Silk City Distillers

Talk to Stilldragon, they have a unit in the works that’s exactly what you describe.

Looking for a semi-automatic, pneumatic, t-corker.  CCR or similar.

My hand is killing me.

@HedgeBird - Cleaned it up.

Some photos.

4 tubes would not be considered sanitary.

Can anyone guess why?  Tricky, but once you see it, it’s obvious.

The dairy guys know exactly what they are doing.

We live in a nanny state - we already have annual boiler and vessel inspections, for low pressure.  It's the same annual inspections already.

This past inspection, a few months ago, they required us to make changes to the condensate return, even though it had already been signed off and inspected by building and plumbing years ago.  Additional check valves, and additional ball valves to isolate.  Swap the pressuretrols for manual reset versions.  We just nodded our heads and did it, not worth the battle.  They wanted to x-ray the still jacket walls from the inside to verify that the thickness matched the engineering prints.  We drew the line there - they were going to charge us for the test.  Keep in mind, low pressure.

if you have your boiler covered by your insurance policy, they are going to want an annual inspection for coverage, whether the state comes out, or they send their own inspectors.  At least out here, that’s how it works.

I'll post this here.  I have no liability, offer no warranty or guarantee, no connection or affiliation with the seller.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSA-Ultima-XIR-Gas-Monitor-NEW/264294563430?hash=item3d892efe66:g:LncAAOSwA8Zcvk0l

If it works, which it might not, it's pretty much the best of the best, infrared combustible gas detection, very very nice unit.  Probably sell for $2,500-3,000 new.  Combustible gas sensor, calibrated with methane.  Separate remote sensor and controller head.  These are XP and your electrician can pull XP rigid conduit.  Plenty of relay outputs.  At 240 bucks, even if your electrician charges you $1000 to pull explosion proof conduit, you would be ahead of the game.  This is the kind of sensor you could feel very comfortable with locating at the still.

We are using a Safe-T-Net 410 monitor control panel with two Drager Polytron XP combustible gas sensors.  One behind the still, one next to gauging/blending.  They are connected via XP rigid conduit, seal glands, the whole 9 yards.  The control panel has two more sensor inputs, I two more sensors but I haven't installed them.

You can find similar panels on eBay for relatively low prices.  Most of these panels will expect a 4-20ma sensor input, and will have a variety of alarm and relay output options.  Ours is currently connected to a siren, but it would be very easy for us to connect the panel to our still controller, and shut off the boiler, power, turn on fans, etc.

You can find high quality explosion proof detectors inexpensively as well, but your mileage may vary.  You absolutely need to understand how to program and calibrate these things, otherwise they are just paperweights.  If you buy a used one, you might find that it's no longer able to be calibrated, so it's a gamble.

This is absolutely NOT DIY beginner territory.  You'll probably waste tons of money if you even attempt this, and end up wasting even more time trying to educate yourself on it.

Sensors to look for would be Drager, MSA, RKI, Bacharach, etc.  The minute you go into explosion proof territory, you pay a serious premium.

11 hours ago, vsaks said:

The reason you don't want a 6% or lower threshold is you don't want a threshold so low that you hit it during normal operations. Then it just becomes a nuisance and might not be noticed when a real problem is happening.

Surprised you would even hit a "real" 6% LEL, that's actually a very high reading.  Of course, it depends on the size of your space, the air changes per hour, etc.  Yes, I realize that's 6% of the 3.3% LEL of ethanol vapor.  Suspect that meter drift gave you an inaccurately high baseline reading (zero calibration).

Ethanol vapor would be detectable by odor at about 85-100ppm, and 1000ppm is the OSHA exposure limit.

6% LEL would be approximately 2000ppm, twice the legal exposure limit.

3300ppm would be the 10% LEL, 6600ppm would be 20% LEL.

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.

We are running thicker than 3lb/gallon now.

Milling in at 16.6lb per minute with roughly 5.25gal/min of water, for a total volume of 7 gal/min.  Roughly, rye mills faster, corn slower, water pressure fluctuates some.

We've run the water as low as 3gal/min, and it's like extruding thick custard.

You can run a high pressure low, but you can’t run a low pressure high.

However, many boiler inspectors are going to hold you to the nameplate pressure.  Meaning you need a boiler operator seal/license.  You might even be required to install regulators before low pressure devices.

You could use these kinds of heat exchangers all sorts of different ways.

Recirculating on the tun, single pass from tun to fermenter, you can use them to preheat mash water using hot stillage, hell you could probably pass steam through the shell side to heat mash if you were really daring (pretty sure Paul wouldn't recommend this).

It's just a heat exchanger.  Clean fluids, hot or cold, on the shell side, process fluids, hot or cold, in the tube side.

We have a very good local boiler shop, surprisingly, they are recommending we move to high pressure steam, regulated to 15psi for the stills, but full pressure for the steam injection on the mash tun.

They say even if we don't add horsepower, running a High pressure Fulton will dramatically outperform our Weil McLain cast iron, significantly faster mash-tun heat-up using the eductors at high pressure, where they can really shine.  They also say that running a regulated low-pressure line for the stills will provide rock-solid steam pressure control, especially trying to do multiple things at the same time (heat up on still 1, operating on still 2, heating mash tun).

They'll hang their engineering certs for 6 months, then we'd need to take the boiler operators licensing exams and put the seals in our name.  Most folks here seem to be vehemently anti-high-pressure, but those guys are telling me it's no big deal.  I'll quote -  "We've installed high pressure steam in thousands of dry cleaners in the state.  If an idiot dry cleaner can pass the licensing exam, pretty sure that you'll have no problem." 

Great thread!

We have two valves.  A full-port ball valve, and a globe valve.  On heat-up, we simply open the ball valve to allow full, unrestricted flow.  For fine control, we shut the ball valve and use the smaller globe valve.  It's common on the European stills to see two valves in parallel.  A large globe, and a small globe.  The reason for this is to maintain fine control, without significant flow restriction of a small globe valve.  

Using a single large globe is sometimes counterproductive, you use a globe for precise control, but a large globe valve typically has poor control at low flow rates.  So instead, use a less expensive ball valve on heat-up, and use a smaller globe valve for precise control during the run.  The technical term for what I'm talking about is turndown.  The higher the turndown, the more precise the control over the full valve range.  This applies to valves too.

Using a single small globe is always counterproductive - I've seen folks have really slow heat-up times, despite having properly sized boilers, because they were trying to force all the steam through a 3/4" globe valve.  Very very restrictive flow path.  We run a 1" globe and a 1" ball on a 1000 liter still.  Heatup easily takes twice as long if you try to heat through the globe valve alone.  Usually I stand around wondering what the hell is taking so long, and then I realize I didn't open the ball valve.

I would also agree to check the cut-in and cut-out on the pressuretrols.  If you are set really wide, and have really long pre and post-purge, you'll have a big swing.  But, looking at the boiler gauge - what's the full swing range you see - low to high?  It should be pretty obvious to know if this is an issue.  I'll say, most of us have 2-3psi swing on the boiler, this generally is not a problem.

Curious - Do you leave pumps wet with alcohol or do you rinse with water after use?

300/600g is also well into forklift territory.  Not only do you need the forklift, you need a building big enough, with enough floor loading capacity, to operate the forklift.

Solids in a grain mash can plug, we are talking about grain-in mash, not wort.

Coolant on the shell side, the small opening that's perpendicular.

The wort or mash to be cooled goes through the large opening.

If you chase with water, you'll have very low losses, and cleanup will be much easier.

Product goes through the cooler like going up or down a staircase, the cooling sections are only on the straight sections.

This type of cooler was made popular by the dairy industry, because it is a highly sanitary design that allows for inspection and breakdown.

I'd replace it with something that looks like this.

Or maybe something like this if a display is necessary.

My Mash and Fermentation controllers are based on this one though, I'm partial to this brand, it's a great system.  You just connect the wires to where they need to go, and it goes.  It has a nice little web server HMI built in, so you can access it from anything with a browser.  Plenty of SCADA/Failsafe capabilities too, alerting/messaging, etc.  

Didn't realize that had gin baskets.

Vendome also makes a GNS redistillation rig.  Not many people know of it though.  It doesn't do much, but allow you to change the label statement...

It works slightly differently though, as it does take a bottoms product.  

I've tried to run the continuous gin still with straight 95% neutral input - it doesn't work well - extractions are very very different.  Lower-proof vapor streams extract more full flavored distillate.  Continuous rigs setup for neutral spirit redistillation/distillation - likely won't work well for vapor extraction in gin distillation.  The proof curve of batch distillation - starting at high proof, transitioning to low proof, is key. 

Using GNS, direct immersion heaters are far more efficient than using the same electric to produce steam to then heat the kettle.

Unless you have some reason to require a steam-heated kettle, grain mash, etc - why bother?  If you want to go grain to glass, keep your gin configuration exactly as-is, and add the capacity to make your neutral separately.  Is it going to be expensive with only electric?  Heck yes.  But, you should be able to find a used Sussman or Chromalox for relatively cheap.  We burn dinosaurs in our boiler, heating oil, because we  have it, and it's still cheap.  Same reason as you, the building has gas, but pulling a  4" gas line for hundreds of feet is incredibly expensive.

On another note.

We are currently designing and prototyping a continuous carter-head gin still that is incredibly energy efficient.  It is fed by GNS and RO water, and vaporizes the input feeds to create a consistent ABV vapor stream.  The only thing you need to do is turn it on, and change botanical baskets at set intervals.  Runs as carter-head vapor infusion only.   Energy recovery on product condenser to preheat the input feed.  Believe it's the first of it's kind, I've never heard of anyone doing this, or seen anything similar.

The premise is simple, for vapor infused gins - the most important part of the process is passing the vapor through the botanicals.  What sense does it make to boil giant pot of liquid to create the vapor stream, when you can generate vapor on demand, at any ABV that you would like?  The benefit of the process is you can then recover a sizable amount of energy via the product condensers.  There is near-zero bottoms product waste, the entire feed stream is vaporized.

I'm playing with it, because I'm interested in knowing how well it might work.  But it's the kind of still that will make people really angry.  Hook the feed hoses up to a tote of GNS, and your RO water supply, turn it on, and make 3000 bottles of gin, or, just run it for and hour or two, and make a few cases.  Footprint is smaller than a skid, doesn't even need much space.

Always inspect the tags of used tanks and verify the mawp and working temps are suitable for steam.  While it might work to push the limits - keep in mind boiler and pressure vessel inspectors.

You might be able to get this for $20k.

It's a killer deal, this tank easily cost 3x that price.  Paul Mueller probably makes some of the best tanks on the market today.  If you get the serial number off the tank, I'm sure PM can send you copies of the engineering prints.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Paul-Mueller-600-Gallon-Stainless-Steel-jacketed-triple-agitated-tank/123299361193?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D56111%26meid%3Db240e4d99b8b4a7fbf3c330d52776290%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D123299361193%26itm%3D123299361193&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3Aae72e77f-717c-11e9-b7ce-74dbd180e7ca|parentrq%3A9701192f16a0ab66849c1f59ffe54391|iid%3A1

I was always under the impression that the OFC designation stood for Old Fire Copper when E.H. Taylor founded the distillery in the 1800s, not Old Fashioned Copper, as used today in the marketing materials.

Looking at the trade advertisements you posted, this pretty much proves it.

Yeast selection usually isn't the problem, I'd look elsewhere.

Paul has got the Marijuana oil production market locked up.  Like the dealer to the dealers!