Silk City Distillers

What he said. And it's not just a pure function of diameter, area, and vapor speed. The type of column will also have an impact. For example, dual-flow perforated plates are going to have a very different set of operating conditions than bubble caps, which will be different from a packed column. Not only that, but each of these subtypes of column are going to have numerous variations that impact operating parameters, for example, the % open area on a dual flow tray, or the type of packing in the packed column. Not to mention that theory will only get you into the ballpark, from there it's based on practical operating experience, as the real world is kind of stubborn in the fact that it doesn't always adhere to theory. I always thought this was a pretty approachable read: http://kolmetz.com/pdf/EDG/ENGINEERING DESIGN GUIDELINES - distillation column - Rev 04 web.pdf

Racked my brain the other day about how I could have possibly overfilled by 17ml, or had such a significant proofing error (on a smaller bottling run). Checked bottle weights - spot on. Dumped bottles to check proof, spot on. Nothing wrong. Counted the cases over and over, checked the bottles. Checked the hydrometer. Nothing wrong. Turned out a full case ended up stacked on a pallet of empties, and the total count was 6 bottles short. Racked my brains for a day until my brother comes over and asks why a full case was sitting on top of a pallet of empties. Hallelujah, all of the sudden the math works, all is right in the world. Any chance you over counted by 1 case, or a case of empties made it over to the full pallet side? Just throwing it out there. Everything PeteB and Meerkat say still applies. Dump the graduated cylinder - get a small scale with reasonable accuracy to check bottle fill. I have a small 5kg scale with good sub-gram accuracy.

Someone mentioned this (very inexpensive) unit to me: http://www.homebrewing.org/Horizontal-Thermocapsular_p_1882.html Anyone have any experience? Looks similar to the one @kleclerc77 posted.

My point was more around the fact that 5.1pg a bushel with an 80% product yield seems implausibly high. I'm not ashamed to say I couldn't even remotely hit these numbers.

Fully loaded, not just grain price - yeast, enzyme, energy, etc. At least enough loading to compare to buying neutral. Closer to $6-7 out here in Jersey, but that's milled and bagged.

@Roger - 5.1pg per bushel and an 80% product yield (on a PG basis) on top of that? You make me want to cry. That's the equivalent of, what, 450 bottles of vodka from 1000 pounds of grain? Cost of the alcohol alone would be about 50 cents a bottle using corn, that's 2-4x cheaper than GNS.

Any improvement is likely to be minor. We are talking 60-65w/sq.in. for a standard watt density element, and 50w/sq.in. for an ultra low watt density element. Is there any real difference at those levels? Comparatively, a steam jacket is probably running around 10w/sq.in. Perhaps if you ran ULWD elements at 120v and used 4 undervolt elements for each element being used today. You would cut watt density by 4x - but at the expense of having to weld a load of fittings.

Other than this being, generally, a very bad idea. You can attempt to use enzymes like glucanases and hemicellulases to help break down glucans and cellulase - this will make your beer more liquid, less sticky, less viscous. Ensure you are reaching a final gravity of 1 or below, so that you have absolutely no residual sugar left. Use an agitator and heat up very, very slow. In-wash elements are a big problem, because the surface temperatures are very high - you can scorch very easily. And like you note, once you scorch, you ruin the distillate as it's nearly impossible to remove the burnt/smoke flavors.

Something like a Sussman ES-12 you mean? http://sussmanboilers.com/es-packaged-electric-steam-boilers-specifications Keep in mind that the electrical equivalent of 15 horsepower is somewhere around 150kw.

Datasheet for that pump says cast iron casing.

If you know specifically what you need, it's hard to beat surplus on eBay for traps and various steam line fittings - valves, strainers, etc. We picked up a few nice Spirax Sarco traps at a price that was small fraction of our plumbers cost. Condensate pumps and tanks not so much, shipping would be costly.

Wire mesh works great if you trade efficiency for ease of separation. If you keep your corn coarse and roller mill your malt, it's much easier to separate after distillation, especially when it's near boiling.

My swipe was directed at everyone, a general statement on the fact that what we believe is a differentiated brand story is actually some kind of prerequisite industry conformity. Even the commercial spirits business sees this, and brands are embracing insulting their own brand stories. Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" for example, or John Jameson jumping into rough seas to rescue a barrel that had gone overboard. If it's all nonsense anyway, then just take the nonsense to the next level, and it becomes more interesting than reality. Take it as you will, but it was a response to @MDH.

Craft distilleries not nearly as creative as Brooklyn. Youve got like 4 main stories. First Distillery (insert something here) since prohibition - except your not. My pappy was a moonshiner or related to Al Capone - so was everyone else's. Secret recipe found hidden in a safe or wall of a building - was probably thrown away for good reason. Local and sustainable - except distilling is only slightly less ecofriendly than a superfund site.

RKI PS-2 and Honeywell E3Point are nice packaged solutions. You can sometimes find new E3Point units on eBay for incredibly affordable prices.

Incredible. You would have thought the level of QC in a commercial producer would be very rigorous.

If this is something you are being mandated or requested to provide by your local authorities, how you approach this may be very different than if you are adding this out of your own volition for safety (which should be applauded). If it's because of AHJ - the device specifications and installation requirements will need to be spec'ed by your engineers/architects. If you are doing this for yourself, that opens up a number of very cost effective options.

Spent grain is tasty food for everything, insects, animals, bacteria, mold, fungus, etc. Consider that spent grain handling would probably benefit from the same sanitation and handling techniques as pre-distillation materials. Putting spent grain into a dirty container (one that held moldy grain) is going to cause spoilage to happen much faster, the warmer the faster. All that said, our farmer drives his bucket loader up to his pickup and dumps all the drums into the bucket. How we wants to handle it is his prerogative, but we really don't want to be responsible for making an animal sick, so we'll take the extra care.

Winter is much more forgiving, especially if you can keep your spent grains cold, frozen even. Summer is brutal, shelf life is awful. Realistically? 3 days, beyond that you push it. We schedule grain pickups based on our distillation schedule. We store spent grains in 25-30g snap top drums. We do this because it makes it easy to trade drums and grain with our farmer, and most people can handle a 30g grain drum without much struggle. One 530g batch is 9-10 drums depending on the grain and grind. Once the warm weather comes around, we actually sanitize our drums and tops, and once we fill them, we don't open them back up. I think this extends shelf-life a bit. Also, we dewater near boiling - so the grain coming off is probably 180f and above. Going into sanitized drums within a few minutes. With more production volume, we're going to switch to Rubbermaid commercial garbage cans, because they are larger, easier to handle (with handles), and you can nest them together.

I would have imagined that pumping non contact cooling water back into the well bore would require EPA and State review and approval.

A janitor is more qualified to be a distiller than post-grad chemist. This isn't a slight against education, I happen to have two masters degrees, and I wouldn't tell anyone that either are a prerequisite, or make anyone better than anyone else. Did they help me? No. The only prerequisite is the willingness to learn, or really re-learn, since you would have had nearly all the foundation you needed by high-school chem. To second Dehner's comment, having a specific skill like being able to TIG are incredibly more useful than most MS-level chemistry skills. You don't need to be a microbiologist to culture and propagate your own yeast, or effectively manage fermentation. Nor do you need to be a chemist to be able to distill. But, you need to be willing to take the time to learn, be open minded, and work through it. Skaalvenn - Agree with you, but your example highlights ignorance not a lack of education.

Yeah that's the problem with Graham condensers. The typical glass fittings that come with distillation glassware don't allow them to be kept vertical. Usually end up needing additional glass as well as an extra stand.

Great community support on this thread, just thought I'd call it out. I'm not sure what you are paying in propane cost vs electrical, but the suggestion to preheat your wash might be something worth exploring. Even if you are working with limited electrical capacity, a very small 2000w heater would take your wash from 70 to 150 overnight. Granted, you would need to consider how to do this safely to prevent vapor release/boiling. However, I'm sure you could very easily cut your heatup time in half, and significantly reduce your propane usage.

That X11 burner on full power would be consuming 320,000 btus an hour. Your tank is 100 pounds. Propane is 21,000 BTUs per pound. Your hundred pounds of propane will only last 6.5 hours on full power. At 4.5 hours heatup at full power, you'll have consumed 68% of your propane. Are you running this thing full out, or throttling back to conserve propane? The pictures make it hard to tell how you are controlling gas flow, is that a small quarter turn valve after the regulator? If so, it would be very difficult to dial in similar gas flow across multiple runs if you are throttling back. Wash was really cold, still cold, windy day, slightly less gas flow - could easily add an hour to heat up, if not more.

If you have two fittings on your tank - the drain and maybe another threaded fitting you can repurpose at the top (thermometer port, etc) - you may be able to run a quick test with a pump to see if additional agitation would be helpful. Retrofitting an agitator to your still is going to be costly and complicated at this point, you've already had a setback. A good agitator installed properly is probably going to cost as much as your still - which stings because it would have been cheaper to have the manufacturer add it. So, a quick test with a pump (RUN SAFELY, Wash not Low Wines, ensure your hoses are away from the heat) will give you some confirmation that additional tank agitation would be beneficial in reducing heat up time. Then you can explore the agitator option with some strong confidence. If so, perhaps the manufacturer can ship you out an agitator, with the associated copper work, to eliminate most of the on-site fabrication work that would be necessary. None of this solves the original conundrum.