Rich Morgan

Basic Stelvin wine caps are not designed as a pressure closure. They are only good for a bout 1-2PSI bottle pressure, and even then that's generous. Personally I would use crown seals for a carbonated drink. The issue with Stelvin is the relatively thin top section of the cap, it will bulge under pressure. Some derivatives of the Stelvin (i.e Lux, and BVS) are pressure rated. I have seen a number of sparkling waters packaged in BVS, with the right cap.

Years back I did a couple of washes with Dextrose Monohydrate (aka dextrose), there was a glut on the market here and it was very cheap. This is not normally the case in Australia, as its usually about twice the price over cane sugar. In Australia most of dextrose is derived from wheat, but I know in the US it mainly comes from corn. This should not make a difference. You should not have any trouble fermenting Dextrose, if anything the ferment goes too fast (hot), as there is not a lot of hydrolysation for the yeast to do. Pure dextrose ferments will run short on Nitrogen, so you will need some DAP. I find pure sugar washes stink a bit during fermentation, and are only really suitable for neutral spirit production. I would always suggest small trial batches to prove the mix, yeast and supplements.

I forgot to mention, when automating non electrical heating sources (steam, gas etc) you need to ensure a fail-safe design. Meaning, if the PID/PLC has a spasm, the burners/steam valves are shut off. I always have used a simple over temp thermostat (non resetting) in series with the supply voltage for the gas/steam valves, it has saved me many a time from crashed PLC's or badly configured PID's. Also, test the hell out of the programming, limits and alarms.

In my experience with still automation, PID's are just one aspect. I use them on our large gas fired stills, but they are networked to a larger PLC for full automation. The reason I do this is to give an element of fail-safe control, and manual control if the PLC has a brain fart. PID's are usually bullet proof, PLC and higher can falter. It also takes the load of temp control away from the PLC. Happy to chat on-side if you need some advice. Currently we have 4 fully automated stills, they are capable of running completely un-attended. Do not ask me for my algorithms for determining cuts :-) Our setup is a series of network PLC's and PID's, using a PC/Database with a custom application controlling all via SCADA.

I have found the best process is to dilute the final product with the best water you can make. We double RO our town water and use that for dilution. If your local water has a high level of dissolved salts, you run the risk of cloudiness in the final product. I do not know of a major distillery that does not RO their dilution water. Town water is fine for brewing, in fact a little hardness helps.

Lallemand has several cane/molasses specific yeasts for Rum production. I have used Distilamax RM 493 with great results. See http://www.ethanoltech.com/beverage/yeast.html

US Gallon I assume, 500 Litres?

Completely off topic, what is the meaning of "Six and Twenty" in your parts. I am ex-Navy and in the British Navy handbook, its was the minimum size for an old navel longboat, six men standing, and twenty on the oars. Arrrrrrrggggghhhhhh.

It was a nervous electrician who escalated to Energy Australia, they panicked due to the ethanol related explosion at Draytons Wines, 3 years back. Anyway, they refused connection until we had a zone engineer pass the place. All good now, and the detector is piece of mind, not for the ethanol vapour, but the LPG. LPG is the real explosion risk. rich..

We had to install an electronic gas detection system, that is sensitive to LPG(Propane) and Ethanol Vapour. It has an interlock on the main switchboard so the stills and associated equipment will not power up until the gas levels are safe. We also had to get a zoning engineer in (at HUGE expense).

I am so thankful that Trademarks are not internationally binding. Some wally in China has been granted a TM for Vodka, LOL. Does the US not have the same laws as Rest of World in that a word or name that has been in common public use for some time, is considered public domain?

My experience is that the hydros with inbuilt thermometers are usually very poor quality, and rarely if ever calibrated, as they cant calibrate the two instruments in the one glass envelope. I use a $50 digital (multimeter style) thermometer with an external stainless probe, and a good hydro. Is there a reason it must be an all-in-one? rich..

We have a M.E.P Etc 240 labeller. They are made in itally for the small scale olive oil and wine industry. It is a brilliant unit. Handles front and back labels off the same web, and square bottles with an attachment. Not sure of the USA dealer, but you can see it here at Core http://www.core-equi...oduct/1469/6521 We tried most of the small benchtop hand labellers (Benchmate) and they are complete rubbish, expensive and fussy. As for label printers, to print high quality labels yourself is difficult. We looked at a number of 4 colour label printers and the quality is ok, but no where near that of a professionally printed labels. Several areas DIY label printers will let you down; Most are either thermal or dye sublimation. Thermal fade in the sun and dye sub are not 100% water fast, they are definitly not alcohol proof. Their consumables are very expensive Print quality is average You must either be satifified with a basic square or oval stock shapes, or have an external label house knife you up custome shapes Having said all that, we do use pre-printed labels, and pass them through our own label printer for small runs of custom product, we get a lot of Wedding commissions, 200 bottles of Dave and Mary's Wedding Vodka :-) Be sure you test and evaluate really well.

Just that, a fire. Ethanol has a relativy low flash point and a ELV of 2% so, it does not require much vapour to create a potentially explosive enviroment.Maybe catastrophic was a bit dramatic, but a still fire is nothing pleasant.

Thanks for the kind words, We are not on town water, so we have about 75,000L rain water collection. We use rain water for all our processes. So far the rainfall has been such that we are good for water. In dry times we may need to get town water tanked in. However, when it rains here it really rains. We filled them completely in the first week of our rainy summer. We use forced liquid cooling for two reasons; Average summer temperature in Australia is about 35C, so air cooled condensers start to become ineffective. For safety reasons I want my distillate cold, about 20C, means it does not create vapours. We use a small 10 ton (ice tons per hour) cooling tower. It runs a closed water loop which serves both our stills, and the lab. Depending on outside temperature and humidity the cooling water enters the building at about 19-20C, and return from the stills at around 36C, depending on still load. Evaporation causes about 10L/hour of top up water. A 1HP pool circulation pump moves the water. I have a fine mesh filter to strain out any gunk (dead insects mainly) so the solenoid valves on the stills don't get fouled. We add 100ml of liquid pool chlorine every week to keep the tower base tank clean. I also add Benzotriazole (BTA) to prevent any corrosion of the copper condensers on the stills, BTA is the primary corrosion inhibitor in most car engine coolants. I have a simple pressure switch on the cooling circuit that must see at least 20psi, before the still heaters will fire up, as cooling failure is catastrophic for any still. The only time this safety feature activated was when someone turned off the top up water supply to the tower, and it evaporated itself to almost dry, the pump lost its prime, and pressure dropped, the system then shut down. The switch was $20 on ebay. Cheap insurance. Evaporative cooling towers are so well suited to distilleries, in climates with lower humidity. The are cheap to run, easy to fix, reliable and above all cheap to buy.

Thought I would share what were doing downunder. I started a facebook page to record our progress, it covers the last 12 months. Love to hear what you think. http://www.facebook.com/DistilleryMan

The cylinders on the Enolmatic are polycarbonate, they are good and stable to 100% ABV. We bottle Absinthe at 68% ABV with no issues, however the pvc tubing takes up the Aniseed oils and can taint the non flavoured products we make. We swapped them all for silicone, and not an issue.

Using sacrificial anodes, is valid on large tanks and boats. I have never seen it used in distillation systems. Depending what is liberated during the boil up, the zinc will react to form any number of water soluble salts including zinc chloride, zinc sulphate and potentially zinc phosphate. All will taint your distillate. Unless you are stripping heavily sulphated packaged wine, I doubt you will have a corrosion problem, but depends on your feed water. The trick to preventing corrosion is to not use dissimilar metals, make sure every contact point is electrically solid, and keep the bugger clean.

Passivation (neutralisation) is a rinse of whatever was acid washed. We flood the entire still, column, condensers when we clean.

I would be interested, I need a change of scnery for a spell. I will email you.

Two causes of film, one is an oily deposit from the glass manufacturing process (rare) the other is a bacterial growth (most common). Yes an acid wash will get rid of it quickly, but I would avoid acetic acid (vinegar). Even the slightest trace will taint your product, and the smell gets into everything. I would suggest a weak solution (1%) of food grade phosphoric acid. No taste or smell. You can use this in your bottle wash water and not need to rinse, but rinsing is always preferred.

Sigh, you guys have such a good range of gear in the USA. Great looking still.

We used http://www.transducertechniques.com/lbc-load-cell.cfm top quality, but $$$$

Also... if your make fruit brandies (specifically stone fruit) there is strong evidence to suggest that copper stills converts the 'probably' carcinogenic by-product of distilling on the stone (Ethyl carbamate) to less noxious substances. EU docs have more on this.

True, I am reffering to the strict Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC) rules, who tyrannically rule Cognac production in France. Lets not forget, the French invented Bureaucrats. Bureaucracy aside, it works for them. You don't see many other countries selling Brandy for $400 bottle, sigh. Christian Brothers, in Australia they are a Catholic Monastical order of Teachers, they operate several dozen schools in Aussie. Distillation is not one of their pursuits here, officially anyway. LOL. Good, fine 'champagne' style Brandy (aka Cognac) is about 30% grape and the wine, 20% distillation technique, and 50% the oak barrel. Any raw spirit aged in the finest of French Limousine oak for 5 years will be amazing. I was privileged to work in Cognac for a year for a small family owned grower/distiller.