stillage for animal feed or fertilizer

[Jesse Alexander]

I have a small farm craft distillery on our family sheep operation.  I am distilling wine into brandy and also distilling rum.  I am interested in using the stillage as fertilizer for pasture or as animal feed.  Does anyone have experience doing this?  The only information I can find is for feeding spent grains from whisky production. 

[Stumpy's]

On feeding stillage:

Without any grain solids, there will not be many total digestible nutrients. Your stillage will also be very acidic (prob in the 3-4 pH range) and high in phosphorus and sulfur which will likely push your animals above recommended dietary levels. I've heard this will turn the meat squishy and slimy....and not in a good "tender" kind of way. The acidity will also be a concern for their teeth if you care. I've heard of some animals fed nothing but slop and some pretty significant issues present themselves in their mouths.

If you were running grain and were to dewater the stillage, the dewatered material would be a decent to great feed, depending on its dryness and storability. 

You could certainly feed whole stillage (grain or not, I suppose) as long as you rationed your animals diets properly. Depending on the size of your operation, a TMR mixer would be great to blend the stillage in with something like alfalfa, corn stalk bales, lime/minerals, silage, etc. Long and drawn out explanation but at the end of the day, as long as you account for it with proper rations and do not do free-choice, you should be good.

On land applying:

Be careful land applying, especially in regards to the EPA. Stillage is considered industrial discharge and requires permits for land application. As I mentioned above, it is also very acidic so you will need to consider increasing lime rates where you are going to spread or knife it in.

Certainly not the end all, be all, but hope this helps. Cheers!

[Jesse Alexander]

I have poured rum stillage that we aren't using as backset on round bales set on their end before feeding them.  However, a lot of the stillage is not absorbed and runs right through the bale onto the ground.  I don't know if I am gaining enough nutrients to make it worth the effort.  I am currently dumping stillage onto our composting manure pile which will be spread on the pasture later.  I have considered spreading it directly on pastures using a tank with a pipe boom with holes drilled in it every few inches to distribute the stillage evenly on the ground.  I am not finding any information about the analysis of brandy stillage.  There would have to be enough useful nutrients in the stillage to off set the need to apply lime to balance the PH.

[Tom Lenerz]

You should check in with your state DNR (or equivalent) to find out what is the requirements for land application, we work a 3rd party that land applies and they do quarterly sampling and the DNR gives them an application rate (x gallons per growing season per acre) depending on the makeup. 

[Jesse Alexander]

 The nutritional value of brandy and/or rum stillage as livestock feed or fertilizer is what I need to determine.  Unlike grain based stillage, it may not be worth trying to recycle.  

[Jesse Alexander]

So it seems to me that brandy and rum stillage is not of much value for animal feed.  Fertilizer is possibly the better option.  Does anyone know the amount of N, P, or K that might be present?

[rumfarmer]

I have a farm-to-bottle rum distillery and am looking at making animal feed using a combination of my bagasse and stillage. We only make Agricole style rum, so no molasses. Stillage data:  PH is 3.3, Phosphorus mg/L is 531, Ortho Phosphorus is 505, TKN is 368, total Nitrogen 413,  COD 13,400, TDS 39,400.  The nutrients contained in bagasse about 1-3% protein, <3% lipid, 2-8% ash, 25-35% crude fiber and 50-60% NFE, in dry weight. 

In January we will be processing 7+ tons an hour of this cane 3 days a week. Lots and lots of waste products to deal with. Would welcome input.

[Castaway Fiji]

Fertigation with stillage from sugar cane based washes is very common in Brazil , we are also using it here, there is a lot of information out there, you do need to raise the PH of your stillage to make it bio available to plants- this is worth a read https://biotechnologyforbiofuels.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13068-016-0532-z

[Castaway Fiji]

This is also  a very interesting read https://openaccess.blucher.com.br/download-pdf/267/19259