Newbie Commercial Still Set Up

[Dr_Blackbear]

Long time reader, First time poster. We started a small brewery out here in Hawaii. Turns out the liquor production add on is pretty easy to do in our county. My business partner wants to move forward with purchasing a still to produce a local vodka/whiskey. I am coming straight from the home brew community and diving into commercial brewing and distilling for the first time.The beer and seltzer im not having much trouble scaling up for production. Lots of info on that. Im getting a bit stuck with the exact still we need to produce vodka/whiskey on a larger scale.I have years of experience running a 15gal reflux still as a home set up , but it seems I need to dive into the world of large plated columns. It looks like were going for a 500Liter still from overseas(Our other equipment is coming from same distributor). My main concern is vodka production. We will most likely dual use our vodka production. Vodka to sell, and 190 neutral spirit to turn into seltzer(high noon clones). Im thinking an 18 plate still broken into 4 12-inch columns. As I see it, I can use the first 1-2 columns for whiskey and then all 4 for vodka. Is this a reasonable approach? I know there are many other details to consider. Just trying to build a game plan. The company were going through basically offers complete kits. They just want to know ,columns size width,plate count and material(copper etc). Attached is a similar design were thinking of. Thanks in advance guys

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Welcome! Before you go too far, can you put your brewing license# in your tag line? One of the pro guys can help you how. We try to be very clear when talking with commercial outfits as this is a home distilling site. We welcome companies, just want the transparency.

Thanks, and welcome home!

[Wildcats]

Welcome aboard man. Can't wait to see how you get along. Keep us in the loop.

[Saltbush Bill]

Did I count 16 thermometers ?

[acfixer69]

Don't see any of the columns draining back to the boiler.

[Saltbush Bill]

Think I can AC...need to blow the photo up bigger.

[juana_b]

Don't see any of the columns draining back to the boiler.

Hard for me to see much detail in that picture but it may be on the back side running just in front of the CIP header.

[acfixer69]

Blew it up on full screen all I see is cip lines. Don't matter is a sample picture anyway.

[LWTCS]

Yeah, balancing that thing is going to be fun.

You'll save money from a man hours point of view by cutting a hole in the roof and going with a single, dedicated vodka column.
The configuration in the pic isn't going to be anywhere as near efficient as a proper vodka column that will fully exploit temp gradient.

Then get yourself a dedicated (smaller) outfit for gin production. This will save you hours upon hours worth of valuable production time.

The equipment will never cost more than the labor to run at the snails pace needed to effectively run the design above imo.

The kettle size looks to be 250 to 300 gallons? Is that correct? If so, it should yeild about a half barrel of whiskey per run.

What island are you on? Where are the grains coming from?

[tiramisu]

I'm trying to get my head wrapped around what the purpose of that monstrosity is.
Overcomplicated reflux still is what it appears to be.

[Yummyrum]

Yeah, balancing that thing is going to be fun.

You'll save money from a man hours point of view by cutting a hole in the roof and going with a single, dedicated vodka column.
The configuration in the pic isn't going to be anywhere as near efficient as a proper vodka column that will fully exploit temp gradient.

Then get yourself a dedicated (smaller) outfit for gin production. This will save you hours upon hours worth of valuable production time.

The equipment will never cost more than the labor to run at the snails pace needed to effectively run the design above imo.

The kettle size looks to be 250 to 300 gallons? Is that correct? If so, it should yeild about a half barrel of whiskey per run.

What island are you on? Where are the grains coming from?

Listen to this guy .

Solid advise in every sentence .

It looks impressive , but it’s a bad configuration after the first plated column .
Definitely no decent Vodka still

[LWTCS]

I'm trying to get my head wrapped around what the purpose of that monstrosity is.
Overcomplicated reflux still is what it appears to be.

For lack of a better analogy, it is a poorly designed Swiss Army knife. It does a bunch things , but doesn't do any one thing very well.

The Alembic hat for traditional pot stilled spirits. Probably does fine.

The short column also likely does a good flavored spirit.

The vodka sections are not at all a good configuration as an excessive amount of high proof will be sent back to the kettle to be distilled yet again.
Also, the pressure needed to send vapor to the column segment at the end of the array will like blow past the drain back traps if you are trying to fully exploit collection speeds typically associated with that diameter.
And finally the gin basket / column is so far away from the heat source that you are sure to end up collecting an excessive amount of "gin tea".

And finally, the narrow vapor pipes entering directly into the top of your product condenser a very poor design. Entering in from the top like that will surely force all of the through pipes round the perimeter of the shell to be completely un-utilized.
Maybe even so much so that you'll only get the performance of condensers that are half the diameter.

[LWTCS]

Here is an example of a PC that has the 2" vapor pipe entering directly over head.
You can see by the staining exactly what pipes are being used and what is being virtually unused.
And this picture only shows a 6" diameter.
So you can imagine how many more pipes are completely unused in an 8 or 12 inch diameter.

[Yummyrum]

Interesting thing there Larry .
Would having a longer section /area between where 2” goes in and 6” starts help reduce vapour speed and expand to share more tubes ?

[LWTCS]

Interesting thing there Larry .
Would having a longer section /area between where 2” goes in and 6” starts help reduce vapour speed and expand to share more tubes ?

Coming in from the side works best.

We actually come in on the side with the side entry installed on a tangential orientation. This creates a whirlpool action that better allows for uniform vapor distribution to every pipe.