Silk City Distillers

Corn doesn't malt well according to a craft maltster I know.  Something about the acrospires being fragile and breaking off prematurely - resulting in far under-modified malt.  Not to mention, maize isn't ideally suited for malting.

Even done well, maize has barely enough diastatic potential to convert itself, let alone other unmalted grain.  Keep in mind, barley intended for malting has been selected and cultivated for high diastatic potential, maize the exact opposite - starch potential.

I've heard mixed stories about lower temperature gelatinization of malted corn.  Depending on the malting process inefficiency, there may be quite a bit of starch still tied up as dense starch - requiring high temperatures to gel.  This creates a little bit of a catch-22 - balancing conversion yield and enzyme denaturing.  Ultimately, you'd likely still want to use exogenous enzyme and higher temperatures.

In terms of overall flavor profile - I don't know that it's so clear cut to assume malted corn makes better whiskey than unmalted corn.  Unmalted grain results in cleaner fermentation, however we know the "fingerprint" of congeners is important to flavor of the overall spirit.  Too clean isn't always better.  I've hear the term "grassy" to describe malt corn whiskey.

Make sure your farmer isn't using a propane drier, don't think you'll ever get that to malt well.

The risk is that regular thermal expansion and contraction cause the JBWeld to break away I would think.  Careful with any downstream pumps.

If you are planning to cool to pitch temps in the mash tun, I'd say 1100-1200g working cap.

If you are only planning to partially cool in the tun, and add water to the fermenters, you could get by with 1000g working cap.

I'm not sure if what your asking is, should you go below 1000g capacity.  You could go slightly smaller, but I think that might be restrictive from a process perspective.  Say for example, you were doing a 100% rye mash, you might want the full water volume due to viscosity challenges.

We chase our pumps and pipelines with water when we transfer, mostly because it's cleaner for us than having to open a hose connection and have gallons of mash spill on the floor.  For our 500g batch sizes (full volume in the tun), this is usually about 15g of water for rinse/purge on the transfer.

We've played around with mashing heavy mashes, roughly 400 gallons total capacity, 1100-1200 pounds grain - to be able to use large chilled water additions to speed cooling (pre-filled the fermenters with water and set them to cool to around 45-50f), we found the product yields were slightly worse than working closer to full volume through the cook/malt additions.

What did work better for us, is going heavy on the corn gelatinization, then using water additions to bring the mash down to malt-drop temps very quickly.

I thought seedlip was non-oil containing hydrosol.

Explosion proof issues aside - I’ve seen these little guys everywhere, usually located close to a still.

Why wouldn't you just use something like of Hoffman Watchman returning to a larger condensate tank?  Or directly back to the boiler if it's the only condensate generating device (it doesn't have a water feeder, not ideal).  It's about 6" off the deck, or you could plumb a tee into the lower drain port, which is at ground level.

We drilled a hole in the steel condensate receiver tank and welded on a ferrule.  Even with that, we have about 5 or 6" of "lift".  Glad I'm not the only person here that has been ticked off by that.

I know of a few stills in operation that have a few feet of lift, using steam back pressure to return condensate.  I know of one going back to the stand-mounted Fulton condensate return - that's not sitting on the floor, but about 3ft up.

I can't imagine a few inches is any real problem, even at very low pressures, but higher amounts of lift could cause condensate to be pushed over to the receiver in bigger slugs.

We use low pressure DSI.  Usually sub 12 pounds.  It’s remarkably efficient.

The brewer next door to us tells us that we could severely underpitch and be just fine.  He's got a few buckets of Hornindal ready for us.  Waiting on the molasses shipment and we'll get a ferment or two in before it gets really cold.

We don't use any feed water chemicals.  We use DSI through a sanitary filter.  We realize that it will ultimately destroy the boiler, that's what happens to boilers.

Look at the big systems, Vendome mash tuns - DSI.  Vendome continuous stills - DSI.  Between these two processes, you are talking about the majority of steam not being condensed and returned, huge feed water use.

My water guy tells me that he's seeing reverse osmosis boiler feeds becoming more common for food-contact use.  Preferable and simpler than dealing with lots of chemicals.  If you are already spending money on water treatment systems, why feed your boiler tap water?

If you are returning *ALL* condensate to the boiler, and are not losing steam to the atmosphere - realize this reduces your need to blow down.  If you are blowing down every day on a boiler that isn't losing steam, you are destroying your boiler prematurely.

You only need minimal filtration to account for any stray particulate that might enter the product due to handling (tanks, hoses, pumps, etc), as the distillate itself should be nearly free of any particulate contamination.

If you keep your process clean, even a small in-line filter as part of your bottling process should be more than sufficient.  Nothing elaborate here.  Realistically, you don't really even need a very small micron filtration - since it's most likely that you'll be dealing with stray dust as the primary contaminent.

For gin specifically, I wouldn't want to expose it to too much oxygen, nor would I want to expose it to too much filtration media (especially something like cellulose media, which  might absorb oils).

If you are doing a good job with handling and processing, and rinsing out tanks, lines, filling machines prior to bottling - you might be able to get away with no filtration at all.

We did a bourbon with 51% corn, 49% whole oat with husk.

The whole oat was roller milled.

Boy was that ever a challenge - that self-lautered in the mash tun without a screen.

Oat husks are huge, if you crack the oat and leave the husk intact, it blooms like a flower.

Had to pump back and forth with heavy agitation in the tun to transfer it all.  Post fermentation it was a little bit easier to deal with.  Dewatering post distillation was a breeeeeeze.

Might be some truth to that.  I've had some bottles on display here at home that have had floc, that I'd shook to remove.  Just going through the cabinet this morning after reading that comment, I'm not seeing a ton of floc.  One of the bottles I know I shook (one of my batch 1 bottle 1) - appears a little "dusty" at the bottom, but no floc.  Makes me wonder if the structure is somewhat crystalline - and for some reason, won't re-form in the same way once disturbed.

But playing devil's advocate - being transported is going to shake bottles up pretty well - from bottling, to packaging, to palletizing, delivery, forklifts, etc.

Crash cool in your fermenters to encourage flock and settling.

Looking to import for a blended project, ideally Jamaican rums.  Tote or less-than-tote volumes.

Anyone have a recommendation?

Logistically, seems like way more work than just pumping out.

You've got to pull the barrel rack, set it down, pick up the individual barrel, transfer it, drop it, dump.

Seems far easier to just pull the rack, set it down, and pump out.  We use a small 1" PD pump, works like a charm.

I've never found cane spirit to be truly neutral, even commercially sold neutral, or even cane vodkas.  Seems to always retain that rummy top note as a characteristic signature.  Always seems to come across as a very very light rum.  Not saying this is a bad thing, plenty of other neutrals retain distinctive flavor or aroma based on the fermentable.  Other than further processing of your cane spirit, additional distillation, carbon, you'll likely need to find a way to adjust the botanical profile to play nicely with the base spirit.  What comes to mind for me, is a warmer profile gin vs a cooler/citrus gin.  Might be fun to experiment with some of the warmer botanicals used in a spiced rum (cinnamon, allspice, clove, cubeb, anise, vanilla, etc) - as many of these work very very well with a rum profile.  I've been dying to try a falernum-inspired gin, lime, ginger, almond, clove, allspice - a cane spirit base would be ideal here.

Gin basket is the fix for delicate botanicals - if you are still feeling you are getting stewed flavor profiles as part of a basket, the next step is really complicated - vacuum distillation.  We felt this to be the case with cucumber, even in a basket it's impossible to get a clean, crisp cucumber - to me it always seemed muddled - sure, cucumber, but not like biting into a cucumber on a summer day.  Vacuum distillation?  On boy.  Talk about botanicals in high fidelity.

Grain or sugar?

Anyone following the brewing microbiology world and the growth/prevalence of Norwegian Farmhouse Yeast styles (Kveik)?  Anyone using today?

Fairly unique yeast "styles" compared to typical pure strains - I say styles since most Kviek are multiple strains / mutated strains blends, not a single genetically unique strain (like we use today).  As a family, they are being described as a previously undiscovered branch of brewing yeasts.

Working w/ one yeast lab to do some rum trials using Kveik strains, because from my perspective they seem fairly well suited for rum.

High ester, remarkably low off-flavor/fusel production at high temperatures (90f+), fast fermenters, POF- (No phenolic off flavors in distillate, clove, bandaid, burnt).

Hornindal is one of the more popular strains - heavy/intense tropical fruit ester profiles - pineapple, mango, citrus.  Happy to about 14-16% alcohol, happy to 98f.  For people struggling with temperature control w/ uncontrolled fermenters, it seems like a godsend.  Typical recommendation is to pitch into 86f or higher.

The home-brew market is out of their mind about the kviek strains, even seasoned home brewers are shocked at how good their beer is, without any concern for temperature control, in fact, many are saying the hotter the better, pretty atypical.  Even extreme cases, pitching into 100f wort, finishing beer in 2 days.

Fairly interesting stuff, domesticated yeasts that are genetically distinct from common "industrial" stains we use today.  We're taught that generally, serially repitching the same strain of yeast is "bad" as mutation starts altering the strain characteristics.  In this scenario, that serial repitching created a new set of domesticated strains, with unique characteristics..

From the attached:

Also, analysis of the volatile ester profiles revealed the kveik yeasts produced above-threshold concentrations of three yeast fatty acid esters: ethyl caproate (pineapple, tropical), ethyl caprylate (tropical, apple, cognac), and ethyl decanoate (apple) (Comuzzo, Tat, Tonizzo, & Battistutta, 2006; Verstrepen et al., 2003). One or more of these esters was present at above-threshold levels in all of the kveik yeasts. Phenethyl acetate (honey, floral, yeasty) was also detected at above-threshold level in 5/25 kveik strains. These data suggest that kveik yeasts present a potential new option as POF- ale yeasts with a range of intensities of desirable fruity esters.

194969.pdf

Proof would need to be fairly low to be concerned about sterile filtration to prevent spoilage, but have heard of some microbes that can remain dormant in higher proofs, so ok - it's a factor.

Sub micron has more to do with light scattering as it passes through the bottle.  It presents more as a kind of very light opaque haze than as visible floating particulate.  Not talking about floc, clouds, etc.  

I've seen this with carbon filtration, where the spirit on the shelf has a kind of gray tinge, due to sub-micron carbon particulate.  Murky maybe?  I can pick it out pretty easy when I'm looking for it, especially in a bright store, with lots of bottles side-by-side for comparison.

To me, visually, sub-micron has a kind of sparkle to it.

Pediococcus - nice call

Larger is better - grain mashing is time and labor intensive.  Increasing volume doesn’t linearly increase time due to the setup, rests, heat times, cool times, breakdown, cleaning, etc.  Mashing more is faster than mashing more often.

It’s tough for us to mash 2x a day, however, we can easily distill 2x a day.  So our tun and fermenters are 2x still size.

This also gives us a nice upgrade path on still size.

All that said, we are currently looking at a 4x mash tun.  That fits a nice 5 production day schedule when we are cranking a single product line.

Yeah I thought the same thing.

I made an edit to my post, was looking on my phone and didn’t see the relays below it clearly.

It would be a simple on/off system if it was controlled.

ABB MS132 is just a straight manual motor start contactor - there isn’t any kind of SSR/Power controller that can vary proportionally that I see, the AF16z below is it a simple on/off providing remote control.