Silk City Distillers

Interesting, there are a number of Manhattan RTDs that I would have guessed contained Vermouth.

Lol, you need to call.

Try Greenfield Global/Pharmco.

https://www.pharmco.com

Lallemand Distilamax GW

Lots of folks are using the mobile canning options that are nearly everywhere these days.

Keep in mind though, the rate of vaporization of stored/barreled ethanol.

Typically, distilleries see barrel evaporation at 10% volume per year.  Based on this, we're talking about 0.03% evaporation per day.

If we look at this in the context of a single day evaporation - 98.7kg of ethanol (total kg necessary to be vaporized) / 0.03% (average vaporization a day) = 329,000 kg of ethanol stored in average conditions (roughly 1500-2000 53 gallon barrels).

Not even sure it's physically possible to store this many barrels in 1600 cubic meters.  In addition, as little as 2 complete air changes *per day* would mean LFL would not be hit.

You missed a step - 1 liter of ethanol liquid is not 1 liter of ethanol vapor.

The impact is not as significant as you might think, as pH is not linear.  You also need to consider the buffering capability of the remaining water.  If you were mixing 10-20% backset with RO water (which you wouldn’t do), you might have a problem, otherwise, nah.

Grain adds buffering capacity as well, if you mashed into 100% backset, the pH would rise.

4.8-5.2 is a good starting pH range.  Don’t be afraid to pitch low - this allows yeast to thrive as they will outcompete bacteria (which can crash the ph).  This is totally counterintuitive, but one of the solutions to crashing pH is to start at a lower pH.

We add backset to the mash at the start of the cook, not after, I would never add it straight to the fermenter without additional pasteurization unless you can store backset somewhat sterile. For some products we add lactobacillus to the fermentation.  We’ve found lactobacillus brevis and plantarum to be positives if you are shooting for a creamy, toffee, buttery flavor profile.

They are both called sour - but the end results are very very different. 

"Hey, Mr. Manufacturer, why is this 304 rusting?"  

"It's not 304, you are reading the markings upside down, it's marked h0E, we never said it was 304."

I'm the king of cheap solutions, lol.

By the way, the Mori adjustable tray continues to be a game changer.

What size is your plate/frame?  Full size 40x40, or one of the 1/4 size smaller jobs (20x20)?  Could be simply a matter of having more filter area.  I think that's the reason, because based on what you've said, I'd bet you are blinding with tiny bits of impermeable skin and pump (which if you've ever eaten an orange you'll realize they do a great job of keeping the juice in).

We had similar challenges filtering powdered carbon from white rum.  We just needed to step up to larger media to eliminate the mid-batch filter cleaning.  Going from a 10" Code-7 cartridge to a 30" cartridge did the trick.  Just not enough surface area before we would completely blind the filter.  If we step up even larger, we're going to need to add more filter, no way to get around it.

What you might try is to do some gross filtration using a poly filter bag or EZ-Strainer (25-50 micron, maybe smaller, they are cheap enough to try).  Don't rinse it, see if you can get some of the particulate to stay behind as part of the screener.  Sticky stuff that likes to blind filter media usually likes to stick together as well.  Pour through slow, then, filter in steps.  If you can get it to 1 micron, get it there, then filter again with half micron.  Again, we realized it was far easier to refilter multiple times with progressively smaller cartridges, than go through Big Bang, with all the filter cartridges in series (pressure issue as the first cartridge would blind up, making the rest of them irrelevant).

Which raises another question, are you monitoring pressure on the filter input?  Is your pump putting out sufficient pressure that's closer to the top of the recommended range for your media than the bottom.

Some brewing studies indicating that olive oil is beneficial for fermentation, would be doing double duty.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.2011.tb00472.x

Zook/Good Food in PA has nice quality blackstrap and fancy.  The blackstrap is baking grade and not industrial sludge. 

Are you taking into account supply and delivery?  Lately electric companies have gotten clever in splitting these up to make the numbers seem smaller and more competitive.

We use a 15 horsepower cast iron Weil McLain, it's not a residential boiler, but it's a small commercial boiler that's really not much more than a larger version of a typical residential cast iron steam boiler.  There's no magic to big iron boilers.  However, depending on your jurisdiction, the steam trim on the boiler may not be sufficient, for example, we are required to have dual redundant pressuretrols, with manual reset, that's not something you generally see on a home boiler, same thing on the manual reset low water cutoffs.  Also, you'll still need a condensate pump system, which isn't cheap.  The bigger boilers have the water feeders on the condensate return tank and pump controls on the boiler, versus residential boilers having water feeders to the boiler and using a float switch to pump condensate back on the condensate tank.  This can sometimes cause issues with boiler overflow.  Can you fix this?  Sure, but it's replacing more expensive parts on the boiler.

It's doable, you'll save money, there are lots of additional costs that need to be considered.  If you want to do this on the super cheap, just find someone with a steam system in their house, and upgrading to something like force hot air, etc.  In my area, I routinely see 2-3 year old steam boilers for dirt cheap on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.  The other thing I noticed is there seem to be a TON of dry cleaners closing during covid, selling small Fultons for next to nothing, for example:

Oh yeah, always be friends with a plumber.

The last part is interesting, but raises interesting compliance questions.  If you are adding NaCl - sodium chloride to your water - then using that water to proof the whiskey - is that considered an additive to the whiskey - requiring formula and approval?  At what point does it become coloring/flavoring/blending material?  Taking it to absurdity - is it now salt-flavored whiskey?

Generally, I would imagine the TTB is good with subtractive processing on water (filtration, carbon, deionization, reverse osmosis) - but would they similarly accept additive processes?  For example, dosing a wide array of chemicals?

Pumped reflux should be able to achieve higher rectification and better energy efficiency than twin dephlegs and dumping reflux from both columns back to the kettle - everything else equal of course.

Twin dephlegs may be more challenging to initial dial in, because you'll be managing temperature control across the two dephlegs independently.    However, if your end product is always neutral - once you've got it dialed in, you aren't necessarily fiddling each run.  This is probably true of either style.

Pumping reflux seems like it should be trivially easy - however there are complexities associated with it, and depending on your jurisdiction factors that can be very costly (explosion proof, etc).

Best advice is to work with someone who has already figured their system out, live and in-production somewhere.

Positive displacement pump (lobe pump) is going to be an absolute MUST here, you should be ok with 1.5" but 2" is a far safer choice.  Flush with water on the still fill so that you aren't leaving wash in the piping.  It would be great if you could get some pitch to drain.

If cost is an issue and stainless is not possible at 190 feet, I'd honestly run schedule 40 black steel pipe before I'd use PVC.  Do it like the old rusty distilleries in Jamaica.

Pucker up and blow.

Or unbolt the dephleg flanges and check it out.

Could be two separate dephleg coils.  One fed from the product condenser, and a supplemental.

Local fire officials will probably have more to say.

1 hour ago, Heavydane said:

The question is, would it help and how much extension would I need?

Easy, as high as you can fit before hitting the ceiling.

You should run it first, get dialed in, and then re-evaluate.

Sensitive topic I'm sure, so I'll leave this here for anyone interested:
 

To Whom It May Concern:

Frontline Essential Worker Related to Critical Infrastructure

(Name Here)

1.     Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21) designates the food and agriculture sector as a critical infrastructure sector whose assets, systems, and networks are considered so vital that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health, or safety. 

2.     The President’s Coronavirus Guidance published on March 16, 2020 instructs employees of Critical Infrastructure Industries, such as the food and agriculture sector, to maintain normal work patterns during the global coronavirus outbreak. 

3.     The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) published guidance on March 19, 2020 identifying food and agriculture employees as critical infrastructure workers essential to the continued viability of this sector who should maintain normal work patterns pursuant to the President’s Coronavirus Guidance. 

4.     The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published guidance on December 20, 2020 regarding priorities for distributing the COVID-19 vaccine.  In this they classified food and agriculture workers as Frontline Essential Workers, and to be eligible to receive vaccination under CDC recommended Phase 1b.

5.     The (Insert State Here - Confirm if applicable) (DOH) published COVID-19 Vaccination Plan has adopted the CDC published guidance (above), and has also recommended that Food and Agriculture workers are eligible to receive vaccination under Phase 1b.

6.     This document certifies that the individual bearing this document is an employee of a food or agriculture facility that has been designated as critical infrastructure, the continued operation of which is vital for security, national economic security, national public health, and safety.

Certified by:  

Company Official.
Sign & Date
 

Can you calculate your break-even sales volume?  With and without salary/owner draw?  Can you calculate how long can you afford to float the business before you hit break even?  If so, you can chart a table looking at different breakeven timeline scenarios to understand where you need to be at each point in time.  Makes it easy to understand how long you can go, if your sales are sub-target.  From what I've seen in this business, there are two main problems.  Undercapitalization and overly optimistic sales numbers, model for those scenarios, and you already have a leg up.  Agree with @Glenlyon - how much do you need to sell?  Is that realistic for the market?

Nah an E (Manual load - 50) - but we're looking to mount it to a conveyor just the same.  

Love our CCR, they were great.  Won't sell it, but if you look for a vendor new, give them a shout.