On Grain or Off Grain

[whiskeytango]

Paul. So you are pumping your spent wash (after distillation) strait into totes or another container for hogs and do you strain it some how for cattle so its more dry?

 

 

[Southernhighlander]

No straining or anything is necessary for hogs.  Hogs actually get nutrients from the liquid as well as the solids.  My dad and grandfather raised hogs to feed the spent mash from their moonshine operations. Hogs love it and getting a little buzz from the residual ethanol seems to make them happy.  However hogs should not be fed hot mash in cold weather.  The hog farmer should pick up the mash everyday in warm weather so that the mash does not start to rot.  Cattle are different because their digestive systems are different.  Cattle can be fed mash with the liquid in if it is fresh however most cattlemen just want to feed the grain.  Row crop farmers put it in their manure spreaders and spread it a fertilizer.    I would not sell it to cattle farmers because of the hassle of separating out the liquid.  i would either sell to hog farmers or give it to row crop farmers.

Find a farmer that will buy it.  Get some used plastic totes.  When the farmer picks up, unload the empty tote or totes and load up full ones.  It's that simple.  Small hog farmers are best.

[Patio29Dadio]

15 hours ago, whiskeytango said:

How do you deal with a spent grain in wash after distillation?  Do you just dump it down the local sewer? 

You might be able to do that while running a stream of water in your drain while you slowing drain the mash, but it depends on your locality and their waster water treatment capacity. 

I ordered a self-dumping de-watering hopper for our start-up.  Plan is to fill it with the spend on-grain stillage and let it drain overnight.  In the morning we should have minimal waste material to deal with.  It might be dry enough for cattle feed at that point. But composting people will take it if not... assuming you don't find any pig ranchers to take it.  

Someone else on this forum posted the idea of big filter bags for $25 each that would do the same as a de-watering dumper.

[majorvices]

I own a brewery and we separate the mash (usually) even with 51% corn (and up) plus rye. The trick is running the rakes while you sparge/lauter. I have done corn whiskey fermented in the still then distilled on the grain and I like the product but, being set up as a brewery, it is far easier for us to separate the wash from the grain.

[DonMateo]

I am in the process of building my shed for my distillery but I do fermentations at 200 l volumes and all on grain. I just did a corn90% and 10% wheat wash that the low wines are really really nice.  On grain is the best in my opinion but by far the messiest and most difficult to deal with. 

[Hudson bay distillers]

is anyone mashing and distilling on grain using steam injection with out agitator , relying on steam mixing educators . if so how many pounds of steam are you pushing thru to get good agitation . 

tim   

[Silk City Distillers]

I don't think you can get good tank mixing without running high pressure steam, probably using multiple injectors based on tank geometry.

We push about 550 pounds an hour of steam through a single eductor.  We stagger water additions to help speed cooling, so we'll typically start with 700 pounds of corn in 300 gallons volume.  Until the corn is gelatinized, it tends to want to fall out of suspension and sit along the tank bottom.  The eductor alone won't mix.  Once we've gelled and ready to start cooling, we've got good suspension with just the steam mixing.  For us, we run the agitator from the start of the mash to the finish.

We use injection for heating, and the jacket for cooling.  Without the agitator running during the cooling phases, cooling the mash with the jacket would take hours longer, it's that significant.

Heating rum wash, on the other hand, the eductor alone in the ~500g total volume works just fine.

 

[Hudson bay distillers]

thanks silk gives us something to think about .

tim 

[Silk City Distillers]

Worth noting, we are using a rectangular tank (converted dairy tank).

In a cylindrical tank with tangental injection, you might be able to get the liquid spinning fast enough to keep suspension with a very fine grind.

And keep in mind, it's very, very loud.  Even fully submerged, zero hammer, you are in the range of requiring ear protection.

[Hudson bay distillers]

well noted silk were talking about a 600 gallon zero tank.... up here the only tanks that are cost efficient are milk tanks  . we ll just have to try it and see if there enough steam power to keep it moving . thanks 

tim 

[Silk City Distillers]

We were able to (somewhat) easily upgrade the agitator on our Mueller with a larger unit.

[Pofarmer]

On 5/3/2018 at 7:32 PM, klattig said:

We made all our spirits (40% corn whiskey, bourbon, corn/wheat vodka, and even a rye) for over a year using the off-grain process.  We did about 50 batches of 220 gallons - mostly successfully.  It IS possible, but you have to really want to do it.  We had the common limitation of direct-fire heat elements as our rationale, but still burned the occasional batch. (and Rye almost every batch, at some point in the stripping run).  

We finally concluded that we had to go on-grain, and made an indirect heat system for our stripping still.  We are happy we did - we can do bigger batches, and we save about 8 hours per mash run by not lautering.  Time will tell how the change will affect the flavor of our spirits, but we have silver-medal winning (SFO) bourbon on the off-grain process - so I think that you can make plenty good spirit either way.

That said, if you're designing your distillery, do it the easy way - on-grain.

Hey klattig.  Could you describe what you did here for indirect heating of the stripping still? This is a problem we're going to have.