Breweries & distilleries on same site....

[gitchegumee]

Looking for some advice from folks who work where they make both beer and liquor on the same premises. Specifically, whether it might be economical to recover still condenser water for use as hot brewing liquor. Also what feedstocks you use for wash. Thanks in advance for any help!!

[theBrewMeister]

We're currently working on doing this very thing. We're currently building a 15bbl production site (beer) and were just approved for our microdistilling license.

So, I cant answer your question, but it is one that I've been rolling around my head this whole time.

The one problem I have, is that the State is requiring that our distilling area be seperate from the brewing area (no clue why). So, I'd have to install over 100' of stainless pipe from the still back to the HLT. It is possible that we could use copper I guess, but I'm no engineer. It still seems like a long length of pipe, and there's sure to be some heat loss. I do know that the temp of the condenser water will range between 160F to 210F though. If insulated, after several hours of running this water back to the HLT, everything is sure to heat up and hold temp better.

The other question is the amount of water coming back from the condenser. You're most likely gonna fill the HLT and then some. Of course, it's just gonna go down the drain anyway, so why not.

The other option I've been considering is a glycol loop or something to that effect, where the same water/glycol is recirculated and chilled. Havent done any cost analysis on this or water recovery yet though.

Keep me posted as you learn/know more please. There's only about a couple handfuls of microdistillers in the States now so information is low.

Joe

[Natrat]

We're about to start distilling. We are using glycol for heat recovery, but bleeding it through a secondary loop in our hot water tank, which is heated with solar tubes. We also have the option of heating our water with steam...which is produced for the brewhouse and also the steam still...when solar heat isn't available (which I cannot imagine given our latitude.)

I'm also going to use the glycol to chill our air for AC and hot solar water for heating the room. We were going to go for a tankless hot water heater, but the solar proved cheaper after tax credits. It's also way cooler

Because our still is so small, I didn't think recapturing cooling water for HL was efficient, so I'm going to run glycol for condensation and use that as my transfer medium.

Nat