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In this Discussion
- CothermanDistilling November 2019
- crozdog November 2019
- DonMateo July 2023
- Fiji_Spirits August 2023
- FloridaCracker September 2019
- GD50 August 2019
- gixxerpilot750 April 2019
- grim August 2023
- JayTee November 2018
- lowball November 2018
- punkin September 2019
- Raoul_Duke February 2018
- richard July 2023
- Sam October 2019
- Smaug August 2023
- Unsensibel September 2019
- zymurgybob October 2019
Comments
@FloridaCracker how much Ammonium Sulfate & Epsom salts do you use?
1 cup of Am Sulf ( 1/2 at beginning and 1/2 24 hours later. 4 TBSP of Epsom at beginning. Get ready for a rip-roaring ferment!
FC
how many grams per kilogram of molasses you recon... 5 grams per kilo is 0.5%, which is what I use... 2 kilograms in 400KG just picked up 4 50lb bags at Rural King for $12.99 each, enough for a year..
Oh, and mix them with water, if you put them straight in the molasses, they may never dissolve... 2 kilos goes in 4 gallons easy...
cheers guys
OOpsss. Sorry guys, I use DAP, diammonium phosphate NOT ammonium sulfate. I buy it a few pounds at a time off of Amazon.
Sorry for any confusion.
Cotherman, my 50 gallon wash consists of 12 gallons of molasses, 12 gallons of backset, 25lbs of granular sugar and the previously mentioned nutes (using DAP not am sulf).
I've always used DAP and wonder, since I'm not a chemistry whiz, what the difference is between it and AmSulf and how the yeast treats each differently?
I switched from all molasses to using some sugar. I was using twice the amount of molasses and zero sugar but using the sugar has made things "easier". It costs a little more but in my small operation, it is negligible. I dissolve everything other than the molasses with filtered water before they go in the tank. The molasses I mix 50/50 with hot backset from the previous run and let it settle for a few days.
I would really like to use 100% refiners grade molasses but availability and or price are likely to make it a pipe dream.
On a different note, I'm waiting on my latest run to air out and then I'm gonna try the coffee and cacao again. Not in the GB4 but macerating the grinds and nibs.
FC
we found that using a yeast calculator and multi-staged starters helped a lot with the sluggish fermentation of feed grade molasses... for your 50 gallon batch, 5 grams in 5L starter ramped to 20L starter gets you the cell count to make it really take off... comparatively, you need 190g of yeast without a starter... and that will have to wake up... ( I do 5L to 50L for my 1000L )
@FloridaCracker whats the OG at the start with your 50 gallon wash?
Nice calculator. Where do you find it.
Yeast Pitch Rate and Starter Calculator @ Brewer's Friend
Roughly 1.095. Usually finishes about 1.04
FC
^^^ what he said!
After 5 years, we have graduated to stainless fermenters!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHxKHcTLof0
Hope you have enough room to road test the stripper when it gets here?
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
yep, those will supply the feed!
Wow bro! That’s freakin awesome!! I’ve been admiring your conical plastics for some time myself so I can imagine how friggin cool it would be to get stainless with cooling jackets.
Good job on all the hard work and making it happen to get to this level. You’ve done a whole lot with a little!!
How are you inserting the tilt units ??
You got a yeast harvest program in place these days? Clarified molasses and stainless conicals, you'd be crazy not to.
This first time we did it through the manway in front, but probably will drop in from the 4" hopping port in the top that we are also using for recirculation return... It read the tilt without assistance when it was in the lower third, but couldn't make it through the 3 layers of stainless where the jacket is, I am using a ESP32 NodeMCU to read it for BruControl, so I used the wonderful modularity of Stilldragon pieces to assist.. A 2" Sight Glass Lens to the rescue...
We could, and likely will pitch slurry from one active conical to another, but our yeast process that goes from 5g in 5L on a stirplate to 50L in a recirc keggle to the 500L starting size of the 1000L ferment is really kicking ass..
Ferments are 24 hours and done. below is 10am-10am... It was blowing CO2 into the bucket faster than I've ever seen any brewery ever do it. had to switch to a larger blowoff hose, the speed was blowing sanitizer out of the bucket using 5/8" hose.. The 1.5" hose was still blowing like a shop vac outlet..
There is some missing SG data, from tinkering with the Tilt.. and our stepped additions were off in the amounts because we have not calibrated the volume yet... next week one goes on the scale and water added 83.4 lbs at a time and marked using a sight tube. anyway, I switched to a actual probe and got much finer chiller control, because the tilt only reads 1 degree resolution... now I am within a half a degree, 91-91.5, and my 1.5HP lab chiller runs 7 minutes an hour set at 75 degrees.
Once you lock in on a process I can see you not bothering with the tilt, especially with active temp control.
Our ferments run so consistent that I can tell you the SG at any point in time, without even measuring.
agree 100%.... Now thinking of a short 20bbl bright tank and a glazed domestic solar hot water heating panel plumbed to the jacket to heat an entire tote of molasses to 180 over a few days , then pump in water and spin and settle an entire tote of molasses, and fill all 3 fermenters... Then sell a kidney to get a continuous still...
Guy a few towns over has a 3500 gallon Mueller closed milk bulk tank. Sitting in an alley way, but looks brand new.
I’ll get him to sell it to me one of these days.
How many liters in a barrel? This vexes me.
220 to 240 litres. I hope this unvexes you.
31 gal = 1 us beer barrel, so 117.348L... 10bbl is 1170, and supposed to have 10% headspace...
there used to be a Klondike ice cream factory here, and that building has 6000 and 7000 gal tanks that I could get cheap, but they don't look 'pretty', and I want vertical... I need to find a 150bbl bright tank that is going to scrap to put a tanker of molasses in...
Herein lies my vexation. To further the confusion a barrel of oil is 159 liters
To my estimation a “barrel” should probably not be used as a unit of measurement and rather solely as a description.
Very easy to understand how many kegs/fractional kegs of beer can be produced for distribution on the equipment. That’s the only benefit, it’s consistent with a common measure in the industry.
much prefer the metric system. just saying ;)
US moving to the metric system is like Britain going through with Brexit.
let me know when the world switches to metric car rim diameters...