Georgeous

thank you for all your help SilkCity

Question, I have an ATF refractometer. i took a reading from a cold sample that i left in the fridge and it was 15.4 brix. i left the refractometer on the counter then 20 minutes or so came back and it was 19 brix. Which would you say is correct and why?

*********************** UPDATE *********************** Well, I feel i should update all as you have helped us so much in dialing in our system. We did our second mash yesterday after correcting issues on our mash tun. Both upper and lower jackets are now plumbed for steam. The upper jacket is plumbed for steam and cooling water the lower only for steam. We changed the direction of our agitators to push downward and not upward. At first i was disappointed with the boiler guy as i was not there for the addition of steam to upper jacket; he used 1/2" steam lines. We tested with water and brought water from 70°F to boiling in about an hour and 20 minutes. The lower jacket he installed with 3/4 and 1 inch piping. Does not seem to be an issue. Our mash yesterday heated fast and we did a good cook. Per Tom Lenerz ( A special Thank you) from https://www.wollersheim.com/distillery/ who helped us scale our recipe to target a 1.065 mash which would yield a potential 8.58% ABV. We hit this right on the nose. Unlike the many mashes literally near a thousand i have done at commercial breweries, there is no comparison. this is an all day effort. Our system is designed to do 10-12% ABV mashes i would like to target 10% going foward so will have to figure how to scale to that. Anyway we had no issues with heat, no rubbery ring of corn only thing cooling through the jacket took a bit of time but not outrageous by any means. Natural Gas steam is the way to go hands down. The 20bbl brew houses i have brewed at using electric or direct fire on a cold day like yesterday would have been a 2 day event. I still have not changed my presure / air vents i sent request above to Paul i think he missed it. But, the ones i got functioned as designed and were not an issue Again Thank you all for your help , we had a great mash day George Shire Distilling Co.

Couple questions for you. Now that we corrected all the mechanical issues the group led us to find we are ready to try our 2nd mash on the large system using your instructions above which is very similar to what we were doing but with a bunch of mechanical faults namely heating. So with that said: Question 1: on step one above what do you mean by " and backset (10%)? We added 500 gallons of water then added corn about 840lbs Questions 2: on our 50 gallon system to control mash ph we used mash stabilizer 1tbsp per 5 gallons so 10 tbls and worked great. What do you recommend for a 600 gallon mash? Question 3: We are mashing MGP ration of 75/21/4 Corn/Rye/Barley , to be clear Rye and Barley are the ones added at 150°F correct? Other than these three clarifications i feel we are ready to go Thank you again for your help

where do you get this from? my chemical guy at loeffler chemicals suggested one they have that you foam on and rinse off called Leraclean 111 (see attached) , has anyone used this one? they say it is safe for copper or stainless, you foam it all over the outside of vessels than rinse off and dry CLEAN-111.pdf

how do you use this? and where do you get it? to be clear you use it for cleaning and polishing or just protecting after cleaning?

I too like the petina, my wife driving me nuts how pretty and shiny it was when it arrived. i contacted my chemical sales guy at loeffler chemicals and he recommended their product leraclean 111. you use a water hose foamer let it sit a couple minutes then rinse it off. they are sending me a sample to try. suppose to leave all copper and stainless bright and shiny

Man what a pain in the ass cleaning copper is. Was not so bad on my starter 50 gallon still but now on my 600 gallon copper top still with a whiskey helmet and 5 plate 18" copper column this is a very laborious task. i have read where some clean with lemon juice, some with ketchup and all other retail type products like tarnx. Is there not something out there to wipe on and wipe off and walla Clean and pretty?

Done, Thank you sir for all your help

Well, i guess my mixer too is not in the optimal place or angle as it comes straight down. i guess all i can do since it is what i have is reverse the direction to push down ward and not upward. Thanks Skaalvenn

Very painful effort with a pressure washer and a big catch pan and made a mess but thank goodness I have a 4 inch bottom dump drain. I did not have PBW on hand probably would have been a lot cleaner method we are all good to go now thank you everyone for your help

we have a 3ft stainless paint stirrer at high speed on a drill works great too

Silk City, really appreciate your advice above and mash schedule. We do log everything down, that part we do right reading your post we are not that far off from what you do. your method of double dosing with high temp alpha removes our amlyo 300 dose. Do you not see the benefit of using amlyo300? Interesting about the dough in temp below 130°F, and the not heating with bottom jacket at first. I think the bottom jacket cook is what did us in on our last batch trying to heat up a beast with not enough heating area. I really appreciate your advices Sincerely Georgeous

Roger, your response is really inappropriate but it is your right to say what you want this is an open forum. on my previous post about my rubbery ring one of the members mentioned something about mash schedule and felt i should chase that down on another thread. We have done many 50 gallon batches with the above mash schedule and yielded great results. We are a distillery in transition from short pants to long pants moving from a 50 to a 600 gallon system. Not all things are linear, so i am here asking mainly to those that do larger mashes; have i outgrown my process and how to make it better. if this insults you that i ask these questions that is not my intent. And yes i read many books and webinars and have taken training a production distilleries. But we take what we learn from the many and form that which is unique to us. i want to learn from other distillers mistakes, not just my own. cheers

Below is our mash schedule we used successfully with great yields on our small 50 gallon system. It is how we were taught, however did not work well on our 600 gallon system. in previous post i posted about a rubbery ring of gel'd corn at bottom of my mash tun. Granted i had issues with steam jacket. But i want some opinions about how we mashed and what you all think. In black was the schedule as it was originally taught to us. In red was follow up questions / q&A in green was the masters responses to help tweak. 1. Add water to mash tun 2. Heat to 130 F, add corn 3. Bring to 185 F, and if using high-temperature alpha-amylase add now (Add Hitempase)(This will liquefy the mash and help with gleantizing the starches)(you may want to add a cook step before doing the Hitempase rest to begin the process of starch gelatinizing a 190+ F cook for 45-60 min) Is this step necessary prior to hitemp phase -It is possible to get away without doing this step and just doing the hitemp rest phase, but this hot cook will definitely help in the gelatinizing process, and with rye in the mash bill, it can help to make the mash go easier. 4. Hold (Hitempase rest) 60-90 minutes. pH should be 5.5-6.5 (This should be a long enough rest, you might be able to cut down to 60 min and not go the full 90 min here)so if no cook phase we add hitemp enzyme and wait 60-90 minutes? -If you do decide to skip the cook (which is again up to you), you would want to do at least full 90 min rest here and possibly also continue to add heat so that you do not drop in temperature at all. You could also add the hitempase at this step as well even if you do a cook, it will just give a little less time for the hitepase to work so you might need a longer rest. 5. Cool down to glucoamylase temp What temp is that? 75C (167F) is the ideal temperature, but it will have more than 80% of the maximum activity in the range of 60-78C(140-172F) and add. Add what? The glucoamylase (aka the amylo 300) Hold 60-90 min (Add Amylo 300. Addd again? No need to add it twice. Sorry for the confusion there. After rest do an iodine starch test for full conversion). You could add the barley at step 5 when you add the Amylo 300 (glucoamylase). Add it before you do the rest, at the same time as the enzyme. 6. Bioglucanase step. Cool to 140 F and add Bioglucanase. Rest for an additional 60 min if glucans are an issue) At what point and temperature do i add my rye and barley? –You can add the rye in with the corn before you do the cook. They rye can really get gummy and produce a sticky mash, so you will want to make sure that it goes through the cook and the hitempase rest phase to help breakdown some of those sticky starches.

also yes i do have vfd controlling the agitators in mash tun, both fermenters and still

so is this considered wrong the way i described mine is? why do you want it pushing the corn down?

Okay my bad when you're looking down the manhole the agitator blades spin counterclockwise the pitch of the blades is to where the bottom of the blades is forward in the direction of the spin 123_1y.mp4

looking down in to the mash tun it is spinning clockwise. how do i know if that is correct? the vortex created appears to pull upwards.

pbw for liquifeying gel'd corn?

that was my first thought, when my son went to china to visit the factory and inspect the equipment them little chinese guys crawled in and out like ants on a hill. so it never dawned on him that that manhole was too small for us. Anyway Thanks Tim

Fellow distillers, on our maiden voyage we had heat issues after dough in, we dumped 840lbs of hammer milled corn into our mash tun and since we could not get it hot, it formed a thick rubbery ring of corn that gel'd together. we corrected our heating issue and filled with water and boiled for new two hours and cannot break this thing up. Unfortunately the chinese manufacturer did not give me a manway an american can fit through to get in and clean it. Any recommendations how to liquefy this crap to drain it out?

Paul, photo 1 my still, there is one on top where this manifold is. the manifold has four ports 2 shut off valves i have no idea what they are for and pressure gauge and the 1.5 bar pressure gauge photo 2 my mash tun has only the two on the side none on top. they are for the upper and lower heating jackets. all are triclover 1.5"

ok for inner pot you mean the one on top of the still right? and for jacket the ones on the side. mine are all fitted with TC connections 1.5" these you show are npt

paul, i am a turnip farmer when it comes to these things. explain what you mean for inner pot? Are we talking still or mash tun or both?