Greening of a Distillery and/or Tasting Room, Bar, Restaurant

[navenjohnson]

I am suggesting a forum topic about all the ideas there are around "greening" or making our businesses more environmentally friendly. 

[adamOVD]

Covid sure ungreened our tasting room. All the plastic cups we throw away is terrible.

[whiskeytango]

On 4/25/2021 at 9:07 AM, adamOVD said:

Covid sure ungreened our tasting room. All the plastic cups we throw away is terrible.

why cant you wash glass ones?  Three hole sink with some Sani should do it

[Silk City Distillers]

I have to smirk a little bit about throwing solar panels on a roof and saying that it's an effective strategy towards reducing environmental impact (aka Greening).  Solar feels like the easiest of "cheats", compared to where the real work, and impact, is.

Heat Recovery & Storage vs. Chillers

Carbon Dioxide Capture/Recovery for Fermentation

Energy efficient distillation processes (read: Continuous distillation with heat recovery, low NOX high efficiency steam boilers (Miura, etc), highly insulated steam lines, etc) - none of this batch distillation on an uninsulated still.

On-site Wastewater Processing, Waste alcohol processing

Post-consumer recycled glass bottles and/or bottle re-use where legal

Local sourcing of all raw materials

High efficiency CIP

[Southernhighlander]

To Silk's point.  I don't understand why so many manufacturers produce stills with no insulation layer.  All of our Pro Series and Signature series stills have an insulation jacket over the steam jacket on the pot. 

As a side note we have vacuum stripping stills that are as efficient as continuous column stills and they are also very fast and produce a great tasting spirit.  Distillation takes place at 150 F so a conventional chiller or well water can be used to cool the condenser.  The insulation layers on these are simple, empty jackets that we pull vacuum on.  There is no actual insulation in the jacket just vacuum, which is one of the best insulators.  These stills are fired by 190 F hot water circulated through the jacket.  The hot water can come from a hot water heater, hydronic wood fired furnace or any other hot water source.  We have them in stock up to 100 gallon capacity.

[adamOVD]

@whiskeytango I'm not fully up to date on current local Covid requirements, as it isn't really my department, but we started using plastic when we were under "to go cocktails only" and have kept using them as the restrictions continually change. I think we could wash glasses in a 3 vessel sink again, but we are currently only doing outdoor seating, and I believe anyone washing a customer's glass is supposed to wear some sort of full facial cover, and have plexyglass in front of them, so it would probably require having am additional person on staff. Kind of a lazy excuse, but I think everyone is a bit burnt out on constantly changing operating procedures over the last year. 

From a production standpoint, being able to reuse bottles would probably have a huge impact, and would likely be something people at any size or budget could accomplish.

[SlickFloss]

Silk has listed many of our cheats here for greening, but we have a few more that are very popular options and none are original ideas just our own executions

 

boiler blow down water to toilets and piped out to botanical garden 

compostable to go cups and straws 

separation of grain and mash water. Reuse mash water to a certain percentage, grain is high protein animal feed syrup which can be sold

daylight windows and automatic lights 

scavenged heat from con water into floors for heat with fan for distribution (this does fall into his broad base heat scavenging though)

product lines that feature the reuse of barrels

stillage that isnt separated used to make organic soil amendment for our fields and auxiliary farmers

composting of all food wastes from employee meals, tasting room scraps, etc

heads are sold to large international bike manufacturer they make a brake degreaser out of it

*installing and designing process plumbing in a way that allows them to be reused if decomissioned

no rinse fills on sour mashes with shorted yeast pitches (only 1 gen, sour mash made from sweet mash we just emptied)

 

the miura boiler is my favorite! we do a lot of what silk was talking about

[Silk City Distillers]

Saw a few other distillery builds that utilized cooling/condenser flows for in-slab radiant heating, I think that’s a brilliant idea.

[Glenlyon]

We have a geothermal cooling system that we have just doubled in size. It runs all the time on a continual loop and the hot condenser water is piped through radiant floor piping embedded in the tasting room floor. The system is passive and costs us practically nothing to operate and it's really efficient, cooling all of our stills and fermenters and best of all - its completely silent. It was also very cost effective to install - comparatively speaking and our customers love the concept from an environmental perspective.

[Still_Holler]

@Silk City Distillers I'd disagree, I think solar power is one of the best thing you can do.  Your still going to be using a lot of energy no matter how many steps you take to minimize or recover it, and where that energy comes from is one of the most important parts of being "green".  Seems to me running solar/renewable powered electric for your still and mash heating and other electric needs is much better for the environment than running a high efficiency boiler that runs off fossil fuel or purchasing electricity from the grid that is mostly fossil fuel generated.

 

[Still_Holler]

Our main green factors are

Solar System w Insulated Electric Still/Masher

local/reused construction materials for distillery building construction

local and/or organic grain/sugar ect..

Cold spring water for cooling

onsite reuse of cooling water for crop irrigation

onsite reuse of mash as livestock feed

reuse of barrels

no use of caustics/acid/harsh chemical cleaners - enzyme cleaner instead

re-use of heads as sanitizing spray

 

[SlickFloss]

On 8/22/2021 at 11:37 AM, Still_Holler said:

@Silk City Distillers I'd disagree, I think solar power is one of the best thing you can do.  Your still going to be using a lot of energy no matter how many steps you take to minimize or recover it, and where that energy comes from is one of the most important parts of being "green".  Seems to me running solar/renewable powered electric for your still and mash heating and other electric needs is much better for the environment than running a high efficiency boiler that runs off fossil fuel or purchasing electricity from the grid that is mostly fossil fuel generated.

How big of a still are you running with how many solar panels? Eventually you hit a limit where it is just not realistic. Case in point, I would accept any input on how I can power 2 x 1750 gallon cookers, 1 x 3000 gallon cooker,  3 x 240 gallon cookers,  1 x 25 inch diameter stripping column, 1 x 14 inch azeotropic column, 1 x 18 inch column with doubler and 1 x 240 gallon potstill? I need enough power to run these concurrently every Monday at start up, and from there they will stagger throughout the week.

 

Absolutely given an entire farm of panels that much wattage isn't an issue, but on top of my 3400 sq foot pre fabbed building? Thing can't even support weight of 10 panels. Never the less I only have 8 hours of sunlight for 6 months of the year. Sounds like I would need to buy another farm just for solar panels!

 

Given the foresight and budget ahead of time it is doable with a solar project near by, but greening a pre existing space doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bath water just because you can't install enough solar panels. For instance, what about the generators I run off of steam turbines on my low nox boilers? Are those worthless too? Am I not green enough?

Edited November 22, 2021 by SlickFloss
typo

[PeteB]

On 4/26/2021 at 1:07 AM, adamOVD said:

Covid sure ungreened our tasting room. All the plastic cups we throw away is terrible.

The use of plastic cups and straws have been banned at public events I have done in Australia for at least the last 10 years.

I still don't feel happy about using the Bio Cups only once, but it is way better than plastic.

I assume compostable cups would be available in other countries.

www.biopak.com.au/products/cold-cups 

[Still_Holler]

On 11/22/2021 at 3:54 PM, SlickFloss said:

How big of a still are you running with how many solar panels? Eventually you hit a limit where it is just not realistic. Case in point, I would accept any input on how I can power 2 x 1750 gallon cookers, 1 x 3000 gallon cooker,  3 x 240 gallon cookers,  1 x 25 inch diameter stripping column, 1 x 14 inch azeotropic column, 1 x 18 inch column with doubler and 1 x 240 gallon potstill? I need enough power to run these concurrently every Monday at start up, and from there they will stagger throughout the week.

 

Absolutely given an entire farm of panels that much wattage isn't an issue, but on top of my 3400 sq foot pre fabbed building? Thing can't even support weight of 10 panels. Never the less I only have 8 hours of sunlight for 6 months of the year. Sounds like I would need to buy another farm just for solar panels!

 

Given the foresight and budget ahead of time it is doable with a solar project near by, but greening a pre existing space doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bath water just because you can't install enough solar panels. For instance, what about the generators I run off of steam turbines on my low nox boilers? Are those worthless too? Am I not green enough?

Solar is not a one size fits all solution, it works for my scale, building and location and I had it preplanned in the startup. Silk City had said it was a "easy cheat" to claim greening, which in my case I strongly disagree with - it certainly isn't a cheap up front cost for my scale - it was a conscious decision to offset my energy use by going deeper into debt.  Sure if you are at the scale your at and put up 5 panels and call yourself green that is lame. 

If solar isn't viable for you it sounds like you are pursuing best technology for your location.  There are also carbon offset programs available to offset fossil fuel energy sources.

Bottom line none of us are "green enough".  Distilling is an energy intensive process to produce a luxury item. My solar panels took energy and materials to produce and have a finite lifespan before being replaced, most of my bottles probably end up in a landfill, and the liquor I sell is consumed and pissed out.  In the end, if you are consciously trying to do it greener than most, I give you props!

[SlickFloss]

3 hours ago, Still_Holler said:

Solar is not a one size fits all solution, it works for my scale, building and location and I had it preplanned in the startup. Silk City had said it was a "easy cheat" to claim greening, which in my case I strongly disagree with - it certainly isn't a cheap up front cost for my scale - it was a conscious decision to offset my energy use by going deeper into debt.  Sure if you are at the scale your at and put up 5 panels and call yourself green that is lame. 

If solar isn't viable for you it sounds like you are pursuing best technology for your location.  There are also carbon offset programs available to offset fossil fuel energy sources.

Bottom line none of us are "green enough".  Distilling is an energy intensive process to produce a luxury item. My solar panels took energy and materials to produce and have a finite lifespan before being replaced, most of my bottles probably end up in a landfill, and the liquor I sell is consumed and pissed out.  In the end, if you are consciously trying to do it greener than most, I give you props!

I have now decided I like you. Let me know if there is anything I can ever do to assist your distilling journey.

[EZdrinking]

On 5/11/2021 at 8:02 AM, Silk City Distillers said:

Saw a few other distillery builds that utilized cooling/condenser flows for in-slab radiant heating, I think that’s a brilliant idea.

I know @Gary Hinegardner did this at his distillery in MO and I thought it was a really smart idea.

[Silk City Distillers]

Yeah we tore out huge sections of concrete slab for plumbing and drains, I still kick myself over not putting some tubes down.

[Still_Holler]

1 hour ago, SlickFloss said:

I have now decided I like you. Let me know if there is anything I can ever do to assist your distilling journey.

Haha, I appreciate it. I read back through your and Silks recommendations and lots of impressive things in there.   

Curious about your "generators run off low nox steam boiler turbines" are you running electrical generators off your steam boiler as well as steam heated cooker/still?

I had researched everything from wood boilers with catalytic conveters to running biodeisel in a tractor with pto generator before settling on electric with solar offset. 

Also curious about the no rinse sour mash and how that works. I have an old timer keeps telling me to not run any tails and just add sugar and more yeast after distillation to do a second ferment.  I have been unwilling to try because 1. It wont be whiskey, but we do occasionally make some cane and grain products 2. worried the residual alcohol would affect yeast reproduction. 

We currently just siphon about 15% of mash water volume from the top of the backset, clean still with a quick rinse and reset the mash using backset as part of mashwater.  I'd be worried about leaving residual grain from previous mash in increasing viscosity/losing volume of liquid in the mash. We mash/ferment/distill in the same pot so this is probably way off from what you are doing on that size setup but I may be able to learn something.

[SlickFloss]

The genny is a steam turbine, passively charges a battery that is a reserve genny for emergency lights and boiler control panel. .If we use the battery to start the boilers we can then divert the turbines energy from charging the battery to our fermenters coolant controls. We have another large emergency generator for the entire facility as a whole so this is a minor redundancy for catastrophic failure to ensure we don't lose any big ferments. As we get bigger the protection is more and more fancied. You could absolutely run a still or a vacuum pump or a inflow radiant heat or just lights off a turbine off your boiler with the right set up and sized boiler. Obviously need natural gas for my system but theoretically if you could get an electric boiler started you could supplement its own power needs from a steam driven turbine in its own main I would think. Wouldn't that be wild?

 

You should talk to Paul. He's done some wild shit. One of my faoviorte moves of his is pulling a vacuum on a strip and running the still off a hydronic boiler (essentially a glorified hot water heater). 

 

Was he saying take your accumulated tails from a run, throw sugar in that and re pitch yeast? 

 

My little hot transfer routine is one of my favorites. So for one of our larger systems we don't have a beer well so we run directly out of fermenters. Sometimes the heavens will line up where we are finishing a cook and one of our fermenters will be just about done being run through the still. So lets say we are running our column out of fermenter 1. instead of transferring our now hot and ready to cool to pitch sweet mashes into fermenter 2 to cool and pitch, we will hold it in the cookers hot (could be 25-30 minutes I'm comfortable doing it up to a few hours). When fermenter 1 is empty and done running, instead of rinsing the sides down into the drain to run to the still, I will close the drain and fill the Ferm with the fresh cook from cookers. The ferment we just finished running is sized to take more than one shift so that we get a sweet and somewhat soured day of collection from each fermenter, so the residual tank is already slightly soured while filling, but it also has yeast in it. In the summer I am very successful in doing this and don't need to add any more additional yeast, int he winter I can cut yeast in about half or sometimes a quarter. The ferment will take off and finish no problems in terms of biological infection (we have very low tolerance on cleaning protocols adjustments to doing this isn't that big of a risk for us) and I end up with a unique lot later that I put towards single barrels or special blends. This its not something I do weekly or even months, I probably do one or two hot transfers a month at most and sometimes none. Essentially by filling the fermenter dirty you are doing a podunk pre fermentation kettle souring of the mash and technically its similar to yeast generationing in brewing. We have an advanced lab and we use it painstakingly to assess ferments and distillates mid fermentation/run. May not be worth the risk for some who don't have as good of an eye on their fermentation activity but its a lot of fun for us and does add up when you're counting every penny. If peoples don't want to risk losing a whole batch, capturing a small amount of fermented and undistilled mash or incompletely fermented mash and mixing it into a fresh fermentable batch may be enough to get the trick done it just may be a slow start. 

 

As for sour mashing in general there's a few ways to do it. You can start out with a total volume originally in the kettle pre mashing but it may affect the efficiency of your enzymes. One thing I have had a lot of my consulting clients do who aren't as chemically and biologically gifted but want to make sour mash bourbon is use it for cooling water additions after all enzymatic rests have been taken. Because of our intentional precision in our brewing process we use city water and backset during mashing to hit very specific PH levels for enzyme optimization at each rest for each enzyme specifically, but thats because we have already spent years ironing out the physical mechanics of our mashing process and understand the exact values of the inputs we are using. If that is not something you're really good at and kind of set up for, it can be wiser to not try and adjust and just do your whole mash without altering it and be successful depending on your enzyme source, and sour it after. Some people like kettle souring too so just letting a ferment sit for a while afterward. I am not a big fan of this because you can start to lose yield as well as encourage diacetyl formulation. I like to control things to end up with specific desirable esters, not end up with certain flaws because. I am a literal psychotic control freak though.

 

How big is that pot you mash ferment and distill in? Lets fuck up some commas bro!

[Atarijedi]

If you live somewhere that gets a lot of sun, and depending on the size of your equipment, you can use Evacuated Solar Tubes (ESTs) to completely heat, or at least pre-heat water, or oil, for heating everything else. There is a distillery in Richland, Washington, called Solar Spirits, and they heat everything with solar thermal. 

https://www.solarspirits.com/

https://www.rackhousewhiskeyclub.com/blogs/blog/solar-spirits-a-sustainable-solar-powered-approach-to-distilling
https://1889mag.com/think/solar-spirits-a-sustainably-focused-distillery-brings-together-tech-and-craft/
https://wineandcraftbeveragenews.com/solar-powered-distillery-approaches-craft-from-tech-perspective/
https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/stories/blog/31986

There is also a lot of research in the industrial ethanol world, to make things more efficient, and they have come up with a lot of interesting things.

[oboyatelny]

We are 100% sustainable and renewable distillery! Processing only by products left from other factories such whey, spelt wines, beer, apple cider or juices. Columns operate under vacuum, required much less energy. Close loop heat transfer and flue gasses re purposing for fermentation and 100% water recycle and re use! 

 

Our neutral spirits are super clean, 100% sustainable. We sell bulk through 48 state 

 

cayugaingredients.com 

eduard@narenewableenergy.com