Silk City Distillers

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Originally I was trying to hunt down a jet cooker from Pro-sonix or Hydro-thermal, and when looking at their smaller sanitary designs, realized that there was really nothing all that fancy about them.  All the complexity involved is to just build in enough flexibility to handle different flow rates, viscosities, etc via adjustments to the injector.  Managed to put together a fairly robust steam injector assembly using nearly-off-the-shelf sanitary triclamp parts.

Having to use a lobe pump from the slurry tank,  before the injector, is probably the most costly part of this.  Need to handle a heavy solids feed, and have the ability to deal with the back pressure of the injector and pipeline.

Prototype run #2 worked pretty well.

Hammer Mill dust collector directly feeds a completely sealed slurry tank.  The slurry tank contains a water spray injector that feeds water into the mix at a set ratio to our mill speed.  PD lobe pump pulls from the bottom of the slurry tank, and feeds the steam injector assembly, and the mash makes its way into the mash tun.

Trial run was just feeding cold water out of our filtration system, only problem is our water is coming out of the tap at 45f right now.  Didn't help we were running a temporary steam  line as well, undersized, that limited our steam injector flow rates.  So, we were running about 7 gallons a minute slurry through the system, about 15.5 pounds of grain perm minute, going from 45f to 130f out (we were only getting about 300,000btu into the process).

We didn't bother restricting the mash outflow to increase the pressure (and temperature), since we weren't at all near boiling.  Need to swap over to hotter water on the slurry feed, and figure out  what the max temperature we can use before things start gumming up in the slurry tank, and then upsize the steam line for the injector - we're only using half the boiler capacity, so we have some upside.

Need to do some more welding to get all of the components together in a a workable fashion.  I  wish I was a a better tig welder.

Very happy that there is absolutely no dust being liberated.  This was the big issue just using the pneumatic air conveyor from the hammer mill to deliver grain to the dust collector - then drop into the mash tun.  We get a little bit more grain dust being captured in the dust collector, but it's fairly minimal in the grand scheme.

What will be promising is being able to get the slurry to above 220f, where starch gelatinization is very fast.  At that point I can produce 420 gallons of gelatinized mash an hour, for as long as I want to run the mill.

We used to fill hot, mash in, then use steam injection to get to gel temp.

It logistically became a problem, because we were milling and rebagging 1000-1200 pounds of grain for each batch.  We aren't setup like a traditional brewhouse with a HLT and Grist Case.

We eventually came to the current setup, where we mill, fill, and heat simultaneously.  Hammer mill has a pneumatic conveyor, so it's silly not to use it to convey.  In the hour it takes us to mill 1000 pounds, we can fill the ton, and get it to temp.  So we do all three at the same time for corn.  For rye, similar, except we heat less, to end up where we want to dose beta-glucanase.

We're trying to prototype a small scale continuous jet cooker, so that we're not using the pneumatic conveyor, as it can get dusty when it discharges.  Prototype run #2 was yesterday, and it did great.

I have a giant 3 foot long whisk I got from the restaurant supply.

Works much better than the paddle.

What I'm saying is if you are working with rye and wheat in high percentages, or unmalted grains in high percentages, going in hot, even if you are able to easily do it, is less ideal because you can't take advantage of glucanase and protease enzymes and/or rests.  So your rye-dominant workflow is going to be very different from your corn-dominant workflows.  Why not just deal with one cereal mash workflow and optimize it based on the equipment?  Document your optimal cereal mash workflow and it becomes much easier when dealing with assistants, training new brewers on the system, etc.  Your dosages, hold times, wait times, heat times, pH adjustments, etc - all become very very predictable and repeatable.

I don't see how there is time savings, waiting for the mash tun to heat up to add the grain, versus adding grain at a cooler temperature and then heating.  Either way he will have to wait for the tun to heat up.  I've actually found that going in cool, and allowing some time for the grist to hydrate and swell during the heatup, actually results in reduction of time spent at temperature.  Think about it, if it takes you 1hr to go from 70 to 190f.  If you add the grist at 70, you have an additional hour in the water and at least near gelatinization temperatures.  So you'll either have higher yield, or a shorter gelatinization hold.  That's a great decision to have to make.

The point of this thread isn't about optimal/efficient/time saving mash processes, it's about getting this guy a process that'll give him an easy workflow with very high probability of success, with the equipment he's got (shared on another thread).  That's all I documented above.  It's overkill on many levels, but that's not the point.  That's not the process I use, but then again, I've got my process dialed in for my equipment, and my equipment is different from his.

14 hours ago, PeteB said:

Recently I discovered high temperature amylase, add it ....before ....adding grain. Strike temperature 190f. drops to 175 after addition

 

I was told to never add enzyme directly to pure hot water, as you risk denaturing the enzymes at a significantly faster rate than if they were dosed in mash at the equivalent temperature.  YMMV.

While you might be able to mash-in coarsely ground/cracked corn at 190f, the finer you get, and the greater increase in fines overall, the greater probability of dough ball formation.  If you are augering in with a grist hydrator - probably not a problem to go directly into 190f.  If he is dumping 50lb sacks of hammer milled corn "flour" into the top of his mash tun at 190f, he's going to spend his afternoon spear fishing with a mash paddle while getting a steam facial. 

Mashing in grains like corn and rye at a lower temperature, than heating, means you can keep the cereal mash workflows identical.  Rye Whiskey, High Rye Bourbon, Bourbon, Corn Whiskey, Unmalted wheat or rye mash for neutral spirits - these can all use the same mash methodology above.  Going in cool allows for the addition of beta-glucanase or a glucanase/protease rest as part of a cereal mash process where high rye or wheat percentages are used, or high percentages of unmalted grain, etc.

Trying to make things easier for the guy.

Amylo300 is Glucoamylase.

Not removing it, just adding it after malt.

Spliting of the High Temp Alpha is insurance that it does not all get denatured during the cook.

Theoretically unmalted should have a slightly higher yield than malted, since some starch is converted/utilized during the malting process.

However, if you are working by weight, the wildcard is moisture %.  Fresh malts are typically pretty tightly controlled and consistent from a moisture percentage.  Raw grain from a field is going to be all over the place.  We notice this with our rye.

We considered starting to test moisture of our mash grain - using the simple oven method.   Weigh, dry, reweigh, repeat until stable.

Other consideration is grind.  Unmalted grain does not mill like malted grain.  Unmalted is tougher to work with.  Probably irrelevant with a hammer mill, but with a roller mill, it will require a tighter gap.  Also, higher percentages of moisture may require multiple rollers, or multiple passes through the mill.  We used to roller mill unmalted rye (less dusty), but the first pass through the mill would yield a flattened piece of rye, not unlike a flaked rye.  Two passes were necessary to break it up.  (our roller mill only has 1 set of rollers).  Malted grains always roller-mill beautifully.

Here is a foolproof method for your 600g batch.  I am assuming this is approximately 1200 pounds of grain. I would consider this an over-dosage of enzyme, and uses extended hold times, but it's a starting point that will guarantee success.  Once you dial it in, start keeping a journal and start dialing back your hold times and enzyme additions until you start seeing a dip in yield.

1. Add water and backset (10%) to mash tun, start heating, agitator on.

2. Once you've gotten to your desired fill, add corn to mash tun.  You want to mash in cool.  Do not mash in corn at 130f or above as you risk clumping and creating dough balls, especially with a fine grind getting dumped in bulk.  This will be a nightmare to deal with in a closed tun.  Mashing cooler, and heating, reduces risk of clumping, vs going in hot.

3. Adjust pH to 5.6 or under, wait 10 minutes between acid additions and rechecking.  Add High Temp Alpha Amylase (500ml).  Do not add enzyme directly to water, only to mash.

4. Hold for 90 minutes at 190-195f.  Hold time will depend on numerous variables.  Your corn, your grind, your agitation, how long it takes you to get to temperature.

5. Start cooling, check pH, adjust to 5.2, add second dose of High Temp Alpha Amylase (500ml).  Wait until about 180f to add the enzyme - as you want it to remain active.

6. At 150-152f, add malt, hold for 90 minutes.  You will drop temperature during your malt addition, you'll need to figure this out and adjust accordingly.

7. Start cooling, check pH, adjust if necessary, again 5.2 is target.

8. During cool down, add Glucoamylase (1 liter) at 130f, do not stop cooling, do not add at a higher temperature.  You want this enzyme to remain active through the entire fermentation process.  This will clean up any mistakes made during corn gelatinization or malt mash-in (longer chain dextrin and residual starch).

9. Cool to low 80s, pump over to fermenter, pitch 1kg yeast.

* One additional point - if you have issues with your agitation being insufficient, and/or your corn grind is too coarse to achieve grain suspension during initial mixing.  Do not run the bottom jacket during the first stage of gelatinization.  Watch the mash, be the mash, you'll see a point during heatup, when it visually changes.  It will go whiter, before it goes yellower, and it will develop a more glossy sheen and clearly increase in viscosity.  At this point once you have suspension, you can turn on the bottom jacket to take it the rest of the way to 190-195f.  Corn sitting on the bottom jacket, under the mixer, not moving, is going to cook it to the bottom.  Not only is this a pain in the ass to clean, it means you are losing yield, or even worse, breaks off a corn ball and clogs the pump or pipelines.

Quote

Also.  If you have a well that produces water that is colder than 55 degrees F then a chiller is a huge waste of money, especially over time.  

I've often thought of shutting down production over the summer months, late June, July, August, early September, because of this.

With the cooler temperatures coming in right after harvest, wondered if it just made more sense to increase capacity and run all-out during the fall, winter, and early spring.  Goal is to run out of grain before the flip flops came out. Then shut down the still house and spend the summer at the beach with an umbrella drink (or building bottled inventory heading into the fall).

We can mash significantly faster in the winter, with 42-45f water.  By mashing a thicker mash and using cold water additions, it makes very, very quick work of cooling, way faster than our chillers/jacket can cool - since we need the water for the mash anyway, it's free cooling.

Once you are talking about a system that can support scale, the fact is, jumping up to the next size doesn't cost anything in the grand scheme of things.

If you are taking about a steam driven still house, what's the all-in price difference between a 125g setup and a 250g setup?  Nothing.  What's the difference between a 250g setup and a 500g setup?  Nothing.  What's the price difference between 125g and 500g?  Minimal.

What's the cost of upgrading?  2x, more even when you consider the downtime.  God forbid you size a boiler and cooling for a 125g setup, you've got to basically tear it all out to upgrade.

I expect Paul to railroad my comments, because well, he's trying to sell stuff here.

@Tom Lenerz or @bluefish_dist speak the truth.

Can a 50g electric still even afford to pay it's operator minimum wage, disability, and health insurance once you consider all the other overhead?

Yeah, interesting, since citric acid is naturally present in grapes, naturally present in cane juice or molasses, and even present in grain based beers - due to citric acid being produced by yeast during the initial stages of fermentation (Krebs/TCA Cycle).  Not to mention that all four of the noted metabolites have numerous pathways for production, and typically exist in every fermentation, regardless if citric is dosed or not.

Saying backset is better than citric is odd (though I'd agree, but for more reasons than just acidity), because backset is going to be choc-full of the same exact organic acids, lactic, acetic, formic, butyric, propionic, that the particular judge would identify as a fault.

Single greatest impact to acetaldehyde is fermentation temperature and yeast strain.  Great study by Chris White looked at fermentation temperature, same wort, same yeast, fermented at 66f and 75f.  The slightly higher temperature fermentation produced 10x the acetaldehyde.  Less so would be distillation prior to the completion of fermentation, acetobacter infection (fruit flies), oxidation post fermentation, etc.

134 grams of yeast in 1000 liters is a pretty light pitch, but if it’s worked for you before.

I second Roger - would dose glucoamylase, heat to 130c, cool and repitch.

Probably one of the best recent PhD dissertations I've read recently on this exact topic:

The microbial ecology of a rum production process

Dr. Victoria Green - Working at Bundaberg Rum in Australia.

35 minutes ago, bierling said:

A long stick and/or power washer.

This

Oh damn, there is a Canada forum???

Federal is based on Proof Gallons, which is a measure that normalizes the volume into gallons at 100 proof.

This is the only piece of evidence I’ve ever found, and it’s not likely these producers were making heavy rums.  Given the focus on production and capacity, this seems like more traditional production consulting.  Arroyo looks to have run this ad in the Sugar trade mags a few times.

I'm in a particularly nihilistic mood this morning.

Consider the fact that Arroyo may have been wrong.  We hold one of his works as being incredibly influential, US Patent US2386924A - Production of heavy rums.  However, I've never found any evidence that it was ever licensed and put into production commercially.  @bostonapothecary - Perhaps you've come across some evidence that this was ever licensed by a commercial distillery, and actually had a bottle produced through his patented process?  If so, please share, I've never seem anything that indicates it was ever even licensed (though that information is likely not in the public domain).  Reading "between the lines" of some of Arroyo's later papers, he seems to be giving up on the heavy rum process, giving up on Pombe as being key, giving up on bacteria being key, and later focusing on hybridized yeast as being the key factor.

Now, sure, It's possible that existing commercial producers simply didn't care about his patent.  Why bother licensing his process if you were a commercial distillery that was already doing it.  It could have been due to market trends, his timing may have been too late, with clean industrial rums becoming far more commonplace at the time.  Or, he was wrong, and his process simply doesn't deliver what we hope it could deliver.  Whatever the reason, it's arguable that his patent was a commercial failure.  Keep in mind, this was not an academic paper, this was a patented industrial process.  We're not drinking "Arroyo Process (TM)" heavy rums today, and it's questionable if one was even ever produced.

There is such a compelling desire to want to hone in on a a process, a technique, a molecule or class of molecules, and want to implicate that as being the most important factor in an outcome.  To try to chase it all the way down to the source, define it, master it, optimize it, in hopes of achieving some super-optimal end goal.  Believe me, I love this stuff, the hunt is almost as exciting as tasting the first drops of distillate.  The fact is, it's never so simple, and it's far more likely that optimal goals are not traced back to single things.  In fact, it's more likely that we are turning 2 or 3 dials, on a control panel with hundreds of dials.  As much as we think a single dial is the dial of critical importance, it's not.  Even with the most sophisticated analytical techniques we have today, it still remains impossible to replicate a spirit by looking at it's chemical fingerprint, because given all the variables we know, there are still more variables we don't.  It doesn't even matter, because even if you could achieve some optimal goal, you still have the human side of the equation, individual preference and perception of flavor, which is so variable that defining "optimal" becomes futile.  You can look at the history of rum, and the overwhelming trend towards clean rums as embracing this trend, realizing that emphasizing "character" means potentially alienating customers, because of individual preference.  Just like the vodka trend through the 70s and 80s hit the dark spirits industry like a freight train, there's an overwhelming trends towards eliminating character, because character eliminates customers.  There's a reason Smirnoff wins every single double blind vodka taste test, because it contains nearly zero objectionable character - and keep in mind, what you love, someone else might find objectionable.  All these things we do start to run contrary to that, and there is nothing wrong with that.  But always keep in mind that Bacardi is selling 200,000 bottles of white rum for every bottle of high hogo that you can make, let alone sell.  We are talking niche, and we are talking about passion products, not profit products.

The inner pot refers to the area where the mash or wash sits in, the inside of the kettle.   If your tanks have the ability to completely seal the inside pot (like your still can be completely sealed) they need vacuum breakers and pressure relief valves.

The pressure relief valve is to prevent any pressure from building up inside of the vessel.  Even though your steam jacket will only max out at 15psi, you can actually create significant pressure inside the tank if you bring the contents to a boil.

The vacuum relief is to protect the tank from getting crushed like a beer can, if you accidentally seal it shut while hot, or attempt to pump out of the tank with it completely sealed (a good PD pump can pull some serious suction).

In both of these cases, we hope we can operate the distillery for decades without ever, ever, ever, seeing those valves do their job.  God willing, they never, ever do.  But for the one time you needed them, you don't want to wish you had them after the fact.  They are very, very cheap insurance.

As to why those Chinese valves shouldn't be used, even if they work perfectly fine?  Lawsuit liability should something go wrong.  Hate to say it, but the reason that the right valves cost what they do, is because they realize that if they go wrong, they are going to be in court.  Even if you don't take them to court, your insurance company will.  It's a terrible thing, and we hope nobody is ever in this situation.  But, as a responsible business owner, you need to consider the liability aspects.  This goes both ways.  Let's say someone gets injured, and that valve is part of the situation - it could be argued that you were negligent, and thus responsible, by not using the appropriate valves (yeah yeah, I know I have the wrong valve, pot calling the kettle black I guess - my inspector had absolutely no issue with it though, and it's something he specifically asked about).