Silk City Distillers

Talk to Larry at Stilldragon, they have a new dewatering unit that is a better option than Vincent. The smaller/attainable Vincent CP units are great, but they are still very spendy and, well, small.

On 9/30/2019 at 9:15 AM, bostonapothecary said:

In my experience with the birectifier, when concentrated, these fractions aren't harmonious and can seem intensely acrid, but when diluted to normal levels and part of a sensory matrix that includes ethyl acetate they define a spirit and represent quality.

 

Not uncommon when talking about flavor and aroma compounds, where an increase in concentration can take a taste or smell from pleasant to awful, or worse.  That creates a whole other level of complexity where it simply isn't about creation of a specific compound as part of the process, but the creation of that compound at a specific concentration.

There are plenty of other plant based sources of long-chain fatty acids and waxes that are fairly similar, depending on what your target is.

Depending on what you want to target, it's fairly easy to find a plant-based match.  You can even engineer a specific profile using GRAS ingredients.

For example, if I want to target C12-C16, I might use a refined coconut oil (no, you don't get any coconut flavor or aroma in the distillate).

If I want a high percentage of C16 - Rice Bran Oil.

If I want to target C18 - Almond Oil.

C16-C18 - Peanut Oil.

If I want a higher percentage of waxes - Beeswax, or heck, just go with cane waxes as well.

Folks who mash corn high in fatty acids see similar oil-slicks - corn oil high in C10 and C16.

Probably more interesting are the long-chain wax esters, meaning you'd probably need two components to match.  Like Peanut Oil and Beeswax.

Which one of these makes the delicious rum oil?  Which one of these tastes terrible?

Wasn't Vegemite historically just spent brewers yeast extracts?

Direct from Lallemand.  While they have run out in the past, it’s pretty rare.

4 hours ago, Allan said:

When trying to get accurate measurements and really dial things in, it occurs to me that the only way to really keep things balance is through a venturi, aggressive agitation, or consistent pumpovers (allowing of course enough time for air bubbles to dissipate before taking readings). 

This isn't necessary and is going to likely be counterproductive, resulting in greater levels of evaporation in an open tank.

38 minutes ago, Allan said:

You're saying that ethanol and water exist in a perfect tango? This hasn't been my experience...can you expand on this? 

This is correct, a homogenous mixture of water and ethanol will not separate or stratify.  Realize that underlying this is constant Brownian motion in the tank, which means in order to stratify, it needs to overcome that.

What you are likely seeing is the impact of small temperature differences at the top and bottom of the tank.  Mixing ethanol and water generates heat, the tank will be warmer at the top, even after some time.

If when gauging you only correct for one temperature, and assume the other liquid is the same, you’ll read slightly higher proof at the top.

For unmixed, non-homogeneous mixtures:

Very cold water and poor mixing might see  warmer ethanol floating on top.

Cold sugar syrup would see this amplified.

Anything you can mix with a pneumatic hand mixer you can mix equally as well with a paddle.  If you already have a pump, why not just use the pump?

A tank of mixed ethanol and water will not stratify.

Fining in spirits?  As opposed to straight filtration?  The only filtration aid I've ever seen in wide use was diatomaceous earth (DE) used with larger plate and frame setups.

0.2 or 0.1 micron and done, it sparkles like diamonds.

EC-1118 is a Lalvin strain, and Lalvin is owned by Lallemand.

LS is bayanus and EC-1118 is bayanus, both are champagne isolates.

LS is made in Canada, EC-1118 is made in Canada.

There are other common bayanus strains in the market, but they are sold by other companies (Red Star, etc).

Lallemand does have a history of marketing the same strains differently, and not making that known to the market, likely due to market price differences, or cross competition between sales teams.

Same or different?

We had good luck getting a 36” rtd off eBay and using one of the top triclamp ports to get the business end down near the bottom of the tank.  It’s near the mixing agitator so we get what we think is a pretty representative measurement.

Ive seen plenty of them longer and shorter, so you should be able to find something.

12" stainless butterfly?  She's a rare animal and might cost as much as the still, totally unnecessary too.

You don't need a fancy lyne on a stripping still, you need a port and piping to safely take vapor to the product condenser.  What I mean by safely is that there should be no risk that you would foam, puke, and plug the vapor piping or product condenser - so taking from the highest point, and if there isn't one, making a highest point (8" spool, 10" spool, welded ferrule on the tun).

If you have a vapor tight tank, you are good to go, if not, it's probably cheaper to covert a dairy tank like the captain says.

Glucoamylase is cheap insurance if you have some concern about mash protocol issues.

Dosing Alpha amylase and mashing in hot - you’ll create a lot of dextrins, not so much sugar.

Distillers typically mash in cooler than brewers.  We don’t care about mouthfeel or residual sugar.  Cooler mash in results in higher wort fermentability.  This is due to creating more favorable conditions for beta amylase.

Glucoamylase will chop up any dextrin that remains.  Ensuring high levels of saccharification.  It will also hydrolyze some of the remaining starch if you are fermenting on grain.

PVC no bueno

Working with a commercial cream base and adding alcohol is likely the easiest option.

Signature Spirits has a base, and if you are looking for the experts, it’s creamy-creation.com.

Dump it on the compost pile, start over.

10 days of bacterial fermentation and a pH of 3.5 has it so chock full of carboxylic acids that the environment will be far too stressful to the yeast to give a good end result, even if you could get it to restart (you probably can't).

For giggles - dose lye to increase pH to 5.2, boil it, dose a "rescue" yeast like EC-1118 with a fairly large pitch, rehydrated, ideally with rehydration nutrient.  Though, if you do get it to ferment to completion, I suspect it will require a fairly massive heads cut, and will yield a pretty funky distillate.  I don't think it's even worth the time.

It's a stainless body with teflon/ptfe seals.

Dayton 4HA31

Stainless and PTFE

About 80-90 bucks

Painfully slow.  Consider storing the drum sideways and using a simple drum spigot.

Reposting...

Ethanol vapor would be detectable by odor at about 85-100ppm, and 1000ppm is the OSHA exposure limit.  By 5000ppm (15% LEL), ethanol vapor would begin to be uncomfortable, by 10,000 (30% LEL) there would be obvious discomfort, by 15,000 (50% LEL) you would be continuously coughing and tearing. 20,000ppm (70% LEL) is completely intolerable.

Previously, 15,000ppm was the NIOSH IDLH limit - Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health.  But that's been revised down to 3,300ppm (10% LEL).  This is likely the reason an engineer or AHJ would specify 10% LEL alarms - that limit is about people safety, not explosion risk safety.

The other factor to keep in mind, is that localized readings might be higher.  A still leaking vapor could have a much higher concentration at the still, and might not be so obviously noticeable otherwise.  Just being near 15% LEL, would likely be very noticeable to a skilled distiller, you are your own combustible gas detector.  But you might not be close enough to notice, until it was too late.

It’s a tricky topic - by our nature craft distillers tend to lean towards being very natural in ingredients used and process.

Color starts to really shift into food science, and starts to give us natural distillers real heartburn because we start talking about unnatural additives.  Natural colors tend to be very unstable and while artificial colors fix that - it’s about as far away as possible from what we are trying to accomplish.

The universe of stable natural colors is small.  The techniques to stabilize tend to be difficult or require additional additives.  Heck, most of us would even have issues with using a natural color additive.  Even then, customers may take issue with the source. Example.  A beautiful natural stable red is easy - carmine - except it’s crushed beetles - and some people don’t like that.  Proof is in the pudding though.  Old Campari still looks great.

The colors from fruit or florals we might use?  Ticking time bombs.

Stopping them from shifting boils down to:

Research and journal articles around color stability for your specific botanical or fruit. You aren’t the first person to be ticked off about the color of blueberry.

Ensuring the pH is ideal for the color.  The pH will accelerate or retard the color shift.

Adding antioxidants to prevent oxidation.

Religiously preventing oxygen exposure.  Purging tanks, purging bottles, even purging oxygen out of liquid.  Ensuring filling doesn’t create a massive oxidation problem.

Storing the product cooler.

Reducing exposure to light.

Smaller batch sizes and less total shelf life.

Perhaps smaller bottle sizes to ensure quicker consumption (browning will accelerate once customers open the bottle).

Research, and befriend a good food scientist (it’s easy, they like food).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894785/#idm140439363439936title

Moving from roller milled coarse crack corn to hammer milled “coarse flour” increased our product yield by 20%.  We expected a chance, but it was a shocking improvement.

No other change, our typical SOP is steam injection with a 90 minute hold above 200f.

Is your tun heated/jacketed?  Do you have the ability to cook?  If not, going finer may be your only option.  Keeping your barley husk intact will help lautering, but lautering corn is always a nightmare (so don’t bother trying).

Also consider fermenting on the grain if you are utilizing glucoamylase.  While you won’t see a change in your starting gravity, you will end up with a higher final product yield due to enzymatic starch breakdown.

That doesn't meet the standard of brandy in the US.

The bottling line filter should not be final filtration.

Final filtration should happen as part of processing.

The bottling line filter is simply a last line of defense for any stray dust are particulate which may have found its way in the product in final transfers, tanks, etc

I agree with Adam - bottling line filtration should probably last damn near forever.

Not the best shot, but you get a good idea.

We use blue label and print on foil stock for metallics.  We don’t emboss yet, but will.  We do matte and semi-gloss golds.