Undersized cooling system for Mash run

[MG Thermal Consulting]

I recently received a call from a new distiller that purchased a chiller and reservoir tank to go along with fermenters and mash cooker from a equipment distributor.

Problems arose when he tried to cool his mash run of 1000 gal with a 3 HP chiller and 1000 gal reservoir. A shortfall of many Btu's.

He is able to reduce temperature of mash 34 degrees F in an hour (the easy part). For this run he will probably have to dump in a sizable amount of ice into his reservoir to get this run chilled.

A 1000 Gal mash tun will usually need 15-20 ton chiller with a sizable reservoir larger than the volume of the mash run size and some cases 30 ton or larger chillers if any of the stills are running or if many fermenters are being temperature controlled.

There are various methods to mitigate the size of the chiller somewhat (a size or two) by reclaiming heat from the hot return chilled water, but these have to be well thought out and planned for.

For all new distillers, please find out what some of your associates are using for cooling size of mash tuns or contact me and I will pass along some names of distillers to discuss the type system I supplied them.

I have new and reused chillers, drycoolers, heat exchangers and pumps that can be sized together for mash cooling, still cooling and temperature control of fermenters and I will consult for types of thermal solutions for distilleries.

This forum is a great place to gather enough information to be not caught in a similar situation.