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Hi from Tasmania


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Hi All. I am in the process of planning a whisky and gin distillery on the West Coast of Tasmania.

So far, my plan is to repurpose a jacketed 1100L milk vat into a boiler with an 200mm packed column with 1000mm shotgun condensor on top and reflux controlled by liquid take off. I'll be using 4 x 9kw elements for boiling and pumping water through the jacket to use for the mashing - maybe.

I'll be getting several 1000L wine fermenter vats for fermenting the mash, but my mash tun is an unknown. I can get another milk vat the same size, but given I'll probably be doing 2 washes of the grist, I should be able to get away with using something a little smaller, such as 700L. Does this sound about right?

I plan on creating a Scotch style whisky and initially I'll be purchasing malted barley for whisky and molasses for gin but I would like to eventually malt the grain (barley and probably wheat) myself.

I'm not sure yet how the maturing will go with the high humidity and cold climate in this part of the world, but it should make for a unique Tasmanian whisky!

 

Wayne

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Thanks Tim. It felt like I found an untapped resource when I first thought of using a stainless steel vat - there didn't appear to be anyone out there using them and they were purchasing their stills complete. I've since heard of quite a few that have used them, particularly in the USA. Luckily I grew up on a farm so have enough ability to be able to construct my own still and save a bunch of money.

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Not sure Wayne how big you would need , our boiler is half a million btu/hr . There are lots of people on this forum that are steam experts hope they will offer some input . It always boils down to budget . We have seen to many distilleries in our province that bought to small of electric equipment and can't produce enough to pay the bills so they just switch to using gns and calling it craft ......huge mistake . Out of all the distilleries in Saskatchewan there are only 3 of us that don't buy gns . 

Tim 

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On 11/2/2019 at 6:10 PM, WayneT said:

Hmm, I hadn't considered a boiler but I can see how nice it would be. What size boiler would I need? I planned on 36kw of heating elements so does that translate directly to boiler size?

A good rule of thumb for steam boiler sizing is 250 BTUs per Liter if you want to reach operating temp within an hour.

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