Spin Dry Grains with 3200RPM Spin Dryer

[700G]

I wonder how well that would work on apples

Me too. I haven't invested (time or money) into any drying device yet, other than an apple press. But I would be very interested to know if anyone tries this on extracting liquid from a pulpy fruit ferment. I've got an apple pomace / water / sugar ferment that I need to separate... about 80 gallons, and this sounds tempting.

I may have to give this a go. Any thoughts on mesh size to hold in the pomace? I'm sure I'll use it on grains in the future too... if I take the leap.

I'd try the 25um bag.

[Truckinbutch]

It's really interesting, how information is mis-understood.. low abv in grain mash is one then, high temp alcohol vapour are a total different animal..

And why would one want to rinse the grains before milling them.. exposing the grains to mildew and who what else, not discounting the milling would be almost impossible..

Mars

Yepper , some folks would argue with a possum . I'm going to look at giving this spinner a shot .

[700G]

It's really interesting, how information is mis-understood.. low abv in grain mash is one then, high temp alcohol vapour are a total different animal..

And why would one want to rinse the grains before milling them.. exposing the grains to mildew and who what else, not discounting the milling would be almost impossible..

Mars

Yepper , some folks would argue with a possum . I'm going to look at giving this spinner a shot .

Did you pick one up?

[frunobulax]

Thinking of buying one of these for my current mash. . 50 lbs. corn meal, then 50 lbs. wheat and barley, about 45 gallons. How long do you think it will take to spin this out?
I read where it may need to "rest" (cool down) in between cycles.
Thanks.

[DetroitDIY]

I picked one up last weekend, and a batch of different mesh bags: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AN ... UTF8&psc=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I have yet to run it, but there are 80 gallons of apple pomace mash mush waiting for it... probably the weekend after this. I'll let you know how it works on that after I get to it.

[steelmb]

My wringer mop bucket never got the StarSan treatment beyond first pressing, and a spray bottle goes a long way if it did.
And as far as the grain, 700G has the right idea with a 5-gallon BIAB. I can out-lazy the bunch of you and this thing looks like
it's right up my alley. Keep us posted, 700G!

I doubt you can out lazy me. I mash, ferment and distill on the grain all in the same vessel. No transfering, no squeezing, no spinning, no racking, no siphoning, no filtering, no mucking about, no fuss, no muss, one and done.

[Oldvine Zin]

I doubt you can out lazy me. I mash, ferment and distill on the grain all in the same vessel. No transfering, no squeezing, no spinning, no racking, no siphoning, no filtering, no mucking about, no fuss, no muss, one and done.

Steam??

OVZ

[steelmb]

I doubt you can out lazy me. I mash, ferment and distill on the grain all in the same vessel. No transfering, no squeezing, no spinning, no racking, no siphoning, no filtering, no mucking about, no fuss, no muss, one and done.

Steam??

OVZ

Yup.

[Chauncey]

keep us updated, not having to squeeze so much grain would be FRIGGIN AWESOME

[DetroitDIY]

I wasn’t after this thing to satisfy my lazy bone, but more after expediency and efficiency of extracting the liquids. Right now I’ve got a decent amount of apple pomace mush, and the alternative prospect of using my cider press sounded like it would take forever.

So I fired it up today and ran a few loads through it. I used a 220 micron bag inside of a 90 micron bag.

Two Stage Filter

They are sized to fit 5 gallon buckets, plenty large for the inside of this Panda spin dryer, but the wall thickness makes the OD too large to flip the bag rims over. So I bent up a simple loop of wire to a loop larger than the ID of the spin dryer, fit the bag tops trough the loop and drew the drawstraings that came fitted on them around the outside of the wire. Worked well enough to keep the bags from falling into the dryer while filling it, but I will fab up something a little more convenient… some day.

I filled it up to about the rim (not in the image shown, but in later runs). The bags touch the bottom of the spin dryer even when suspended around the wire as shown in this image. But when I unsinched the draw strings, they were clearly under tension and the upper half of the bags inside the dryer expanded out to the dryer walls, drawing the top of the bag almost fully into the dryer. All this is to say, I was loading about 3 gallons of mush into the bags per run, but if I had a better way of keeping the bag top open with it fully installed, I likely could have fit another gallon or so in there.

Filled Charge of Mush

Drew the draw strings shut, slipped the plastic top cover over the bags (it fits inside the dryer), closed the clear blue top hatch and rotated the lock lever to turn it on. This clear top hatch and the on lever seem pretty light duty and cheap. If they break with much repeated use I won’t be surprised… so will have to try to be gentile with them. But the on/off latch lever is a little clunky and it’s difficult to operate it smoothly.

The spinner takes a while to get up to speed. You can see one of the images of the wash coming out as it runs. In fact, with all the wet slop I put in, it was draining before I even turned it on, so make sure if you use this your catch bucket is under the out spout before you fill it.

System Running

The run time says 5 minutes, and at 5 minutes a little alarm goes off and the spin down begins, but with the mass of the left over pomace in this thing and the low friction spinning design it took another 6 minutes to come to rest. The latch lever is such that if you force it open, there is a clutch that will slow the spinning basket to a stop immediately. I did this when it was spinning very slowly (< 60 rpm), but don’t plan on doing this regularly as I’m worried about the robustness of the design, and definitely don’t want to try to open it shortly after the 5 minute buzzer when it’s rotating closer to 3,200 rpm.

Opening up the hatch after it was done, the remains of the pomace was pressed up against the ID of the spin dryer along the entire height, which you can see in the second to last image here.

After Spinning

And this image shows the remains of the pomace as I’m about to dump it out. It appears wetter than I recall the original pomace, which came from an apple press developing about 100 psi of pressure, but drier than I’m figuring I would achieve from a mop squeezer type system (though I don’t speak from experience here).

Spent Pomace - Compost Fodder

All in all, I’m happy with the efficiency of the moisture extraction, happy with the ability to get it going and have 10 minutes to do other things, and disappointed with the duration it takes to run. I think I would buy it again if I had to do it over, as I’m thinking it’s at least as quick as my apple press, and doesn’t need as much interaction and adjustments as my press.

[The Baker]

Talking about the time it takes to spin the grain reminds me of the time I got a new dough mixer for the bakery.

The old one took say half an hour. The new one took about ten minutes. There were other reasons for the new mixer, but:
my wife could never understand that I did NOT save any time with the new mixer.
It took the same time and effort to load and to unload. And the big deal was that whatever the mixing time, there was other work to do to fill in that time.

Geoff

[frunobulax]

My buddy and I just ordered one. Wringing out a 45 gallon bourbon mash by hand (approx. 50/50 cornmeal and 2 row) pushed us over the edge.
We're counting on doing some Rye and Bourbon mashes in the near future, so I hope it works well.

[bronctoad]

yesterday I used mine for the first time on a 32 gallon AG sweet feed/molasses
the proof is in the pudding as they say
3 fills with 7gal biab bag. ( about 2 to 2 1/2 gals) this wound up drier than I've ever got with
any other way I've done it
for cleaning I sprayed it down with left over hot water As I wasn't sure it got up at
the top near the rim, I stuffed a med sized comforter in it soaked it with more hot water
and ran it through a cycle works good on fabrics too. huh? who'd of figured?
Gave it a star-san spray and put it away HAPPY
Time will tell if it will hold up but I'm satisfied it was worth it.

Bronctoad

[DetroitDIY]

Well, I finished up using the spin dryer on my 83 gallons of apple muck.

I have been running my dryer on a little but sturdy workbench I made for the kids. This was convenient for placing the wash catch bucket below the outlet port. The workbench is on wheels with locking casters. I think I locked two of them and called it good.

As the spin dryer goes from 0 to 3,200 back to 0 rpm during it’s cycle, it of course goes through some resonate frequencies, which as a system with my little workbench, were probably different than they would be on a very stable surface. I’m sure you’ve now guessed where I’m going with this…

Sometimes I would put my hand on the top of the dryer during start up to dampen the vibration, sometimes not. In my shuffles I was getting set for a subsequent run, moving a 6.5 gallon bucket of mush next to the dryer while it was in the run down stage, but still spinning fast.

I must have bumped it a tad with the bucket of mush, as in a flash the spin dryer had flown off the workbench and crashed onto the floor with a medium dent at one point of the lower side, a few minor dents around the top rim, the plastic top trim panel a bit unseated, and some inconsequential plastic bits broken. I didn’t do any serious internal investigation to see whether that suffered any damage.

Cleaned things up and put the spinner back up on the workbench (of course). Ran it with a partial load (I had been loading it all the way to the top previously). Stayed nearby with my hand on the top to “dampen” the vibration. It worked well enough. Ran about two more loads, eventually filling it back up to near the top and not standing there to dampen the vibration.
On, I would guess the 3rd or 4th run after the first accident, it was running with a full load with me some 15 feet away and Blammo!! It pretty much blew up. Metal outer housing on one side of the shop 10 feet away, internal metal spinner with bag of muck still inside and motor hanging on 5 feet in the other direction. Plastic shards with a blast radius of 20 feet from where the spinner had been.

Rivets and adhesive joints inside failed, cast motor mount base fractured some 270 degrees around but still connected. A general and unrecoverable mess. Plus, there was apple muck EVERYWHERE. Not on the ground, so much as about chest to waist level throughout the workshop. What a nasty mess to clean up.

The explosion happened during start up (but it had gotten to a pretty high speed). I suspect it hit a resonance and the inside spinning mass just nicked the dent on the outside cylinder and that was the end.

Pulled out the old apple press to finish the job, which was definitely slower, but less prone to spontaneous combustion.

Contacted the company, that my spin dryer blew up, made a mess, and it was very lucky I was not close to it when it did (that’s definitely true, it released some serious energy during the self destruct and through the entire unraveled cylinder of stainless steel housing… had that caught me I would have been going to the ER). They were very good about it. Said this was the first such report they had every received (I doubt that). Sent me a replacement system. Instructed me not to run is consecutively without at least a couple hours of rest in between (I don’t think that was the issue and plan to ignore that).

In subsequent uses, I will use a more stable mounting surface and keep well clear of contacting the system during any portion of operation. I’m hoping with those measures it’ll stay safe and have a better service life.

[OtisT]

Happy you survived and am impressed that they replaced it. That is cool. What great service. Did you tell them what your application for it was? Your use is probably not within specifications. Otis

[DetroitDIY]

I was very selective in my choice of words. My guess is it was not obvious just what I was drying, and a non-suspicious person would have assumed clothes.

Yes, I was very happy with the customer service. No hassle, replacement received within a week via FedEx. No cost to me involved. But I don't see knocking on their warranty door a second time. This time I must be smarter (and safer).

[ydoih8u]

Maybe build a box or enclosure for it so it can't be knocked over.... Plus it may contain some of the shrapnel...

[acfixer69]

Maybe after butches disastrous results on AD and this on maybe we try another method.

[DetroitDIY]

Well, seeing as they sent me a replacement, I had to make use of it.

I had to separate some 42 gallons of wash from a rye oat mash last weekend. It was VERY soupy, much more so than my marc apple brandy wash is was running when things went bad. I strained it via gravity (using 5 inch kitchen strainers... may need to invest in a mop wringer after all), then pressed the strainers together to manually wring the grain out a bit more, then dumped that dry-ish grain into the spin dryer. Then I used the spin dryer to collect the last liquid out of it.

What I found was that when I added wet muck to the spinner, it was unstable - very unstable. I shut it off within 2-3 seconds after turning it on because it immediately started bumping and jumping. But the dryer the muck I placed in it, the more stable it was. Makes sense to me thinking about it after the fact. Liquid sloshes a lot, so if I have liquid in there (or rear wet grains, they slosh a bit when it's starting up, before it's at a high rotational speed, and that throws it off kilter. The dryer I put stuff in, the smoother it ran. It sill had a few resonate frequencies it had to pass through, but it went through with much less vibration amplitude. This also seems consistent with the wet clothes it was designed for: they're mostly solids and don't slosh. They must never have customers (and must not test) what will happen if some idiot in the Midwest puts in all liquid. The instructions say to never put shoes in there... off centered mass... unstable,

Anyways, it seems I'm sorting out how to run it better now. The only other thing is I would like to sort out a more stable surface to run it on that is bucket height above the ground to catch the liquid. And I'm still thinking of building a little 3/4" ply wood box to "catch" it is it tries to blow up again. And... I'm going to have to buy a mop wringer after all.

So if you are happy with the efficiency, simplicity, safety, and cost of a wringer... do it. If you feel that that last (I'm guessing here) 5-10% extraction efficiency of the spinner is important... do it, but after you've adequately wrung out your grains/pulp/whatever.

DetroitDIY

[DetroitDIY]

Ran it again with a medium load and it jumped again. Didn't self destruct, just a minor dent, but I'm done with tempting fate. I've ordered and received my mop wringer. I'll be looking for someone in the "neighborhood" who may want to take this off my hands.

[ydoih8u]

Heh, well it was worth a shot.

[fizzix]

Ran it again with a medium load and it jumped again. Didn't self destruct, just a minor dent, but I'm done with tempting fate. I've ordered and received my mop wringer. I'll be looking for someone in the "neighborhood" who may want to take this off my hands.

Never had a problem with the bucket and bag method and it's efficient. Grain is damp when dumped so it's reclaiming the liquid pretty well. I toss the spent grain under a tree that has barren soil.

[Big Stogie]

Hi Guys! I’m back! Let’s catch up and get together !

[Pikey]

B*GG*R - My SiL bought one of those spinners to try to make cider ! - Second hand of course and as far as I know he got bored and never used it !

I'm pretty sure it will be "in a shed" somewhere

Perhaps I'll mention that I could use one ?