Here is a good cheap housing.

Pall Advanta ALT11G23ABH4 Stainless Steel Liquid Filter Housing w/ Clamps @ eBay

Ask him to check his shipping price, because it's outrageous, but if you could get this for $150, its a screaming deal.

You can get cartridges cheap from St. Pats, as long as you flush and keep them in good condition, they'll last a while.

Letina 40x40 Plate-and-Frame Filters @ St. Patrick's of Texas

Big volumes, plate and frame filters are most cost effective, but running small batches, you'd lose gallons just to wet the media.

We use 10" Code 7 Polypropylene filters in Pall housings.

We always do a final polish with sub-micron, 0.22 or 0.10. We've done side-by-side tests of only 20 micron char filtration next to .1 final polish - the spirit is noticeably clearer with more sparkle, especially in a nice quality bottle. The 20 micron char-only-filter looks muddy/hazy in comparison.

Not meaning to be contrary @zymurgybob, but the McMenamin's you, Bushman and I went to up in rural Seattle when we toured Bothell and Woodinville before the 2014 ADI conference seemed more like a refurbished TGI Fridays in a strip mall. I remember you commenting at the time that it was not at all typical of what McMeniman's usually does. I also remember the beers there were quite good.

I wholeheartedly agree with your enthusiasm though; the McMenamins' in Troutdale and Hillsborough are national treasures.

The McMenamin brothers are my heroes. Their business model is to take every place in Portland that I loved as a kid, but that was kinda sinking into the trash heap of history , and put it back on the tax rolls as some combination of hotel, brewery, brewpub, conference site, and/or distillery.

I'm guessing they cut some kinda deals with whatever municipality controls whatever site they're looking at acquiring, and offer to bring the (usually old) facility up to good safety and health standards, without trashing all the gorgeous old architecture and fixtures that make the (did I say old?) place special, while adding a taxpaying profit center to the community.

I don't know how many facilities they have now, but maybe 15 years ago it was 51, ad they're adding new ones all the time. Last night I was at a "Distillery Festival" at one (a rescued elementary school) in Bothell, Washington. They've converted hotels, county poor farms, Masonic lodges, roadhouses, taverns, dance halls, schools, movie theaters, and god-knows-what-all to very successful businesses.

Sorry if I'm going overboard about McMenamin's, but they're rescuing history, and their best tool is beer. How could you not like that?

@Kapea said: I took about 10GB of photos. I'll put some more up if you guys want.

Sounds like a great trip.

Post some more pics!

Packing still and cleaning out the cupboard where i keep the spirit library i found this dusty old bottle. Batch 1.

Last Tuesday we went on a distillery crawl. We visited one brewing/distilling fab shop, Bridgetown Brew Systems, and seven distilleries:

• McMenamin's CBR
• Aria Gin Distillery (my favorite aria used to be Nessun Dorma, now it's Aria Gin)
• Bull Run Distilling Co.
• Clear Creek Distillery
• House Spirits (their American Single Malt Whiskey - Westward - ROCKS!)
• Rolling River Spirits and
• New Deal Distillery - New deal had numerous open fermenters with pear brandy wash at high krausen - the aroma was exquisite!

Our classes took place in the McMeninman's Edgefield brewery, distillery and hotel.

I took about 10GB of photos. I'll put some more up if you guys want.

Big storm on Nullarbor

The StillDragon Australia store will close Sunday afternoon for the week while the final transition to the new warehouse on the coast happens.
Reopen Friday 24th November.

Sorry for any inconvenience, onwards and upwards. To infinity and beyond.

Thanks @grim a lot of good information there, which is useful to know. With what you have said, presumably I could use the malted barley without the husk, which i include at the moment, not only would my calculation be correct, or does this not really matter, but i should add 10% for the husk allowance?

If making a bourbon with rye, corn and malted barley, would you say that using corn meal would be ok, or for it to be a better spirit using flaked corn would be more ideal?

Thanks

Starch is starch, so the closer you get to a refined white flour, the further you'll go from the characteristic flavors and aromas of the grain. Taking it to the absolute extreme, converting white corn starch to glucose using enzymes, and you'll make something much closer to rum than whiskey.

The reason moonshine recipes that include non-gelatinized corn taste like whiskey is due to the fact that the corn germ/bran influence the congeners produced during fermentation. For example, UJSSM being corn-flavored rum, and not whiskey, even though it pains me every time I hear someone call it whiskey, it kind of does taste like whiskey, and that's because of some of that germ. (Lacto too, but that's another thread.)

Also keep in mind that you can't compare these pound for pound. Unfermentable Pericarp/husk accounts for 10% of the weight in something like barley, and closer to 1% for corn, and for most other grain, at least 10% of the weight is non-fermentable bran and germ. So, if you are trying to faithfully reproduce a specific mash bill, you'll need to do some math if you are working with dehusked or degermed (or both) grain products, since most mash bills assume whole grain weights. Degermed barley flour would probably represent the most extreme difference. A whole grain rye flour probably the least.

Corn meal is typically degermed to increase shelf life, and because of that it will have ~10% more fermentables on a pound by pound basis than flaked or ground whole corn. Process, compared to flaked maize, it requires a full on cereal mash to gelatinize all the starches, although if it's fine ground so it converts pretty quickly.

Flaked would be closer to whole corn, as it typically does contain germ as well, and it's partially/mostly gelatinized by the flaking process already. So, not only does it have all the parts of the corn seed you would want, half the work is already done. I mentioned degerming and shelf life above, another reason flaked is more expensive is that it's shelf-life is more finite than corn meal. Corn meal can probably sit 3 or 4 years, flaked won't make it a year.

@grim, looking into the IR filter sheets and I believe, If I am correct, what I would need would be the K 250 IR " Chill filtration of tannin containing spirits or white spirits high in fatty acids". with the digging I have done I have only found them sold by the case of 100. Any idea where one could get single sheets for experimentation?

1/2" Full Coupling @ StillDragon North America

I just noticed that I've made a typo in my original question. I meant the 6710m not the 6700m. The one in the link is the one I'm trying to get a hand on it. I'm just trying to figure out how am I going to connect this inline with the existing tubing.

From the lok of this:

Panel 1/2" Digiflow 6710M-44TM Digital Flow Meter count up Gallons GPM 115V cord @ eBay

I see male threads on both ends on the sensor. Am I not looking at the right place? If you have a picture of it, that'd be great :)

Thanks,

@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.

@Username said: If I go electric, I'll have up to 4.8kw at 13 amps

Is that enough power to get the ProCaps doing their thing?

Plenty for a 4" column on a 50l boiler.

If I go electric, I'll have up to 4.8kw at 13 amps

Is that enough power to get the ProCaps doing their thing?

Fired up the little rig yesterday to run a few test batches of quinoa.

Electric is so far superior to propane for these little stills it's not even fair to make a comparison. Almost forgot how easy it was to run.

Just a little twist of the dial, even the finest movement, up 1/4 amp, down 1/2 amp, and the thing is like cruise control.

I have a ~16kw propane burner, and a 5kw element. Heating on element is half the time.

The other thing, soot on the bottom of your still, gets all over you hands, pants, makes a mess.