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Hello All,
I am new here and I have gained a lot of valuable information reading on this forum. Thank you!
I am now in the process of setting up a small commercial distillery and have purchased an electrical heated bain-marie still that is soon to be delivered. I will be making Gin and other flavored liquors from very high grade 96% ABV neutral that I purchase from a large industrial factory. I will be using a Gin Basket standing besides the boiler for vapor infusion.
I have 2 questions I hope you can help me to discuss and clarify:
I have been reading a lot about the safety issue that sets the max recommended boiler charge to 40% ABV but I have also read that some commercial distillers like Hendriks use 60% ABV boiler charge. What are your recommendations for boiler charge ABV in a double wall bain-marie boiler?
Regarding the water in the boiler after a run - can this be reused or must this, together with the last part of the spirit, be thrown out?
Please ask questions if something are unclear in my description :-)
Best regards,
Thorbjoern
Comments
How would you be reusing your backset from # 2?
Hi Robert,
I was thinking of changing the botanicals in the Gin basket and adding more neutral to the boiler and doing a second run.
Br,
Thorbjoern
If your gin basket drains to the kettle, you probably don't want to do this. You may find a higher concentration of bitter and other off-flavors in the second run.
When we run gin from neutral, the remaining liquid in the kettle is fairly indistinguishable from water. It contains a small amount of alcohol, and I often considered using that for the next run, to minimize losses.
We dilute our still charge with RO/DI water, so I don't need to be concerned with mineral build up. If you aren't using demineralized water, you'll eventually build up a somewhat high concentration of minerals in the still.
I suspect you could probably do this for a few runs, before you started to build up some tails components in the still.
We run a fairly low boiler charge though, 18% alcohol, so really, what we're starting with isn't far off from water anyway. We do this because we want to collect a distillate very close to our bottling proof. We do not want to have to add any water, if possible, to the distillate.
Hi @grim,
Thank you very much for your input.
My Gin basket do not drain to the kettle just a valve out to a bucket for disposal. So I wont risk off-flavors from there.
I use water filtered by a brita purity c500 filter to dilute the charge - this take some of the minerals but not all.
I think it will be possible to reuse the charge water maybe 3-5 times by just adding more neutral before flushing it out . This will reduce loss of neutral.
Br,
Thorbjoern
Don`t really understand that. There is not much alcohol left in the boiler at the end of the run. If you are processing huge volumes it might be an issue.
@grim (assuming you use the same charge technique across the board) have you found any noticeable differences between higher and lower-proof gin runs (of the same bill obviously)? I pull lower for whiskey and especially brandy, never tried it with gin though, always gone through column to basket and out using my own mostly-neutral
I can't really see how there would be in the end result, but sometimes gin happens haha.
I use the 18% rule, 18% abv in the boiler and run it through the gin basket. The gin comes out spot on 40% and based upon volumes there is maybe 5 % losses. Mainly due to taking cuts on your gin run. But i didnt figure that out. That was from some Odin video. Either way you lose a little bit of alcohol but not that much. I hzvd been doing 50l charges that consume 9 litres of 96% neutral, which costs my $1.3 per litre. So i probably lose 65cents in lost alcohol. Its not enough for me to lose sleep about.
My gin boiler has much more capacity compared to the single gin basket, so running dilute and proofing less seems to have a simpler workflow. Net net, it probably wastes more power than running a more concentrated still charge and proofing (why spend the energy distilling).
Really wish the crew here would make a slightly larger GB!
Crew Here = StillDragon?
Tell us what you want.
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Bigger than this?
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
Why does your Julio look so stoned?
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
Maybe because he is Jamaican? Yah mon.....
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
What's the rough botanical capacity?
The 8" version is roughly 160 x 355mm internally.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
The basket on the 12" gin column is 10" W x 15" H
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I suggest someone do the math for liters of volume inside the 2 baskets... or you could just see how much water they hold and measure it!
The 8" basket holds 7 litres and the 12" one holds 19 litres according to my water test, although i ran out of chewing gum near the end.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
So it sounds about 10x increase from the Small GB to the 8".
Average bottles per basket load on the small GB top out around, what, 25-30 750ml bottles (that seems to be my top end)? So talking about 250-300 bottles on the 8" GB, give or take?
For a low-proof charge run (18% in, no dilution out) on 250-300 bottles, we're talking about 400-500 liters still charge for this sized basket. If you increased that to about 30% you'd be in the 250-300 liter boiler range, and at 40% pulls you back to about 190-225.
Realistically, you are talking the 8" GB pairs with the 380l still boiler, for about 250-300 bottles per run assuming dilution post distillation? Or if you want to pull off at close to bottle proof, roughly 125-150 bottles per run, with a short-loaded basket.
I get 48 bottles out our of our GB... I was thinking the 8" for the 380 and 12" for the 1000l also...
@grim Are you running the 18% through a plated column? If so, how many plates? Also, running off the still at close to bottling strength, outside of not having to dilute, do you find you're getting a small flavor change or is it more substantial?
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@grim. This is what I did, I got my tank guy to just get a 4" section about 200mm long and weld on a 2" ferrule for the gas outlet. Now the whole thing holds two Gin baskets and I can fill up my 150l boiler with a charge of 120l and get about 60litres of product out of it. I havent run it yet as I am still trying to get rid of the Gin I have. But this does have my two gin Baskets in it, I havent moved the condensor location yet. The other option which I tried was to get a second gin basket and stack that on top. The extension piece might be an alternative product for SD to carry.
Yeah that's a good idea.
I used the SD 4" filter disc below a 500mm section and put the GB on top... to prevent drip down, I warm it up, shut off power, fill it, then blast the power back on. I think height causes channeling, sometimes I have a bit of dry material inside int he center, the 2 basket idea would stop that, and maybe insulation would be a good idea for GB also, as wall reflux could be aiding the channeling.
I will be ordering a 8" GB as soon as I can...
I was going to use a filter disc but I got the basket and wrapped teflon tape around it until it had a vapour seal inside the basket and works very nicely. I will do that with the second basket so the vapor has to go through both baskets.