indyspirits

Got one. Love it. With that and a bench refractometer your can nail high sugar solutions.

John should simply hire a real estate attorney and carve off 5 acres for his distillery and sell it to the legal entity wanting to open said distillery. Unless Im missing one of the dozens of mitigating factors.

Does anyone find this: a bit draconian?

I find teflon seal a bit unforgiving (read: stiff). We use silicone exclusively.

Initially a 5500 watt ULWD -- this was for rums & malt whiskey. When we initially tried conducting a cereal mash w/ corn we used a burner and a serious rube goldberg agitator. The agitator didn't work too badly really (think of a dewalt gear reduction drill with a series of clamps and 2x4s to hold it in place and turned on). We did experience scortching during the strip. The gauge of the metal simply isn't thick enough. Our next step was to have a thick plate of steel cut for us to temper hot-spots but we took delivery of our jacketed still before it came to that.

Your boiler will cycle on and off based on pressure. You'll have a pressuretrol (normally two for safety) for which you'll set a pressure and offset. We set our pressure at 8 PSI with a band hysteresis of 3 PSI so it kicks on a 5 PSI and off at 11 PSI. As for control, we have two valves piped in parallel, one 2" valve that open during heatup and then a smaller 3/4" valve used for fine control once the still has come up to temp.

They hold a soft spot in my heart as that was how I started but after you've burned a batch or two of corn you quickly look for other options!

My point was that I dont believe DYEs core business is 26 gallon milk can stills.

Is that one of the 26 gallon "milk can" stills? I may be mistaken, but I don't believe they actually make those but rather source them from one of about a million alibaba manufacturers. Run a cleaning cycle (again, doubtful they have CIP) with TSP. A friendly bit of advice, you're facing a real uphill battle trying to make a go if it with a 26 gallon still.

I just pissed myself.

As @JustAndy said.. Bobby_M at brewhardware.com has tons of fittings. I've also used http://brewershardware.com for larger TC fittings that don't apply to your problem.

Can you provide more details on your whiskey still. We experienced that in reverse -- made gin in our column still and had a tinge of flavor carryover into a neutral spirit. After our standard CIP protocol we backflushed with PBW followed Acid #5 (both from Five Star) through the parrot triclamp connection through the lyne arm, etc. That did the trick. So the answer is yes, you can do it, but it's a bit of a balls ache.

Had to Google it. Brilliant!!

Yes, Im aware of that. But your post above could be read that antibiotics are added to the distillate not used to clean up fermenters.

That's a joke, right??

Truer words were never spoken

Let it patina like an old penny. Save yourself the frustration. You'll have a thousand other things more important than keeping your copper shiny.

Masters in chemistry, while helpful, is far from necessary. What you really need is a process engineering consultant for about a year, a stellar marketing company, compliance officer, and CFO. Oh, and a shit-ton of money. Distilling is by far the easiest thing about running a distillery (and probably, after the first year, the most boring).

You may be in for a challenge with that grain bill. Assuming they have a standard wedgewire false bottom that much corn and rye will clog up tighter than a cat's butthole. Single malt? Absolutely. Milled into a cornmeal consistency -- hardly ever. Now, you could have them mash and then use a FIP to slurp the slurry and take it your place for fermentation. As for your question, whats the total size of the mash tun?

I'd be interested in hearing more about your setup. 10 psi steam has a volume of somewhere around 16 cubic feet / lb. Your boiler produce around 500 lbs of steam (I think) / hour which is enough to completely fill a small home. I can't for the life of me figure out how a jacket on a 265 gallon kettle has enough volume to hold that amount of steam. Does you WM have the ability to underfire the burners or are they open to atmosphere / bunsen style?

It'd guess minerals in the water. Do you have a TDS meter? Are you using an ion exchange column after your RO system?

Do you have a steam accumulator?

Assuming 75% efficiency you're looking at either 300 kbtu or 450 kbtu. His heating needs are: 200 gallons = 1668 lbs 200 gallons from 75F to 212F = (212-75)*1668 = 228,516 BTUs 200 gallons from 212 to vapor = 970 * 1668 = 1,617,960 BTUs In my experience he won't have enough load for the boiler to run efficiently -- it's going to be short cycling to beat the band, and although it's not hard on the boiler, it will kill efficiency ($$$$). He needs roughly 250kbtus to heat up the still to boiling and another 1.6mbtus to vaporize the entire contents of the still (clearly he won't be doing this). The question that's difficult to answer is how fast can the heat be transferred from the steam jacket to the contents of the kettle. Delta-T is a factor (operating the boiler at 9 psi rather than 2 psi has it's advantages) but so is the architecture of the kettles (a "tablet" shaped is better than a cylindrical shape). I'd bet he wont see appreciably faster heatup times with a 600k than a 275k boiler because of the heat transfer rate and the fact the boiler will have serious short-cycling problems -- a 600k boiler wont push heat in any quicker than a 400k boiler. That being said, when he upgrades to a larger still he'll be good to go.

Incorrect. You can use a 3Å molecular sieve.

The human nose is pretty remarkable detecting 2,4,6-TCA (cork taint stuff) at a concentration of 4-6 ng/L or parts per trillion. Amazing really. Makes that 5% even more important to clean up. Cork taint, now that might be an interesting topic to bat around.