Filtering Corn Mash through a Spent Grain Bed

FA20driver

Anyone try to do this on a "micro-level"? I recently tried it out pumping about 500 lbs of a gelatinized corn mash over 500 lbs of a freshly spent grain bed with another 50 lbs of rice hulls mixed in at transfer. Took all night for the runoff to pump over to the fermenter, but thanks to an automatic grant pump, I guess I can say it was a success. The mash had quite a bit of lacto growing by the time I pitched the yeast, but that could be a good thing. Will know once I run it.

Considering that I am currently limited by my electric still, this is likely the cheapest way to be able to run a corn/bourbon mash in a grain out fashion without spending a considerable amount of $$ on some sort of press.

I used the typical SEBStar and SEBAmyl to convert the corn. I recently bought SEBFlo to see if it might help the corn filter faster next time. I used corn meal, thinking it was the only way to get it through a pump from my mix tank to the mash tun.

I can't help but think that the corn whiskey will be a bit less "corny" having not fermented on the grain, but we shall see. The overnight "conditioning" of the corn mash will definitely give it a house flavor. We grow some good lacto here at the brewery, as has been proven by a few sour batches of beer over the past several years...

punkin

Someone posted on one of the forums the other day that they had success with intial corn mash filtering using geotextile.

It sounded a great solution to me, simple and easy to line a drum with one or two layers and pump into it?

grim

Geotextile is a disaster, tried it, plugs up easily and is nearly impossible to clean. The little ribbons of nylon or whatever that stuff is traps the mash in the weave. A day later it's an absolute stinking mess.

grim

We have great success with # 4 stainless mesh/fabric.

We separate post distillation, but we can get a relatively good separation. It's key to keep the corn crack a bit on the larger side, as the outer corn skin and malt husk forms a bed.

It's absolutely huge spacing, and does pass solids. If you are separating pre-distillation, you will absolutely need to let the mash settle, as a good portion of small particulate will pass. Separation is significantly faster the higher the temperature. We're now separating near boiling.

It's 0.187 spacing on the stainless fabric weave, like I said, monstrous. We have it almost down to a science, about 1.5hr to separate 265g mash. Easy to spray down and clean.

grim

Looks something like this

Smaug

Your nails are beautiful.....who does them for you? :)

Wow, so 4.7 mm? That's encouraging. Are you generally satisfied with your conversion? Are are doubling up on enzymes or anything like that to help ?