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Is it possible to run a continuous fermentation?

What I imagine is running a sugar wash lets just say 10 gallons. Once appropriate alcohol content is reached 8 gallons are taken for distillation while the remaining two are added to a new wash containing 8 gallons of new ingredients. Seems like this would produce a continuous flow of washes without the startup costs of yeast. Also depending on the proportion of new to old the time to ferment could be drastically reduced. i.e. If it takes 3 weeks to ferment 6 gallons if instead you had a continuous 10 gallons fermenting so after each wash you add 6 gallons of new wash to the 4 old it would only take say 1-1.5 weeks to reach peak alcohol content (because the 4 gallons of high yeast concentration wash would quickly take over those 6 gallons versus starting off from a small packet of yeast). In this fashion you could produce double the output and not have to purchase yeast for every wash.

Is my reasoning correct here?

You wouldn't want to leave behind that much fermented wash if you went this route... Take some time to do some research here and you will discover that many members reuse the lees/trub from a wash, along with new sugar and/or grains, to eliminate the need for new yeast in subsequent washes...

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you have the basic idea for a continues ferment.but it can be expensive or a bunch of work. or it need one tall building.then what do you do with it all?
conical fermenters whould work best for this. you start the ferment in one,after lag you move it to the next fermenter,you start a new one in the first.
now you might have 3--14 fermenters daisy chained .one for each day it takes to ferment.then ending with a settling tank, thats chilled.in that one the yeast/beer is separated .the beer distilled and some of the yeast is return back to the first.ok thats the basics of it,but you need a way to move one to the other.either with pumps or gravaty.now conical fermenters are 500$ or more and pumps are 200$ now if it takes 7 days to ferment you need 7-8 of them.so for the fermenters thats 3,500 and pumps another 1,400 .a grand total of 4,900$..you can use gravity but each fermenter is about 3 foot tall.
having 7 stacked is going to take one tall building.then once this chain is started you have to keep it going.no changing product,no vacations or you have to start all over.
this whould work much better with low yeald mash/wash that takes 2 days to ferment then you need less eqipment.

Isnt this the premise of doing a sour mash? Im pulling my beer off my trub and adding new sugar water along with a little gerber, Top it off with the dunder in the boiler. Im in my third generation now on my oatmeal banana gerber and have only used the yeast from the original batch and it is still working like a champ.

not exactly.its using a specialized fermenter for each step in progressive steps.you start in one,after lag time its moved to the next one.then a new ferment is started in the first .take a 48 hour ferment for example.. the first tank mite have o2,stiring and heating cooling to help the yeast grow,,the second whould be a standard fermenter,heated/cooled to encourage fermenting,,the third tank is a settling tank ,that is cooled to encourage the trub to drop out and some way to harvest the yeast.many beer/wine brewers do similar with carboys.just for different reasons.
where this gits complicated is with long ferments,this is because once every 24 hours you change tanks.so you need a tank for each day it takes to ferment.

HawkingRage wrote:Isnt this the premise of doing a sour mash? Im pulling my beer off my trub and adding new sugar water along with a little gerber, Top it off with the dunder in the boiler. Im in my third generation now on my oatmeal banana gerber and have only used the yeast from the original batch and it is still working like a champ.

Your confusing the reuse of trub with sour mashing. Probably because of the UJSSM recipe. The sourmash in the UJSSM comes from the use of backset in the primary ferment.

Prairiepiss wrote:

HawkingRage wrote:Isnt this the premise of doing a sour mash? Im pulling my beer off my trub and adding new sugar water along with a little gerber, Top it off with the dunder in the boiler. Im in my third generation now on my oatmeal banana gerber and have only used the yeast from the original batch and it is still working like a champ.

Your confusing the reuse of trub with sour mashing. Probably because of the UJSSM recipe. The sourmash in the UJSSM comes from the use of backset in the primary ferment.

So a sour mash doesnt need the use of the previous trub, just backset? HMM

Just when you thought you knew everything.

You could sour mash using both backset and trub if you like... That's how most do it...

True continuous fermentation:

http://drinkicd.com/#fermentation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

check out the video at the top, around 2:30 in.

i looked, that will work only with a clear ferment like sugar/water /and commercial nutrients.

I totally agree, they even called it out in the video. But it should be possible to have a slow drip transfer of a sugar wash over a grain based bed, or series of buckets such that it picks up your grain flavors, and the yeast have time to do their work and come up with a continuous system. If it worked anything like my mash tun, it would even filter itself.

Right now am running a rotating sugar/rum wash.. By the end of the week, it's done fermenting and ready for a stripping run, and the backset/dunder goes right back into the fermenter the next morning to be ready for another batch the following weekend. Just running an experiment trying to collect a solid amount of low wines to play with

If I switch to a wash that takes longer to ferment, I will probably move to rotating batches in two or three buckets so there is always something that's ready to go.

As for the 'continuous' fermentation, that more of a theoretical interest to see if it could be set up over grain, but the batch process works fine for me. Hard enough to keep up a schedule to try out all the interesting things I read about here.

lokibrew wrote:I
If I switch to a wash that takes longer to ferment, I will probably move to rotating batches in two or three buckets so there is always something that's ready to go.

easiest option right here

more the merrier i reckon

"sugar wash over a grain based bed,"
you can do that for your self if you want,but legally sugar is not allowed in a grain mash.
or in brandy.(during ferment)

I've got a basic 'sweetfeed' mash going, with corn, sugar, malted rye, and molasses. Because I got whole corn instead of cracked corn, I over compensated with sugar and added water the next day to dilute it since I had very high SG readings. Then of course I couldn't leave well enough alone, and started grinding some of that corn and throwing it in as well. Anyway, now, after 5 days, I've got about 18 gal bubbling away nicely in a 20 gal Brute container. Alcohol content maybe only 4 or 5% . Well, I'm out of likker , so I thought, 'why not just siphon off 5 gal to a carboy and distill it?' Then I thought,' why not do this continuously, siphoning off 5 to 10 gal. and putting it in my 15 gal keg/boiler for distilling; and keep replacing the fermenter with more sugar, water, ground corn and so forth, indefinitely.'

Other than distilling lower AV wash, is there any big problem with this procedure?

That's how the Ujssm is, take away and add more ongoing cycle with out backset, with is sour mash, yeast only one time. Always something to run fermenters never empty do two and you'll stay busy for sure

Lonesome Loins wrote:I've got a basic 'sweetfeed' mash going, with corn, sugar, malted rye, and molasses. Because I got whole corn instead of cracked corn, I over compensated with sugar and added water the next day to dilute it since I had very high SG readings. Then of course I couldn't leave well enough alone, and started grinding some of that corn and throwing it in as well. Anyway, now, after 5 days, I've got about 18 gal bubbling away nicely in a 20 gal Brute container. Alcohol content maybe only 4 or 5% . Well, I'm out of likker , so I thought, 'why not just siphon off 5 gal to a carboy and distill it?' Then I thought,' why not do this continuously, siphoning off 5 to 10 gal. and putting it in my 15 gal keg/boiler for distilling; and keep replacing the fermenter with more sugar, water, ground corn and so forth, indefinitely.'

Other than distilling lower AV wash, is there any big problem with this procedure?

If you are not letting it ferment out completely. You are just wasting sugar. And it won't be clear. And possibility the sugars will scorch in the boiler. And or the solids still a floating in it.

I read it that dpump is simply looking to reuse his yeast on a continuous basis. I don't think he's looking for commercial continuous fermenting.

Dpump, your idea is good but why leave behind any alcohol? That makes no sense.
Successive ferments will be faster due to not having to go through the growth phase as long as you keep the ph in check. and the large amount of yeast in the fermenter just eats those sugars like crazy.
This can be kept up for several generations with no ill effect. There is some belief that the yeasts will mutate over time but I haven't been able to make it happen. I would also periodically remove a good portion of yeast and waste just to keep things tidy.

Go read up on UJSSM and you'll see that many are already reusing yeast over sometimes dozens of fermentations. Someone recently mentioned being on round 20 something.

Prairiepiss wrote:

Lonesome Loins wrote:I've got a basic 'sweetfeed' mash going, with corn, sugar, malted rye, and molasses. Because I got whole corn instead of cracked corn, I over compensated with sugar and added water the next day to dilute it since I had very high SG readings. Then of course I couldn't leave well enough alone, and started grinding some of that corn and throwing it in as well. Anyway, now, after 5 days, I've got about 18 gal bubbling away nicely in a 20 gal Brute container. Alcohol content maybe only 4 or 5% . Well, I'm out of likker , so I thought, 'why not just siphon off 5 gal to a carboy and distill it?' Then I thought,' why not do this continuously, siphoning off 5 to 10 gal. and putting it in my 15 gal keg/boiler for distilling; and keep replacing the fermenter with more sugar, water, ground corn and so forth, indefinitely.'

Other than distilling lower AV wash, is there any big problem with this procedure?

If you are not letting it ferment out completely. You are just wasting sugar. And it won't be clear. And possibility the sugars will scorch in the boiler. And or the solids still a floating in it.

Thanks. The better 'solution' is to buy another fermentation vessel.