Stumpy's

Moved to posting: http://adiforums.com/index.php?showtopic=6681

We have some excess distillation capacity at the moment and are willing to complete stripping or spirit runs on contract. We are currently operating a 40 plate, 40 foot continuous column still (for stripping only) and a 650 gallon pot still with a 5 plate column for stripping or spirit runs. We are located in Columbia, IL which is just outside of St. Louis. Please PM me or shoot me an email at adam.stumpf (a t) stumpysspirits(dot)com for more details. Thanks, Adam

We are on a well and found that we had to set up a dedicated cooling loop with buried tanks. We did a huge distillation of low wines that lingered for nearly 12 hours. I almost ran the well dry. Our well refills at a decent rate but it still wasn't enough to keep up with the condenser late that night. If you get into a similar situation, you will find that you pull all kinds of debris into your plumbing system, which brings me to my next point....make sure that you have a programmable filter and softener that are capable of both back-flushing every day, AND have a bypass. If you start to pull a lot of sediment into the system, your filter and softener will obviously clog and you don't want to lose water flow to your condenser! Just be sure that if you bypass the softener, that you switch back to soft water before filling your steam boiler....no one wants hard water scaling on the inside of their boiler! In short, we found it best to only draw from the well for mash water, proofing water, and building service. Use some other system for cooling. However, if you have a well that refills at 50 gpm, all of my comments are null and void!

Currently up for auction at http://www.americanbarrelexchange.com/

Yeah. I'm hoping that milling finer will take care of all of our issues and we can just go grain-in through the whole process. Working on hunting down a different hammer mill at the moment!!

Hi All, We've run into a bit of an issue in our process; spent grain removal. We are currently stripping all of our products through a continuous column still with perforated plates. Needless to say, it doesn't like grain (I've taken a couple corn and beer baths already!) We are currently milling our grain with a 3.175mm screen in a hammer mill and have plans to move to a screen that is sub 1mm. The question. For those of you that are separating you wash and grain, what methods are you using? Do you find it effective? Pros and cons? Out of necessity, we built a gravity sieve but I know there must be a more efficient way (oil press, centrifugal sifter, trommel, etc.) I find that our little contraption removes quite a bit of wash but still requires some pressing (by hand) to get the grain close to dry. Also, we are removing the grain after fermentation. Thoughts? I've considered removing right after cooling the mash. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Adam

We have a 30" code 7 cartridge filter that I am filling with granular activated carbon and recirculating. I tried both ways and they both produced a great spirit. However, I use the cartridge filter elsewhere in process too, so find it rather redundant to have the extra filter sitting around. Of course, the reason we are getting rid of that spare filter is because we are a start-up and cash is at a premium right now!!

Dropping the price to $4,000 and adding a picture of the filter. PM me if interested. Adam

I did a sanity check on price and realized my last post was too high (which I was unable to edit). 40cm x 40cm, 40 plate Della Toffola plate filter for sale. Stainless frame, all new gaskets, 200 cloth filter sheets, 70 activated carbon filter sheets. The filter will need a new sight glass insert and a pressure gauge; both of which should be minimal cost. Asking $4,500. Located in Columbia, IL. PM me for more details and pics!

I have a 40x40, 40 plate Della Toffola plate and frame filter. It has all brand new gaskets. Included are roughly 270 filter sheets. 200 are particulate filter sheets and 70 are activated carbon sheets. It will need 1 new pressure gauge and 1 new sight glass insert. I decided to go a different route for vodka filtering. $5,500. Email Adam.stumpf@ stumpysspirits.com for more details and pics.

I'm taking reasonable offers on these. They are taking up too much room in the distillery and need them gone. I was looking at them yesterday for vodka filtration. If one were to weld a 4" ferrule into the bottom and remove the baffling, these would make great chill filters.

Dropping the price on these to $1,250 and $1,000, respectively or $2000 for both. These were used on a 650 gallon pot still with a 5 plate, 16" column.

Thanks for the ideas! I will be on the phone this morning. MDH, we are actually using Piramal out of Park Hills, MO. I will absolutely contact O-I.

Hello All, I am on the hunt for pallet quantities of Jersey and Idaho bottles as my current supplier is currently out of stock. Anyone with information regarding where I might purchase some would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Adam

I have 2 extra condensers for sale. These were included when I purchased my still but decided to go a different route for condensing. I had also considered using them for mash coolers but already have one. These are both tube-in-tube design and constructed from stainless. The outer tube is 10" in diameter and the inner tube is 4". The inner tube has baffles welded into it to create turbulence and enhance heat transfer. The inner tube has a 4" ferrule on one side and a 1" sanitary valve in the other. The outer tube has a 1" sanitary valve on each side. The length of the condenser is 5'. One condenser is welded onto a 4.5' stand. These are located in Columbia, IL (near St. Louis). Asking $1500 for the one with the stand and $1250 for the one without. Please email stumpf.adam@gmail.com with any questions.

Email sent.

We are not up and running yet but we are currently refinishing a seed cleaner that will do about 150 bushel/hr for super clean grain. We decided to make the investment because we are using grain from our family farm and the cleaner at the distillery is the first time the grain will ever see a cleaner. If you use a cleaner, you will likely be able to get away with a little longer storage time because the screen cleaning process w/ a fan should get rid of most bugs. If you are going to buy your grain from a local mill, you will likely get a medium-cleaned grain as most mills' cleaners are set up to clean for bulk sale or feed. Those are typically faster cleaning rates so you will see a little more chaff, bugs, etc. Kind of vague but I hope that helps! As soon as we get up and running I'll let you know what we learn. Adam

Wow Paul, your craftsmanship looks great!

Wow, thank you for your opinions everyone! The pool heat exchangers are quite intriguing. I may buy one just to test! They are priced low enough and made from 316, which I like. If all else fails, I can try the pool heat exchanger and if it doesn't work, I can go another route and not have a ton of money sunk. $500 for a 600k BTU/hr condenser seems way too good to be true...

Mike, I figured my water/ethanol weighted average was a pretty BIG assumption so I weighted it a little further toward the water side to build in a little buffer. That is why my specific heat is so close to that of water. As I am reading through my old fluid dynamics textbook I am realizing how much I have forgotten over the years! I suppose I like doing things the hard way. I have a little free time on my hands and love fabricating...not to mention that we are in the middle of equipment setup for a new "bootstrap" distillery so I am trying to stretch every dime as far as I can right now! I think we should be able to get away with a smaller chiller than 12.5 ton....still not saying my calculations are correct! I think it would take 12.5 ton to remove 155k Btu/hr but we will not need to remove the entire thermal load put into the boiler. As I sit here and type this, you made me realize that my math assumes I will be condensing every drop of liquid in the boiler, not just a portion of it. So you are right in that my condenser is way too big. Back to the spreadsheet now. Thank you for pointing my brain in the right direction! Adam P.S. I'll be in touch when we are designing our cooling loop.

Phil, I am almost done refinishing our seed cleaner and building our malt house. I hope to be churning out clean grain and custom malt within the next couple of months! I'll be sure to let you know when we get everything operational. Thanks, Adam

I came up with the 155k BTU/hr from the specific heat equation (Q=m*Cp*dT). For the mass, I assumed the weighted average of water and ethanol, based on a 10% wash...same for Cp. I used 212-70 for my dT and 5 hours for time. That should be assuming no heat removal from dephlegmator. I will be using copper for this particular build and will do an iteration in stainless after cash starts flowing! I was planning to have a vapor chamber at the top of the condenser to introduce swirl...similar to air induction into a cylinder in a Diesel engine.The narrowest point in my lyne arm is about 4.25" ID...hoping that the vapor isn't too terribly fast through there. Thanks for the input!!!

I am currently working on building a new condenser for my pot still. I recently purchased a "retiring" distillery and am not happy with the condenser design that is currently attached to the pot still. The current design is a 10" tube with a 4" tube inside. The 4" tube has baffles to create turbulence for the vapor. Based on the size of the still (700 gallon, 75" boiler diameter, 16" column that has 5 plates and is 5' tall) I do not expect that condenser to be too terribly efficient....not to mention that it is rusting inside! I want to build a shell-and-tube condenser. I have read the forum topics on this matter but didn't really find what I was looking for. I was wondering if I could bounce some ideas/math/assumptions off you guys. Based on my calculations and assumptions, I believe I will need about 155,000 Btu/hr heat input to finish the run in a reasonable amount of time. One big assumption I used was that the overall heat transfer coefficient for this type of heat exchanger was 175 Btu/(ft^2*hr*F). Am I way off base here? So doing the math based on the calculations and assumptions I show in the attached file, I find that I need 29 sq-ft of heat transfer area, at minimum. Breaking that down based on material I can buy, here is what I am thinking. 8" shell diameter, 1/2" tube diameter, 5' tube length, with the area of tubes being 33% of the area of the shell. That leads me to having 85, 1/2" tubes in an 8" shell which would give me 56 sq ft of heat transfer area. The factor of safety comes out to 1.94 so the condenser is a little over-sized to be safe. Based on what is shown in the attached file and the text above, do you all think I am in the ballpark? I want to get your experienced opinions to find out if I am blowing smoke up my own butt before I go and spend a small fortune on this thing! Please let me know your thoughts...I look forward to hearing them! Adam Heat Exchanger Design.pdf

Phil, We currently produce soft red winter wheat...and corn of course. We are also playing around with a couple of different barley varieties and some rye as well.

Mark, I'd love to show you what we are up to if we can connect when you are in STL. Shoot me a PM before you head this way and I'll get you my contact info! Adam