Home Distiller

What's the impact on downstream people if we use a public system to 'flush away' our spent mashes? Anyone know?

Theres probably more corn in peoples poo than what your flushing down the drain....when you consider the overall size of the municipal sewer system.

What? I did no eat any corn!!! (You have to imagine that being said with a Scottish accent thicker than oatmeal.)

dry it out and feed it to the animals. took my corn from ujssm dried it and took it to the park and fed the ducks with it. i also put some in a squirel feeder. or if you have woods close just take it out and dump it the wild animals will find it

well I guess it depends on what you flush - if you were making it with chemicals, then maybe, but since the majority of what goes into a mash is water, and the rest is, for the most part, food based, then I am sure the sewage plant can handle it ... chances are, there is more nutrition in the mash leftovers than in the personal contributions of frequent patrons of the domestic thrones

Doogie wrote:well I guess it depends on what you flush... - personal contributions of frequent patrons of the domestic thrones

That being said - how about us folks on septic?

The yeast and such I think the tank will handle - might even be good for it. But I am unsure of the grain solids.

Think to be on the safe side I'll strain as much as I can and use the solids for the compost, but as I said, not too worried about the liquid side of things.

in the summer, I just let the pot cool a bit and dump everything into the composter ... in the fall and before planting in the food garden, I dump it out into the soil ...

Spent wash goes into the creek . Creek chub minnows love it and do well on it . Spent grains I dump wet on the garden beds . I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching drunk assed squirrels out my living room window after they have eaten their fill and try to climb trees

Truckinbutch wrote:Spent wash goes into the creek . Creek chub minnows love it and do well on it . Spent grains I dump wet on the garden beds . I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching drunk assed squirrels out my living room window after they have eaten their fill and try to climb trees

If only my neighbors weren't so close.... Lol!

I prefer to feed the wildlife my spent grains. The deer, geese, ducks all come looking for a treat. I don't worry about them becoming dependent, I just don't distill often enough.

I never chuck anything out. It all ends up in my garden one way or another. Wildlife love spent grain. Hot backset and dunder will kill the toughest of weeds.

Pour the hot liquid on a fire ant mound.

When I Ferment grapes for wine, or even cook grapes for jelly, I just sling them across the back yard. Give the nutrients back to the ground.

Everything should be edible...chickens love it, we made dog treats out of it for a long time. Til I tasted one! Now we make Dad treats, crackers for snacks. Add some herbs and salt, bake.

I screwed up once and put hot still slop on the garden...let it cool first.

Everything gets used/reused here on my farm. The animals consider it a treat and will stand around waiting for me to dump out the solids after squeezing. I also remember some old folks making corn bread out of the spent corn. I've eaten it, but that was a long time ago. I've never actually tried to make it. I am assuming they ground the spent corn up fine, then mixed it with fresh corn meal to make the bread. Thus making their fresh corn meal last longer. But, I'm not really sure. Just a thought on an old topic.

SF

I could be wrong. But I think we distill off most of the toxic stuff.

Gave the chickens some corn from a UJ wash. They took a nice nap after staggering around a bit.
I try to rinse it out a bit now. Don't need a bunch of "AA"-type egglayers sleeping it off all the time.

tp

Lagunitas Brewing Co was started up in 1993 in Lagunitas CA, but was evicted after a year because they were sending all of their waste stream down the drain. The local utility did not have a modern waste water treatment plant, and the large volume of active yeast was causing a lot of problems with the septic tank system. A real waste water treatment plant is more than capable of handling this kind of waste, and they charge industrial producers of food waste for that service. So it's plausible that active yeast slurry could cause similar problems in your person septic tank, if you have one.

I live in the city, so no yard -> no compost pile. I put all of my spent grains into compostable trash bags and they go into the green waste bin. Liquid waste goes into the toilet. If my house was on septic instead of the public sewer I would be wary of putting my yeast trub down the drain, unless I could come up with an easy way to make sure it was all dead first.