Today in the Shed

RobertS

I hope F-2 was a good enough friend to hold F-1's hair back while it barfed that up.

grim

No puked all over F-2 too. Had to scrub down the entire floor.

Moral of the story - don't f@ck with the PLC agitator control and not baby sit it after you make the change. Mixer didn't run on preset interval, heavy cap formed, and the co2 dumped the cap right off the top.

Barely no liquid loss, surprisingly, but lost about 500-600 pounds of grain off the top.

No big loss, the mash efficiency was astronomical so there was little additional conversion/saccharificiation expected.

zymurgybob

Thanks to everybody out there who keeps refreshing my reluctance to get involved with rye. Blessings be with thee,

CothermanDistilling

@grim said: ... Barely no liquid loss, surprisingly, but lost about 500-600 pounds of grain off the top.

No big loss, the mash efficiency was astronomical so there was little additional conversion/saccharificiation expected.

So you found that new liquid solid separation we have been looking for?

grim

You know, if you had a loose screen at the bottom of the tank, I bet you could pull it up and lift the heavy cap off as a block.

dad

What do you mean you lost it? You didn't shovel that back on top?

grim

Why bother? My SG indicated nearly 100% efficiency. The risk of infection with some dirty floor microbes outweighs any minimal gain in yield.

Besides, you see how high that is? Hell no.

grim

Alright the rye is delicious. I bought the rest of the silo, 35,000 pounds.

Fml.

punkin

Hooooeee!

You shop the way i shop.

grim

I hate rye, puked, first time in 2 years. Started the first run at 5am, did 2 back to back. Can’t clean it, quitting time.

Clogged 5 caps, need to break down the column.

Fml.

punkin

Well your committed to it for a while now. #:-S

Unsensibel

Cedar leaf essential oil extraction.

A friend is making a batch of soap.

kimbodious

thanks Unsensibel, the pic of that setup brought a big smile for this old Lab Rat!

Kapea

@Unsensibel said: Cedar leaf essential oil extraction.

A friend is making a batch of soap.

Your friend is making fragrence for scenting a batch of soap.

zymurgybob

That setup sure looks slicker than my setup that used a re-purposed gin essence still, and a mason jar insulated with a boot sock. Worked, tho.

Unsensibel

@kapea I'm making the essential oil, he the soap. Wanted to do some oils anyhow that aren't dissolved in ethanol....

Unsensibel

@zymurgybob thinking about replacing the condenser as the coil doesn't seem to be able to keep up with a full bore flame. Lots of sputtering

CothermanDistilling

that condenser is awesome, just throw some ice cubes in your water... maybe bigger ID hose and a bigger pump... I have the straight through condenser maybe calculate your heat you are putting in too(by evaporation rate), you may be just over-driving the whole system...

Oh, I put a wad of stainless scrubbie inside about where the green clamp is on your parrot and it helped a lot too!

Kapea

What is the botanical?

grim

In the bed, not shed. Flu, Bronchitis, now Pneumonia. Thought I was going to end up in the hospital last night.

Get your flu shot, don’t screw around. It’s not going to be a good year for flu. Came on nasty and fast, and won’t go away, even with anti virals. Week and a half behind in the shed.

Kapea

Half the people I was around in Portland last week were coughing, sneezing, and sniffling. Then I thought for sure I'd get sick after being closed up in a metal tube at 35,000 ft. with sick people for hours on end as well. Been home for five days. So far I'm good.

Get well soon @grim. It sucks being sick on Thanksgiving.

grim

Same thing, flew over to Colorado and back last week, connections, 4 flights. I'm sure I picked this up on a plane.

EZiTasting

@grim - hope you get better soon!

Should look in to Chiropractic adjustments. Since we’ve been doing it regularly (at least once a month) none of us have been sick! My son and Wife both have(d) serious asthma and spent at least one week in hospital over the Christmas holidays (its hot where we are) with near pneumonia like infections...
Haven’t had that, nor any illness of any seriousness in nearly 4 years!

I’d imagine you have sufficient alcohol to neutralize anything else ;)

Dreamer

Reviving this cracker of a thread, as a late comer I have enjoyed reading all 58 pages of it....

Today in the shed I put together this little pair of shiny things. It’s not SD, I bought second hand and beggars can’t be choosers, but it will be driven by a SD controller when I finish building it, and it’s whole reason for existence is to feed the SD gin basket.

Now to work out how to drive it.

I have to say I was pretty happy with the quality, until I compared it to the SD gin basket. The SD gear is absolutely next level quality. If anyone reads this who is looking at other gear and thinks it is all the same I can tell you it is 100% not the SD gear is absolutely a cut above.

punkin

They copied our first edition caps and we have moved on 3 or 4 times in development. Most people will benefit from upgrading the caps at least to our latest bubble caps and downcomers but will really benefit by upgrading the plates and going to ProCaps.

zymurgybob

This week we got a big shipment of wine that was unsalable by reason of filter failure, but the odd suspended particle is no problem for a gas-fired potstiller. Applying our multiple-pass stilling procedure, we ran a test batch and have a lovely 142-proof viognier eau de vie with good rich flavor. I'm hoping it'll retain most of that flavor when we proof it to 100 proof.

We've still got another maybe 35 cases of the viognier, and then we can start on the semillion and gevurtztraminer. I'm really chuffed about this.

CothermanDistilling

a great base for some absinthe ;-)

Smaug

Made my mouth water just reading that ZB.

grim

You had me at gevurtztraminer :x

zymurgybob

The first craft distiller on the island was making clean neutral from unwanted wine with a really clever continuous still, but I'm happy with all that dirty, nasty, grape flavor. I just hope I'm able to get the good flavor from the other wines.

Because such unwanted wine is unpredictable, we'll just market the brandy (eau de vie, really) like wine. "Here's what this batch is, and when it's gone it's gone forever." I'm lovin' this.