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PeteB

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Everything posted by PeteB

  1. I posted on this surging problem some time ago but don't remember anyone following up on my suggestion. I had a similar surging problem with a bench top still. I completely eliminated it by putting a few small chips of a ceramic tile in the boiler. I remember this technique from University chemistry days. I tried it in my production still that very occasionally surges but not certain that it helped because it only happened occasionally. Find a very hard tile or porcelain dinner plate and smash so you have lots of small pieces with sharp points. It is those points that allow the allow the liquid to boil off a lot easier and should prevent surging.
  2. Many of you on this forum will be fermenting and distilling with grains in so you may not understand lautering. Briefly the mash is on top of a perforated screen than is held just off the bottom of the mash vessel. At the start of runoff some small particles get through the screen so to get a clear wort the first runoff is recirculated to the top of the grain bed. After a time the grain bed itself becomes a depth filter and traps even very small particles. But there will always be some solids from the start of the runoff that are still in the gap under the screen that could dislodge and block a control valve in certain situations. For example if the pump produces a high pressure when the outlet is restricted then the control valve will needed to be almost shut if you need a small flow and it could get blocked. (I had this situation quite often in a different industry) With a low pressure pump and a large flow then the valve will have a reasonable valve opening and blockage is very unlikely. I didn't realise until I visited several Scottish distilleries last year that they didn't recirculate to get a clear wort, they even had mechanical rakes to stir up the grain bed between sparges (additions of extra water to wash sugars out) that would wash more grain through the lauter screen. They would have been fermenting with a small amount of grain in. DrDistillation said "But this shouldn't really happen if you lauter correctly. " That could be correct if you are making a modern beer but for distillation there is no "correct" way.
  3. I imagined the pump would be below the lauter screen. With it 10 feet above then my suggestion of a T and stand pipe would not work with a regular centrifugal pump. You would need a pump that easily self primed and didn't mind being run dry for short periods. Generally, pumps have less problems if mounted below the delivery liquid and with a short suction hose.
  4. A simple control valve/tap can become blocked if there are any grain particles in the wort.
  5. KISS Another way which I currently use on my belt press is to insert a T on the outlet from the mash tun. Install an open ended vertical pipe that ends higher than the mash level. It is almost a mini grant. It works well with my small centrifugal pump. If the pump pulls more liquid than is filtering through the screen then air enters through the T and the pump loses its prime for a short time until liquid builds up and re-primes the pump. It is a very basic setup but I have had it running for about 5 years. Please note that some pumps may not self prime in this situation, and maybe some pumps seals may not appreciate the loss of prime even for a short time.
  6. The VFD's I have can be controlled with a 10K pot.(potential divider) Hook a float onto the pot with stiff wire and with a little tweeking you should be able to keep the level constant.
  7. I don't lauter any more but when I was I used a float switch, very simple and effective. A slight disadvantage with an on/off switch was it reduced the efficiency of the plate heat exchanger that was in the line, a continuous flow would have been better but no big deal. If you like gadgets then have the float controlling the pump speed with a variable frequency drive.
  8. You would need to put at least one drip of vodka in the bottle before adding the water then find someone who is very good at marketing.
  9. A couple of options. Is the filter cartridge sealing at the ends? Check by removing the cartridge and see if there are pressure marks in the ends of the cartridge. I have silicone washers that I sometimes need on the end of a new filter. You mentioned above that the "dust" might be bubbles. A strong vacuum can certainly create bubbles, is the "dust" still there the next day?
  10. I haven't forgotten to post photos and diagrams, just too busy just now to do it properly this week. Back soon
  11. Single spout Enolmatic bottle filler works well for me, but will eventually need seals in spout replaced. Search "condensation" near top right of this thread. It has been well discussed in 2016 and again in 2018
  12. It might pay to check if your Enolmatic is pulling enough vacuum. Over the years the seal in the tapered filler neck of my machine has worn out a couple of times. Another problem was a crack in the plastic nipple on the top of the pump housing case where the hose fits, it looked fine but was broken almost completely off. Occasionally I find bottles with a small projection from the glass in the neck where the rubber filler head attempts to seal. Very frustrating as I swapped several parts from another machine and the problem was still there. Found a few more bottles on the same pallet with same problem.
  13. I have 2 continuous stripping stills that I built. An experimental one that runs on 1.5 Kw electric and will strip about 400 litres of beer per day. A larger one strips about 2,000 litres a day. Very efficient with energy use and zero cooling water required. Beer feed is used as condenser coolant, so the beer enters still at close to boiling point requiring very little energy to raise the last few degrees. Hot overflow of the spent beer is also used to heat the input beer which increases the flow rate. Surplus heat from the overflow produces high grade hot water. The larger continuous runs on used fryer oil so my running costs are almost negligible. I will probably never get time to build it, I would love to build a continuous fractionating column with quite a few take-off points ( like petroleum stills) That way I could blend different cuts back at various ratios to create unique flavour profiles.
  14. I recall an experiment at university 50 years ago to demonstrate surface tension of water. A very fine filter with a vacuum on it would allow air to move very easily through it, but wet the filter and the vacuum pump could not pull air through the filter. If this could the problem with a fine wet filter you need to manually fill the housing with liquid then it should work.
  15. I have a continuous stripping still, input flow rate controlled by maintaining a constant input temperature. Beer or wine feed is heated by the condenser which is a counter-flow tube in tube, with some heat also from the stillage overflow. The slower the input flow the hotter the feed is when it enters the column. A gate valve allows the bulk of the feed then a simple PID opens and closes a small bypass valve to keep feed temperature constant. KIS
  16. Way back when your still was built the builders probably didn't know copper contact with distillate vapour is very important to remove undesirable compounds, mainly sulphur. As mentioned above it might have been done to prevent erosion of the copper. Erosion of copper in a still shows the copper is working for you. I suggest you try to remove the tin from anywhere in the vapour path. In the pot it won't matter if left.
  17. I am no expert on stills with column and plates but I would think a 12 inch diameter on a 1,000 litre pot is out of balance, too wide, but I could be wrong. Just putting it out there for comment by others. When you say "getting expensive running 700 litres of wash" are you talking about the cost of the wash or cost of running the boiler. If it is the wash you are concerned about just pour the condensate back into the pot to run for your next test. I can't help on the cost of running the boiler unless you could convert it to run on used motor oil or fryer oil (as I do)
  18. I obviously don't know what type of solder was used, I hope it was not lead based. I was advised by a stillmaker 10 years ago not to use "silver solder" (a common one in Australia is 2% silver) because it corrodes in a still. I Copper TIG welded it. I found a crack in the base several years later but had no TIG gas so fixed it with silver solder. After several weeks it leaked again and I discovered that silver solder won't last especially on the base where heat is applied. I estimate it would have taken only 4 weeks to corrode through 1 mm of silver solder. It lasts much longer where there is no applied heat. Another interesting observation is the pitting in the copper of your column, especially in the second photo. That is caused by sulphur reacting to produce copper sulphate, that is a good thing but it is a good reason to have stills built from thicker copper or they won't last.
  19. OK, lets call the flock "clusters" not "crystals". My observation is that after a period of time these clusters can be broken up by vigorous shaking and they disappear for some time. Eventually a small amount of fine sediment settles on the bottom of the bottle. If shaking pushed some of these compounds back into solution I would have thought the "clusters" could re-form. I would be very interested if someone has access to an ultra sonic device to test if this type of vibration could break the clusters down so fine that they would not be visible.
  20. I have always thought flock was a crystalline structure. Can't remember if I heard it as fact. If it is crystalline then it would naturally take time to form at ambient temperature. At lower temperatures a solution holds less dissolved solids which would speed up crystal formation, hence chill filtration works. Freshly diluted whisky has not had time to grow large crystals and much of the compounds are still in solution while " bottling, to packaging, to palletizing, delivery, forklifts, etc" . Flock would form in the following weeks as it sits on a shelf.
  21. I did hear ( not sure how reliable) that some of the bigger guys use ultrasonic to break up the flock and apparently I'd does not re-form. I have noticed that vigorous shaking makes it disappear but it eventually re-appears but not as obvious.
  22. If you are exporting whisky to China make sure there is no flock. A friend has a shipment held up at the moment because their rules say the product must have no solids. ( On 7/31/2018 at 8:56 AM, bluestar said: Yes, this is flocc of oligosaccharides from barrel aging. Generally, it depends on the type of barrel and size.................) I occasionally get flock in some products that are not barrel aged even at 50%abv
  23. Sullivans Cove whisky from Tasmania has won world's best single malt several times. Look at this video to see how they are now dealing with it. https://sullivanscove.com/journal/flocking-and-filtration/
  24. I used an industrial vacuum cleaner to remove dust from the outlet that would have otherwise drifted into the surrounds It had some type of filter shaker that operated when the filters started to block
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