Mash tun size

[WayneT]

The only sizing certainty I have so far is the still, which is an ex-milk vat pot still at 1130L, so will hold a 1000L charge comfortably.

I'm going in circles a little bit with the size of the mash tun. If I wash twice, would something like 700L work?

[Silk City Distillers]

Larger is better - grain mashing is time and labor intensive.  Increasing volume doesn’t linearly increase time due to the setup, rests, heat times, cool times, breakdown, cleaning, etc.  Mashing more is faster than mashing more often.

It’s tough for us to mash 2x a day, however, we can easily distill 2x a day.  So our tun and fermenters are 2x still size.

This also gives us a nice upgrade path on still size.

All that said, we are currently looking at a 4x mash tun.  That fits a nice 5 production day schedule when we are cranking a single product line.

 

[captnKB]

@Silk City Distillers is right. Running a mash tun twice the size of your still is far more efficient than a tun sized to your still or smaller

@WayneT if you need some help in planning I do distillery consulting and would be happy to help you.  Drop me a line at Distillerynow@gmail.com

Cheers,  -KB

[Southernhighlander]

Lots of our customers purchase mash tuns and fermenters that are twice the size of the still. In your case that would be a mash tun that has a working capacity of 2,000 liters.  We sell mash tuns in that size with built in crash cooling. If you are doing barley based spirits and need a lauter tun, we can supply those as well. paul@distillery-equipment.com

[WayneT]

Thanks guys, that's the info I needed.