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Ok - stupid question of the day!.

I've already gotten myself arms like Popeye squeezing spent grains from a whisky mash using a sparging bag - but....... how do craft distilleries do the same thing?.

In Scotland when making Whisky we just run hot water over the barley and collect the wort by straining it through a fine metal mesh panel at the bottom of the mash tun - but with a bourbon using corn or other grains, the corn is boiled, before being left to ferment - so my question is - how is 500 gallons of mash split? - or do commercial distillers just put the mash, grains and all into the still, and then wash the remaining grains from the still when distillation is complete?.

Lots of pics online of totes full of corn mash - but I can't find anything at all that tells me whether/how the grain is removed (as I would do) prior to distilling - or is it just left in?.

Answers on a postcard please ? - lol.

My wife and I did the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and while we were out, we hit other distilleries as well, 10 in total. The majority of them used continuous column stills, huge, 50 foot high, 20 feet in diameters (or bigger) . They said they feed the entire wash, grain and all, from the top (or the middle somewhere), while heating with steam from the bottom. The mash flows over the plates, the good stuff getting distilled and vaporized on the way down, heads and whatnot being pulled off at certain plates, and the ethanol heading out the top, all the rest ends up at the bottom where it's removed, dried, and sold as feed. Some distilleries had pot stills too, but I'm not sure what all of them did. If you heat with steam jackets (steam going through pipes, those pipes heating the wash) you don't have to worry about scorching the grains, so you can distill on the grain as well. If you ever get a chance to go to some distilleries, I would highly recommend it, it's like Disney Land for home distillers.

Most small distilleries with stills in the size of a few hundred gallons who make bourbon will have steam jacketed stills with internal agitators to keep the mash moving to avoid scorching. The mash cookers work the same way as the stills do, steam jacketed and agitated. The mash is generally pumped from mash cooker to fermenter, and fermenter to still, and back out of the still using air diaphragm positive displacement pumps. These pumps are designed for pumping slurries with high solids content. Most small distilleries when they dispose of their spent grains won't fully dry them either before giving them to farmers to be used as feed. Just pump into a tote and drain what liquid will drain off. If the spent grains are going to be used as feed in the immediate next few days, they don't need to be very dry. Big distilleries like the guys in Kentucky and Tennessee will have huge centrifuges to remove most of the moisture from the spent grain before they are dried in an oven.

False bottom is how. Pretty simple actually.

Or wrap some stainless screen around the end of your siphon.

RevSpaminator wrote:Or wrap some stainless screen around the end of your siphon.

Known as a Bazooka screen. For a hobbyist, I like those for mash tuns intended for distilling where sparaging efficiency isn't normally an issue. One is in my future... I see two good options using one.

1. Use the leftover grain in a sugar head faux whiskey. Jimbo's Gumballhead or UJSSM are good choices. Both are in the T&T.

2. For an AG, rinse or soak the spent grain to absorb whatever little fermentables are left in it. Then use that same water for your next mash in.

Im running Odins cornflake recipe, only im using 3x more the corn flakes plus rye flakes. Im using a 5gal carboy and realize when i do a grain recipe, ill have to learn to sparge to make a ferment more efficent. When this current ferment is finished and it settles, ill only rack 2/3 of the carboys volume (if im lucky)..
My question is:
Can i add backset or distilled water to whats settled and re-rack to reclaim more ? Does anyone think more fermentation will happen?

I would not recommend that unless you have taken the precautions conducive to brewing. What you have left is most likely unfermentable sugars, waste product from the yeast, dead yeast, and potential bacteria. Better to save your time then trying to reclaim what little, if any potential alcohol is left.

Thanks for the advice. I realize it may be better to save my frugal ways for grocery or x-mas shopping. I did however already did the dirty deed. I racked only 10 L from a possible 20L. The mash tasted like whiskey heaven. I added around 5L of distilled and gave the car boy a bit of a shake. There was a good amount of c02 pumping through, but i realize majority was trapped gas. I racked again. the mash tasted watered down (what a surprise). ill be running it through very soon to avoid bacteria con't, seeing as the abv is decreased.

Just out of sheer curiosity, freshwater, have you been able to get more fermentation?

If it did, it wasnt much. But i will say: this was my second time doing Odin's cornflake recipe. I used 1.5kg of corn flakes and 500g of rye flakes...im positive the yield was better than the first. Im pretty sure ill go frugal again w distilled water to get all that distillable juices out. Important to rack and let settle alot. I did 3x.