Silk City Distillers

It's going to cost you close to $400 from any of the major biological suppliers.

https://www.atcc.org/products/all/24843.aspx

Pot flavored alcohol?

Just when you thought there couldn't be anything worse than a paint peeling IPA.

Very difficult to source.

Square?  Yeah, that changes everything.

Someone had the Race labeler with the spring plate attachment for square bottles posted for sale the other day for a good price.

What's the pH?  EC-1118 is commonly used to restart stuck wine fermentations, so it's robust.  But, if you've already dropped to a very low pH, it's not likely to restart, especially since you started at 1.07.

I would imagine it would take weeks to ferment out a 1.07 sg in the mid to low 50s, if it even finished at all.  It's highly likely that your yeast are simply flocculating and dropping out before fermentation is complete.  Even the start of fermentation would have been significantly dragged out pitching into a 57 degree tank.  A typical ale yeast would have the same problem.

Fix your jacket temperature issues and pitch warmer.  Depending on how cold your ambient temperatures are, you might find you need to pitch even warmer, to be able to keep tank temps elevated through lag phase.  Target something closer to a high 70s pitch.

Once you start fermenting in earnest, the yeast should throw off enough heat to keep the tank temps warm enough.  The challenge is starting off warm enough so that you don't fall back into the 50s before fermentation is complete - as you'll stall.

We deal with similar issues fermenting in the winter as we operate in a non-conditioned space.

Never had an issue with EC-1118.  It's a fast, clean fermenter in the low/mid 70s.  Routinely 0.998 with grain.

Most CIP suppliers sell acid blend CIP cleaners that are nitric/phosphoric blends - any reason you couldn't just use those blends in a higher concentration?

As an alternative, fill the display bottles with grain in percentages corresponding to the mash bill.  You can layer it in to make it look pretty.

I wouldn't let a bottle go into the wild that contained anything other than what the label indicated.

If you do this, you might want to run a set of alternative labels that clearly indicate the bottles do not contain alcohol, are for display purposes only, not for human consumption, etc etc etc.  Even still, I think this is fraught with potential risk and liability.  Can you imagine?  Some rookie new trainee at whatever venue these are displayed at, steals one, gives it to a friend, who downs a cup full of coke and bleach and ends up in the ER, or worse.  Sorry bluefish - not calling you out here - but it's a good example of why you shouldn't do it.  Sure the TTB wouldn't be pleased if a bottle of Iced Tea came into their lab either.

Maybe it's silly to state this, but wash/beer is not a Class IC flammable liquid.  I'm saying this, because you mentioned 350-550 gallon tanks, which sound more like fermenters to me.  If you are talking distillate, it's easy to stay under the 60g MAQ if you are running single pass on anything 500 gallons or under (assuming sprinklers).

Around me, roughly:

Natural Gas - $12.00 for 1 million btu
Fuel Oil - $20.00 for 1 million btu
Electric - $60.00 for 1 million btu

I fire with heating oil.

2 minutes ago, kleclerc77 said:

We have a small(er) facility and from what I understood, there are different rules for gas fired vs. electric boilers. Those rules being explosion proof rooms and general proximity to other equipment. I was told that you could put an electric boiler pretty much anywhere, while a gas fired boiler has to be much more isolated and must adhere to a laundry list of other regulations for it. Is this not the case?

 

This is not the case, a boiler is a boiler.

I run a 250g still off a 16hp boiler, so that's roughly 150kw in electrical equivalent.  I can heat up in about an hour if it's warmer temps, the equipment is still hot, etc.  Or about an hour and a half from a cold start in a winter.  The efficiency on the electric boiler should be somewhat higher, but I would imagine you are still looking at 3 hour heat up times with only 50kw.

An electric fired steam boiler like a Sussman or Reimers will probably be as costly to install and plumb as a gas fired boiler.  

In the case you might find it to be somewhat cheaper on the install, it's going to be a wash when you factor the increased operating costs.

Itll be similarly sized when installed, and the same rules apply to steam boilers regardless of how they fire.

I was under the impression that continuous fermentation was more prone to bacterial issues than batch fermentation.  So really, continuous fermentation is not a solution to infection at all, it represents an even bigger problem - the answer to which is usually dosing antibiotics, which may pose ideological issues.

What do you mean by just in time mash injection?

Biggest issue that we have run into trying to operate a distillery and have other jobs is not production, it's sales.

Beverage managers, bartenders, owners, buyers - all these folks can or will only meet at 2pm during the week.

Too busy in the mornings - prep for the day.  Too busy at noon, lunch rush.  At 4? No way dinner rush is starting.  Friday?   No good, too busy.  Weekends?  Not possible.

Easy to produce at 6pm and on the weekends, not so easy to sell.

Realistically though, where does one use such a unit with regularity that you don't also have to perform the exact same gauge in a TTB approved manner?

Proofing down by trial and error (the intermediate steps)?

Periodic testing of barrel proofs for informational purposes?

Intermediate steps in processing liqueurs?

We use International Molasses - we pick up at their warehouse in Garfield.

This one:  http://www.anton-paar.com/us-en/products/details/density-and-concentration-meter-easydens/

Isn't Anton Parr now making a small low accuracy unit for pretty reasonable cost?

Patenting lactic souring?  Cmon.

We use a single 3/4"TLA Eductor in a 600 gallon tank (http://www.nciweb.net/eductor_tla_heater.htm) for Direct Steam Injection.  It's pretty loud, but the heat up time is great.  Costs should go DOWN with DSI - significantly less effort than a jacket - unless the heating jacket just gets used for cooling and there isn't any less labor/material.

We did it because we converted a jacketed/insulated dairy tank into a mash tun - and we wanted to use the single jacket for cooling.  Both our still and mash tuns are insulated - absolutely a benefit to insulation, and not just safety, but efficiency and reduced heat up time.

The agitator design will need to be specific to the tank geometry and density - motor size, gearing, blade size, shaft length.  We have a geared down 1hp agitator (90rpm) on a 600g tank, and I'd like a bigger/faster agitator.

Your chiller sizing will have more to say about cool down times than water vs glycol - if that is what you are asking.  Glycol or not should be irrelevant to the jacket design.