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klattig

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Everything posted by klattig

  1. YES, I have been having problems with Tapi closures too! Our issue is separation of the wood bartop from the synthetic cork. Tapi claims these are 'co-molded', but the failing closures are clearly glued to the wood. We'd been seeing failure rates up to 50% during the bottling process, and have been getting customer complaints from failures in the field. We use two sizes, and they have different failure modes: the 21.5mm ones 'spin' - the cork part rotates inside the wood, making it really hard to get the cork out. The 19.5mm ones simply tear completely out of the wood part - leaving just a nub that requires a pair of pliers to get out! Most disappointing is the complete lack of response from Tapi. I called my rep several times, with no response. Then I left messages on their main number - nothing. I reached out via their online contact form - crickets. I finally switched to another supplier (ACIC), but have 10k stoppers that can't be used and no recourse. Frustrating!! My advice: Avoid Tapi at all costs!
  2. I agree with all that Stumpy had to say, but will add this: Don't even try to run this with a lauter screen! Wheat does not filter well, no matter how many rice hulls you add. Do a grain-in ferment & strip.
  3. Are these still available? I'd be interested in 3 pallets...
  4. We have a similar problem in a home-brewed 550g mash tun. We installed ~60' of 3/4" flexible copper tubing around the inside perimeter of the tun, and we can run hot or cool water thru it. We typically re-heat from about 175 to 190F in ~75 minutes with near-boiling water. I can't see why you couldn't run steam through it to maintain a higher temp. You must have an agitator running while heating or cooling, otherwise on the area immediately around the coils gets heated/cooled.
  5. Interesting, and just what I'd expect! Thanks for the feedback!
  6. I guess I'll run an experiment and find out! We actively cool as well, and there's still a few weeks of relative cool here in AZ where I can keep my ferment as low as 80F... If I don't ping back on this in a couple weeks, bump the thread & I'll post an update!
  7. Around the same time as we changed the mill size, we got a lot pickier about the timing of the heads cut, and stopped recycling any heads. So the final product yield actually went down, but there were multiple factors involved (as usual, we changed too many things at once!). Anyway, I think I've read that some methanol can come from one-off ferments of cellulose, but Silk City is right that the literature seems to support the idea that the vast majority comes from pectin. This is off my original topic, but what ferment temperatures are folks generally using? There's a wide range of answers on the web! We do control ferment temperatures pretty tightly, but our target is typically 87F +/-2. Any thoughts about that being too high, and producing more fusels, etc?
  8. captnKB, Yes, that makes sense. But our OG is 1.070 or so; we never exceed 11%ABV after ferment. I think we aren't stressing the yeast, but perhaps the finer grind provides more opportunities for methanol-producing activity...
  9. Hi All, Early this year we started milling our grains more finely in an effort to improve yield. We went from the 'standard' 0.038" we see used for malts a lot, to 0.024". Sure enough, yields improved 10-20% (we have a lot of different mashbills, and some were affected more than others). But, it seems like we are generating more heads than we used to. This is hard to quantify, as it might just be that we're more attuned to the downsides of leaving more sharp notes in the spirit than we used to be. But, it occurs to us that a finer grind might result in more cellulose getting ground up to the point that it is more fermentable than usual, resulting in more methanol. Does anyone have thoughts/experience with the idea that a finer grind might produce a larger fraction of heads? Thanks!
  10. We have precisely the same problem with crazy foam-up & overflowing fermenters. Our mash profile is quite different (and we don't have your issue in stripping), but the mash volume expands from about 470 gal to overflow the 550gal fermenter. We lose something like 30 gallons all over the floor each batch - not a fun clean up! We start at a quite high 19-20 brix sugar content - although we never ferment to 1.000 - we always finish around 1.008. So I suspect that 2-3brix of the initial reading is beta-glucans, or some other un-fermentable. I've recently tried adding a beta-glucanase enzyme to the mash process, but it had no effect. I'm anxious to hear how others might have tackled this problem!
  11. Well, your yield certainly doesn't get better with the second distillation, Eric! How much you lose depends on how tight your hearts cut is, whether you recycle heads & tails, and if so how much foreshots your throw out & how deep you go into tails...
  12. This is hard to answer with precision, since we recycle some heads & tails in every batch. I agree it is the key parameter to determine actual efficiency; my best estimate is 75-80 proof gallons stripping yield from 1000# grain. I'd be interested to hear what others are yeilding...
  13. Ah, true - we use a mathematical formula that takes into account the initial reading to compute an approximated gravity. We got this from the More Beer website (I attached it here - it's cool). Brix and SG.xls
  14. Yep, we have a 500 gal reservoir of chilled water that we circulate through about 60' of copper tube inside the Mash Tun. We can use 'cold' tap water (about 92F for about 10 weeks here) to get us to ~125F, then use the chilled water to go the rest of the way.
  15. Tom, we don't use a hydrometer for OG or FG - we use a refractometer. Does your comment also apply to brix readings obtained with a refractometer? I'm under the impression that longer glucose chains (dextrins) will impact the refractometer, but not so much 'other compounds'. Thoughts?
  16. Yes, I agree 1080 is high - but we start all our whiskies in this range with no problems. It's been a year ago, and our process & enzyme regime was different, but we tried about 15brix OG with the same result. The datasheet for the SGA says it's a "Saccharifying glucoamylase (or amyloglucosidase)." It seems like we're missing something fundamental about fermenting rye malt...
  17. I've been posting on the site for awhile, but realized that I never posted an intro... Adventurous Stills hails from Tempe, Az. We've had our distilling license since 2016; we focus on whiskies (of course), but make a Vodka, a light & dark Rum, a Gin, and 'moonshine' as well. The name comes partly from the disposition of the three founders, and partly due to the angle we try to take with all our spirits - a slightly different take on the 'standard' spirit styles. We're self-financed, and pretty much built the distillery by hand from the ground up. We did most of the TI's in our leased space, and built our own stills (600 gallon stainless stripping still, 110g copper spirit still, and 60g copper & stainless vodka still). We also built (and re-built) our stainless 550g mash tun (once for beer process, and once for on-grain process). We are 100% grain-to-bottle, and use about half local grains (yes we do grow stuff in AZ!). We're big on the idea that supporting other craft distillers helps 'raise the tide', helping all of us succeed by increasing awareness of the notion of locally crafted spirits. So far, we've mostly been asking questions on this site, but as we're learning, we hope to have answers to contribute as well! - Kelly
  18. Paulo, We're looking for a new enzyme supplier... The primary challenge for us is volume - we mash 500 gal once a week. So a 25kg container of enzyme is too much. If you can supply in a smaller size, please contact me. Thanks! - Kelly
  19. Hi All, We make a Rye whiskey with 10% wheat, 5% cararye, and 85% malted rye. We love the flavor, but consistently fail to ferment to completion - FG is usually 1.007-1.008. We do ferment to completion with several other mashbills (all-corn, bourbons, 4-grain whiskey, etc); we only struggle with Rye. Our mash process looks like this: - wheat in with JZyme TAA (high temp alpha) at 175 for an hour - cool to 155; add cararye & malted Rye along with JZyme SGA (saccharification enzyme). Hold at about 150 for 1hour. - Cool to 85F, pitch yeast. We run a fairly thick mash so our brix at yeast-pitch is 17-19, and ferment / distill on-grain so we don't worry about viscosity / lautering yield. We maintain ferment pH between 4.5 & 3.8 (usually no intervention is needed). We've played with ferment temps, ranging from 90F to 82F doesn't seem to matter. We played with adding yeast nutrients, with no effect. Adjusting the saccharification hold time (up to 2.5 hours) & temp (145-160F) has no effect. In all cases, the mash ferments very fast, but reaches 1.007-8 in about 60 hours then stops. Any suggestions for how we can squeeze the last 1-2% ethanol yield from our ferment? Thanks!
  20. We are grain-in all the way. We're able to pump the spent grains (even more viscous after distillation), but my concern was getting them stuck in the outer tube. This would definitely be easier if we got a centrifuge... Is anyone attempting to recover heat from prior distillations to reduce heat-up of a new wash batch?
  21. Paul, I've been chewing on this idea for awhile - we would like cool the spent wash from the stripping distillation, and using this waste heat, pre-heat the incoming beer for the next run. Seems like we could save some power costs, and more importantly reduce heat up time. Do you think spent wash could flow through the outer shell? We have a 2" FIP that generates quite a lot of suction...
  22. Well, depends on your definition of a long time is! We use about 12kW to heat, so it takes about 3 hours to heat up, and about 6 hours to run. We use it mostly for stripping, and therefore never have it in full reflux. If we tried to run full reflux & make vodka, it would take forever!
  23. We made all our spirits (40% corn whiskey, bourbon, corn/wheat vodka, and even a rye) for over a year using the off-grain process. We did about 50 batches of 220 gallons - mostly successfully. It IS possible, but you have to really want to do it. We had the common limitation of direct-fire heat elements as our rationale, but still burned the occasional batch. (and Rye almost every batch, at some point in the stripping run). We finally concluded that we had to go on-grain, and made an indirect heat system for our stripping still. We are happy we did - we can do bigger batches, and we save about 8 hours per mash run by not lautering. Time will tell how the change will affect the flavor of our spirits, but we have silver-medal winning (SFO) bourbon on the off-grain process - so I think that you can make plenty good spirit either way. That said, if you're designing your distillery, do it the easy way - on-grain.
  24. We recently converted our process from off-grain to on-grain for all our products. (yes, we've been one of the nuts out there doing bourbon with a beer process!) We've noticed the appearance of a silvery film in the first column element when doing the on-grain stripping runs. (we use a 4" column on a 100 gallon still, using two copper perforated-plate bubblers). We used to see a little of this when using the beer process, but it seems much more present now. We've also noticed the presence of some black oily flakes in the low wines, more noticeably at the tail end of the run. None of this stuff seems to show up in the spirit runs, so I'm not too worried about it. But, anyone know what this stuff is?
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