AK2

So since there is an external drive, do the Ubiquitis draw on your wifi? The cameras I have been looking into all draw too much wifi from the 24/7 streaming and are sending monthly wifi costs through the roof.

Whiskeytango, I always have to preface everything I say on here that we are still under construction, I only have ethanol plant experience. I am not aware of a chiller that will warm up a fermenter. When I had issues with a fermenter turning "cold" at the ethanol plant I would use the plate and frame heat exchanger to warm the ferm back up. I would valve off the cooling water and plumb a condensate return line from our boiler into the cold water side of the exchanger. I called this technique "reverse heat exchange", until it was pointed out that I was still exchanging heat, I had only reversed the hot and cold side. We then referred to the technique as ferm warming.....reverse heat exchange sounds a lot better to me.... Adam

Is anyone on here using security cameras in their tasting rooms? If so, did you purchase them yourself or did you hire a service to come in and install/maintain them? We are considering using security cameras just for liability reasons, appreciate any feedback. Adam

Thanks Falling Rock and Southernhighlander! I seriously might use the Terroir idea!

We are under construction now. We are going to store our barrels on our farm, in a building yet to be determined. We are considering using a building that is approximately 300 yards away from our livestock buildings. This building will get the pleasant aroma of said livestock when the wind is out of the North West, which only occurs a few days out of the month. My concern is that even though this building will only be subject to the livestock aroma a 3 days out of 30 it will effect the final product coming out of our barrels. Do any of you have experience with this situation? Did your livestock aroma effect the product negatively? I appreciate any feedback. Thank you, Adam Edit: We will be storing product in these barrels.

We are in the building stages, we have the exact system Jake Norris mentions, a glycol chiller cooling a water reservoir. It made the most financial sense as we do not have room for a cooling tower and are on city water. It also is supposed to allow us to run with a smaller chiller, using the buffer tank excess cooling capacity verses sizing a much larger and more expensive chiller. Hopefully it works as designed......I apologize that I do not have real world experience to give you. Adam

From my very limited knowledge this all makes sense. Silk City nailed it. Thanks to everyone on here, great place to learn. Adam

I have an ethanol plant background so my statement may not apply, please take with a grain of salt: There were times when our mash would turn a darker color after distillation, and the resulting DDGS and syrup product would be much darker as well. This was due to fermentation not finishing and sending a high sugar load through distillation/evaporation. Is it possible these ferms are not fully finishing and the sugar is caramelizing? I do not remember there being any off odor when this occurred. As far as top open/closed: Any chance the yeast are entering the budding phase with the introduction of oxygen? We would use an air sparger to introduce oxygen during yeast propegation, the fermenters were sealed and very quickly turned anaerobic. We typically had little to no ethanol in the yeast prop, we didn't make ethanol until the fermenter. That being said, I can not really believe just opening a top of a vessel compares at all to using an air sparger. Open top fermentation produces ethanol all the time....so I really do not have a good guess...just a wild one......... Adam