Hoses or Piping?

[SSVI]

So I've visited a whole lot of distilleries and I can't think of a single one where I've seen a mash tun piped to a fermenter piped to a still, hoses and portable pumps are always used. Breweries I've visited seem to do the same. Is there any particular reason for this? Wouldn't having solid piping make this process a little easier? I'm assuming there is a very good reason for this that I simply don't know. I would appreciate enlightenment from any of you fine folks.

[Patio29Dadio]

From my perspective it is the cleaning aspect combined with the need for flexibility that would otherwise be very complex and costly to implement in hard-pipe.   You would likely need stainless steel runs.  And what if on this day you needed to pump mash from mas tun #2 to fermenter #4?   You would need a complex piping and pumping valve manifold matrix to cover every option.  In the end of the cost-benefit factoring the extra cost of labor to move hose, most of us end up accepting hose as the better option. 

 

Now having said that... I really hate moving and connecting hose.  If you had lots of capital to burn and were building a ground-up state of the art facility, maybe connecting all of that with stainless is the way to go.  There are some big guys that do that.  But a lot of them still use hoses.

[vsaks]

It is a question of cost and added complexity. You have to account for not just product movement but also CIP. We have hard piping from HLT -> mash tun -> fermenters -> wash still -> LWF -> spirit still -> ISR -> SR and bunch of loopbacks. You end up with manifolds on inlets and outlets and have to be sure that the correct valve is open and the rest closed.

12 hours ago, SSVI said:

So I've visited a whole lot of distilleries and I can't think of a single one where I've seen a mash tun piped to a fermenter piped to a still, hoses and portable pumps are always used. Breweries I've visited seem to do the same. Is there any particular reason for this? Wouldn't having solid piping make this process a little easier? I'm assuming there is a very good reason for this that I simply don't know. I would appreciate enlightenment from any of you fine folks.

[Tom Lenerz]

I think it is going to be related to size. Larger distilleries and breweries will have a lot more process piping than smaller ones typically. Process pipe is essential for automated processes and can be used to lower labor costs. If everything is piped there is the initial investment of buying the piping, valves and manifolds, but in the long term you don't have to pay people to physically haul hoses around. Sounds minor, but if you are doing the same thing everyday, at a large scale it just makes too much sense. Also you don't have to worry about hoses splitting or having hose barbs shoot off. If you are only moving 1,000 gallons of mash, its a costly mess if that happens, but not in comparison to moving 30,000 gallons. 

[SSVI]

You've all made very good points. Thanks for you input. I had assumed that there would be some issue with sanitizing and such but it seems cost and limited flexibility are the main factors. It does make a lot of sense that there would have to be a lot of thought put into process optimization to avoid a spaghetti sandwich of piping runs.