indyspirits

Out of curiosity, have you ever had a 100% wheat spirit?

Well.... the good part w/ flaked grains is that the mash has already been done for you (there is a difference between steam rolled and flaked grains, the former is usually for animal feed) so they're easy to use. The bad part is that they're very expensive compared their whole-grain counterpart. For grains that gel in the beer-brewing temp range, I really don't think there is any advantage to flakes over grain but Im more than willing to be proven wrong.

$2k plus my time. A lot more if it doesn't work. I was the one who posted the "nooks and crannies" question. Still very valid. I just cant imagine cross contaminating boiler feed water and glycol/water mixture is a good thing if you went the cool-with-the-steam-jacket solution. Leaning toward a tube/shell solution as this point.

I say your constant hijacking of threads to flog your equipment is offputting. If you have comments or thoughts on my CSST approach to cooling I'd like to hear them. I'll simply ignore non-related posts.

I gotta hand it to you, you never miss the chance for the hard sell. But honestly, I don't give a toss about a new mash tun, I have one of those. Can we redirect responses to my OP?

As they say, if there's no picture it didnt happen.

Im curious how that's possible 500 gallons from corn gel temp to malt temp needs nearly a quarter-millon BTUs of cooling. In five mins that would be impressive.

That's what I assumed, but, well, you know what happens when one assumes... About 2 seconds after I posted my "knooks and crannies" comment I remembers our tun has CIP ball in it which should take care of much (most?) of the cleaning.

I can imagine that getting clogged w 3/4" tubes. What do you mean it's a "4 pass". If we go with my idea, I'm a bit concerned about cleaning as the corrugated tubing approach would introduce many knooks & crannies.

Paul let me make sure I understand this... you charge $2,950 for 28 sq ft of cooling and my proposed solution will be $2,000 for a bare minimum (excluding area increase do to corrugation) 98 sq ft of cooling and I don't have to deal with a pump or cleaning. Cooling with the steam jacket is fraught with problems about which others have addresses ad infinitum.

I certainly have not but I'm interested! Honestly never consider S&T as a mash cooler. How much cooling area does yours have? Are you running the mash on the inside or outside of the tubes? I assume you're able to cool grain-in mashes. How do you have it positioned re: your tun?

We use the tun for both lautered (false bottom in) and grain-in mashes (false bottom out). We want a system that can cool both.

Backstory: On site we have a 2500 liter steam-jacketed mash cooker with wedge-wire bottom. Two drains -- one is a manifold style (a series of twelve 3/4" drains in a circular pattern to prevent wort from channeling through the grainbed) and the other a centrally positioned 3" triclamp drain for grain-in cooks. Agitator is top mounted to facilitate removal of WW false bottom. Facility has 2,500 gallon water/glycol reservoir chilled to 7° C ( 45° F). Our challenge is cooling. Currently we have a home-rolled "fold-back liebig" -- basically a tube in tube -- 2" copper over 1" copper. Total cost about $350 for just shy of 6 sq ft of cooling surface. It's neither fast nor the least bit convenient. My idea: TIG weld vertically oriented sections of 13/16" x 1-5/8" 304 stainless strut channels spaced approx 18" on the inside wall of the mash tun. Use stainless strut pipe clamps to hold 1 1/4" CSST gas pipe (plastic jacket removed). Terminate CSST with a MIP adapter for connected to glycol loop. Pump glycol through CSST to cool contents of mash cooker. The ID of the mashtun is about 5' 4" so circumference of 16.5 ft. I can pickup a 300' CSST roll for $1,050 which will get me 18 (ish) loops in the tun. If the tubing was smooth-walled that would be just shy of 100 sq ft of cooling surface area. Perhaps an increase of 25% due to corrugation?? Total cost will be around $2,000. What haven't I considered?? Backpressure? Cleaning issues? Interested in everyone's thought on this.

What this guy said! However, we opted for a proportional valve rather than solenoid as our input water is 45 F and our initial solenoid valve resulted in herky-jerky temps.

Call lallemand in milwaukee.

For us that did not include cleaning out the storage bin which can be a truly nasty job. We clean ours monthly. Also never ever leave the scoop in the bin... you never know when the health dept might make a surprise visit. :-/

http://www.fivestarchemicals.com/wp-content/uploads/StarSanTech-HB2.pdf

Starsan give that soapy/sudsy appearance. I use it when brewing.

That sounds less like a vent and more like an airlock. We don't bother with either.

I recall reading somewhere a starch spud is about 20% starch and much less (15%??) for eatin' spuds. Based on those (potentially incorrect) figures just run some numbers to see if you'd be adding back more water to rehydrated the flakes.

Just get a one quart jar w/ lid and label it 750ml.

Bathrooms clearly aren't ADA compliant. Plan on a 7x7 box with nothing fancy -- forget about a urinal and stool. Google "Standard ADA bathroom" and you'll get a million hits. We have two identical. Both unisex. Both dull and utilitarian. Seems to work OK. You'll want to have forklift access to your storage, i.e. approach from the widest dimension. You'll forever be fighting yourself entering from the "end" of the room. Heaping on to what others have said, I think you need twice the amount of fermenters. Be caution of the on demand heater -- consider what happens to flow rate if both bathrooms and your kitchen area are using hot water at once. Think about having your RO close to where you intend to proof/gauge You'll want a rolling lockable tool chest. Harbor freight is your friend. You'll want a I dont see a furnace / mechanical room. We cheaped out the first winter and used only a fireplace (hey, lean times!) and still heat to heat our entire building. Got dinged twice by inspectors when temp fell below 68. You'll need a water softener in front of your RO system. Think about process hose storage; hose bib locations, 220 outlets for pumps, electrical drops from the ceiling, need for 3-phase power, location of NEMA approved enclosure for VFDs, etc, Fridge for yeast storage (you dont want to store your gogurt with your EC-1118) Where does your electrical drop come in? Just stating the obvious but that dictates where your electrical room will/should be.

Download a scanner app from the app store and use your smartphone.

Wow. That's brutal. From a performance perspective I am aware of no reason not to go with PVC compared to ABS. I can't imagine the cost of doing our in copper. Ouch!

On the TC vs DIN -- I thought I liked TC but our new still has DIN. Infinitely better.