@punkin Great idea mate. I just dumped another 150 litres of that stuff wondering there has to be a better way. Now I know. Thanks mate.

You don't need the potstill to be 4". The 2" long condensor offers plenty of knockdown (up to 10l an hour). Having a 4" ferrule in your keg and using a 4" reducer has many benefits, including ease of access to the inside of the keg and being able to upgrade to a plated column in the future. You can reuse all the 2" potstill parts in your 4" column and save the cost of buying those parts.

It would be handy to have a drain on the keg. Also element ports, view port and refill port.

That's why we designed the milk can, by the time you pay someone to weld all those fittings to your keg you have spent the money it costs to buy a shiny milk can that already has all the fittings.
I used to offer new kegs converted but they sold so slowly compared to the milk cans that i stopped offering them. The cans are just better value.

Disregard of course if you can do your own stainless welding and get the keg .....cheap....cough cough.

Just off the boil, i think it has to be osomewhere in the 70'sC for food pasteurization temperature but i'm not sure. The backset is boiling when you turn the boiler off, so that is when i'd do it if i wanted to save it long term.

This is what it looks like with beer, just for anyone who's not sure what i mean by a 'cube'. Each cube holds about 22 litres or so if full. You fill it as full as you can and squeeze the air out by pushing against it with your knee and then doing the cap up. This not only gives you less chance of infection it also gives an indication that something is not right if the cube bloats or loses the vacuum.

Moab Brewery

Yeah 100% enzyme mashing.

Agree - during the hot and sticky Northeast summers we approach 100f, 100% humidity in the distillery when mashing. You can imagine what a 2000l fermenter would do if it wasn’t actively cooled.

Will do 51% corn 49% quinoa. Cereal mash w/ enzyme.

This will be the 3rd in our series of alternative adjunct bourbons.

This is the house that inspired my tribute.

Bought my new/office home lego blocks yesterday. 2 x 20' High Cube (9'6" tall) containers. They are in brand new condition from one of the companies that has them built in China to their design and rents the space on the trip out here, other than that unused.

Just under $10kau for the pair. They're green on the outside (wanted primrose/beige but none available) but light grey on the inside like all containers.

I plan on filling them with my stock in the next couple of weeks and then shipping them full to the new warehouse.
Once there and emptied the work begins getting 4m cut from the side of each 6m container before getting a 4m filler strip welded up to extend the main room to 4m x 6m deep.

This is the basic design, there is a post in the shed about where the desk is that will determine whether the filler module will be 1.2 or 1.8 or maybe even 2.4 deep which would change the proposed fit out a bit. The filler module will be welded steel RHS, i'll see what sizes they have in second grade at good prices when i start. I'll be using as much of the steel panel that comes off the sides of the containers as possible.

Room for a bedroom and an office plus the main large room is really as much room as i live in now in a 4 bedroom house. There is a new kitchen and bathroom already in the warehouse that would be just past where the TV is shown as sitting and would be accessed by either of the southern door sets.

I am still in debate as to whether to have a raised section with windows in the center module, i'll see what the costs are i guess. At this stage i am planning on painting internally and just glossing the plywood floors and using large mats although i may consider bamboo flooring if i don't like the look of the oiled ply.

Considering insulating the walls (or parts of them) with 20mm coolroom panels but it's an expense i may not need so i'll see. It will be fitted with wall mount reverse cycle although i don't expect to really use the heat.

I'll do a picumentry of the build if anyone's interested. I expect the final budget to be somewhere tween $30k and $40k although if full insulation is needed i would expect that to add $8-10k.

The house/office will be transportable if needed with a little cutting and prizing.

Really looking forward to it, a long time since i've done a design/construction project this big.

Hellooooo 2500 pounds of Quinoa...

The tables are more extensive than just esters, it's a broad mix of flavor compound types.

Also. The process was stupid simple too.

1. add rainwater to clean fermenter and oxygenate to kill bad things.
2. add 50kg sugar to 180l water
3. add yeast and turbo yeast. And B vites (500ml thermosacc, 1.1L expired turbo yeast, 6 B complex vitamin pills dissolved in water)
4. oxygenate 15 minutes.
5. wait 5 days. (Was dropping 30-35 points a day on the gravity tester)

So... finally got round to doing some stuff again. And... I FIGURED IT OUT!!

B vitamin deficiency.

I ran some old turbo yeast and added more thermosacc for good measure and let a 1.10sg sugar wash rip. Except one fermenter I added some b vites. That one took off and dropped like a rock. It was dropping SG twice as fast as the other three fermenters. Two days in to the ferment and I added the same dose to the other fermenters and they all finished in 5 days.

Glad i finally figured it out. Was going crazy. I still have to strip it when I get a chance. I'll leave it for a few more days to clear up and then see what it tastes like. Not expecting great things but I just needed some ethanol for chemicals anyway.

Yaaay!!

As long as you don't have a ton of solids in your hydrometer flask, it's plenty accurate.

Mashed bourbon today - 70% corn 2lb/gallon on total volume. 1.067 SG.

My starting gravity was 1.050 finishing was around 1.000. But it was a straight corn wash so from what I understand its the starting gravity is not that accurate correct ?

Mashing Corn with Steam Injection @ AD

Best guide i ever saw for making lacto starters. I've tried it and it works exactly as described.

Pint is a legend.

@draw57 said: I have 13 gal. milk can still. I run 10 gal. mash about 15 % abv. My thumper is half gal. mason jar. It fills up in about half of run. Is there some rule on how big my thumper needs to be.

With gear that small, some of your problem is with heat loss. Once the thumper is up to boiling, in an ideal system, each gram of steam from the boiler condensing will vaporize about (actual number depending on the heats of vaporization for both the boiler liquid and the thumper liquid) a gram of the thumper liquid, so the liquid level in the thumper won't change much.

On the other hand, if all the heat derived from condensing that gram of boiler liquid is radiated, convected, and/or conducted away from the thumper, you're just added a gram of liquid to your thumper. Your situation is somewhere between those 2 extremes, but you're gaining liquid after the thumper boil.

Insulate the thumper and all the vapor tubes, for a start.

MBC's Mosaic Mo'Betta IPA - $7.65/4-pack 12oz (355mL) cans at Costco. With GET they were just under $2/can.

I bought a case. Thirsty surfers demolished the case. 2 left (I hid them).
Sold out at Costco now. :(

Pirate Life is one of the best breweries in Australia in my opinion. They also do a Mosaic IPA that is a cracker of a beer. Unfortunately the only place i can get it here is the craft beer bar where it goes for $16 a can.

Pirate Life Mosaic IPA

MBC's Big Swell IPA is really good.
Mosaic Mo Betta WAY mo bettah kine!