Silk City Distillers

Fair enough. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5731e51d8a65e244fd560a92/t/577c1c5e15d5db726ef26bca/1467751519284/Brochure+2835_R1.pdf You might want to consider electric heat tracer line to heat the pipelines and pump head. There are lots of similar gear pumps that will work.

Fork lift works best for us.

Believe 182.10 is the physical spice/botanical, 182.20 is the extract/oil of.

Oil is usually a better option than propane, but it really depends on where you live. Out here in the Northeast, heating oil is still pretty common (although slowly disappearing). I can pick up the phone and have a 250 gallons delivered in an hour, no big deal. But I understand, in many parts of the country this just isn't the case. You can burn biodiesel with an oil boiler too. Always wondered if there was a way to make biodiesel using heads (ethanol+esters and not methanol). Could be a really interesting way to be self-sustaining, recycle waste products into usable fuel. You can add a small amount of heads to heating oil, but only a small amount is soluble without fancy chemistry.

I always thought the holy grail would be to find a building on city steam - aka Con Ed steam in NYC. Why even bother with a boiler? Unlimited high pressure steam on tap. That said, fuel oil isn’t mentioned often here - we burn fuel oil for steam. Our boiler came with two burners, gas and oil. Running gas was complex for us, the pipe was too small. So we said screw it, drop in a 300 gallon tank, once oil gets expensive we would swap. Oil still pretty cheap.

Natural gas fired steam boiler is king for a reason. In most cases, it's significantly less expensive in the long run, compared to running electric - to the tune of about 50% savings. Sure, you can find places with a closer gap, but you can also find places with a wider gap. Low pressure steam is very safe, and well understood by local authorities. Lets say you have a 300 gallon still, to heat it up from 70f to 197f (the bulk of heating), given a few losses, takes about 375,000 BTU. That's roughly equivalent to 110kw over an hour. Let's say you pay $0.12 per KWH. That's $13 to heat up your still, and roughly $25.00 for the whole run. There are some states that would be close to 2x this (Cali, Mass, NY, etc). Lets say you run 4x a week, every week. That's $5000 a year in electric, probably $2500 a year in natural gas. That's $2500 a year savings. Over 5 years, that pays for the boiler. Trying to compare this from a "simplicity" perspective is moot, since 110kw is going to require either 480v 3 phase, or heavy 400a 240v 3 phase. If you don't have either, they'll cost the same as a steam boiler and gas to install. Brewery next door just installed 400a 240v 3 phase, they had to pay the local utility $20,000 to drop power to the meter head, and probably another $20,000 of electrical work internally. There is a "balance point", where the decision is significantly closer. Probably around the 150 gallon mark, especially if you already have 240v 3 phase in place. However, if you are successful, it means you are going to hit a point where you are scrapping your investments and installing steam and nat gas to be able to scale. If I had heavy 480v 3 phase, and absolutely no option for natural gas or even fuel oil, I'd install a Sussman or Chromalox electric boiler.

New or used oak?

High temp varnish?

Trying to plan out the logistics of shifting to 53g. What are you folks seeing in terms of lower bound maturation timeframes in 53g? We are currently predominantly 30g, with a 24-26 month lower bound. Through the grapevine, folks have told me 36 months on 53 - but that seems somewhat young. We have a few at the 3 year mark now, and I’m hesitating to even think about touching. Really interested in hearing your thoughts, planning for a shift from 30g to 53g - and it’s a major investment in time, and money, and I’d prefer not to get it wrong and end up with a gap as a result.

Cooling water is the big energy savings. However, are you legally permitted to take the water and discharge it?

pH is usually never the problem. It can be a symptom, but seldom the cause. I agree with nutrient additions for an entirely raw (non-malt) batch, especially if you aren't using backset. If your end result is neutral, you might opt to go the route of a small addition of DAP vs. using a fancy organic/amino acid-based nutrient. Try something like 470g of DAP per 1000l of mash - that will add 100mg/l FAN. You might be able to pull that back to 235g/1000l. Hard to estimate since you don't know the starting FAN of the mash. In addition, if neutral is your goal, you might want to consider dialing back that starting gravity to 1.055-1.06 and trading a faster fermentation for a higher yield, especially if you are just stripping anyway. Duration of fermentation isn't linear, once you start pushing near 10%, you risk protracted/long fermentation times. Protracted/long fermentations emphasize bacterial flavor contributions (positive or negative). The pH dropping is a sign of this, and means hitting terminal gravity is going to draw out as the lower pH starts to stress yeast.

HTFs are ideal, but what people found out was that the thermal mass of the HTF (Mineral oil, heavy glycol, etc), in addition to mash/wash being heated, made their already slow heat up times even worse - because they were already running undersized. This was especially so when they filled their big fat steam jackets with gallons and gallons of additional liquid for the little elements to heat. The other factor to consider, is the thermal mass of hot HTF means that you need to anticipate your heat input changes far in advance. If you were used to driving a still with immersion elements, this is a big difference, because it's like piloting a cruise ship vs a speedboat. I know a local place that uses a circulated hot oil system, they use a massive 3 phase 480v circulation heater and their tanks have coils. They make asphalt sealer, steam can't get hot enough.

Interested - location?

Another fairly successful test run today. Clear, though, that we can't squeeze any more out of this boiler, even tempering the brutally cold ground water, we're still ending up around 140f output, at the 7gpm rate. Given I'm using the same boiler to heat the water as I'm using to drive the steam injector, should be no surprise since a BTU is a BTU. Tempted to preheat some water in a holding tank, but that goes against the whole idea. Once we've got this in a more permanent arrangement, we'll see if we can slow down the mill speed and water flow rates to get closer to boiling.

Square fermenters look great.

SG of 1.005, if that’s the actual SG, is the number to watch. For us, complete fermentation is 1.000 or slightly below for grain.

One of my biggest regrets, get to go to Copenhagen and they were closed.

Are you guys consistently soaking? Or going in dry?

@indyspirits - Wow, we are very very similar to you. 20% loss in 2y in 30g, with the 53g being roughly half. We have heat, but it runs sporadically. Coldest winter temperatures are around 55 degrees, and we have hit 100 in the summer. Probably similar to you, winters are very very dry. Low outdoor relative humidity in the winter means even lower, bone-dry, relative humidity indoors at warmer temps.\ We've considered humidifying to reduce losses, but we really get some fabulous color and flavor at the 2 year mark, which makes me hesitate to change any of that. To some extent, evaporation of liquid means some intensification of flavor, especially as it relates to the non-volatiles. Our proof slightly increases in 2 years, but it's fairly minor, maybe and increase of 2 proof. Looking at some of the high proof KY Bourbons, seeing proofs at 130+, wouldn't it mean KY is too dry?

I don't know the method used, but it was a saponin-removed ready-to-cook variation. I know a co-packer who imports in bulk and repackages for retail and food-service use, he was able to pull in some extra for us. The mash was not at all bitter.

Whiskey flavored with venomous ants

Either phosphoric or sulfuric acid will act as catalysts for Fischer esterification. I’m not sure there is precedent to use formic acid for pH adjustment, TTB may take issue with that.

Yep. About 7gpm.

Bulk? Like jerry can sizes? J Tech Sales or Gusmer

No.