Pofarmer

bump

Kinda like it, actually.

I assume you were doing steam in the coil to cook?

I see no one has replied, so I'll just say what I've seen done in small distilleries. You don't say how big this is. I have seen several where the bathroom is in the tasting or customer area, and that serves the workers also. I've seen at least one, where the restroom is in the production area, and guests can use the restroom while on a "tour". In the end, it's going to depend on what your local inspectors will allow. I'd call your local health department and ask them. In the end TTB is worried about revenue. The local health department is going to worry about most everything else, and state inspectors are the ones looking at DSP facilities unless there's a tax issue.

We're just putting some in barrels now. Small volume. I'm going to do some double Pot still to compare, I think. I don't know that I'd necessarily call it tailsy. How do you prefer to do it?

So, in trying to do a "One and done" single pass whiskey with a 4 plate column my MO has been to run to compress heads, and then back off power to where all the plates are good and active and then adjust dephleg to where I'm around 125 proof off the parrot, and adjust dephleg to keep that as long as I can. I'm not tracking any temps at this time. Heads taken off will wind up being less than 10% of the total run. Does this sound sort of right?

Just a question. I'm learning too here. Anyway. What size column are you running and what is your approximate output rate off the column? Are you tracking dephleg water temperature?

I'm just gonna interject something here, and it may be off base, but - when has that stopped anybody? Lol. Anywho. If you are running a continuous column aren't you still going to need a finishing still? What do you do if product comes off the still that needs to be cleaned up or is somehow unacceptable? At least with a pot still you can re distill and do a spirit run. What do you do if there's a need or market for a different product and a continuous column is no longer a good fit? And I agree with RyeWater. A location without sufficient NG and 3Ph really just wouldn't be an acceptable location. 3 Phase motors in a commercial setting have numerous advantages over single Phase all throughout the process.

Holy crap. How many in the county?

Can you define "Small town?"

So I think the answer to what you're doing is "It depends". It depends on the capacities you have available. I'm running a 4" 4 plate column on a 55 gallon set up with 11000W available heating. 2L per hour for a 4 " column, in my mind at least, is low. the "ability" of the column is probably around double that. I've pushed my column to 8L or around 2 gallons per hour. That's running around 9500 Watts. This was on a bourbon mash. The resulting spirit, once you get past the heads, which was really compressed and really quick, wound up being a little tailsy throughout the entire run. It's sitting in stainless now and I intend to do a second pot still run slower in an attempt to clean it up a little. In retrospect I should have been running a little more dephleg, and my column was trying to tell me that(Didn't have a vigorous boil on the bottom plate)but I'm still learning too. We'll see. I've had a little dab on oak, and it's not bad. There is another larger distillery near me that strips in a 500 gallon steam jacked still with a 12inch, 4 or 6 plate column, can't really recall. On a stripping run he'll hit as high as a gallon a minute. To me that's way too fast for that sized column, and the whole thing has a tailsy quality that doesn't come out in a spirit run. I think he's actually making esters or conjoiners by overheating the wash, but that's I guess, a little different topic. So, I guess, long story short, I think you can certainly over run your column, but I doubt you have anywhere near enough power available to actually do it.

This is an interesting little read. https://www.mcbrayerlegacyspirits.com/2021/04/02/the-letter-behind-the-legacy-how-we-discovered-our-mash-bill/

You could contact OakStills directly. They have more agitators than just the cheapy one they list on their web page.

Everything is figured at 100 proof.

I've had people tell me that regular old Fleischmans bakers yeast was widely used before prohibition. I've never tried to verify it, though. I think a lot of pre-prohibition distilleries probably kept a yeast strain going, that's part of the reason for sour mashing.