Dehner Distillery

Hello, James is right on. My option nothing against "hillbilly stills" but they are to short and to small diameter for what you are doing. A column that size are for starting out, but not full on production. You have to charge for your time when producing a product and it sounds like it takes you for ever. 1. as mentioned above because of your short column size you have to run a much higher reflux ratio A= make the column taller, the farther the out put is from the boiler, the less reflux ratio 2. over taking the column, is because of high reflux, no drain on the duel flow trays, to small column because of vapor velocity. We need to understand ways happening. "hillbilly still" uses a "duel flow tray", a duel flow tray is a sieve tray with no over flows. You can over take the column because the is a lot of liquid setting on the trays because of the high reflux, because of the liquid is wanting to go down and the vapor is going up at a high rate "vapor velocity" and the duel flow tray is flat, the pressure on the bottom on the equal not letting any liquid passed the vapor. The liquid starts to over take each tray. A= Change tray design (install over flows, or interrupted duel flow design, or ect.) you could go with rings or saddles also, widen out column to lower pressure, widen out column to lower vapor velocity. 3. Long distilling times, a little of everything above. A= taller column 6' min (5'column & 1' dephlegmator), wider column I'd say 8", interrupted duel flow tray ( or something with overflows) with a layer of 1/2" ceramic saddles and 1/2" copper pipe cut up. Just trying to help. take care.

I disagree. boiler size and power, can over take a column by having to much vapor velocity. That leads to poor separation, that leads to poor Quality.

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I think that is a great idea! it would be super easy just open the drains on the still and drain it or was it down. Just get a false bottom for your pit and go......

sorry mistype "I could not afford a big mash cooker starting out."

With 184F hitting the corn at lets say .... 75-80F and the vessel, it does cool to about 155-165. I know what everyone is thinking, "thats not hot enough" but that is the idea of the enzymes. You have to remember 10-15 years ago this process was not even possible. Thank you ethanol plants!! I use a medium temp alpha amylase form specially enzyme, and convertaze ag300 (gamma amylase) from bsg. I would buy everything from specially enzyme but they only sell product in 2 1/2 gallon Jerry cans. The product that I get from BSG is the same thing that specially enzyme has but BSG sells in 1 L containers. For both SAB 100 is rated at 125ml will convert 600 lb of grain. I use 125 ml of each per 600 lb of corn or grain my self. You need both because thats how the whole idea behind the process works. One is an exo, and the indo, one dills holes in the starch particles and the other eats from the inside out. The AG300- put in the same time as yeast. Never ever put in over 100F. It is a very slow worker, it takes 4-5 days for it to do its job. You can see from my example how the gamma increases the sugar faster than the yeast can consume it until there is no more to convert, that is when the brix falls of the face of the earth. I have used this method ever since I started out. I could afford a big mash cooker. This process has saved me so much time and money it is not even funny. It took a lot of experiments to find my grove. Also, I did my own experiments comparing a full cook to this process so that I could see the difference. example- day 1- mash and cool , brix 10% starts to ferment day 2- brix 13% fermenting like crazy day 3- brix 13%-14% fermenting like crazy day 4- brix 11% still going crazy day 5- brix 3%-5% starting to slow Note: agitation helps but will not speed up the AG300 (gamma amylase)

I don't know what size of prop they are running so I can't really say. I would just really look at how many times you can turn a tank over every minute with a specific prop. The rep from "lighting mixers" was over and was teaching me all about it. It was a great lesson! That is what they do and they are good at it.

Why are you selling if it is doing good?

What are there prices for flaked corn? per lb?

About time right? Better than word press. I was starting to wonder what you were doing with all that money you are making. take care.

I get the 200 rpm thing. it really depends on the blade and how many times you can turn the tank over. The more times you can turn the tank over the more heat your pulling off of the steam jacket, the faster the distilling time. I have seen in real life instances where peoples variable frequency drive have broke and they hook the motor direct and they cut their distillation time down by half by more than quadrupling the speed of the motor. I have seen people go from 200-300 rpms to 900-1000rpms and cut a 14-15 hour distilling time in half. Everybody's situation is different, find out what works best for you. take care.

I use the cold cook method with great success. For the heat source I use an instantaneous water heater that puts out 184° at 9 gallons a minute. I also use Alpha and gamma amylase. I average about a 10% loss on yield compared to a full boil cook. But the time saved in the energy saved far outweighs the 10% loss. So it puts me in the black more.

The two still idea is just fine. I have a continuous still for stripping and a finishing still my self. My question to you is have you ever seen a 1200 gallon still? That my friend is a BIG boy. I am thinking a 600 gallon still set up correctly would be a smarter and faster choice. But thats just me. Personal I'd put in a large continuous still and run it at 4-7 gallons a minute. You would be done before noon time.

rtshfd - sorry don't think I was referencing you. Sorry for the miss understanding. 1 hour heat up time seams super fast to me. You'll need massive amounts of heat and a fast agitator running about 800-1100 rpms with a good prop to help pull the heat of the steam jacket. depending on % of alcohol I would say it will be longer than 4 run time easy. I would ask for references when they make this sort of claim from your still manufacture.

A couple things to think about, like craft beer if you have a cocktail room (some states like Iowa don't allow) you only serve what you make. So it doesn't that long for people to get drunk even if your serving low % drinks. But when your your product is in other states it is on it own. I have never met a broker that couldn't sell the world, but I have never had a broker hit the mark they set...... " Joe we will sell SO MUCH you won't be able to keep up...." BIG FLOP ON THEM.....they failed.. That is why I feel there will be a battle for shelf space. I have 6 products now and 3 more coming on line. Iowa has 10 distilleries now. Example = if each one had 6 items thats 60 pc. .. not that it would happen but lets say all 60 pc went to a different state it would just squeeze everybody else. Now, a more realistic approach is that there's 48 continental states If one distiller out of every 48 states sent one product to all the other states that would squeeze 47 bottles onto the shelves in the battle for shelf space would begin. And because of this I think that's were being undercapitalized will come into play. I just don't think that some of these distilleries will be able to hold out long enough to see their sales actually take off. I would wholeheartedly agree that people come into this thinking that just because they make a bottle of whatever it's going to sell. It's easy to get it on the shelf, and it's easy to get the first bottle off the shelf, but you have to sell the second bottle. It just blows my mind where people think they can move extremely large amounts of $35 custom vodka or $45 bottles of gin. It's all just my opinion.

Not tring to rain on your parade but as Skaalvenn said bigger still bigger money. When you go over a section size still and if you have more than one your boiler with install could cost $40,000-$60,000. Also, if you are putting up lets say 10 barrels a month (thats a low number) the cost of the barrels if they don't come back down soon could cost you $200-$400 each so $2000-$4000 a month x 2 years is $48,00-$96,000 just in empty barrels. Here is is something I was told when starting out. "Joe you can always get bigger equipment, start out small and grow bigger". I am so glad I did just that. My sales sucked for the first couple years. Starting out there was months when I never ran my still because I had so much product made up that was not moving. If would have gone big......I would be out of business for sure. Because I took my mentors advice I am now growing like crazy. We manufacture equipment, we do contract bottling, private label, we sell our own brand over several states, we are sending product to China, and I own TWO distilleries. You can quote me on this one "with in 2-3 years there will be an implosion in craft spirits" there will be a large number of distillers go out of business. The two main causes for going out of business will be.. 1. under capitalized 2. lack of shelf space, the battle for shelf space will become super super intense, there is only so much room. Take care.

I know your going to find this hard to believe but we use just a simple distillers yeast. "DADY" ..... You find with a lot of yeast for rum that the yeast strains originate in the Caribbean area. With that being said they require temps above 80F most above 85f. So any temp less they will not work or be to slow. The DADY works across the the whole temp range, and I don't need to keep the ferm tanks heated to spark off a ferm, or heated at the end to finish a fermentation. Also, as eveyone know DADY is cheap as hell. I do NOT keep any back set. I have never had a problem with pinching fresh yeast every time. I will use one pound per batch (500 gallons) .5lb starter and .5lb dry sprinkled over the top. The first bubbles will start within 1 hour. Glad to help. Take care.

I hate to rain on your party but 4 hours per run on a 300 glad still? You would need more heat than what is in HELL, making the devil very cold. No way 4 hours! never! it would help massively if you could heat exchange the hot water off the condenser, and off the spent mash. - My smallest still of only 36 gallons has a lag time of only 25min in between runs when alcohol is not coming out. As a matter fact with this design I don't even have to run the condenser. The vapor comes out of the top of the column and goes through a coil of 40 feet of 1 inch stainless tubing that passes through a vessel that is holding the next batch. In that vessel it heats up to approximately 150 - 160°f. when the run is done on the still it's only 25 minutes for me to drain the still and fill the still and then alcohol is coming back out of the parrot. - I believe that you could incorporate some sort of heat exchanger and your fermentation tank where the water coming off the condensers could heat up your next batch that way you would cut down on the heat up time for the next batch massively. - work smarter not harder. P.S. why the would you ever buy a 800 gallon stripping still? what a waste of money. I could strip that much in half the time doing what I just said above. Give me any 200-250 still and I would smoke you. Saving time and energy. I am not trying to be mean, so sorry if I come off that way. But please don't be foolish with your time and money. I want to see everyone make it. Remember, bigger still bigger everything......steam boiler, tanks, money! Dehner out............. take care.

Jeffw- I would agree with everything you said. Especially when it comes to the continuous still. With the agitation there is no adjustments needed once the con. still is set. I would say I can put in more than the normal sugar amount because it the fermentation will use it all up. Unlike if it was on agitated, I would have residual sugar still left in the tank, and have to use less sugar so that I did not waste money with unfermented sugar. one little trick is (and you will have to experiment to find your own flavor profile) do a sugar wash, then add raw molasses or other form of sugarcane to the sugar wash or in the still right before you distill it. Example is 1-2 cups molasses per 30 gallons. It does not take much to achieve the profile you are looking for. This will save anyone massive amounts of money compared to buying large amounts of molasses or other cane products. take care.

thoughts on bottling 50 ml bottles?

William R. Hill and Company Brad-PAK Tricor-Braun take care

sorry I had some miss spells.. started doing RUM darn talk and type. :-)

Shindig- One thing that I have found out in this industry everybody seems to do things differently to try and achieve the same results. When I first started doing wrong I never agitated the tank. The tank I was using was a IBC 275 gallon tank. I was using a 1 hp tote mixer to mix up the sugar wash in the tank. Normally I would take the tote mixer off but only this time I did not because I was lazy and the whole thing is stainless anyways. I would be doing work around the distillery and about every 2 to 3 hours I would turn the tote mixer on for about 5 to 10 minutes. I really notice that it would almost instantly degas the tank and also keep the sediment on the bottom of the tank from settling it would keep it suspended. During this time I had two totes fermenting both of them started the exact same time with everything the exact same only one I left the tote mixer in one, and the other one was just regular. The one with the tote mixer finished fermentation about three days ahead of the other tote. Ever since then I have implemented a system where I agitate the tank and some fashion preferably with a mixer. For me I find that my fermentations Excel very quickly when agitated. And also they seem to use up all the sugar that is provided instead of leaving residual sugar left in the tank. I had the rep from lightning mixer coming to the distillery and talk about different style mixers and what they can do for me and he was telling me that even the ethanol plants have huge mixers that constantly's agitate the fermentation tanks to keep sediment from settling on the bottom and reach completed fermentations faster and with a higher percentage of alcohol. I would say across the board for me agitation works, and it works great. Even my whiskey or any grain washes excelled dramatically because of less settlement compaction. I ferment on the grain.

I process lots of sugar and i can says if done correctly the SR makes for a very very nice smooth rum. If you want A Jamaican Funk rum then go with the LS. The key to getting high % yields is to "feed" your rum wash. Don't start out with a high amount of sugar. I will end up using 600-700 lbs per 380 gallons of water. The one thing that i did was to stop using yeast nutrient and only use DAP. To use nutrient just cost so much money and the people in Jamaica at the big rum factories mainly just use DAP and that's it. It does help that I will process one batch and leave a little bit of previous batch in the bottom of the fermentation tank with the dead yeast. That really helps the next batch it acts like nutrients for the next batch. And for many of the rum wash probably one of the best things that help me out is agitation. I constantly agitate the tank on a rotating timer hooked to my lightning mixer. In some of the IBC totes that I use for fermentation tanks I simply go to Harbor freight or Northern tool and buy a water fountain pump. I take that pump and just drop it into the tank and it has a 3 foot hose That I put on it and it is always agitating the tank. That helps degas the tank and keep the yeast suspended. And believe it or not it actually ferments in about half the time. When the run is done I simply hooked it up to the continuous still in process it. I'm really looking into setting up a continuous fermentation system.

I use Panela. I buy it by the pallets. It comes in 40 lb boxes and in the box is 1 lb bricks. I dump them in the fermentation tank hole in dump in hot water through the instantaneous water heater at 184°. Then I turn on the lighting mixer and let it go to town. You don't have to want ad any nutrient to the solution because all the minerals and everything right from the cane juice is in there. It produces an excellent flavorful sweet smelling product that really is quite delicious. You have to remember that molasses is the crap left over after all the sugarcane is refined after they take out all the good stuff. Panela is 100% pure basically dehydrated cane juice no fillers no additives just pure cane juice. It is wonderful and sweet and as I'm dumping it into the fermenter I often take a bite out of one of the blocks chew on it.