Silk City Distillers

The problem is what you are pumping, not how much of it.

Positive displacement pumps, double diaphragm, flexible impeller, screw pumps, etc. These will all work, but the cost will be astronomical when compared to the volume you are moving, and they will have flow rates geared more towards 500 gallons, and not 55.

Why not elevate your mash tank and fermenters and bucket brigade your liquids? It's sanitary, it's fast, and it's going to be hard to argue with the price, especially once you add hoses to the mix. I'm not joking, it's going to be hard to beat this. Adding the hot temperature to the mix only makes this a harder problem to solve for, since now you are restricted with what pump materials can handle near 100c.

Otherwise, the most budget-conscious alternative is going to be looking for a double diaphragm pump with the largest solids capacity you can find (look at specs of all the manufacturers). I'll tell you though, in many cases you need to get to 1.5" before you can pass anything reasonable. You could probably get by with a 1" pump, but only if you take your grain down to flour.

This is also less than ideal from a sanitary perspective, since you'll most likely have threaded fittings. Buckets are easier to clean and sanitize than pumps, unless you are planning to CIP your hoses and pumps for 55g. Another option is to find a cheap Walkie/Pallet Stacker, it'll let you lift and move your tanks around, and you can just use gravity to drain. As a benefit, you get a new tool to help you move pallets and grain around too.

Wondering the same, we've got an Armstrong 3033 hose station, it's got a nice thermostatic valve and dial so you can see your temp right at the station. It also has a really nice rubberized spray gun to protect your hand from the heat. The included literature says it's good to 185F.

I've seen recommendations of anywhere between 140 and 180. I've seen references to some FDA and USDA guidelines for 180F, but they appear to be geared towards dairy and meat processing, where sanitizing the surface is required, but can find no reference for what the recommendation is for general washdown.

I've also seen recommendations to stay away from 180F if you are just doing general cleaning, since you'll cook on proteins and just make more work for yourself. Not to mention standard PVC plumbing is only rated to around 140F. Given that safety guidelines say you'll give yourself a 3rd degree burn with 5 seconds exposure at 140F, I wager that's plenty hot enough, if you can even get to that.

If you are going tankless, make sure you check your max temp, most residential units will not let you set above 120F, it may take a commercial unit to allow you to override higher. Also, figure out your max flow rate in GPM, and check the curves of the tankless unit to see what the maximum temperature rise is for your flow rate. If your water is really cold, and you have a high flow rate, you may not be able to even get anywhere near 120F, let alone higher.

Surprised your 40 gal can't keep up with the NDP-15. I have a small roller 2hp 4cfm@90psi finish nailer compressor that seems to do a respectable job on my similarly sized ARO 1/2" pump. It doesn't push it to 13gpm, but gets it more than halfway there for sure. The one thing about running these things slow is that the pulsation is wicked, so I've been keeping my eye out for a small sanitary pulsation dampener. I'm sure running it at full speed probably smooths things out a bit too.

We ultimately decided to just bite the bullet on a positive displacement pump for moving mash, a deal presented itself on a pump that couldn't be passed up, so now we've got a 300 pound monster that could probably pump oatmeal or peanut butter if we needed it to. The pump head and drive are Viking, amazed at the build quality, it's like a swiss watch on the inside, the motor is a 3hp Siemens explosion proof. I believe it's a touch bigger than a Waukesha U60, but geared to run about half speed with a smaller motor.

Few, if any. Drop me a line and we can talk, my architect and attorney were both quick learners, North Jersey.

I would think that the other issue here is that topping off may not meet the type designation depending on what you are making. For example. New barrel, bourbon. If you were to top it off with new make, that new make ain't bourbon, because the barrel isn't new. So now you've turned your barrel of Bourbon into a Barrel of Whiskey Distilled from Bourbon Mash. Am I off the mark here? And this would be in addition to issues with the age statement.

The obvious benefit of this approach is increased yield. Near 100% conversion rates with little loss of starch, sugar, or alcohol.

Be a trendsetter and insulate your steam lines too. It's amazing how many distilleries I've been to that are running naked. I suppose after paying a small fortune for stainless piping, you might think it a shame to cover it up, but do it.

If you slope towards your still you should have a trap before your globe valve, especially if your steam line is a long run.

This Armstrong resource is pretty helpful in addition to the Spirax site:

http://www.carotek.com/assets/pdfs/Steam-Conservation-Guide-101.pdf

Just to be safe, check the curves of your on-demand heaters, many are spec'ed at 10gpm, but they can only do that with a lower temp rise, once additional temp rise is needed, they need to run slower, in some cases much slower.

I know plenty of homeowners that converted to on demand, and then ran into this trap the first time they tried to run the dishwasher and take a shower at the same time.

Not a steam engineer by far, but was speaking to a process engineer who spent many years in pharma, he said that thermostatic air vents and vacuum breakers are critical. Also remember Robert from Koval sharing a story about someone imploding their still boiler jacket.

The torque is the problem, not necessarily the weight of the motor, in fact the motor weight is minuscule compared to the torque. The exact same forces encountered by the paddles will be encountered by that flange. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that the flange get torn right off. Most of the time you see additional studs to distribute the load across a larger surface area, or in others, you'll see the agitator mounted to a kind of bridge assembly to use leverage to reduce the torque.

If you are using municipal water, I believe your local water authority will provide you with a copy of monthly or quarterly test results, and if you are in a large enough municipality, your local health department may be collecting weekly water samples if you feel something has gone awry and want to confirm. The Ward testing above is dirt cheap anyhow, so it may not matter much to you.

What filter you might need is going to depend on how far off your test results are from where you want them to be. At a minimum, on municipal water, I'd say carbon filters to remove chlorines and chloramines that may impact your fermentation. Particulate filtration is cheap and will extend the life of your carbon cartridges, so I'd say add them as well.

Anything beyond this is going to need to be driven by your test results. If you really want to dive into the topic, pick up a copy of Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers by Palmer and Kaminsky.

Also keep in mind that you don't need to take all of your mash water to zero and add back minerals. If you find an issue with your source water, say for example iron is double what you want it to be, there is nothing stopping you from mashing with 50% carbon filtered tap, and 50% RO. The other option is to run your RO membranes at a lower rejection rate, or even to use lower rejection rate high flow RO membranes (read: the cheap ones). Main issue here is that membrane life tends to be shortened due to fouling.

275 amps - Now you're cooking, yeah that's in the right ballpark for 300 gallons. I think a bit more than an hour, but I'd trust his calcs more than mine, he does this for a living.

If you are buying new, I'd suggest getting quotes from Watlow and Chromalox too. Otherwise, if you have some patience, you can probably find a suitable element in the surplus market for 1/10th the price of new. Many of these are ansi/iso flange mount, so be sure to account for any additional fabrication/welding costs to be able to mount the element to your tank.

Scrounge - You will not get 300 gallons to boil in an hour if all you have is a single phase 240v/200a supply. At max you'll only have 48kw available, and that is not counting any of the numerous other large loads you'll likely be running simultaneously, for example, pumps, agitator motors, chiller, lighting, etc.

Let's say realistically, you can consume half that for heating, 24kw. That'll mean it'll take somewhere north of 4 hours to heat that 300 gallons of water from 68ish to boiling (realistically, probably closer to 5). This would require a 24,000 watt element, not a 275 watt element, a big 100 amps draw, which you will have serious challenges to find in a single 1p element, and probably just as challenging to wire. Even if you turned off everything, and the lights, unplugged your cell phone charger and the radio, you are still talking about 2 and a half hours.

You would need more than 100kw to bring 300 gallons to from 68 to a boil in 1 hour, which would necessitate heavy 480v 3 phase power, and some very expensive heating elements.

If you'll need to boil for a protracted period of time (cereal mash, aka corn), immersion elements will not work. You'll need to use a bain marie setup with a heat transfer oil, which will have lower efficiency, so you'd probably need at least 20% more power. Other factor here is your cost of electricity and propane, with large batch sizes, this means high input energy costs.

Rick - If all you need is 160, I suspect propane with a series of on-demand commercial water heaters is going to be the most realistic. You will need more than one daisy chained depending on how cold your input water is, and even more if you want faster heating (3 even). You'll need one hell of an insulated holding tank to prevent the already heated water from cooling down before the tank is full. Even with propane and on-demand it would probably still take more than an hour to fill up that 500g reservoir.

Direct immersion electric will be more efficient than steam jacket powered by electric, however you will probably be able to generate more BTUs with propane, and put more heat into the tank, even if the overall efficiency is lower. Like I said above, max realistic capacity on a 1p 200a 240v supply is going to be 48kw, with 24kw realistic, this is only 80,000-160,000 btu - pretty small, especially since it's pretty easy to find 199,000 btu commercial on demand propane water heaters. The Rinnai commercials with the commercial control unit can do upwards of 180 degrees output water temp with a ridiculous efficiency, and at a little over a thousand bucks a unit, they are dirt cheap. Well, dirt cheap, but you'll probably need 3 of them to hit 100-120 degree rise at anywhere near 10gpm. How big is your propane tank? You'll need to keep those guys on speed dial.

Like I said above, any kind of cereal mashing and boiling of grain is going to require steam jacket or electrically heated bain marie, otherwise you are going to turn that very expensive heating element into scrap metal, so this is always the biggest part of the decision.

Sweet spot for electric is really the sub 150 gallon range, once you get into the 300g territory, or even the 500g as mentioned above (or larger), the thing that made electric desirable initially (lower up-front cost, simplicity) completely reverse and it becomes significantly more expensive than the alternatives, especially if you factor in annual operating costs. Nat Gas generated Steam almost always wins in the end.

The grass is Bison Grass, and I don't believe it is GRAS (pun intended) as it does contain Coumarin. I believe the export versions use processed grasses that do not contain the active ingredient (or less of it).

Coumarin also exists in other herbs that were historically used in bitters and spirits, for example Tonka Bean and some Cinnamons, which are no longer permitted.

Congrats, can't wait to see it.

While the TTB doesn't specifically use the words barrel or cask, the IFC, NFPA, and IBC do. I would think that to a new startup, losing the cask storage exemption is equally as problematic.

First wine in boxes, now whiskey, what's this world coming to.

The problem is the calculus of making a box versus a barrel. While the box is less labor and significantly less technique, the raw materials required to build a box are significantly more expensive than to build a barrel, why? Staves are relatively easy to source based on the geometry of a log, planks are not, planks will be much more expensive.

Looking at white oak, 8/4ths thickness, the material to make an approximately 53 gallon container are going to be near $150us. That's just the oak, and that is in volume pricing. Add the labor and any external banding and you'll quickly be near $300. Not even taking into account the time associated with kilning or aging.

A straight sided 6 or 8 side container might be bit more economical, but now you've got much more complex joinery involved. The 4 sided container could be very easily constructed with gross dovetails and captive heads using inexpensive machinery. Going 6 or 8 sides is going to rely significantly more on the external banding for strength.

I have a beautiful Stickley chest of drawers, it's wonderful, quarter sawn oak, dovetails to die for. You think the TTB would let me wheel that into my place and fill the drawers with whiskey?

Since you are working on a plan, I'll play devil's advocate.

Defies economic reasoning that existing providers wouldn't scale to meet the new industry demand for the product.

A typical reason for the supply side not meeting the demand side, even at higher prices, are shortages of input materials. Generally in this situation the price of the product would rise as specific individuals from the demand side begin to pay higher prices to secure delivery. I've heard this mentioned regularly. If major buyers can't acquire raw materials, what makes you think you can, especially without paying a major premium? The cost for an existing supplier to expand is going to be significantly less than a new entrant to market.

A secondary is that the existing market is time to meet new demand. How long does it take to scale demand? What's the cost to a supplier to build one additional barrel when they are near capacity? Will you be coming to market at the same time that new suppliers would be releasing new supply, post-expansion?

Tertiary, does the supply side believe the new demand is sustainable? Investing in new capacity generally requires some years of payback, will the new demand be sufficient to reach payback or will it destroy the suppler if the demand fizzles out?

Barrel cooperatives scare the hell out of me as a new market entrant, because it means I need to secure a critical raw material of my product from a competitor, and not an independent third party. It's very plausible that a successful cooperative would close it's door to new buyers. When the going gets tight, who gets the barrels?

If someone isn't already, I'd suspect that someone is in the process of building a supply chain to ship oak from Europe across Asia into China and begin shipping barrels by the container load.

I'm impressed they raised the amount they did.

I particularly like the photo of the charred flooring planks.

I have a hard time believing it's your still, unless you are losing vapor - this is the only explanation for reduced yield during the distillation process. If it's not coming out of the still, it was either lost as vapor, or not in the still to begin with, which leads to the second guess.

Systemic infection has established itself in your process line. This would explain reduced yields and off flavors - stressed yeast, competition, other fermentation byproducts, etc.

If you are sure you are cleaning your still very well, and not leaving behind difficult to clean oils, it's going to be coming in from the fermentation side, and the only realistic reason is infection. I'd suggest taking the time to break down everything and give it a thorough cleaning and sanitizing. I assume you've tasted your wash prior to distillation? What's it taste like now? Give a good swig? Most of the common nasties will have particular off-flavor making them identifiable.

What's your CIP protocol anyway? Going deep in tails is going to need more than a rinse down.

"Cask strength" - Marketing term indicative of an overproof product, not necessarily the specific proof on a cask.

Estimate the lowest cask proof you expect.

Pick some funny decimal number near your cask strength estimate, I'd suggest ##.7 - since 7 is lucky. 59.7, 60.7, 58.7. Absolutely do not end in .4, very unlucky in Asian cultures. Bonus points for something clever like "Hard Eight Whiskey" 54.4 or "Snake Eyes Bourbon" 61.1.

Make minor proofing adjustments to each cask, or batch, to bring it to the specific product proof on your approved label.

From a consumer perspective, I would think a minor adjustment for federal reasons would be more than acceptable here.

Isn't this how everyone does it?

In the new America, where you can be sued for less, it seems much safer than selling a versions of a product with different label proofs, especially if they are being sold at the same price, someone is bound to scream bloody murder over being cheated .01.

Apologies, not following but interested, are you talking about running the agitator/recirculator continuously? On an open top fermenter? Wouldn't the gas exchange at the surface create an environment ideal for yeast propagation, but not making beer? Sounds like this is a trade off between speed and efficiency. Sure it would ferment quicker, but you'd also lose quite a bit of sugar to additional yeast growth, no?

Seems to me that unless you were able to eliminate gas exchange at the surface, this isn't much different than running a starter on a stir plate. Even with a tiny amount of surface area, a deep head space, and simple cover, the gas exchange is still high enough to favor yeast growth over fermentation.

Or is this just something that you run occasionally, on a timer?

I still don't understand, are you looking to use it as a mash tun or just a plain ol' cereal cooker? Are you using grain that needs to be gelatinized?

You were talking about fermenting on grain, which means you aren't going to need to do much to modify that vessel, you certainly don't need any screen, and the vessel geometry isn't important if you don't need to to shovel out the grain.

What's the rating on the heat exchanger? Do you know if it was for heating or cooling? Steam? Ideally if that was steam or hot water, it would be very easy to retrofit.

That agitator looks plenty strong to me, I wouldn't touch it.

I doubt that you'd clog up that output valve, but if you let a very stiff mash settle before you cracked it, you might plug up.

On second thought, it's a piece of junk, let me take it off your hands and scrap that right quick.

I can understand the open fermenters, but I still don't understand why to use a material like wood, negatives seem to outweigh positives unless you are weighing tradition significantly (I can appreciate that).