the cook temps from ~140 to fermenting temperature with a once through tube and shell exchanger.

Through a 3" line, the apparent viscosity of our mash is 7.2cP @ 140F, and 15cP @ 80F

Through a 4" line, the apparent viscosity of our mash is 13cP @ 140F, and 35cP @ 80F

I don't think 4 hour cook times are achievable with that volume without DIS. For reference, our runs are 2500 gallons, (1/5 your size) and with DIS we can run it up to 200F in about 2.5-3 hours. You can cut down on that time if you are able to recycle some of your heat from other processes.

I would run a central top mixer with props and run CIP spray on either side. CIP spray balls (the size I'm familiar with anyway), won't be getting that thing clean if you're only using one and running about 14' diameter. It also eliminates a number of problems that running from the bottom induces.

You can run without a grist hydrator without a problem as long as you're careful with you pH and temps, but I imagine it's a worthwhile time saving investment.

Price Drop

Can you post pictures the link doesn't work

Sorry about that, if anyone needs pictures PM me your e-mail and I'll send you the photos.

TTT

TTT

TTT

TTT