Silk City Distillers

You mentioned that the plates were "off" - not sure if this means bypassed or that there was no dephlegmator water flow. If there is no dephlegmator water flow, and there is minimal passive reflux, it must be heat input like Meerkat suggests.

What is the hole size and spacing of the sieve plate? What is the grind on the wheat? Are you cracking or grinding to flour? What is your mash procedure look like? Are you mashing in a manner similar to a wheat beer? Protein rest? Malted or unmalted grain? Either way, are you utilizing any additional enzyme, specifically beta glucanase to reduce viscosity? Unmalted - protease/xylanase? Grind coarser, use beta-glucanase, sparge hotter, use a larger sieve hole size - you are going to be getting more solids carry-over into the fermenter, but you are probably crashing and racking off the yeast/trub anyhow. Don't be concerned with trading mash efficiency for streamlined workflow.

We use filtered steam, easier than filling and dumping, and doesn't seem to require much liquid water to swell. They stay pretty on the outside.

Probably not "wild yeast" - not sure how many yeast strains you use in house - but if you are using one yeast strain, and especially if it's a competitive factor yeast strain - it's probably the same yeast.

Drum heater and a forklift...

Have you tried antifoam? Fermcap-S

While corn itself is much cheaper pound for pound, to use corn as your feedstock is going to require a significantly higher investment in equipment. It's too early to do the math, but unless you are processing massive volumes and are OK with payback being calculated in years, white sugar is going to be a cheaper fermentation feedstock.

I'll drop some positive comments about Mark - great guy - great tanks at great prices. We're hoping to buy another from him, despite being the goldilocks of tank buyers. No, that one is too tall, that one is too too long, and that one is too lumpy... Thanks Mark!

COD or BOD, or both - and what about TSS? Couple options... Low cost/easy options: Recycle 20% as backset in new wash - you take 20% right off the top, free money, you save on both sides. Dilute spent wash with cleaning water - use alkali cleaners - not only will you reduce overall COD, but you'll help shift pH balance. Dilute spent wash with cleaning water and cooling water - depending on your sewerage costs, you might find it to actually be cheaper to waste water for cooling, dilute your wastewater to the point at which you pay no additional surcharges. If there is a chiller in the mix, you might find co-mingling of all wastewater to actually be cheaper than running a chiller and disposing of stillage directly. Make sure you are side-streaming your high-test waste - no yeast down the drain, ever. Medium cost options: Dilute spent wash with cleaning and cooling water - inject ozone to drop COD - if you use an oxidizing cleaner this will help, but you'll then need to manage pH separately. This may not impact BOD. High cost options: On-site sewerage treatment facilities - pond or tanks - microbial digesters. Or ... Just pay ...

Still dragon's Traditional Rum Still is by far the most compelling design I've seen if you are looking for a traditional high wines/low wines thumper approach. I'm not aware of anyone making anything similar. I'm sure Forsyths or Vendome could make something in this style that is stunning too though, if a traditional Caribbean approach is what you are looking for.

We ran into a similar issue. Our boiler can burn heating oil or gas depending on the burner - so we went with the oil burner - and will running oil until oil becomes uneconomical, at that point we'll switch burners and have the gas line run. I did the math at the time, and the minor cost savings of gas had a pretty poor ROI when you factored in the gas line cost. However, we are in an area with major heating oil infrastructure, and it doesn't hurt that the cost of oil is pretty low right now.

You don't want our inspector, we had to build a concrete block boiler room with sprinklers and all the still area electrics are class I div I.

The rules outline the requirements for when you are using a blowdown system, they don't designate that a blowdown system is required. You are a batch process steam user - there is no reason you need to operate your boiler 24/7. Blowdown refers to the discharge of water and steam under pressure, high temperature. The blowdown system is for safety purposes, to provide a safe area for water to flash, so you don't discharge boiling water and steam into the sewer system, or kill someone in the process. Let's say you were someone like Marcal in Elmwood Park, with massive high pressure steam boilers that don't turn off - then yes - you probably need a blowdown system and won't be able to argue otherwise. But a batch process user where your boiler is running 20% of the week? These rules do not apply if you are draining and refilling a cold boiler, which is not considered blowdown. If this is a jacket system, and not steam injection, you shouldn't need to regularly "blowdown" either. My 2 cents, I'm not an engineer, official, or otherwise.

Who is telling you they are required, curious. We are in NJ, running 15.6hp, code compliant, approved, etc etc. High pressure?

From poking around Alibaba a few times, it looks like EVERYONE's stills are copied by Chinese factories, which may or may not be the same factories producing the equipment for those manufacturers. Not to speak for ASD, but I remember a few years back the topic came up here a number of times, where very similar systems were being posted on Alibaba. I would assume the same for everyone else. Seems like the minute a new product is online, there is a factory in China making a copy of it. It might look great, but if their plate design is awful, the whole rig is going to be junk. Don't look at the shiny copper, that's the meaningless exterior. How does it function? The Alibaba advertisement probably doesn't touch on that. These places might never have even run a still before making a copy. How do you know the picture on the website is even a still they made? They even steal pictures to re-use on their websites and Alibaba. Ever wonder why Stilldragon photos have watermarks all over them? Because all their photos are stolen and re-used by other manufacturers. As to equipment made in China, some is terrible, some is great. As to equipment made in America, some is terrible, some is great. What I would imagine you get by buying though someone here is peace of mind. I don't know about you, but wiring tens of thousands of dollars to a party in China? Sight unseen? From the consumer side, I'd much rather prefer a party here in the good old USA who can very easily be sued in the American courts system should something go wrong. Likewise, they have the relationships, they've likely taken the hard knocks so we don't need to. Everyone dealing with China takes the knocks, I'm sure they did, even if they aren't going to publicly talk about them. The still is such a tiny part of the startup budget, why is that even a factor? To save a couple thousand bucks trying to go direct? C'mon, the potential negatives of dealing direct SIGNIFICANTLY outweigh the cost savings. Think of couple of dollars price difference as paying insurance. And I don't even sell these things for a living.

You might want to talk to the beer guys who are doing cask conditioning, they likely have that protocol figured out for you already. I don't think you are going to find many here doing that, because it doesn't scale well, and might be an uneconomical approach to fermentation, especially given the benefits (which may not exist at all). Steaming the barrel is probably the easiest approach to cleaning and sanitizing without having to introduce sanitizers. Using it as a primary fermenter might be a bit of a challenge, given the geometry and a rapid fermentation, I can see a high probability of overflow. Also, you will likely lose much of the barrel contribution during distillation. If you burn hay in the barrel (introduce smoke) - some of that may come over in the distillation, however the taste that comes over in distillation need not be the same as the odor of the smoke. Check into Darek Bell's Alt Whiskies for more info on smoke introduction. No idea if using high oxygen content water is beneficial or not (sounds like Ozone to me), but it will cause some of the organics in the product to the oxidized. I'm going to err on the side of that being a potential negative, as the oxidation is going to be indiscriminate - good flavors can be impacted just as much as bad flavors. High iron is detrimental for fermentation, so if you are trying to eliminate an iron problem, I'd suggest going down the traditional path.

Stilldragon sells a 2" weldless triclamp bulkhead. However, that looks like a standard plastic tank bulkhead (Hayward style) with a threaded triclamp adapter.

Both really great responses - I'll second for the pre and post flow making a real impact. While we don't go to zero, under high load it will absolutely cause a wider waver in the header pressure. Also, I asked about the heat exchanger because we use a tube-in-shell for on-demand hot water. Our heat exchanger is somewhat oversized as well. We did need to put a globe valve on the steam input line to throttle the steam, since the beast could consume all the steam you could throw at it. While it's nice to be able to pull unlimited amounts of 180F water - if you had tried to do it while distilling, the pressure would drop like a rock. By cutting down the steam flow with the globe valve, it's not nearly as bad. It's not that our boiler is undersized (we're 16hp), but that the heat exchanger is oversized.

Need more information - the 250k BTU heat exchanger - is this a tube in shell, or some other kind, being used for on-demand hot water? You are seeing boiler pressure drop when hot water is being used while the steam boiler is also feeding the still, etc?

It all looks big, until you try to turn the forklift around.

Also - Lacto will not produce a colored distillate.

The most obvious places to look in the distillate for bacterial contribution are in the late heads and early hearts, and this will be due to esterification of the carboxylic acids produced by the bacteria. I've run a good number of these combinations as Fischer esterification reactions in a glass lab to know the table is roughly accurate. The ethyl esters are easiest to pick out in the late heads fraction, but be aware that the acetic acid esters will almost always dominate. Depending on what you are looking for, you might find that the bacterial contribution may very well be positive, and not negative. For example:

Some strip before they do the spirit run, others do a single run in a plated still. There isn't a right or wrong, just different, depends on what you are after. Sometimes the product dictates how it wants to be run, other times, economics.

If you like that ARO, I'll sell you my spare, I haven't used it since I got the Yamada. I have that same exact model 666053-344, polypropylene frame with teflon wetted parts, only a slightly older style frame. It's in great condition, was rebuilt, and clean. PM me if you are interested. I'll take $200 for it.

That pump uses an aluminum housing, not the best choice for alcohol.