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Molasses wash pH and stuck fermentations

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  • Yeah ya cant trust the analysis fer shit.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • edited February 2019

    There's a local guy with a nice trailer, he used to transport dairy.

    Always wondered if it would be worth our while to send a trailer down to Louisiana and fill it up, drive back, park it out back. Gotta be 5000-6000 gallons, although probably not rated to haul the high SG of molasses full. Would make 50-60 barrels of rum.

  • how close are you to a rail yard, LOL...

  • a little video showing our latest procedure for prepping and fermenting 1000L batch of molasses wash and how we do additions, temp control, and circulation using Tilt Hydrometers and BruControl Software

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wup88Uddgs

  • @CothermanDistilling i want to thank you for taking time out of your day to share videos like this with everyone. It really is helpful to see the details of other folks operations and how they’ve tied it together with all those small connecting parts.

    I have a question about your steam eductor. What size are you using and does the steam add an appreciable amount of water to the molasses or medium it is heating?

    Do you use the eductor for anything else?

    Have you discussed the design and fab of your steam boiler anywhere? It looks a great setup from the videos.

    Thanks, Steve

  • Along the same lines as Steve above, I’ve read the posts from testing prior to the hard piping upgrade. Would you be able to provide images of how you hard piped the eductor? I’m envisioning the image from I think HD with the copper hard piped steam ring for mashing corn in a 55 gallon poly drum (foggy memory) using unions to adjust for height.

  • 1/4",3/8",1/2",3/4",1",1.5" Stainless Steel venturi eductor nozzle,tank eductor water nozzle @ AliExpress

    I use the 3/8" on and it is only a couple PSI with 3x 5500w elements, the $7.45 1/4" one can handle 10kw without going over 15psi (you will find pressure will increase with immersion depth also!)

    It takes maybe 1 gal to heat 100gal... 100 degrees... higher pressure means less water loss, but it is higher pressure, and I like my 5psi...

    you can use it for grain too, you might be able to use it for distilling with a high enough PSI so you are not adding too much water... all I use it for is molasses at the moment

    search on here for unikeggle or uni-keggle I have been pushing it for years, and think it would be a great product to have made... with a dragon logo on it... destription: 3x 2" ferrules for elements, 1x 1.5" long ferrule for racking arm, 8" ferrule on top, 2" ferrule at angle on top, and a 2" for the temp sensor/fill/float

  • @gixxerpilot750 said: Along the same lines as Steve above, I’ve read the posts from testing prior to the hard piping upgrade. Would you be able to provide images of how you hard piped the eductor? I’m envisioning the image from I think HD with the copper hard piped steam ring for mashing corn in a 55 gallon poly drum (foggy memory) using unions to adjust for height.

    the eductor is just piped with SS tubing, it has 3/8" pipe thread, I went to an adapter to 3/4" TC, a TC elbow, a long custom 2" TC pipe, a 90, a 45, and then to black rubber hose.. and you can see it at the 00:35 second mark in the video...

    and the prior video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D46LLXgoH6c

  • I love the unikeggle. I’ve been hoarding found kegs for a while now with one allocated for that duty. I wasn’t sure if it was a 6” or 8” ferrule welded on tho.

    I’m interested to know what the pressure relief system is for the steam. Are there any secondary safeties installed?

  • edited April 2019

    He has a PRV mounted top dead center.

    Any idea how many BTUs you can generate @CothermanDistilling ?

    What pressure gives you the most agitation?

    How long till your "steam generator " runs dry at that prefered pressure?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • 1 bar PRV, it is 3x5500w, 16.5kw which is about 1.5 Boiler HP, so 56kbtu according to an online calculator...

    I am sure higher pressure would give more agitation with less water loss... but I don't have any control other than off and on... this is with the 3/8" eductor, I can run about 2 full hours before the upper element is in danger of not being completely submerged...

    The 1/4" one I have I think will give 8-10psi with a single 9kw 3-phase element and a side-mounted float/fill chamber more psi means more energy per volume of steam, but not that much more..

    Also, you want distilled/di water, the buildup of scale is pretty quick... I use the water from my AC condenser, but a small RO/DI would probably be easier... a very light whitish deposit, but just a light acid like star-san or saniclean takes it off

  • OK, no pics, but we built a holder for my steam eductor want to hold it in steady in my 620L Letina. I put it on my 2500lb scale, filled it with 400Kg Molasses and let it rip... set an alarm for 1 hour and shut it down to inspect, it was at 17, but I did not think it was uniform, it had gained 24Kg , so 24 liters). I still had more than 3" above the top element, so I know I can go to about a 36KG gain and then I would have to cut back to 11Kw and could easily go another 20KG of water... I added a couple gallons to be safe, and fired it up and ran till 190, and you hear the whole mess change sound, just like making a cappuccino... I let it cook for an hour, then added water to 650Kg, added acid and chems stired and pumped to whirlpool(need a bigger mixer, the one for the 50gal not big enough... I might need to just bite the bullet and buy a regulation mash cooker and ladder HX....

  • Is anyone recirculating their rum wash during fermentation? Wondering what your setup is, particularly the pump, I am using a very small centrifugal pump and if the ferment goes to quick, the CO2 buildup outstrips the off-gassing and the pump cavitates. With really careful plumbing it continues to pump, but lots of foam, and the heat transfer into(out of)the foam is lower than liquid, and the wash temp creeps up too high...

  • Could you put a small submersible pump (ala 12v bilge pump) right in there or do you think it would have the same issues?

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • from a hydraulic standpoint, that would really work great... zero inlet restriction.... it is a 1200L plastic conical, so logistically it would be tough though.. I am taking from the racking arm, and thinking it's slight restriction along with the impeller action.

    I may try a centrifugal pump with the impeller trimmed down a bunch, and my try my gear pump or peristaltic, but both are probably far too small, I think I need a Flexible impeller pump... might be worth testing with a cheapie, but it has to run for 3 days at a time...

  • edited June 2019

    Immersible pumps are generally designed to lose waste heat to the liquid they are immersed in.

    If your ferments run cool, it could be beneficial, but if your ferments run hot, or need cooling, it's counterproductive.

    Immersion pumps generally look really small for their flow rates, it's because they generally aren't so concerned with heat, because they are immersed in coolant.

    A small 300 watt immersion heater is sufficient to keep my rum ferment temps in-line in the colder winter months. That's 300 watts in 530 gallons. You would think, totally worthless, right? Nope, it's plenty to hold mid-80s to completion. Will it warm up a stalling, cool ferment? No, but that ain't the point.

    So keep that in mind when looking at a big immersion pump.

    Cotherman - we've got an external agitator. We run it during rum ferments, but it only runs occasionally. We might run it for 15 minutes every day, once active fermentation begins to slow and yeast begin to fall. I think the big benefit is to keep the yeast active and in contact with the wash. Agitate too much, in an open fermenter - and you'll be adding too much oxygen. That means you are going to favor yeast biomass growth, and your ferments are more like yeast propagators.

  • I'd run an external circ. pump on a timer, maybe 2-3 minutes an hour or something. Don't pull from the absolute bottom, as your impeller will shred yeast. I'd probably start on day 3 or 4. No sense on day 1 or 2, the circulation provided by the co2 is usually more than sufficient to keep the yeast well suspended and rolling.

  • The circulation is needed on day 1 and 2 due to the heat generated, we are trying to keep it under 90-91F... at the speed it goes, there is no day 4 of fermentation and barely any day 3... it can drop 60 points in less than 24 hours.. 9% in less than 3 days..... the rest of the week is settling before distillation... we are running pump continuously because the heat concentrates at the top of the fermenter. We have good luck with the process, which is basically Arroyo's "Ethanol Fermentation of Blackstrap molasses":

    They are also connected to a circulating pump S that draws the fermenting liquid from a point near the bottom of the fermenter and circulates it through a cooler T, delivering the cooled mash at the top of the fermenter. The cooler is situated outside the fermenters, and one such cooler T can take care of three or more fermenters Q. This device Is used to lower the temperature of the fermenting liquid whenever it becomes necessary. Fermentation temperatures are thus rigorously controlled between 28 degrees C. and 30 degrees C.

    Just looking to have the huge amount of CO2 dissolved not interfere with the pumping... (if I put a drill mortar mixer in the fermenter and churn it and have a spray bottle of fermcap handy, the problem dissipates for 15 minutes or so.) I am using translucent silicone tubing out of the HX and can see the rum wash become very foamy when the CO2 is saturated... I am thinking that a flexible impeller will be great, but it will have to work at a slow speed. We do pull from racking arm because, even though we settle, there are still non-fermentable solids suspended that we like to let settle

  • edited June 2019

    Bigger pump head, slower rotation.

    CO2 tank and a solenoid? Couple of seconds will get the tank rolling.

  • I'm with you on the heat buildup. I have a damn hard time keeping it under 95 during the summer (10 months). It's like a fusion reactor with the heat buildup once the yeast start kicking ass.

    FC

  • I like the CO2 idea... ...Anyone remember Figgin's mixer that used a pulse of gas in the side of the tank? It was like a little Tsunami creator in the tank... Here is Rusty demonstrating it back in march of 2012 during a distilling seminar

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  • The latest iteration of my rum ferment temp control setup explained:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1tqiHBAl_I

  • Elegant, cost effective way to add cooling capacity to a non-jacket tank.

  • We had some setbacks in yield and flavor, mainly, I believe due to lack of yeast cell count/health.... I also want to tweak our molasses prep procedure soI made up a chart and started doing some test settlings and fermentations..

    Once this round is done, I will focus on re-pitching rates and re-awakening of dormant yeast collections from previous batches..

    and shot a little video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPSbjaorg2Y

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  • That chiller is the shit Mike. This time of year I have a hell of a time keeping my temps down.

    FC

  • Light at the end of the tunnel.. series chillers have the fittings brazed on, Temp Control dialed in with option to swutch between chiller or just HX and tote of water, and a simple but working yeast growing procedure (5L stirplate/50Lpump recirculate), and a whopping 20% increase in fermentables by doing shorter settling, but adding a 2nd settling on the 'sludge' to make what Arroyo refers to as 'sweet water'.. I might be squeezing a proof gallon out of every 20Lb of molasses if this strips like I think it will...

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  • Mike, can you give a little explanation for the second settling and sweet water?

    FC

  • Heat the molasses with HX, direct steam, or indirect steam. Measure 5g/Kg of citric acid, g/Kg of ammonium phosphate(spray grade so it dissolves), and .8g/Kg of calcium monophosphate and add those to enough dilution water to double the volume. After molasses was at 80C(176) for an hour to kill the bugs, add treated water (big pump stirs well) Stir really good and cool this for 6 hours. Rack off 75-80% the clear black settled 'thick mash' into a clean, sanitized, covered container to cool further. In the container with the settled sludge, add good water to bring up to original level again, but do not disturb the sludge (I pump in via racking arm horizontally to get spinning motion (definitely do NOT re-mix the sludge into solution!) Let settle for 6-24 hours. Rack this 'sweet water' into the fermenter, mix, take brix reading (mine was 10 brix) . Add half of the cooled 'thick mash, mix, take brix reading (mine was 20), pitch yeast... add more than half of the 'thick mash' that is left when it is down to 2/3-3/4 (~12 hours), and the final remainder 6 hours later...

    Here is a photo of slowly added water to the sludge that makes the sweet water next to one where it was just dumped in... it may be clear, but it has sugar in it and the 2nd settling of sludge is more compact.

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  • Weekend update.. it did not ferment as low as i thought, still good but not phenomenal. I had a couple of sudden 10 point rises in the gravity a few hours after stopping the circulation pump, and for the life of me could not understand what happened... I took a sample this morning and it was closer to 1.058 on a hydrometer.. I started thinking that maybe a chunk of crud must have fallen off the floating tilt hydtometer?? I pulled it out, cleaned the crud off and put it back in and it read 1.057.. so at a 80 point, or 20 brix ferment, so pretty happy... will run today or tomorrow and get yield numbers... looking for 25lbs or less to make a Proof-Gallon

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  • Holy added steps Batman!

    Thanks for the explanation. Sounds like you should recoup a measurable amount of wash that would normally be discarded.

    FC

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