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In this Discussion
- Bolverk January 20
- Bomber1004 May 2022
- captainshooch October 2022
- CothermanDistilling January 2023
- crozdog November 2022
- DonMateo January 20
- Drywall_Dan July 2022
- grim September 2023
- jbierling January 2023
- lowball July 2022
- Moonshine September 2023
- MotherOfDragon November 2022
- punkin January 20
- richard April 2022
- Smaug January 2023
- Unsensibel April 2022
Comments
White rum is so underated. It's what i drank most when i was distilling. 1/3rd OP rum, 1/3rd fruit juice and 1/3rd lemonade make up one big batch of trouble.
Skaal
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
Agreed
White Rum and Aged Rum are completely different spirits in my book. One is absolutely NOT a lesser version of the other. Thinking of it in comparison of new make whiskey to aged whiskey is entirely incorrect, in fact some of my most favorite rums are white rums. The cocktail scene would be a sad sad place without white rums.
I havent made any rum yet but I like the fact its very cheap to make. Its hard to compete with the big guys in making rum, though. Not such a market for Rum where I live. My mate in the DR though.
The latest news is I finally got my title transfer so the shed is mine, after waiting 10 months. In 2 weeks I will have the paper and I can submit for the Building approval for the expansion. My control panels are getting repaired so they can handle 40 amps and 9 kw elements. And I still have problems with cooling, 3000l/hour doesnt cut it even with 11,000 l reservoir. I should just build a pool at my distillery.
Well here is the new panels set up with 63A connectors and 12mm silicone insulated high temp cable for the 9kW elements.
What do the connectors look like? What do the red rimmed knobs do?
Those are 63 amp triphase connectors. The red rimmed nobs are caps that close shut when you dont have the connector plug in them. I am not at my shed today so I cant take photo but I will do so tomorrow.
IEC 60309
Slick
The big lesson for the newbies here is figure out what the biggest elements you can get and then size your system accordingly. Unfortunately i thought i would be using 5kw elements that would draw 20 amps. So panels and circuits with 32 amp cicuits and breakers were fine. And theybwere great until I bought 9kw elements. I plugged three into one panel and cranked them up to the maximum and fried two circuitd and solid state relays ad they got up to 38 amps pretty fast. So i had to get my neighbor who runs an electrical panel export business to come along. He redid my main 3 equipment panel and the main board
The final result i am happy with but it cost me double. I think that in distilling, like in mining projects, people look at the big piece of gear, in this case the big still and think thats what makes it run. The truth is its the electrical control panel and the cooling pumps that allow it to run.
It is true that people are mostly interested in the things that are the least important.
Distillery up the road just put in electric patio heaters, and commented to me that the electric install was double the cost of the heaters, which was not cheap...
And another friend wants a 400A service installed for his continuous, I referred him to an electrician friend who told us that the 400A meter boxes (service entrance meter enclosure) were made of unobtanium, and now run over $5000...
Well I just had a 260 amp breaker put into my incoming service pillar and that was $900 bucks. The truth is I resized it to go with the largest elements I could get. But its done. I will post a foto of the new board set up. My mates sparkies did a great job. I am going to need a 260 amp service entrance meter from the local utility. I am not looking forward to it.
Here is the plug.
Before the pandemic, the distillery up the road had 380/460 put in for a steam boiler and chiller for his 2000L system, and he elec co paid for it.. The steam boiler is really small, I really want the same thing, and he says the electric bill is really cheap, $400/mo using it a lot.. commercial elec rates in the US are a lot like pricing airline tickets, pure magic...
Yes well I am having dual entries and exists put in the top of my 1300l boiler so that I can convert it to steam when I am up and running. Right now energy doesnt cost a lot and I am going to put in 5 x 300l solar hot water heaters to save on energy on the heat up time. And later put in 30kw of solar panels to further shave down my power bills. But first I have to put the extension on the back so I can get my license. Thanks for the comment on the steam boiler. The only issue I have with that is to get that to work here you need high pressure steam lines and the approval process for that is really difficult. Immersion elements are the fastest.
Michael I dont see how an electric fired steam boiler is going to help you unless you are pushing steam to multiple locations. Ah,,,your stripper! Ok I get it.
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
All about the stripper! It may not be in use for another year, but the oogling of the giant copper column by customers on tours of how we do things have definitely translated into bottle sales, so it is slowly paying for itself just by sitting there... I may be starting it up with 3HP created by 2 1.5HP keggles in parallel, using a total of 6x 5.5kw-9kw elements..
460/480 if you’ve got it means access to cheaper electric boilers. There is always a decent sized Sussman on eBay for a couple of grand. You can even find stainless clean steam units for 5-7k, which are perfect for direct steam injection.
@CothermanDistilling 6/ 15kw elements gets you just a bit more than 300,000 BTUs. That column by itself should run nicely on that. Maybe not get the full 350 gph processing speed but darn close.
The math we have been using says 200 gallons an hour but Gamblers Bay and Boundry Oak have both done better than expected.
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
that is what the neighbor up the street has... it is awesome, but a lot of hoops that I will tackle later
@smaug - 9kw is probably the max for fitting in the keggles, and also my 200A service... I have already melted one meter to the 7-pin 3-phase meter socket and made the Duke boys unhappy.... given my situation of beign space limited in downtown where every inch of 'butts in seats with a drink in their hand' is the priority, I will test and tune with a 'non-boiler' at 3 5.5 kw first, if that can't make it run, I will double up... that is also why I started with the open area of an 8" in the 12" column....
I’ve been dying to load a couple elements into a 8” spool I have to see if I can just run my steam jacket still using electric (vs the big boiler) once we’ve heated up. I have a hunch I can get better input power control by adjusting power input as opposed to adjusting steam flow.
Will also let me run full bore on mashing without playing the balancing act between two steam kettles.
I can’t imagine I’d need any more than 10-15kw.
Shoot @CothermanDistilling,,dunno why I thought you had a 400 amp service?
Maybe that's next on your progression?
@grim, yeah FloridaCracker acquired a commercial kettle a few years ago and cut in a ferrule to attach a spool set up for elements. Remember?
He tried using an existing, smaller ferrule but it didn't allow for 2 way traffic flow. Pressure generated from the spool didn't allow for any condensate return. The result was he smoked his elements dryfire style.
So he retrofitted for a 4" and worked great once brought to temp.
I agree that once brought to temp you should bop along nicely and imo will absolutely have more precision control.
Also, sorry DonMateo for derailing your thread. Things have been so slow around here the past few months that seems like your thread is what is generating the most dialog,,,,,,not withstanding the instances when you and Richard start to disembowel each other,,,,,,lol.
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
@smaug. No worries mate. I started this thread so that people who read this can gain the benefit of the lessons learned in doing this and restoring a shed. One thing that I was thinking of doing is starting another thread about how much it costs to set up a distillery. I have really appreciated the discussion on running a BM still using steam generation. Its definitely something that I want to do. I should have some more progress fotos in a month or so. In 4 weeks I put in for the building approval for renovation of my shed. I need a bottling room and barrel room for my license.
As for @richard. I am sure if we ever sat down after taking the piss out of each other for a while we would probably have a few drinks. South Africans and Aussie dont mix well. Over the I have met hundreds of South Africans but I only have 3 that are my mates. They are in general though, very very good engineers. And I am sure that @richard is like that too.
OK 260 amp breaker at the street pillar.
New cooling pump set up.
Photo of pumps
New and final panel configuration.
On the pumps your probably thinking why 3 and not 1 with a vfd? We thats a good question but anyway. The big one if for when i get my big stripping still and i jave to knock down 40kw of energy. The medium sized pump is for running the spirit still. And i put in the third for when I need low volume recirculation but with low watts and enrgy consumption. Ie cooling water to my big 1300l fermenters. The small pump is only 100watts consumption, the medium one is 500 wats and the large pump is 1.5kw.