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An evaporator for spent mash...


Chrismass

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Well I haven't seen any threads on this so I figured I would share it. Below I have linked the page to a whole bunch of waste water evaporators. These things could save a whole lot of time, energy and money. It runs off natural gas which is dirt cheap even here in New York. I cannot dump my spent mash, (We have strict environmental regulations) nor do I have a dry house or local farms to take my spent mash. Does anyone else have experience with a similar piece of equipment or recommend a better version/brand? Any thoughts/comments!

http://www.equipmentmanufacturing.com/wastewater-evaporator-water-eater-home.htm

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interested to know what you will do with the dried mash?

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Actually I am not 100% sure as of yet. I know a few people who own farms that may be interested, but otherwise I figure I will just get rid of it. I unfortunately live in the suburbs and because of that we have strict environmental regulations. The unit says that in batch mode it will do 17GPH. The BTU consumption is 200k. Two therms costs around a dollar where I am located, that makes the cost per gallon >5 cents. For that price this unit will pay for itself instead of me lugging it away to be disposed of. My only other option was the town dump which charges an exorbitant amount of money to destroy it, and also requires you leave it in a container which you don't get back!

My curiosity was if anyone else had experience with something like this. If I become the first, I will follow up on this.

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Before you go to all that trouble, drop an ad in craiglist for free farm feed, or contact the closest brewery and find out what they do. You may be reinventing the wheel here. With all the droughts of late, feed costs a fortune for most farmers who might drive quite a ways to get free feed.

But in any event, if you can't dump your stillage/spent grains "anywhere", what good does it do you to pull the water out? You'd be several thousand dollars poorer and still up a creek without a paddle.

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Once it is dried it is distillers dried grains, which has a much longer shelf life and is a commercial product you can sell to farmers. You can look up the prices as they trade on the Chicago Mercantile exchange. To make anything like this feasible though, I imagine you would have to do it much bigger and see maybe if other distillers and maybe brewers in your area would be interested in some sort of joint venture. If you are around any big producers this might work...of course, setting it all up would be a huge undertaking. I have had a similar thought as I am opening in Chicago and all the distillers are dumping into the sewer and the breweries just send there spent grains to the dump. Sounds nice and environmentally friends, etc, but absolutely a ton of work and serious money would be needed.

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DDG production is financially impossible for small plants. If you're in the Chicagoland area, there's quite a bit of cattle out your way. When we moved to Colorado and had to reset our recycling procedures, we put an ad in Craiglist re: stillage. Within 24 hours we had 30+ farmers respond.... some willing to drive an hour each way once a week to get the free feed. And that was before the drought hit, spiking feed prices.

Have a look at this map. You've got plenty of cattle out your way, and feed prices are at all time highs in most of the US. You'll find farmers... you just have to look.

http://marketing.brownfieldagnews.com/radio-affiliates/illinois_affiliates/illinois-cattle/

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A few of the breweries I talked to couldn't get farmers to come get spent grains. I like the pure simplicity of this much better obviously. I figure if you take the breweries and distilleries you could probably run a dry house, but the complications are pretty endless. In the short run, I can go down the sewer...not to mention I haven't even checked but the commercial composting places in the area might take it for little to no fee other than the annoyance of getting it there. Waste management said they might start a composting hauling service at the behest of Whole Foods, so definitely many other options to look at and I am not about to spend a lot of time figuring out the logistics of a dry house. On a side question, Denver Distiller you guys giving any tours during the ADI show week?

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Well, all I can say is ignore what the other breweries tell you, and try and secure farmers on your own. You're adding a cost to your production that simply shouldn't be a cost. It's worth the phone calls and then some.

No, we're not giving tours. We're a small shop and can't shut down production to handle them.

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