Steam injection for mash tanks

[brantoken]

Has anyone tried steam injection to heat the Mash tank?

From what I have been reading it would seem to be the most effecient and is used in the fuel ethenol industry.

From my understanding there are two methods Sparge and Jet cooker?

If so which method is it?

Thanks

[daveflintstone]

that is apparently how shochu is made. in wood still.

[JohninWV]

We use direct steam injection and it's great. I also know lots of other people in the industry that do the same thing. You just need to make sure you get clean steam and using chemicals in your boiler is an issue. You better know exactly what you put in for boiler treatment.

[PeteB]

You can find previous discussion on this subject at http://adiforums.com...?showtopic=2153

[meerkat]

Direct steam injection is very efficient. Any chemicals you add to your boiler water must be approved for food products. This is more of an issue for high pressure boilers than for the low pressure boilers generally used by distillers. Your chemical supplier (if you use chemicals) will be able to advise you.

The steam should be filtered before it is injected. Suppliers like Spirax Sarco supply sintered stainless steel filters meeting the 3-A Recommended Practice for producing culinary steam. This will prevent bits of rust etc being blown into the mash. Although it could be argued that the distillation process will remove them anyway the health inspectors who are used to inspecting preserve and baby food cookers will probably be happier to see the filters in place.

Spargers and jet injectors can both be used. They are both aimed at getting the steam rapidly mixed into the liquid to avoid the collapse of large bubbles which can be noisy and can introduce severe vibrations. The collapse of these steam bubbles is exactly the same thing as cavitation in pumps. Spargers can be "home-made" successfully - just keep the holes to 3 mm or less to avoid the large noisy bubbles. Place the holes in the bottom 180 degrees of the pipe so that the steam is directed downwards or sideways and the sparger can drain after use. Jet injectors create mixing by a venturi action which pulls liquid in to mix it with the steam and break up the bubbles. These are generally proprietary devices.

[JohninWV]

Meerkat, sorry to sidetrack the post, but you've been a welcome addition to the forum. More often, I see people bickering back and forth on, what I deem, issues insignificant to the general industry. Great to have your input.

What's your background? Maybe I missed that in an introduction.

[Artisan Still Design]

your steam outlets can be designed to keep your wash agitated too.

[meerkat]

Thanks for the welcome JohninWV. I didn't ever post an introduction - sorry for that. My background is mostly in large distilleries making neutral spirit. I am a chemical engineer by training. I wrote some software, originally for my own use and when I offered it for sale I found that there are a lot more craft distillers than there are big distillers. A couple of my early craft distiller customers (who are members here) very kindly advised me on things that I had got wrong or which were not suitable for small scale operations and hopefully the software has evolved to be a bit more useful. So my aim in joining here was very much more to learn than to teach, but where questions arise where my experience in large distilleries can help the smaller operations who don't have the resources the bigger guys have I try to pay back some of the favors I have received from the craft distillery community.

PS I tried to click the "Like This" button on Artisan Still Design's comment, but it seemed not to accept my click. The agitation benefit is a very important one, but often overlooked because it is the secondary goal of adding the steam.

[Artisan Still Design]

PS I tried to click the "Like This" button on Artisan Still Design's comment, but it seemed not to accept my click.

an example of a large powerful program scaled back for smaller use