Diary of a Distiller

Over the weekend Mike and I finished most of the pipe work for the brewery and distillery chilling system. All we now need is the pump and that project is done. I mentioned before, but we are using a 500 gallon wine chilling and clearing tank as the reservoir and cooling system for our chilling system. We had it already available, Mike had picked it up awhile ago very inexpensively, and it was just sitting there taking up room and unused. So being thrifty, we decided to make it useful once again. We ran PVC piping many months ago along the walls of the brewery / distillery; going to all the fermenters, the copper spirits still, and locations of future stills. Then we connected the brewery chilling plate and transfer system for the hot wort to the network. Finally we ran the pipe along the ceiling of the basement to the cooling tank, and prepped everything for installing the pump.

Follow up:

You can see some photos of this in the galleries to come. Also I show a few of our 500 gallon wine fermenting and storage tanks. The reason I'm show them is to focus on the PVC piping along the ceiling above the tanks. This is for venting CO2 from the tanks, to the outside. Each tank that has active fermentation still in progress has tubing that comes out of an airlock and goes into the CO2 vent pipe. This way the basement winery doesn't become filled with CO2, killing us. That just wouldn't be fun.

Early Monday morning the boiler guys came to start the boiler installation. We are usually closed Sundays and Mondays, but Mike went in to work with them; while I was off down to Rockport, near where I used to live in Rockland / Owls Head, to meet with a Steel Work company to discuss my latest project. The boiler guys spent several days working on the installation, and will come back next week to finish it.
Gallery: Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 23 - Boiling & Foaming - A

Now that we have a full scale brewery shaping up, we have the ability to make much larger amounts of spirits in our future distillery. Sure, building the brewery has set back the opening of the distillery at least six months, but the possible capacity has increased five to ten-fold. The only set-back is that our copper spirits still wouldn't be able to keep up. So we need another still. there's no way we can afford to buy another one right now, but I looked at the money I have earmarked for building the distillery, and I think I can finance having part of a still built for us, while we build the rest.

We have a three barrel size, direct fire, brew kettle that came as part of the brewery purchase. It is an ungainly, even ugly, and basically useless piece of equipment for us. During the past few months we have tossed around the idea of making it into the kettle for a still. To heat it we would use the steam for the brewery, instead of direct fire like it was designed for, or our spirit still will be. This will take the installation of a steam coil inside the still or the welding of a steam jacket to the outside and bottom of the kettle. These are technically jobs that we could do ourselves, if we had to. We would have to buy a welder, which we plan to sometime in the near future, but we really don't have the time or expertise to jump into doing it ourselves right now. We would first have to play with the welder for a few days, practicing our skills, before starting the work. We want to get the brewery up and running right away so that we can get our first beer recipe developed, brewed, bottled, and on the shelves by Thanksgiving. An overwhelming plan, but that's what we are shooting for. So we can't spare the time to start another do-it-yourself project right now.

So I took measurements, plugged numbers into formulas, and drew out blueprints for how to make the brew kettle into a still kettle. These drawings, plus photos of various pieces of equipment, the copper spirits still, and the location; came with me when I went to visit the steel workers. I met with the head of the company for awhile and we discussed the possibilities. Then I headed back to the winery to check in on the boiler installation.

Mike had helped the two boiler guys wrestle the four cast iron, and ungodly heavy, boiler plates into place in the boiler room. Then helped assemble them. this took them all morning, and they had just finished when I got there. At around 300 lbs. each it was a heavy job. They didn't have to be moved far, but had to be put into the exact location where they would stand forever more, as well as stand them up from where they had been stored on their sides.

Gallery: Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 23 - Boiling & Foaming - B

Monday afternoon my friend Scot, who is opening a potato vodka distillery up in northern Maine stopped by for a tour of our facility. he was impressed and had a lot of fun seeing what we were doing. He is just at the point where he is starting to design his distillery, so it was really interesting and educational for him.

The following day, Tuesday, Jody was back in town. I hadn't mentioned it, but he had gone on a hunting vacation for eight days in Michigan, where he has a buddy who is a game warden. Fred had been helping us with all the heavy work while Jody was gone, but it was nice to have him back.

Tuesday morning I took all my photos and plans for the still to another steel working company, one which specialized in food related equipment, and went through my thoughts again.

I spent Tuesday afternoon at my desk and computer in the distillery, starting all over from scratch with my still designs. During the night my brain had stormed away, thinking about the still. I realized that turning the three barrel kettle into a still would mean a useful capacity of around two barrels. (A US beer barrel is 31 gallons.) This would definitely improve our total, possible capacity, but that is the same size as the spirits still we have now. It wouldn't mean that we could increase our capacity from being able to fully process one barrel of wash a week into high proof spirits to any higher amount, because the still I was designing is what is called a Stripping Still.

A stripping still is used to process and distill the wash or wine, as you call the fermented, but un-distilled liquid that will one day become spirits, for the first distillation. The Stripping Still basically strips away all the flavor and alcohol from the wash, fast and efficiently, removing all the components. Thus transforming the wash or wine into what is called 'low wines' which is a rough distilled spirit of around 30%abv / 60 proof. During the stripping run you are only concerned with getting all the flavor and alcohol out of the wash, but you also have all the nasty stuff in there as well. Methanol and other bad chemicals. low wines are not good, or safe, to consume. During the second distillation in the Spirits Still you remove the nasty stuff.

You can do both steps, one at a time, in a spirits still. But that means running the wash through the still, batch by batch, first transforming it into low wines; decreasing the amount of liquid each time, and saving the low wines until enough accumulate . Then when you have enough to fill the still for a spirits run, you distill the low wines into the high wines, or spirits.
This whole process is why rum, whiskey, brandy, etc. is distilled two times. If you wanted vodka, although I don't know why anyone does, you would have to theoretically run it through the still three, four, five, six times until it was up to 95%abv. and flavorless. A process that isn't really feasible in a alembic pot still like we have. Pot stills are for creating the maximum and best flavors in a spirit. For vodka you need a hybrid still, one that has 'plates' that basically cause multiple distillations to go on, all at the same time, during the run of the still. Or even a 'continuous still' that is set up to run as the name implies, continuously. Taking the wash and stripping out the alcohol, removing all the flavor at the same time. I have never really understood vodka, I learned to appreciate the nuances enough to review it, but it makes no sense. I want to taste the flavors in the alcohol, but then I drink for the appreciation of those flavors, not to get drunk. (Sorry for my vodka rant.)

The idea for a stripping still is for it to run every day, getting enough wash processed into low wines to fill the spirits still the next day. This means that both stills run each day, with the spirits still's capacity controlling the whole operation. The idea is for the spirits still to run at full capacity, and this should be what controls the output of your whole operation. For the spirits still to run at peak operation, we need a stripping still that can process seven barrels of wash at a time. The numbers work out great, because our brew kettle has a seven barrel capacity as well. If we have the right size stripping still, we can run the brew kettle every day, have the unfermented wash go into a fermenting tank, and then into the stripping still when done. We will have to also get 4-5 more fermenters, but that won't be a terrible problem.

First thing in the morning a delivery of glass, wine bottles that is, came in. We use the loading dock in the brewery / distillery for our glass shipments, so now the area was jam packed with pallets stacked eight feet high with cases of wine bottles.

Wednesday morning was spent measuring our distillery, figuring out what the best footprint was for a stripping still so that it wouldn't be so large as to take up too much room in the distillery. Then measuring the ceiling height and taking that into account as well. I had to squeeze between the pallets of glass, barely able to fit, as i went back and forth from my desk to the what had become far reaches of the distillery. What took five seconds yesterday, now took a few minutes of squirming.

I then ran these hard earned figures, which determined what the physical size of the stripping still would be, through various formulas to come up with working dimensions for the still. To process seven barrels, 217 gallons, at a time, the total capacity of the still has to be 25% to 33% larger to allow for boiling and foaming to occur, without the foam bubbling up into the still head and so getting into the condenser and fouling it; or getting into the low wines.

By 11am my brain was starting to boil and foam over as well. I guess I had hit my capacity for the day. Luckily Mike asked me if I could help Jody down in the winery for a few hours. Jody and I spent the rest of Wednesday bottling our semi-dry blueberry wine. We got halfway through the batch by days end and cleaned up all the equipment so the rest could be finished the following day.

Fred came into help on Thursday, so I could do more brainstorming and planning of the stripping still. I corrected some issues from the day before, and made some changes that came to me during the night. I spent most of the morning on this, wandering around, pacing, thinking, drawing, plugging numbers into formulas; until my brain started boiling and foaming again.

I took a break and went down into the winery to help Jody and Fred with the wine bottling. They were on the final stretch and I pitched in to help get it all wrapped up. After lunch we unloaded the pallets of glass, unstacking the cases one by one, re-stacking them onto a hand truck, trundling them to the stairs down to the winery, and sliding them down the chute. Then they had to be re-stacked on pallets downstairs. This is backbreaking work and took us the rest of the day to accomplish.

It's already been a long week, but it's only Thursday and we still have until Saturday afternoon to go.

Who knows what Friday and Saturday will be like. Have a great weekend folks!