indyspirits

Anyone put an industrial water hammer arrestor on their diaphragm pump to smooth out the herky-jerkiness?

What I would do to get very close is buy a copy of AlcoDens from @meerkat, find out how much sugar is in your AJ, and then just consider the AJ a simple dextrose solution and run the proofing calcs in AlcoDens.

When compared to condensing vapor and cooling mash maintaining ferm temps is a metaphorical blip on the radar. For us, the most difficult calculation was the size of the tube in tube mash cooler. This article in BYO has all of the math needed to DIY one.

Well that certainly sucks. When I ran it the first time this morning I did so using it as a CIP pump to clean it -- probably not how I will use in in real life. Why did they say a ART wont work?

It's a big f***er. Bought on ebay for $900. Retails for $2700. Stainless body, aluminum air motor, teflon seals, valves, etc. Max flowrate of 107 GPM. Paired it with this compressor. Unfortunately when running balls to the wall the compressor can't keep up. Dang. Should have learned how to better read the performance curves. We're going to install an air receiver tank. If you need one of these (you do!) I strongly recommend ebay or something on the secondary market. I spent about four hours tearing it down and cleaning. Apparently it was used to pump adhesives. The insides of the material chambers were a bit rusty. Cleaned up fine with phoshporic acid, a stainless brush and elbow grease (PPE is your friend). We're building a cart for it out of strut. Here is it in action. VID_20180914_100206.mp4

I cant imagine operating without a forklift. How do you get 120 cases onto a truck?

Exactly what we do for rye 144° - 146° F ? Couldn't you simply add all of the HTA at the upper end of the gel range and start cooling upon negative starch test? This sounds reasonable. So I ask this.. suppose we're doing a gristbill of 80 corn / 20 barley. Could we conduct a cereal mash all at the same time? Add all grain, b-glucan at 125, raise to 190 add HTA, hold until negative starch, cool to 150 and add g-am?

That's exactly what we're doing. The farmer from whom we get our corn plants both rye and barley as cover crops. We're getting samples of both this week. Alternatively there is a local maltster we may work with. Exploring all options. That's the first I've heard about adding nutes to unmalted barley. Similiar to a nutrient regimen we'd use for molasses?

So @Silk City Distillers got me wondering about taste differences between raw and malted barley. So think, "self, just make ten gallons of beer from both malted & raw, run them through a simple pot and see if you can tell them apart". Then I realized I have no idea how to mash raw barley. I guess I'd start like I do a cereal mash with corn except at 150 not 190. Adjust pH, add alpha and gluco? I'm stumped on this.

I would have thought the addition of water would raise the BP enough to get at those oils. Am I wrong?

We're getting pushback from our insurance carrier that our fermenters should be bonded to our facilitiy's ground loop. Has anyone else been asked to do that?

By one online, add whatever bulkhead fittings you want, spray foam it yourself, and, if you feel you must, build an enclosure. On the grand scheme of things 500 is tiny. Our reservoir is 2500 gallons. It sits outside and looks like total crap. We call it the Mr. Marshmallow.

Other than aesthetics, why does that matter?

We have this model (non gas sparge) as our second filler. I suppose I'm happy? We audit fills (by mass) four times during each run for each spout. We easily hit our internal +/- 1% fill level target with ease. In our experience, the fills are not equal. Spouts #2 and #3 are consistently slightly overfilled. I can query out those figures for you if you'd like. Still well within our tolerance limits. It would be nice to be able to use a polishing filter with it but since it pulls the spirt, rather than having the spirit pushed to it, we're unable to do this. On the whole, I'm pleased with it.

What's so difficult about this? If your whiskey is under 4 years of age you need an age statement.

Why 60 degrees? Most yeast pitching temps are at least 20 degrees higher. You can do much of this with water.

We use malted barley not because of diastatic power, but because it has a different flavor profile that raw.

And where in the world are you paying 50 cents/lb for corn? Bourbon is expensive solely because the market supports the asking price.

Great news!

Have you spoke with Michael at TCW? We have the four head and have never had an issue. How far are the fills (by mass) out of spec? Edit: Just say Michaels reply above. Mea culpa.

I assume the collab was whiskey? How long did you age it? New or second-fill barrels? How large? We've been asked to do a number of collabs here locally and tend to decline because the want the product on the shelf in three months.

Eeek! That's not good. Our is about 360 coming in (softened) and 3 out. Is your feed water softened? First I'd verify your TDS pen is working with some distilled water. If it is, looks like you need to replace your membrane.

I would ask to see the regulation.

Are you selling these as new make spirit??

We do something like 25 lbs of solid in 10 gallons to macerate Whenever I read about these MASSIVE botanical bills it makes me chuckle. Never in a million year did I think this would work, but it does! Out total bill is 18 lbs / 10 gallons of neutral with the bulk of it in anise (green not star) to hedge our louching bets. I can't imagine stuffing in another 7 lbs of herbs. Your bill gives me pause... we could accommodate another 8 lbs if we double the amout of water we add prior to distillation. Hmmm. More experimentation is in order.