Southernhighlander

Continuous stills only make sense if you are going to strip in them and then run the low wines in a pot still, in my opinion. Even Vendome's continuous stills do not remove the heads very well. Which is why Jim Beam and some others feed all of the output from their continuous stills into really big pot stills. Personally, I think that pot stills make sense up to 2,700 gallons for some applications, including removing the heads from the beverage ethanol produced in really big continuous column stills.

PeteB, After thinking it over, I do remember college chemistry labs where we were working with wood gas and coal gas etc. My statement should have probably been more specific. Something like: Very few Americans know about the history and uses of syn gas, especially producer gas (wood gas), such as its use in internal combustion engines and as an alternative to natural gas, in heating applications. There are several alternative energy sources that are green, that can be used in distilleries, but I think most distillery start ups don't see them as viable options for 3 main reasons. #1 They get the idea that the complexities that are involved in dealing with inspectors and the government rules and regulations will be multiplied, because the powers that be, may not be familiar with that particular, alternative energy source or delivery system. Most of these inspectors have never seen a distillery and are already unsure about what they are looking at anyway, which makes them overly cautious to begin with. #2. It is something different, that they don't see very many people doing, so they are unsure about the viability of it #3 No equipment manufacturers offer green distilling systems, as an affordable, viable and safe alternative. I think the last reason is the main reason that we don't see more distilleries utilizing alternative energy sources.

PeteB, I'm gen x. I missed being a baby boomer by 1 year. I never had high school chemistry, as I did not go to high school. I completed the 8th grade and dropped out in the 9th to help my dad at our sawmill. Grade school and middle school bored me to death anyway. My IQ is over 140 and I was reading at a 2nd year of college level when I was in 3rd grade. I don't remember anything about wood gas in my college chemistry courses and I took college chemistry up through organic chemistry. My wife is a boomer and she says she doesn't remember anything like that in her high school or college chemistry courses. Here in the states running vehicles etc from wood gas is not common knowledge, even among the boomer generation. I remember listening to Click and Clack the tappet brothers on car talk, when a guy called in who mentioned seeing someone who was running a truck using wood gas and they didn't have a clue what he was talking about and those 2 guys were some of the best mechanics in the US and both were MIT graduates. The caller explained how the Japanese and Germans ran their cars from producer gas during WWII, but Click and Clack had never heard of that. It does not surprise me that syngas is common knowledge among baby boomers down under, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Ray_Magliozzi I have been reaching out in all directions trying to figure out something different and new. That's why I've been looking at alternative heat sources and distilling methods such as wood gas and vacuum distillation etc. I have also been looking closely at the limitations that exist because of the azeotropic equilibrium barrier and we have been playing around with achieving 200 proof through filtration, and of course we have always worked at coming up with a better column and still design. Something that seems like it may lead somewhere is our development of column stills that operate under vacuum which are completely automated. We'll see where it all goes, I guess. Distillation has been around a long time, so coming up with something new and revolutionary is a daunting task.

You'r welcome. Very few people know about syn gas. My Wife lived in Mammoth lakes back in the mid 70s. She has told me lots of stories about how deep the snow would get and swimming at a placed called hot creek, which I guess is off limits now.

Tim, I hope to perfect it. I'm considering the use of a wood gas fired low pressure steam boiler for my own distillery. This method may not be the best for all distilleries, but it is great for those of us that are in rural areas. It can be compressed and stored but the process for compressing and storing it must be well thought out to be safe.

This is why we have always put vacuum relief valves on all of our still pot and mash tun inner boilers. Everyone should have them on their fully enclosed storage tanks as well. Vacuum is a force of nature, not to be screwed with. http://www.teachertube.com/video/railroad-tank-car-vacuum-implosion-258883

We are talking both clean and cheap. Wood gas is not "a polluting and wasteful energy source". The combustion of wood gas generates no particulates. Wood gas burns much cleaner than gasoline. The efficiency rating for the energy extracted from the wood is around 75%, which is much higher than burning strait wood, Emission levels less than 20 ppm HC and 0.2% CO are attained from wood gas. The potash solids which are left in the gasifier can be used for, or sold as fertilizer. Just to be clear, the given efficiency rating is for the conversion of the energy in the wood. The gas itself has an efficiency rating of almost 100%. I'm an outside of the box thinker and I do my best to think my ideas through completely. For example, when I started my distillery equipment business, I decided to do it in a very unique way. I wanted to start the business without any investor money, without any dept and without any of my own money. I started my distillery equipment business with no money at all from me, the bank or anyone else. Affordable Distillery Equipment grossed over $4,000,000.00 last year and I started the business a lttle over 5 years ago. I am able to sell my equipment at a better price than all of my competitors (when comparing apples to apples), because I have very low overhead and operating costs. Unlike it's competitors, ADE has no loan payments, no rent or lease payments and my real estate tax is less than $200.00 per year. All of my 12,000 square feet of shop and warehouse space is completely paid for, as is all of my production and office equipment. There are several other ways that I keep my overhead down, that I won't mention, because they are proprietory. Also, being successful in business has a lot to do with having advantages over your competitors. My outside of the box thinking has given ADE several other advantages, over all of our competitors, that I will not go into. Of course our quality and customer service gives us the biggest advantage,

Adam, What I want to do is more complicated than direct firing a still with wood. My Grandfather ran wood fired stills for years, but he switched to propane in the 1950s. His stills were indirectly fired with wood and propane. It's very hard to control the heat with a wood fired still. It takes a lot of finesse which is only learned through experience. Also, to be safe, an old fashioned wood fired still would need to be ran outside. My idea is to create steam with a wood gas (syngas) fired low pressure steam boiler, using a wood gasifier to fire the boiler. This boiler would be a low pressure steam boiler and not a hydronic hot water boiler. It should be relatively easy to convert a natural gas or propane steam boiler to syngas. My other idea would be to direct fire a still with a wood gas jet burner. The wood gasifier would be outside the building with plumbing that would feed the wood gas to the burner, to directly fire the still. syngas burns much cleaner than burning strait wood and it would be much easier to control the heat with a jet burner than with an old fashioned wood firebox and my way would be much safer with the gasifier being outside. There's a guy that runs his Dodge Dakota using a wood gasifier that sits in the bed. The Dodge V8 gets around 3000 miles to the cord, if I remember correctly. The motor only puts out 50% of the HP that it would put out with gasoline, but the old truck has been clocked at a little over 70 mph topped out. I love to think outside of the box. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas

Tim, Your hydronic boiler method is really cool. If you cut your own wood, or burn sawmill scrap I would have to say it must be the least expensive heat source for distilling. If a person used sawmill waste, end trim and slabs with in a hydronic boiler for heat and out of date donuts from donut shops for making the mash, the inputs would cost almost nothing. I have a customer who makes fuel ethanol for his wife's car using that method. He makes the diesel fual for his dodge truck from fryer grease that he gets from restaurants. He purchased his still from me 6 or 7 years ago. He wanted something really inexpensive, so we built him a still with a used 55 gallon stainless barrel and a 6" stainless packed reflux column from used stainless pipe with a tube and shell dephlegmator and tube and shell condenser. We packed the column with small pieces of an old cracked ceramic sink that one of my employees donated. I broke the sink up myself with a hammer gloves and safety goggles. That still has been running E-85 ethanol for years now. A lot of people turn their nose up at stuff like that, but building something from recycled stuff that costs almost nothing has always given me a good feeling. We haven't built anything like that in years. Everyone thing we sell now is pretty and shiny.

PeteB, What you have done with your distillery is really cool. I've considered building wood fired stills and or wood fired boilers for stills. For a little while just before I started the distillery equipment business I had thought about building wood fired gasifiers that could run whole house gasoline generators. I think that I would have been successful selling to preppers and people off of the grid. Wood gas will run large gasoline generators at about 50% of there regular horse power and produce around 50% of the electricity that they are rated for. Anyway, I'm curious if anyone thinks that wood fired boilers for distillery equipment would sell? Would anyone be interested in something like that?

Hi Jeremiah. We have 30 or 40 combination mash tun stills in distilleries all over the US and some in Canada. We could build the column flange to go on your vessel as well as the column line arm and condenser. If you have a drawing of the tun that you could send us, we can give you a quote for everything that you need. You would just need someone there to weld on our column flange and cut the whole for the column flange. We can even supply directions so that your sanitary welder can easily do the job. Our email is paul@distillery-equipment.com Shoot us out an email and we will supply the quote as well as our reference list and a list of the people using our combination Mash Tun Stills.

Dave, As far as I know we have responded to all of your emails that we have received. We allways respond to all emails. Your still and Mash Tun that you ordered on Feb 27th will be delivered and set up at your distillery within the next 2 weeks.

Please see the options below. When comparing apples to apples, we have the best prices in the industry as well as great quality and excellent customer service. We also have jacketed stills in which you can do grain mashes in 6 gal, 10 gal, 20 gallon and up. Unlike some of the others we have complete turn key units with heating system and controller. https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/26-gallon-moonshine-still-with-4-borosilicate-sight-glass-4-plate-column https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/26-gal-moonshine-with-4-borosilicate-glass-4-plate-column-everything-included https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/26-gal-moonshine-still-with-4-stainless-bubble-plate-w-cooling-kit https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/26-gal-moonshine-vodka-e-85-ethanol-still-4-bubble-plate-copper-stainless https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/26-gallon-moonshine-still-with-4-diameter-copper-whiskey-column-distiller https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/53-gal-moonshine-still-4-bubble-plate-copper-stainless-reflux-column-vodka-e85-6 http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-still.co

Evidently a lot of distilleries are doing really well. Several of my customers, who purchased equipment from me 3 to 5 years ago have come back and purchased larger equipment. Some of them traded in their original equipment, while others kept the original equipment and just added more capacity. One of my customers purchased a 300 gallon Ultra Pro Vodka Still, 300 gallon Pro Series Mash Tun, Rite low pressure steam boiler and several fermenters. 2 years later he added an 800 gallon Ultra Pro Whiskey Still two 800 gallon Mash Tuns and several 800 gallon Pro Series Fermenters. He is having trouble keeping up with demand and may soon add a complete 1500 gallon set up, which will put him at 2,700 gallons of still pot capacity. If distilling fallows the same path as craft brewing, then we still have room for thousands of distilleries. All industries have a some businesses going under, while some succeed and others succeed really, really well. The SBA tells us that on average, about 50% of businesses fail in the first year. I don't know the figures exactly, but I know enough to know that way more than 50% of distilleries survive the first year. Because of the demand for craft spirits, craft distilling is a great business to get into right now and it will be for some time to come. If you are well funded this is one of the best times to get, in my opinion. It's just like anything else, some will not do so well, but others will go really really far and some of the biggest winners aren't even in the game yet. http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-still.co

That's Awesome! I agree, vacuum is fun and it opens up a lot of possibilities and the vacuum distillation process for beverage ethanol is a safer process, in my opinion. We've built some smaller short path ethanol reclamation stills with vacuum pumps. They reclaim ethanol from a mixture of oil and ethanol. The oil is extracted from the plant material at -80 C during the extraction process, so there is no water component in the oil ethanol mixture. The boiling point of the oil is very high, so the ethanol is easy to separate from the oil. I'm working on a design right now for a 500 gallon short path vacuum still for ethanol reclamation. It's a big jump in size from the small ones that we've built. Challenges can arise when going from small systems to large systems, but I believe we will be successful. Once we build the 500 gallon short path, we are going to start experimenting with beverage ethanol vacuum stills. The big industrial vacuum pumps are expensive, but the size needed (including installation) should cost less than the cost of a steam boiler including installation.

You can run 50% abv or 15% abv or evan 8% ABV, Running at 15psi you only add around 320 gallons of water to 2100 gallons of mash before you reach operating temp. Once operating temp is reached the total volume of liquid in the still decreases, because at that point you are vaporizing ethanol faster than you are adding water. There is no problem doing the tails cut. I have a question that will help you understand. Do you do your tails cut any differently when distilling from an 8% mash, then when you are distilling from a 50% mash? The quantities are different but the cuts are done using the same methods. Did you see my post about my new line of stills that distill below 100 degrees F? What do you think of that?

Just thought that I would let everyone know that we are working on designs for a new line of stills that are very different than the average beverage ethanol stills that are currently in use. Our new stills will distill at less than 100 degrees F. They will be jacketed and can be heated with 165 F water from a hot water heater. These stills can be used to make any spirit that you desire. They will have an automated computer control system. We will post updates as time moves forward. paul@distillery-equipment.com Also we currently have in production a new still that will produce 90 gallons per hr of 190 proof gin or vodka. The price is only $49,995.00 Email me privately about this one. It is not on the web site yet. paul@distillery-equipment.com http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-stills.co

Direct steam injection is an age old tried and true method for mash cooking, stripping and spirit run distillation. During the later part of the 19th century and the early 20th century, direct steam injection was used by legal bourbon and whiskey distilleries in the southern US. Though not as popular as it once was, direct steam injection is still used in legal distilleries for mash cooking, stripping, as well as spirit runs today. We have sold several steam injected mash cookers, stripping stills and spirit stills. Our steam injected spirit stills have produced spirits that have won national and international awards. Two of our steam injected stills are pictured below along with the steam injection vessels. The complete system, including the steam injectors, were designed by me. The largest steam injected spirit still in operation today was built by Vendome and is used by the Call family of NC. It is known as the Beast and it has a capacity of 2,100 gallons. It has a traditional turnip head and a thumper. For over 130 years distillers who use direct steam injection for spirit runs have claimed that their spirits are far smoother and taste cleaner than spirits ran in other types of stills. Direct steam injection has been used by moonshiners in the southern highlands of the US for well over 130 years and is probably still used today. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/for-calls-the-art-of-making-moonshine-runs-in-the_us_56fe928ae4b038fff497f81e For Calls, the Art of Making Moonshine Runs in the Family ... www.huffingtonpost.com The Calls use a 2,100-gallon still — which Brian designed and Vendome built — employing a unique method of direct-steam injection that prevents the ... http://www.blueridgeinstitute.org/moonshine/still%20_types_and_techniques.html Moonshine - Blue Ridge Style - Still Types and Techniques www.blueridgeinstitute.org Named for its squatty turnip-shaped boiler (often called the “pot”), the turnip still dates back centuries. In the Blue Ridge it was used into the 1930s, but few ... http://www.callfamilydistillers.com/our-still/ The "Bull" — Call Family Distillers www.callfamilydistillers.com "The Bull" - Our custom designed 2100 gallon direct steam injection still. Designed by master distiller, Brian Call - it is the largest direct steam injection still ...

I'm sorry Dan. It was late and I completely misunderstood what you wrote and what was going on. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Our standard series combination mash tun whiskey stills will do a mash cook and whiskey run in an 8 to 10 hr day. Our steam jacketed pro series combination mash tun whiskey stills and ultra pro series combination mash tun whiskey stills, allow the customer to do a mash cook and whiskey run in 8 hrs, including clean up. Our 300 gallon stripping stills will do a stripping run in 2 hrs after reaching operating temp. Our combination smash tun stills cost exactly the same price as our stills without the mash tun option. A distillery can start with one of our combination mash tun stills and once their orders dictate, they can add a dedicated mash tun. Our 500 gallon steam fired mash tun stripping still costs $26,000.00 with built in crash cooling, that will give a 1/2 hr crash cooling time. With the correctly sized boiler, heat up to operating temp for distilling is 41 minutes and you can do a complete stripping run in 2 hrs after operating temp is reached. These units have a 304 stainless inner boiler, that is over 1/4" thick stainless steel. They have both a steam jacket and an insulation jacket.. Mirror polish inside and out with internal copper components that give more copper vapor interaction than an all copper pot still. 417-778-6100 paul@distillery-equipment.com We offer a complete line of equipment including steam boilers.

Who is claiming "...copper is a worthless feature for a bourbon still"?

Minnetonka Dan I would like to have seen the reaction you would have gotten if you had said that to Lem Motlow or Booker Noe. For that matter, the reaction of any Master Distiller along the Bourbon trail. So, I have the same question as Silk City. RobertS is absolutely correct. 99% of the Bourbon in the US is distilled on the grain. That is the absolute best way to distill white dog for Bourbon and any Corn based Whiskey. Here is the deal. If you push off of the grain distillation equipment towards someone doing Corn Whiskey or Bourbon and you sell them that equipment, you are doing them a major disservice. If you tell them that luatering and off the grain fermentation and distillation is the best way to do corn based mashes, then you are either intentionally giving them the wrong info, so that you can sell them your equipment, or you are ignorant of the correct process and need to do further research.

You are welcome. The import info listed is a matter of public record.

Here is a very good manway for a still pot https://www.glaciertanks.com/pressure-manways-mw-rnd-g18-4-ss304.html Note all of the clamping points. This is what we use and I have never had one leak. Here is a really cheap Chinese manway https://www.glaciertanks.com/non-pressure-manholes-mh-g10-non-press.html This is one of the worst manways that you can use for a still pot. They almost always leak. Note the lack of clamping points. Also this is really light weight. Please note the manways listed on the import records below. All of the listed shippers are in mainland China.

biodzlden I don't think that any inspectors are going to have a problem with the brass valves. We have stills in over 200 distilleries with the brass valves and no inspectors have mentioned any problem with them.. Email me privately paul@distillery-equipment.com and I will get you a price for the stainless ones. They can be a lot more expensive than the brass ones. There is another way. You can run tubes into the bottom of a column of water. Every 27.7" of water column gives you one psi. If you run into a 56" column of water you will have a pressure relief device that is actuated when the internal pressure of the still reaches 2 psi. The diameter of the water column does not matter so you could use a 2" diameter piece of pipe that is 83" tall and that will give you a relief device that operates at 3 psi. If you need help calculate the diameter of the tubes needed to feed the water column pipe, just let me know the diameter and height of your continuous column and the amount of vapor going in and the amount of condensate that you will be producing per hr, and I can give you the size of the tubes that you need, if you decide to go that direction.