Bier Distillery

I guess what I'm wondering is how much effect the inlet/outlet size has on the pump's ability to handle grain in mashes. The one I've seen in use was 3". Is 3/4" far too small?

Aye, there's the rub. No room for the forklift to get where it needs to go.

Would a cavity/screw pump with a 3/4" in/out be able to move a 2 lb to 1 gallon ground/flour grain mash?

How does this compare to a comparable in price (whatever that is) plate chiller?

You use electric elements in the jacket right? How did you insure that the localized temp didn't reach the smoking point? Or perhaps even minimal smoking isn't an issue since the jacket is sealed?

I ran some tests using an immersed element inside a 2" stainless tube immersed in peanut oil and there were wisps of something (I thought smoke) coming from the oil within a few seconds. Perhaps the larger volume of a jacket would help, but I don't know how much at this point.

Out of curiosity, would these work as heat transfer fluids?

http://www.agrilabs.com/Products.aspx?CategoryUid=11&ProductUid=93

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/CLA0/633509009004.oap

Interested as well.

Anyone selling simple/cheap solenoid/PID solutions?

Afterall, it is a little ironic how distillers pour their heart into their very distinct and unique product whatever it may be and then turnaround and put it in a stock bottle like the rest of the guys on the shelf. Makes it very hard to stand out IMO.

I think most craft distillers would hope their product stands on its own legs. That said, I get what you're saying, but how many custom wine/beer bottles are there?

FWIW, feel free to post or PM what your rough costs for a custom bottle are.

What yeast and how much of it?

http://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/2013/01/15/cleaning-up-the-ip-board-url4short-mess/

Are the .1 scale high precision hydrometers from HB Instruments worthwhile? They seem to be taller which would be a good thing but is there appreciably more space between the graduations for the expensive .1 models vs. the inexpensive .2 ones?

The .1 high precision ones seem to be rarely mentioned here which is why I wonder if they offer useful precision for our purposes.

You could easily do much better (in several regards) than that RO system.

Russ

Recommendations?

1.07 to 1.01 in 3 days seems to be a miracle. What yeast? How much? Reused?

Thanks, that was what I wanted to clarify if people were willing to share. Its not hard to plug some volume and ABV into a calculator and get the theoretical grain sizes.

For the whiskeys present here, is this figuring 2x grain? 250g = 500 lb of "grain".

Any recommendations on small RO systems?

Using a nice little 2000ml glass lab still, pretty handy.

Which one?

PeteB

I use high yielding apples for my juice I tend to lean towards Jonagold apples as they produce the most juice and the juice is very light in colour and very sweet similar to a honeycrisp apple, I prefer the jonagold for fresh eating and juicing and for fermenting. Not sure what you want me to expand on but I find that if I do not filter the fresh pressed juice very well right away then when I start fermenting and the solids in the juice will settle at the bottom of the tank and the hard cider produced will be reductive from the solids rotting at the bottom it will give a rotten egg smell and flavour to the hard cider. it can be fixed by adding copper to the process but I rather not have to do that.

not sure if that helps or not

Would fermenting in a conical and dropping/removing the solids as it ferments accomplish the same thing as filtering?

Wouldn't distilling also remove any smell?

Are you referring to adding copper while distilling or fermenting?

Needs calcium to work right though.

How so and in what form? Calcium carbonate would increase PH.

corn to water at 3:1, cooked to ~180f added alpha-amylase, cooled to ~140f added gluco-amylase.

Shouldn't alpha be in the 150s and beta in the 120s?

Interesting idea. With the mash already roiling from a boil, would you need to worry about directly immersed elements burning an "on the grain" mash? Has anyone using immersed elements ever burned the wash _after_ the boil started?

2nd'd. Assuming you're not using expensive fermenters or limited for space, why not just start more washes and let them clear on their own?

All fixed. No gobbledygook when viewing profiles either.

Also using Chrome:

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