Silk City Distillers

Yeah, up here in the Northeast we are 3x that rate.  Burning oil is cheaper than electric out here.

Other issue with electric is that it's easy to top out on power, which is why you don't see many electric stills over 250/300g or so.

If you've got heavy power, 480v/3ph/200a - you'd be in business.  If you have typical single phase 240v, good luck, even if you consumed every single kilowatt (no lights, no computers, no anything else), you are still talking about 3 hours heat up time on a good day (48kw).  Stepping up to a 200a 3 phase system, maybe a couple more kw, but you could at least keep the lights on, run some pumps, a fridge, etc.  Moving to 480v gives you real headroom, as well as saves an significant amount of money on the wiring (half the amperage).  Unless you are an in an industrial area, it might be hard to get 480v service.  Hell, even pulling 480v in many places is a $20k job, maybe even more expensive than a boiler.

We're not talking water heater elements here either, you'd need to step up to industrial flange mount elements, and they aren't cheap.

Interested in the grain separator, send me the details please!

For your original post - 250 gal water, 350# corn, 220# malted wheat, 55# malt:

Inputs

Corn = 350 lbs at 33 ppg = 11,550 ppg

Unmalted Wheat = 220 lbs at 37 ppg = 8,140 ppg

Malt - 55 lbs at 32 ppg =  1760 ppg

Total = 21,450 ppg

Maximum Gravity

21,450 / 250 gallons water = 85.8 or 1.0858 SG potential

(16 plato) 65.4 / 85.8 = 76.2% Efficiency

My initial response was a bit of a swag at 19 plato - that would of been about 91% efficiency.

What's obvious here is between the two cases, you picked up significant efficiency by reducing the mash thickness.

Keep in mind that corn yield can be all over the place.

Inputs

Corn = 350 lbs at 33 ppg = 11,550 ppg

Unmalted Wheat = 110 lbs at 34.5ppg = 3,795 ppg

Peated Malt - 55 lbs at 37.5ppg =  2,062.5 ppg

Total = 17,407.5 ppg

Maximum Gravity

17,407.5 / 250 gallons water = 69.63 or 1.0696 SG potential

(15 plato) 61.1 / 69.63 = 87.7% Efficiency = This is not terrible.

Someone check my math, it's early.

Sulfur dioxide will come over, you will need to treat.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jib.100

Agree, and it’s not just Carl.

Every time I come across a pressure vessel cooker, I wonder about being able to cut hold times dramatically by cooking above boiling.  Time is money.  Never enough time.

@PeteBWhat's your workflow/process like for mashing in Rye at 194f?  Augering/Milling into a grist hydrator?  What's your grind like?  Curious as we've had a hell of a time mashing in Rye hot.

Typically used is powdered E120 (FD&C Carmine Lake Powder, sometimes, but not always called Natural Red #4), added to the final product per manufacturer direction and your local regulatory limits.  This is a processed natural color that must meet certain requirements to be used.  You would buy this from a flavoring/coloring house as a ready to use food dye.  There are strict labeling requirements associated with E120.  Purchase this from a reputable coloring house that can supply you with all the necessary documentation, data sheets, and not something like eBay or Alibaba.

Sight glass.

To be able to view plate action.  Spend enough time watching a still and you can easily notice something being upset in the typical column behavior.  Plus, they look cool.  Most stills could get by with half as many, or 1/3rd as many.

What’s it look like proofed down in a bottle?

What micron filtration?

Wealthy brewers...

This is the paper I see most often cited when talking about raw grain processing and ethanol yield.

Only caution is that the comparison is against high temperature pressure cooking.  It's a pretty massive temperature difference being compared to here, and most of us don't pressure cook.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jib.236

Starsan is only a sanitizer, not a cleaner.  So not surprised it's really not helpful.

A caustic CIP cleaner is what you need, and for really tough scale, alternate with an acid CIP cleaner.

Zep, Birko, there are a number of cleaning product manufacturers that can help you out with selecting the right product.

Yes, not only better yields, but far easier workflows.

In almost every case for us, getting good conversion and yield with high % of raw grain required far higher temperatures and longer holds than the literature would indicate.

Consider mashing in all your raw grain with your base grain - corn or rye.

LTL Freight guys got a killer barrel proof pick.

Most VFD will give you:

Speed Control

Slow Start

Overcurrent Protection

Up to you if you need or want them.  Pumps are usually a no-brainer as the speed control is valuable.  We have one on the tun as well, helps to slow down the mixer when mashing smaller volumes.

Quote

Been going back and forth with supplier on the milling, they only have a roller mill but are working with me on getting it crushed finer. This last batch came in particularly horribly milled, a bit of whole kernels even. Bummer because I like their products,

We were in the same boat.  Love our primary farmer, love his product, love his story.  But, for him milling was a pain in the behind.  For us, inconsistent, a batch contained everything from whole kernels, or half-split kernels all the way down to flour.  

He was much happier moving to whole kernel.  We're happier moving to whole kernel (huge yield jumps).  Saved both of us time and money.  Not to mention, whole corn is more stable than cracked, especially during the humid summer months.  Payback on buying the mill was easily realizable in time and yield differences.

Post a photo of your corn.  You have more than enough malt to convert without the additional enzyme.  The enzyme is gravy on top.  Keep in mind the glucoamylase will remain active throughout fermentation, that's like sprinkles on your gravy.

Push longer on coarse crack try 2 hours and move backwards from there, moving from 140 to 145 isn't going to solve this.

We struggled with similar low yields using fine cracked corn.  Optimizing fine cracked corn required 90-120 minutes at temp, thickness was a major impediment to full gelatinization.  We could run iodine starch tests forever it seemed with the fine crack.

Tom is right, go thinner, and push your hold temperatures longer.  16 plato starting seems very low, would have expected 19-20 with that much grain.  The fact that you are finishing dry points to getting complete fermentation of the starch you are extracting (no residual dextrin, etc - wouldn't expect that with glucoamylase).  So that points to starch extraction from the maize.

Hammer milling the grain ourselves pushed yields up 20% overnight.

Debatable whether or not PBR is better as a mild acid cleaner than a beverage.

But yeah, PBW, mild citric wash, good to go.

As much fores as a fores cutter cuts if a fores cutter could cut fores.