Georgeous

On 10/8/2019 at 12:20 PM, MichaelAtTCW said:

Filters are filters. Not sure why there is any question about which one will work for the Enolmaster, but maybe there's something I'm missing. It's been many years since we stopped selling Tenco fillers so I don't recall completely, but I've been looking at pictures of the unit online and it's just a standalone filter housing with a hose barb inlet and outlet.

The only odd thing about their unit is that it uses vacuum to pull through the filter, which means you'll get less life out of filters than you would if you were pushing through them with a positive displacement pump, which is the way we set up Mori Fillers with inline filter.

Any filter housing should technically work. It's just a question of plumbing it inline with your Tenco filler:

Polypropylene filter housing

Stainless steel housing

Professional-grade housing

It looks like all you would need to do is get either a hose barb x thread or hose barb x tri clamp fitting to make one of those work just like the Tenco version.

All

i went with the professional grade housing after talking to Michael of TCW. i got the 30" but am using my 10" filters i used on enolmaster on it. it works better than that italian piece of $h!t

Call michael i never met anyone that know so much about filtration, trust me all my filtering needs he is on speed dial 

thanks Michael and TCW

i do everything by weight and not by volume, for one it takes the temperature out of the equation. Your argument on evaporation is also very valid. i just want a check and balance to my recipe. Sugar is a pain in the ass to work with. i use alcodens now for creating my recipe and it gets me dialed in but would like to see how close. i just figured a lab with a dma 4500 could quickly test and email me the results. i just dont want to drop $45K on my own alcolyzeR

is there a service out there from a lab that you can send a sample of a batch and they give you a certified result for what your aBV is after adding sugar. This redistilling in a lab still is getting old. 

good information to know

9 minutes ago, Foreshot said:

Any pics of the area? I was thinking of getting one, would like an idea of the issues I may have to deal with. Thanks.

for high spirits you will need the pyrex version the plastic one will crumble as the spirits will cause it to delaminate. What do you mean by pics of the area? The glass / pyrex breaks very easily. i would like to get a stainless housing filer to put in line but done know which one will work with this system

3 times the F@$#@$ thing has cracked on me. Sh!+ cost a fortune each time to replace. is there another inline filter that will work with my enolmaster?

 rum does not require an age statement

how much for the rinser sparger and flow meter

30% glycol or 30% abv Heads/foreshots seems like it will do the the same. Glelyon, how many gallons is your cooling vessel and how low have you gotten the temp on it?

yeah he has been doing it for years and swears by it. 

i recently visited a vodka distillery here in the Great State, and the owner was telling me they put their foreshots and heads in their cold water tank in place of glycol. 

Anyone else out there doing this? 

Recommended?

i really don't see why not, but i will let the more experienced chime in

too complex for me i was more curious if anyone else was doing this

See email below i received following a phone call. Basically they will have lavender fields and want to harvest them and distill them in to oils. As this is a special needs community they are looking to contract out to a distillery. I dont know anything about it, is this something that will harm my still? last thing i want is lavender smelling bourbon 

thoughts???

George,

Thank  you so much for speaking with me this morning. I really, really appreciate it! First let me tell you about myself. I just finished my masters at A&M where I studied plant breeding. I accepted a job back in May and have been here for 3 weeks now! Wow, off to a running start!

We are looking into branching out into agrotourism. A lavender field has been a dream of our founders for some time, and it is my goal to bring that dream to reality. Our citizens are eager for a new project and I believe that this is a good route to take to broaden their horizons.  We are hoping to grow and harvest the lavender with help from our citizens, to then have distilled by a third party so that the citizens can then in turn make lotions and soaps to be sold in our gift shop. We are dreaming big here, I know this can be done, I just need a great support system to help make it happen. Please let me know if this would be possible, with your facility being so close, this is a very reasonable solution for us. I would love to meet and  be able to talk about this more in dept. I am looking forward to hearing from you!

So my findings, we charged the still with 600 gallons of low wines from our fermenter and heated still to about 202° F and our copper column which is 18" in diameter and 5 plates. We used all 5 and it was slower than hell. We did not use the deplagemator. Our initial runnings started to come out around 180 proof after about 6 gallons it dropped to about 160 proof and over about 6 hours we stopped collecting at 110 proof. This was a very long distillation but product came out with desired taste but not volume. 

On 7/20/2019 at 8:43 AM, Silk City Distillers said:

Being able to adjust your reflux condenser temps on the fly makes exploring whiskey heads technique fairly interesting, especially if you have a few plates to play with.

For example, running high reflux to stack heads, slow take off >190pf, then flipping off the reflux condenser entirely and shifting to quasi-pot mode.  You can get the product yield efficiency of a column, and the flavor profile of a pot.

Silk City

so what you are saying is run the dephlag all plates then shut off deflag and bypass the plates for pot still whiskey helmet only? Curious how long do you run the refluxing for when you go this route? i mean how do you know when it is time to switch over to pot? i been experimenting with my still to see what she's got. i ran batch bypassing column, ran one with 1 , 2, 4 and today will do five plates. i am not good at the dephlag refluxing part. not a lot of information out there. i trained on one but did not get as much out of the training as i would have liked. 

On 7/16/2019 at 4:19 PM, Julius said:

What type of spirit are you making?

making a bourbon

On 7/16/2019 at 3:44 PM, Classick said:

The answer to this question is likely heavily dependant on the type of still you are running, and therefore very subjective. (perhaps adding pictures of yours, or listing the make/manufacturer might help?)

We dont run anything lower than 130 proof on our still, which is when fatty acids (turquoise floaties) start to appear (obviously depending on type of base material we're distilling)

However, we have the only still like ours in the US, so i doubt anyone uses the same settings we do.

i have a 600 gallon still made in china with a whiskey helmet and 5 plate column. it is steam fired

On 7/16/2019 at 4:07 PM, glisade said:

I assume you mean hearts and not heads. My wash is about 8% ABV and I collect hearts starting around 160-170 proof and stop around 100 proof. Hearts to tails cut, I think, is much more subjective than heads to hearts cut. So go with what you think seems right...or ideally try both and see what works out best.

correct, i meant collecting hearts not heads i will see if i can change the topic. 

At what proof do you stop collecting your heads to insure no tails are collected. We have always collected down to 80 proof. However, when we trained at a commercial distillery in VA the head distiller recommended we stop all heads collection once we hit 100 proof to avoid collecting tails. For specs 600 gallon mash 8% wash initial running's coming off at 170 proof. Everything i read says to collect till you get down to 80 proof. What do you seasoned guru's recommend?

thanks

so Kris and Hudson do you strain the grain out of hydrometer tube before reading or fill as is? the reason i ask i visited a distillery that takes readings grain in and says it makes no difference. With refractometer it makes no difference as you only need a drop. For my snap51 i strain as well. 

Curious what do most of you use out there? A ATC refractometer only requires one drop and you get an instant SG or Brix reading, with a hydrometer if doing a grain in mash you have to strain the grain to get a good reading. in the beer world most used refractometers, quick and easy. But even with hydrometers breweries have false bottoms on mash tuns so wort is strained to liquid unlike grain in fermentation. I have refractometer and hydrometer and take readings with both to compare. but i also have an anton par snap 51 which will give me density in g/cm³ which is the same as SG, heck it will give me SG if i set it up to do so. So again just curious what you other guys do

Cheers. 

will this work with nordic style bottles?

Does anyone have a diagram or automation / video of how you use this thing? Am i wrong in thinking you will need two pumps to make it work? one for cooling water from chill tank and one for the mash from mash tun?

I still enjoy making beer from the hobbyist level. I make 10 gallon batches. When i chill after boil i use a blichmann plate chiller (no grain in mashes with beer) i pump to the chiller and back in to the wort in a loop until the entire batch is at pitching temperature. This being a 60plate chiller it will bring my wort from boil to ground water temp + - 2°F. I dont have to recirculate it back in to the hot wort but it does help reduce cold break plus aerates the wort prior to pitching. Problem for me is ground water temperature in texas is about 90°F just about year round. Yeah for about 2 weeks of winter i may get ground water down in the 70's and man i brew a lot of beer then. This technique is the same as the local brewery i use to volunteer at did theirs and it worked well for them. 

On 5/15/2019 at 10:51 AM, Tom Lenerz said:

A set of smaller tubes in the shell (or tube-in-shell) has much more surface area = more cooling capacity than a tube-in-tube like you are describing in the same footprint. The most efficient in surface area in a physical footprint is a plate exchanger. The disadvantage is particle size and ease of cleanliness, its easier to clean and pass larger particles through a tube-in-tube than a tube-in-shell or a plate exchanger. We use a tube-in-shell, 4 pass with 3x 3/4 inch tubes. It works awesome for 30 gallon beer, but can be plugged if you aren't careful. It would be much harder to plug a 1.5 inch or 2 inch tube-in-tube, but much less efficient and more expensive to get the same cooling rate.

that definately makes alot more sense, as that would have more cooling to heat exchange. where did you get yours Tom?