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Spent Grain Dewatering

I found this and wonder if there maybe a company making a small version for maybe a craft distillery type operation...

Spent Grain Belt Filter Press @ Tradekey

Read that it can take fully saturated grains down to less than 50% moisture in a single pass saving in regained mash may pay for one of these in a small size...

Video of a huge unit in operation..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep3_pM9I578

I was doing stinkin thinkin... nothing more

happy stillin,

FS

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Comments

  • hello we press fruit on a belt press this works like your video

  • Somewhere I've seen a different approach - it was an in-line multi-compartment press - operated like a joined series of horizontal cider presses - a cider press arrangement may be more appropriate/do-able for a craft distillery but returns would be also be small on a small scale operation

  • edited December 2015

    Wonder if one of these would work for spent grain...? Is a screw press small one does 1/2 ton per hour...

    Electric Fruit Juice Press Machine for sale @ Alibaba

  • you will need some form of membrane to allow water through, but not the grain, it needs to move away as it works or it will fill up and clog, the presses have a belt cleaning. the smallest belt press is 500kg/hour you might find a second hand one

  • edited December 2015

    Checkout the HEBS system from IDD.

    I've seen it in action in 2 breweries here in Sydney (Rocks & young henries). Great bit of kit.

    Young henries use it for their vodka and whiskey mash as well as their beers

  • edited December 2015

    I've been talking to a few companies about a filter press for dewatering (same as the HEBS approach). They are pretty expensive, probably the most expensive part of that full kit. On the pre-ferment side, you need to have a sanitary system, which pushes the price even higher. On the post-distillation side, you can get away with a more typical industrial setup. Another example from the brewing side is the Meura Micro.

  • I am liking the calandria used to boil the wort... How would that work in a still boiler? here is a homebrew scale one: Calandria for Home Brewers (PDF)

  • I am about to start my bourbon runs for the year, and am looking for a more efficient way to dewater the spent grains. I only do 10 or 12 bourbon washes a year but there has to be a better way. I mash 75 pounds at a time. First I tried the sieve method, then I actually tried the mop wringer, my latest method is the hydraulic press, which for me is the most efficient method so far, but there has to be a better system that won't break the bank. Maybe a DIY expelled or extruder or some form of belt filter press or "V" belt press. Although, I want to stay on the hobby scale so the mechanism will fit in the shed. Any suggestions. Someone has to have a better system

  • Used Residential washing machine on spin cycle??

    If you could get the machine clean enough it would still be a bear to get the grains out though.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • wouldn't be too hard to build a centrifuge cheaply

  • edited January 2016

    @bachman - What's your mash bill?

    We've found that beta-glucanase during mashing significantly improves ability to dewater a bourbon mash, especially with wheat or rye, even malted. It makes any method work better, in fact, it makes straining in a paint strainer back almost tolerable.

    Pick some up from Pint - enzymash.com, where it goes under the name of Sebflo-TL. Plenty others sell it under different names, ex. Viscobuster (White Labs), etc.

    Honestly, best approach is the paint strainer bag with small volumes, other than digging a pit in your garden, distilling on the grain, and just dumping the whole lot into the pit.

    Gets really interesting at 1000 pounds a batch.

  • @Smaug ,I like the washing machine idea although I don't want my shed to look like butchs on AD @Johnboy , I also like the centrifuge idea, I am not sure if my metalworking skills are up to it. I may have to look at that a little harder @grim, my mash bill is 50#corn,15#rye,10#barley. As for enzymes, I use pints HTL and GL, I guess I need to get some TL from him. Hopefully someday I can play with the big boys and do 1000# batches. Thanks for the help

  • edited January 2016

    Do not bother trying to make a centrifuge, unless you are a machinist by trade and work in a shop with a million dollars worth of computer controlled mills. To get them to work correctly you are talking about some real RPM, otherwise it's going to be no better than squeezing by hand. Cleaning the thing every time you use it is going to be a massive pain in the ass.

    We've gone down numerous routes to attempt to not need to spend $10,000 to separate grain.

    Our best prototype to date is a shaker table, I'll post some video the next time we separate, but it's essentially a big steel table inside a big poly hopper with a 1/2hp vibratory shaker. This is essentially an augmented gravity drain. Corn must be kept on the coarse side. If you are grinding to a flour, there is nothing that's going to work that doesn't cost $10k, except a $3 paint strainer bag.

  • washing machine sounds perfect for your size, but I would use brand new, and custom wire with switches the couple 'cycles' you would use... Hard to get a used one clean.... but if you did dissassemble completely and clean, you could fab up a mount bolted to a concrete floor and eliminate the suspension system, reducing the chance of sharting up the whole room...

  • Isn't there a video somewhere of a washing machine attempt that goes horribly wrong?

  • I think it would be possible to skin a machine back to expose the bones and then reconstruct and beef up to more adequately cope.

    Like a cross between a portable cement mixer and a butchered up washing machine.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • edited January 2016

    @grim, I have looked at the vibrating sieve and wasn't sure how it would work, may have to revisit the idea.

    @CothermanDistilling, I am a little concerned about the washing machine idea after seeing Butchers post, although he did strip down the machine and didn't bolt it to the floor.

    @FloridaCracker, if you look for butch Coolidge on AD, his machine goes terribly wrong and got hurt pretty bad.

  • edited January 2016

    Dewatering centrifuge a wholly different design, they are generally faster, at least 5x, and sometimes more, use significantly smaller bowls, and the bowls tend to be machined out of stainless and hung by multiple bearings. They also tend to be continuous, not batch, and have mechanisms to keep the material evenly balanced as it works through the bowl. They are also in very heavy housings, so if the bowl explodes, you won't get killed. They are precision machines, even 20 year old used Alfa Laval units sell for $20,000+.

    Dewatering in a washing machine will likely yield no better performance than squeezing by hand. It's not fast enough, and there isn't enough movement of the material through the process.

    Heck, if I were going got play with this, I'd consider trying to modify a commercial centrifugal juicer first, and use it as a continuous machine. It's already stainless, sanitary, and made to be easy to clean, not to mention tiny in comparison. You'd need to balance the in-feed speed accordingly, and perhaps make sure that your mash is thoroughly mixed and homogenous before feeding in (dropping a big glop into a 15,000 rpm rotating bowl probably not a good idea.

    image

    The other option are those masticating juicers that are all the rage now. They crush and squeeze, and run significantly slower. Probably significantly more immune to in feed. And if you are really concerned about adding oxygen - probably better approach than centrifugal - since my countertop Breville makes very foamy juice.

    image

    Or, just googling a bit - whatever the hell a "wheat grass juicer" is, it looks like absolutely the right idea - masticating juicer made for high fiber content, need to have some serious compression to juice grass. Look at the screw on this sucker, this is EXACTLY the same as used in a dewatering screw press like the Vincent units.

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  • edited January 2016

    Someone must have tried this already. I would imagine barley hulls might really muck up the screen on the centrifugal, juicing on my Breville sometimes requires a screen cleaning. If the masticating approach works well, you could probably scale it up relatively easily, especially since it appears to be a kind of self-cleaning approach.

  • edited January 2016

    Industrial screw press for comparison.

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  • Wife saw the computer screen, she says if I try to use her juicer she will divorce me.

  • It probably just a threat.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • "PROBABLY" maybe a key word in Smaug's post.... :D

  • edited January 2016

    @grim, that might be an opportunity. Every time my wife threatens to divorce me I threaten to take her up on the offer and try the used market.

  • edited January 2016

    Yeah don't bother with a centrifugal juicer. It doesn't even remotely produce dry grain, and the output is completely foam. High speed is worse. Screen clogs very quickly. I need to clean this up quick.

  • edited January 2016

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  • So you have a secret YouTube channel that your wife doesn't know about?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

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