Southernhighlander

Kansftb, If the boiler output is 12KW you will have around a 2 hour heat up to operating temp time, as long as your coil has enough heat exchange surface area. Also you will have plenty of btus to do a spirit run once you reach operating temp. If the KW output is lower than 12kw let me know what it is a and I will calculate it for you. Also, I can calculate it from BTUs, HP or lbs of steam per hour.

Skaalvenn, If there is liquid in a vessel to start with, liquid will always blow out first when a vessel is under pressure and ruptures. However, if what you say did happen, it still fallows my point that the explosion was not the result of pressure from the still rupturing, it was the result of an ignition which was caused by the still rupturing. The twister distillery fire was the result of the head of a still blowing off due to over pressure and the 192 proof GNS coming out as a liquid, some of it being a fine mist, which ignited and caused a fireball. This occurred on camera.

I don't think that the rupture of the still at silver trail was the direct cause of an explosion, so great that it blew the distillery apart. That still was built from thin copper soldered together. It is my understanding that it had ruptured before and they had it repaired. Having a tiny 4" packed reflux column on such a large still is a really bad idea, because it is easy to over fire it and build pressure. Being that it was thin copper and soldered, experience tells me that it probably ruptured at less than 20 psi. A vessel rupturing at 18 psi will not by itself cause a huge explosion and fire. If the still had high proof GNS in it and the rupture caused the GNS to spill on to the flame of the propane fire, that would cause an explosion. Also the owner said that there was burning mash all over the walls. Mash does not burn. I think that the silver trails explosion was either caused by the ignition of GNS or the ignition of propane. If the still ruptured and 10% mash spilled onto the propane fire putting it out then propane would have filled the atmosphere and ignited from a lighted bulb or whatever. It is my understanding that the propane burner did not have an automatic shut off. Regardless of what exactly was burning, I think that the situation in that distillery was very unsafe as was the equipment.

As far as hot condenser water goes; Why in the world would you want to cool down free hot water? Use it for your next mashing in and for CIP cleaning etc.

. Pete B said "But on average there is no doubt a well educated person doing a reasonably technical job will be better than a person with little education." That is probably true in most fields where that person is working in an office or lab, but not so much in other fields. For example a Tool Pusher on an off shore oil rig. That is a very technical job which requires a great deal of technical skill, but most of the guys that have those jobs have never been to college. The main reason for that is that most Tool Pushers start at the bottom and they usually do every job on drilling rigs before they become a tool pusher. Most college boys would never do those kinds of jobs. I am, for the most part, self educated and I have gone farther than most, but I still want my son to go to college.

There is nothing wrong with being educated, and having a masters degree is a great accomplishment. However, in my business I have ran into some engineers that could not even come up with simple formulas to solve real world problems. They could not even do basic college algebra without using some sort of software. i have ran into extremely educated individuals that had absolutely no mechanical ability what so ever. On the flip side of the coin, I know of a guy who built a multi million dollar business who dropped out of school in the 9th grade. He designs very complex equipment using complex mathematical formulas with great success. So no you definitely do not need a degree to be a distiller. Personally I would rather deal with a plumber who is starting a distillery than a guy with an electrical engineering degree who has never worked in the field. The other day, I saw a college graduate being interviewed by a reporter who said that she believed that a person who is not a college graduate should never be allowed to make more money than a person who is a college graduate. Personally I'm really glad that I live in a country where the 9th grade drop out can reach the highest pinnacle of achievement in business and science. Thomas Edison only had 2 or 3 years of formal education. He left the 7th grade because the teacher said that he was addled. It was not all that long ago, in the grand scale of things, that 2 high school dropouts solved a problem that all of the greatest PHDs and engineers in the world could not figure out.

Hello, We are graco pump distributors. Give us a call at 417-778-6100 and we can help you. or you can email us paul@distillery-equipment.com.

Curt, We have everything that SD, and Hillbilly Stills etc have at better prices plus we have jacketed baine marie R&D stills with built in electric heating systems in 6 gallon, 10 gallon, 20 gallon, 45 gallon and 105 gallon operating capacities. if you want the best for less, email us and we will send you a qoute and a reference list with distilleries you can visit to see our equipment in action.. We now have equipment in over 215 legal distilleries in the US and 30 more around the world. paul@distillery-equipment.com

Thank you Hudson Bay Distillers. We really appreciate the great feedback. A certain Canadian still vender has been bad mouthing our equipment saying that they believe our stills must have thin metal and bad welding because our prices are less than 1/3 of their prices on most equipment. This same company quoted one of our Canadian customers over $30,000.00 for a 30 gallon still. We sold Hudson Bay the 45 gallon jacketed still pot that is discribed above, that was inspected by his friend the Canadian welding inspector. Our price was only $1,860.00 Some equipment vendors are marking their equipment up over 500% because they know the market will bear it. We have a small mark up and low overhead so that we can sell our stills and other equipment at affordable prices. We have stills and other equipment in over 210 legal distilleries in Canada and the US. We have a very good reputation. If you want good, solid, well made, great performing equipment, at the best prices in the industry, just give us a call at 417-778-6100 and we will offer you equipment that you can hand down to your great grand children. Don't pay 5 times more than what you should for your still, email us for a quote and reference list paul@distillery-equipment.com You can visit distilleries on the list and see our equipment in action. http//:distillery-equipment.com

Due to the thinness of the copper in your still your still pot may not be able to stand up to the torque of an agitator over time. In this situation you can use a pump that will handle temps up to 200F to circulate the mash around in your still. You would need an input port and output port on your still pot.

Bluefish My IBC totes are 550 gallon and 750 gallon stainless steel and they have the rating to be used as above ground fuel tanks among other things. I will be using the plastic totes for spent mash that will be sold to hog farmers. I have large fuel tanks here for one of my other business's and I have never had to have a hazmet inspection for them. They do meet OSHA requirements though. We all have to deal with OSHA if we have employees. As far as anything running across the floor, this is a 3 sided shed we are talking about. If there were a leak from the stainless steel totes. It would just run out onto and into the ground. Some barrels in a racking house always leak a little. I have been in several distilleries where they rack their barrels in the same building where distillation takes place. I have seen barrels leaking all over the floor because the air was too dry in the building. I would think that 50 barrels of whiskey inside a distillery with a few of them leaking is a hell of a lot more dangerous, than me having 3000 gallons of ethanol stored outdoors in a 3 sided shed inside stainless totes that would never leak. I have owned manufacturing business's for most of my life. One involved very dangerous work. A distillery is just another manufacturing business. I am all about safety.

JustAndy, I can certainly understand what you are getting at. As an equipment vendor who has equipment in well over 200 distilleries, I beleive that all rules should be fallowed and the codes met. So far, non of our equipment has failed inspection. We have several large stills and mash tuns in distilleries in Canada and Canada seems to have tougher inspectors than the US. They remind me of the Canadian border patrol guys. They are all business and they are serious. Anyway, I'm asking these questions because I am starting my own distillery and distilling school. I am in a very different position and have a different set of rules than people in municipalities and other counties. Where I live there are no plumbing or electrical inspections required. I do not have to get a building permit or any permit at all. I do not have to use a licensed contractor or be a licensed contractor. As far as the building goes, the only thing that I have to do is have a perc. test done on the soil for my septic. So I'm really lucky in that department and I know it and I am very thankful, because I know what many of my customers who have built their distilleries have gone through. Of course I have the drawback of not being in a high traffic area. Here is what I had planned to do. I plan own putting a couple of thousand gallons of GNS and aged spirits that I'm going to use for blending, in totes in a large 3 sided shed that has an iron cage around the spirits and across the front. The shed will be very well ventilated naturally. The locks and security should meet the requirements of the TTB. This way the totes, which are rated to hold ethanol for storage, should be looked at like above ground fuel tanks. This shed will probably be 150 yards from the distillery & distilling school. We will never have over 120 gallons of high proof stored in the distillery. I will also build racking houses into the sides of the hill. These racking houses will be built out of rough sawn oak which is cheap and plentiful here since we have 16 sawmills in our county of 5,000 people. I don't think that my fire marshell will have any problem with my 3 sided shed. What do you think? Just so everyone knows, my racking houses and ethanol storage shed will be over 3/4 of a mile from my closest neighbor. The guy that I mentioned earlier that had thousands of gallons of ethanol in his distillery with no sprinkler system, is in the middle of no where and the closest structure to his distillery is at least 2 miles away.

Bluefish, I have been in several distilleries with large amounts of ethanol and no spill control and no sprinkler system. I was actually at a distillery when the fire marshal inspected them and there were three 270 gallon totes of NGS stacked in the store room and he passed them with no issues. I guess if a persons local fire marshal says that it is okay that is the end of it, right? I mean there is no higher authority in that jurisdiction, so who would bother you about it?

I have another question. I plan on building wooden racking houses on the side of a big hill on my property. So if I have 300 barrels in a wooden barrel house that is on the side of my hill with no neighbors within 1 mile of me, am I going to have to have sprinklers in my barrel houses? I just don't see that being required here. It is nonsensical. http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-still.co

So do these standards apply to distilleries in rural areas as well as municipalities? I know of several distilleries in rural areas with no sprinkler systems that store thousands of gallons of spirits in totes. Maybe this is a state by state thing, not a federal thing?

Hi Purple Toad, Email me paul@distillery-equipment.com I can give you a better price and our units come complete with American Made electric heating systems. We have equipment in over 210 distilleries around the US. http://distillery-equipment.com

Email me privately at paul@distillery-equipment.com and I will tell you how to do it without a chiller and how to use all of the hot water that comes out of your condensers for all of the hot water needs around your distillery including mashing in. Running a close loop chiller to chill hot water that you could be using is a huge waste of energy and money.

mendodistilling That's strange. All of the standard copper plumbing pipe and tubing that is used in the US is alloy c122. You should be able to get it in sizes up to 2" or 3" at your local hardware store, however the salesmen at the store probably do not know that it is alloy c122. They only know it as copper plumbing pipe and tube. Alloy 110 is never used as plumbing pipe and tube for obvious reasons.

Hi A.S. If you need equipment please consider us. We have equipment in over 200 distilleries. We have quality equipment at some of the best prices in the industry: http://distillery-equipment.com paul@distillery-equipment.com 417-778-6100 Come visit our booth at the Annual Craft Spirits Conference and Vendor Expo. in Baltimore.

We can supply any gasket that you need at better prices than our competitors. If you need gaskets email us paul@distillery-equipment.com Also we have one of the biggest sanitary parts and valve selections in the USA at better prices than our competitors. Check out our web sites http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-stills.com http://triclamp.co

Indyspirits, My grandfather raised hogs and he fed spent mash for years. His hogs loved it. They would slurp it right up and they always had a good buzz from the residual ethonal in the corn mash. Happy hogs make good bacon. I have some notes from my 6th great grandfather from 1794. He fed his hogs wet stillage. he found that if he fed it too them hot in the winter that it was a problem, so he would let it cool before he fed it. The best way to handle it is to pump it strait into 270 gallon plastic totes. When the farmer shows up unload the empty totes and load the full ones onto his trailer. You can do the same for row crop farmers using it as fertilizer. This is how we will be doing it at my distillery here in MO.

DistillaMI, Everyone on here has given good advice. There is a very closely kept secret among a few vodka distillers. If you add 1lb of salt per every 100 gallons of mash it will help break the Aziotrope and you should be able to hit 190 proof no problem. Add the salt after fermentation is complete or it will kill your fermentation. The salt will increase the boiling point of water to 216°F It imports no flavor to the distillate. I think that you should use salt with no iodine or other additives. For everyone who wants tighter control on your dephlegmators we have thermostatic valves that will do that for you at a much better cost than PID, or computer control. Also the Thermostatic valves do not operate off of electricity so they are, in effect, explosion proof. Also, they give you proportional control instead on off control. We have used them to run up to 3 offset multiple plate columns with no issues. You just set the temperature slide on the valve and the valve will maintain the temperature selected. Including the price of our special thermowell these Swedish made valves cost between $450.00 and $500.00 For more info or to purchase call 417-778-6100 or email paul@distillery-equipment.com http://distillery-equipment.com

ThatDrunkenBird. Email me privately paul@distillery-equipment.com It may be something that we can fix for you. If the problem is what I think it is, it may only take a couple of hours to fix it. We run our own delivery trucks and we deliver and set up our stills all over the U.S., so I may be able to have one of my guys stop in and fix your issue on his way back from somewhere and there is no charge if it does not work. Both of my delivery guys are great welder fabricators and they carry everything on the trucks that they would need.

ThatDrunkenBird, How many plates does your DYE still have? Our 4 plate column will do 80% from 8% mash no problem. Our 16 plate column will do 95% by itself.

littleb We build a really nice vodka still at and ours cost less than 50% of the price of an Artisan Still Design Vodka Still. Our quality is as good or better. We have the better price because we have very low overhead. We have lots of distilleries running our vodka stills and I am glad to give you their contact info so that you can call them. We also have distilleries that act as show rooms for us and you can go there and see them run and check out every detail and ask all of the questions that you like Our Ultra Pro Vodka Stills have 20 plates total and they will run 95% no problem. Here is my contact info paul@distillery-equipment.com 417-778-6100 http://distillery-equipment.com