Silk City Distillers

The mechanical thermostatic valves would be great if the probe end wasn't so damn big (Talking Danfoss AVTA, the KING of self-acting valves).

For  someone without fabrication capability, they are impossible to use as they are too big to fit in the condenser, or plumbing.

If someone would fabricate a flow-through housing that could be easily plumbed into the output plumbing of a condenser, that would be fantastic.  A nice one-piece unit.  Even better if it has the adjustable bleed for the control valve necessary when you locate the probe away from the process temp.

We use steam injection too, hence no chemicals.

Preheat in the still?  To save time?

Obligatory cautionary statement - Don't even think of attempting to let that still heat up unattended.

I second many of the comments posted above.  I suspect it would be less expensive and less of a headache to simply purchase a larger still if you are looking to save time.  A decent PLC system with a good HMI, and all associated instrumentation, valving, input modules, output modules, could easily run north of $1500-2000 for just parts.  Depending on the PLC system, you might even need to purchase the programming software and hardware interfaces, which isn't cheap, then spend the time educating yourself on the system.

PID dephlegmator control will give you 75% of the magic of a fancy PLC automation system, at 1/10th the price.

Mouth feel, smoothness, sweetness.

Trying to dig up some old references on glycerin.  I think it was an old Fleischmann book where he stated that glycerin's positive impact was temporary, and over longer periods of time it would turn bitter.  Thought this was interesting, as I'd never heard that previously.  Seemed to be a relatively common blending ingredient pre-prohibition, especially in low-tier spirits.

Like Indy says, 1:1 ratio.

Don’t boil it, you are caramelizing the sugars.  Bring water to a simmer, take off heat, add sugar.  It will take a little longer to dissolve.  Give it an occasional stir.

Unfortunately, seems this isn’t a China phenomenon anymore.

Another option if the rig is beyond retrofit - Convert to pumped reflux with an explosion proof AODD pump and don’t worry about dip tubes, traps, heights, or differential pressures.   You will, however, need to dial in your pumping speed to match reflux rate, and this may require adjustment throughout the run.

Assuming there isn’t a physical issue with the trays (blockage, manufacturing issue), intermittent mid-column flooding is typically due to a slug of subcooled reflux in the column forming a vapor trap.  Usually traces back to sloppy RC flow control, where a spike in cold coolant flow causes a period of very cold reflux.  This liquid is slow to descend, and seemingly appears “stuck”, as the cold temperature of the distillate on the tray causes a disproportionate amount of upflowing vapor to condense.

If shutting down the still for a few minutes, allowing all trays to drain, fixes this, focus on getting better control of your RC coolant.

It’s my understanding that in some of these cases, they are laying down entire barrels of lower proof distillate for proofing purposes, not adding water directly to barrels.

No idea on the legality but why would you want to do this?

Find your local chemical supply house and make friends.  Citric, Lactic, Sodium Hydroxide all at very reasonable prices, only catch is you are buying 50lb bags or 4x1g liquid.  Just tell them you need USP grade or higher for food use and they’ll know exactly.  

For really small quantities, you can get USP grade chemicals from Amazon sellers.

I’ll second the food grade lye for intermittent pH adjustment, but you’ll want to test and adjust more often than once a day.  Small adjustments, otherwise you will stress the yeast.

I can’t see using that pH 5.2 product at commercial scale.

From some of the design threads around the interwebs, running the feed on the bleeding edge of boiling is problematic as you risk boiling in the feed lines from the last heat exchanger to the input, causing all sorts of sputtering and inconsistent feed rates.

Adam,

That’s awful about your cats, I’m sorry.

Required reading..

Fahrasmane_Microbial_Fauna.pdf

Just wonderin' if I was doing it wrong.  But we're going far off topic.

Love bacteria.  Clostridium, Propionibacterium, Lactobacillus. Mmm Mmm Good.

What should go into a charred barrel to yield a good bourbon?

You are on the right track when the distillery smells like someone vomited in a sweaty locker room.

Who likes the funk?  I like the funk.

Please, spare yourselves the goat heads.  Utilize the miracles of modern microbiology.

Would be roughly equivalent to doing a strip and spirit run.  Collecting product deep into tails (low abv) isn't going to give you a heavy product, it's going to give you a tailsy product.  To get a heavier flavor, you'll want to use a good portion of backset in your next rum beer, and recycle feints.  It's very hard to emulate the funk of a Jamaican double retort with a column still.  

I posted this on another forum discussing whether or not whiskey helmets make any sense at all.  What is the difference between a stainless cylinder atop a pot still and a beautifully bulbous copper helmet atop the same pot still?  They are, practically, more similar than they are different.   Here was my theory and opinion on it.

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Remember that helmets and other capita on stills were invented and used before plates were.

Helmets rely on an old theory of rectification called dephlegmation, as compared to the fractional distillation that we talk about today. Coincidentally, this is where the dephlegmator (partial condenser, reflux condenser) inherited it's name from.

Dephlegmation is rectification through passive contact between liquid and vapor passing each other, versus fractional distillation which utilizes active contact (think plates and trays). If you are saying to yourself right now, so ... a packed column is a dephlegmator - you would be correct based on the original definition and use.

But, move backwards in time, and forget everything you know about distillation today. Those old dead guys couldn't make shell and tube condensers, they probably didn't have any way to include active cooling to a reflux condenser either (at least not for a few hundred years).

So, now think of the funny shape of a helmet. Why? Why go through all that trouble for the funny shape? What the hell does the funny shape mean? Well, it has significantly more surface area than a pipe, no? With more surface area comes more passive heat transfer, and with more passive heat transfer (on the outside), we get more condensation (reflux) on the inside.

Now we have the liquid side of dephlegmation taken care of, also consider that the funny shape induces turbulence in the head, and thus increases vapor-liquid contact.

In addition, all this increased surface area increased copper contact of the vapor.

So put yourselves in their shoes, 800 years ago. You ain't making trays or a reflux condenser, but what you can do it put a big bubble at the top of the still to increase passive reflux and induce more vapor/liquid interaction (dephlegmation) - and you would have a better performing still. Especially so running after harvest, in the cooler fall air - passive reflux would be maximized. Heck even Fischer esterification would be amplified.

But, in terms of distillation, we're not even talking about providing a full plate worth of distillation - a helmet alone will not result in higher purity than two runs would.

So why bother?

Flavor, primarily.

Keep in mind one thing, one very important thing, the impact produced by adding additional distillation stages (plates, runs, whatever) - is NOT LINEAR. THIS IS HUGELY IMPORTANT. Imagine rectification as being like distance.

The distance between Zero plates and 1 plate is a football field long. The distance between 1 plate and 2 plates is significantly less, probably half the distance of a football field. The distance between plate 10 and 11 is now the size of the football. The distance between plate 20 and 21 is a human hair. And so on.

Now, think of this in terms of flavor (purity) output. The difference between Zero plates and 1 plates is huge.

This is why helmets, passive reflux, and things like thumpers can make a big difference, a noticeable difference. You have a whole football field of flavor to play with. If the "distance" between distillation stages was linear/fixed, these methods would have never been invented, as their impacts would be largely unnoticeable, like trying to determine the difference between running 20 and 21 plates only using taste and smell.

This is the reason why we see variations in helmet shapes, and sizes, and lyne arms that skew up and down, and all of those crazy 1700s and early 1800s still designs. When you are playing on the football field between pot still distillation and adding one additional theoretical distillation stage, you have tons of variations that absolutely will have an impact.

Get an assay sheet from your supplier, don't make an assumption on the sugar content.  If you find yourself with a solid quality high-test, it could be as high as ~75% fermentable.  If you are using blackstrap from a really efficient refinery, as low as 40%, and who knows if you can even trust that number.  There is a big difference in fermentable sugars, and a big difference in price.  High test, bakers grade, fancy - you can trust your starting gravity to be mostly predictive of your yield, the bottom grades, you can't.

You can roughly work by weight of molasses (11.6 pounds per gallon) and sugars content.  1000lbs of 70% molasses is roughly equivalent to 700lbs sugar, go from there.

Don't be greedy and make your life miserable, shoot for low starting gravities in your first batches and move up from there.  

Lots of good threads on the topic.

We have the same "issue" with our steam-fed tube-in-shell water heater.  With no other steam load it's easy to make 200f water - this goes right to the mash tun.  But I wanted to use it for the wash down hose station as well.  Have a way to do a quick sanitization of the floor with hot water.  Building inspector shut that down, even though FDA and USDA have protocol for it.  He thought it way too dangerous, even though it's a tempered wash down station (160-180 or something at the top end).  I wasn't about to fight a battle.

You know an ice maker of the kind of capacity we are talking about costs as much as a chiller.  This doesn’t save money.

Also keep in mind that ice is considered food, given a health inspector who is itching for a fight...

If you have reasonably cool water, you can get damn close without the hassle of making 1000lb of ice.

1000lb @ 150f + 1000lb @ 65f gets you to 107.

Running cold water through the jacket can easily get you down another 20.  From an efficiency perspective, using the jacket first would be slightly more efficient.