alky_D

[nothing to lose]

"How much are you going to try? 5 gals or more? And where did you find that much free bad canned fruits?"

Probably 55gal batches.

I have a friend with a salvage grocery store. I get great deals on good food in bent cans, and all the stuff he don't want to sell or can't sell I can have free. Like it looked to be cooking oil spilled on Cranberry sauce cans, messy and not worth cleaning to sell, but nothing wrong with it.

Yams in badly bent cans, lids are puffed because of bent sides, probably nothing wrong with the Yams inside, but puffed lids are also a sign of spoiled foods and who wants to take a chance, though I know for sure the dents did it, but I don't like Yams that well!! Stuff like above is free, other stuff is cheap. Large cans of sliced peaches about 50cents

May be a good idea for you to look for those type stores, salvage or discount grocery. Ask the owners of smaller stores for the sugary garbage they have to throw away anyway.

 What happens is places buy by the skid/pallet, maybe 40-50 bannana boxes, contents mostly unknown. Could be all food, lots of paper towels and toilet tissue, bug sprays etc.. About anything you would find in a store. But it's salvage for some reason, maybe 1 can in a case got damaged and leaked, so they scrap the whole case, exactly they same thing you would have bought in a real store. Maybe it's a little out of date, maybe it got bent, sometimes just the company changed the product or just the label. Anyway it's mostly all good food, but the stores do get alot of garbage not sellable to the public at times too.

Tell em it's for the hogs

I used to have goats and pigs, geuss what they ate alot

 I wonder how ceral would do? Like corn flakes, rice stuff, think it would work or has all the good stuff been cooked out?

[nothing to lose]

By the way Bruce, did you happen to see my post from back around May?

That was before I shut every thing down for the trip to Canada, haven't got back into things yet, still getting caught up here.

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/5/2/1713/08783

I was making some peach Beer there. Unfortunatly the wife sat it outside on the porch, got ballon knocked off dirty etc.. and I tossed it out. Should have froze that myself

[Bruce S]

I have a small amount of Alky I can try this with .

I also have some rancid olive oil to try with as well.

I'll do some this week, let it sit see how it does with just sitting( we need to know what its going to do in the tanks) then try putting it in the deeo freeze to see what that does for seperation.

I'll try a couple of different mixes.

One of Norm's old comments about using 2 & 3liter plastic pop bottles for a VAWT has me saving these for our daughter's next project; so I'll be able to do some cross-trials.

Bruce S

[Bruce S]

NTL

There's some of those type of places back home P.B.MO, but they've all disappered around St. Louis. You might want to stay around the 5gal levels and get things down pat before jumping into the 55gal sizes.

You'll need to get the yeast amounts figuered out and how much water to work with those suryps from the cans.

Gotta a strainer? one normally used for making jelly? try running the fruit through that before putting everything into a vat then take all the left over stuff and maybe soak it into a bunch of water let soak a couple days with a tight lid( keeps out bugs) check sugar content adjust accordingly and make a non-drinkable run.

This way you're getting every bit of what you can out of what you have. I've learned this has we have little to hide runs and most neighbors don't want our left over yeast for their gardens ( they will gladly take tomatoes, and love the roses that keep blooming through the summer and even during light frosts though!!).

So we make as many runs of the leftover as possible, which BTW includes the old yeasts and liquid, we just make sure not to use these for serving.

Too bad about pouring out the dirty beer. You know that by distilling even bad beer you can get whiskey right?

The ceral stuff is an item I haven't tried, doesn't last long around here:-))

If you're getting these on the pallets, you can given it a try just make sure that before you go the add yeast you measure the sugar content, the carbs may release extra sugar. I think you could even cut the added sugar way back, could be a good test, though.

Cheers!

Bruce S

[nothing to lose]

OK, I decided to go with small batches first.

Screwed up the first 3 a little maybe already.

Hmm, you say 1.5lbs sugar to 1 gal water, geuss I messed up a bit with 4lbs/1gal mix then

I'll water it down, no harm done I geuss.

I think the problem was the yeast might be bad. I just am not getting anything for gas.

I mixed up about 1gal yams and cranberry sauce and water also, no gas their either.

When I did the peach beer I was blowing up 9" ballons all night on top of a gal milk jug the first night. Now I am not even taking the slack out of the deflated ballon, so nothing happening here. I used bread yeast that was out of date and would have been tossed out anyway so no harm done, just add in some fresh yeast and I think all should be fine, just wasted a night is all.

Between cleaning the rock house (real yucky and mice) and broke cars I got slowed down here. Now the PC died agin today, hopefully got it fixed now, I'm online for now anyway, see if it dies again later. Jusr got it working again the other day after it crashed. Crappy hardrive, ordered a new Maxtor for it just now, this WD been nothing but problems.

Well got to run, I'll thin down that sugar mix and toss in some better yeast.

[nothing to lose]

I warmed the mixes abit, added fresh yeast, but I did not thin the mix yet since I wanted to see if it was just bad yeast that was wrong. It was the yeast!

I got a gal milk jug of yams/cranbberry/water and a gal of Sugar/water, both are bubbling like a shook up bottle of soda pop with the lid off. I got some good reaction going now. Ballons are starting to take shape also.

At this time judging from the bubbles created and ballons on top I would say the reactions are about equal for the 2 mixes so far. Now I geuss the question would be which will die out first, or produce the best yield.

I'll let this run awhile as is I geuss for now. Latter I will add 2gal water to the sugar mix and use it again since I mixed it 4lb/1gal. If I get time later today and can find a 5 gal container to use I might remix that batch tonight before the yeast dies out.

Maybe Monday I can get those barrels. Everytime I think I can pick them up something comes up! Had my trucks tied up this weekend no way to haul them.

[nothing to lose]

Not the 55gal drums I had planned, but it's a start anyway.

First I did 2 milk jugs. The one on the left was 4lbs sugar/ 1Gallon water and I also put some of that mix in a 1 liter soda bottle. The one on the right is 1 can 16oz Cranberry sauce, 1 can 29oz Yam's mixed with enough water to make 1gal.

To begin with nothing did anything. I used old yeast, 2003 dated. So then I used fresh bread machine yeast. I got a good reaction going in both. The yams/cranberry definatlety was bubbling faster and fill the ballon faster/larger then the 4lb sugar/1 gal water mix. Both were working well though.

So then I took the sugar water mix which is too much sugar too little water and dumped both containers into this 5gal jug. I added enough warm water to make about 3-4gal and added more yeast. At first I was getting no reaction or bubbles. After awhile I decided to add 1 can cranberry sauce. This I mixed with water, heated it, mashed it, basicly making a soup or drink of it and poured it in. Not alot seemed to be happening so I took a nap. Been a hard weekend and late nights etc..

After maybe an hour or 2 the kid woke me and said my ballons were about to pop

So I let the CO2 out.

I should have got a picture before letting out the gas, but I had a really hard time finding batteries for the camera, then they were dead. I was lucky to get the first picture took with a little charge but they died again right away and were being charged still when I took the second one. I hate portable CD players!!! I buy $20 batteries and charger for the kids camera, can't find anything, their dead when found, WHY? CD players! If I don't get a camera for my birthday in a couple weeks I'll be buying one for myself!!!

Still can't figure out why this camera takes great outdoor pics perfect, but everything indoors is crappy like these turned out. Will try to get better ones later after I charge and hide the batteries!

[nothing to lose]

"So then I took the sugar water mix which is too much sugar too little water and dumped both containers into this 5gal jug. I added enough warm water to make about 3-4gal and added more yeast."

That could sound wrong. I took the 1gal and 1 liter of sugar water mix and put that into the 5gal jug. Just wanted to clarify I did not mix in the yams/cranberry with that. That mix is still in the milk jug and working well.

Nutrition (brewing) facts

Cranberry sauce, 16oz can, per serving, Calories 110, Carbohydrate 27g, Sugars 22g, X's about 6 servings.

Yam's in syrup, 29oz can, per serving, Calories 150, Carbohydrate 36g, Sugars 23g, X's about 5 servings.

[Bruce S]

Nice picture of a Brontosaurus in the back ground....

That Pink balloon would've been something to see fully loaded.:-)))))

[nothing to lose]

"Nice picture of a Brontosaurus in the back ground...."

Ya, That's a growth chart the kid printed long ago.

"That Pink balloon would've been something to see fully loaded."

Don't know why the odd shape there. Anyway I had trouble with the seal on the 5gal jug. Rough edge on a seam and it didn't seal. Speaking of which, I got a little moisture out the leak. Kinda tiny bubbles like when you use soapy water to check a propane tank for leaks and you have a tiny leak.

 Perhaps the CO2 is carring away some of the contents. Have you ever tried to cool and condense the escaping CO2?

 I just wonder if that could be an extra amount of Alky? Part of that missing 3 quarts?

Probably not, but I had a strong alky/beer type smell. You know what I mean, the kinda smell you think would give you a buzz all by itself. Then that little wetness around the leaky seal has me wondering if something condensed as the CO2 was escaping.

I have the jugs outside now. Sitting on my trailer. Darned if it didn't cool off the last couple nights now. I figured outside they would stay a nice 70-90 degrees, course it rained and got cool instead. So today I was looking about sunrise. Not much for bubbles, stuff cooled off durring the night. Before I came back inside I looked again, got nice big bubbles going now. It did not take long for the mix to start warming up, though it's still cool out and started to rain again.

As for the ballons, before I set the jugs outside I punched a tiny hole in the ballons. Now they keep air out, but they don't blow up either. I figured that would have been a problem. They would have either filled and burst or blew off the jugs.

Now I got darker mix in the bottom and the top is getting a whiteish clearish look already. Not sure if it's just the canned stuff all settled out or if I am getting a bit already.

 Is the top where the Alky should be? Maybe carefully suck a bit off the top and freeze it to see if it has any content yet? Only been about 2 days I guess, have to look when I started it. Sunday night I think. The 5gal jug has about 1-2" of the white stuff already. Maybe it's the sugar showing though?

Well had me another thought on using waste heat. Was at a friends house, they have a window airconditonare sitting in the living room

Hmm, I didn't mention it, but doesn't the heat blowing out the back into the room defeat the cold blowing out the front into the same room?? :O

 So anyway I got the idea, why not use the hot air blowing out the back to keep a fermenting mix warm? I figure as long as the air flow is not blocked it should not effect the airconditonare at all. This might be a free way to keep the mash a nice warm temp without getting it too hot. With Central air, build a rack over the outdoor unit, or shelves near a window unit. Yeast slows when cold, too much heat kills it, but I figured that would be about the right warm temp to keep it very active.

 Just something to think about. Last night the house was hot and the air running even thought it cooled off outside and my yeast outdoors slowed till this morning when it warmed abit. All that waste heat would have been good last night.

 I'll have to put more thought into that for this Fall when days are hot and nights pretty cool.

[Bruce S]

NTL;

   Nice to hear about the extra yeast working for you. The mucky stuff at the bottom is the dead/dying yeast it's okay to leave it.

The smell is the CO2 and my bet would be that your probably right about the discharge. There a lot going on in your mix right now and I would also bet that the old yeast got busy too. The extra "I'm getting a buzz " is from a mixture of CO2 and Alky, so moving it outside is a good thing.

 I have not tried cooling the CO2 didn't have a discharge around my corks , but idea of the extra quarts going out with the CO2 does make sense. I'll look around and see if there's a low tech way of cooling/capturing the discharge.

The white-ish looking stuff is working yeast froth, this is a good thing.... Keep an eye on it, it'll tell you when the yeast is finished, so long as those bubbles are going at it, the yeast has food to work with , once the food is gone or the yeast is finished , or the alky is at a proof that kills the yeast , then this run will be ready for the next stage.

Before you put this runs into the freezer, you'll need to do the part I put up about the heating/distilling part.

This is where the fish heater comes in..

I would say you have about 8 -10 days to go before this run is ready, but it may finish early so kinda keep an eye on it, if the yeast dies early there may be a vacuum and will begin sucking in air and that would be bad.

The airconditioner should have it's hot side sitting outside, way would it be inside?

Careful about building a rack on the central air unit it's efficiency goes down when you begin to block it's ability the cool

Cheers!

Bruce.

[nothing to lose]

"The airconditioner should have it's hot side sitting outside, why would it be inside?

Careful about building a rack on the central air unit it's efficiency goes down when you begin to block it's ability the cool "

Didn't ask why, maybe they just bought it or had it fixed and checking to be sure it put cold air out the front? Or maybe they just figure it's not very good cause the house never cools off? Who knows. But anyway I thought about the waste heat in normal use from that. Yes, if trying to collect the heat we can't block the air flow at all.

 I have a couple thoughts, but my window unit is in a bad place to do anything and the other side of the trailer doesn't have a window I could use

"The extra "I'm getting a buzz " is from a mixture of CO2 and Alky, so moving it outside is a good thing."

Same thing I thought in both cases. For a low tech cheap way to cool it, I wonder if just a long skinny copper tube sticking straight up would do it. Perhaps it would condense on the rise upwards and run back down into the bottle, still letting out the CO2. It was condensing on the bottle itself a bit it seemed. Another thought I had for cheap, maybe use an old Ice chest, fill with ice, run the J tube into a bottle in the cold ice chest then. Rather it's worth the trouble would depend if a decent amount extra got collected I geuss. If you loose 3 quarts of mix on a 20 quart (5gallon) batch, I expect maybe a 33 quart loss on a 55gallon batch if all works equal. That's about 8 Gallons, so if I got back 2 gallons then it may be worth a little trouble.

How do you vent to your plants? I think I will start doing a little gardening over at the rock house. Nice large front and back porch I can set barrels and planters I think, plus another spot. Are you piping it into the soil and letting it rise out, or do you have like a green house over the plants? I am thinking a PVC pipe and plastic mini house over the plants till they get larger, then lift it off latter.

[ghurd]

"HIC"

scuze me...

"HIC"

scuze me s'more...

"HIC"

I'll try later

"HIC"

something wrong with the monitr. montorer. montornener. monitornerner

the screen thing

"HIC"

i'll try later

"HIC"

[nothing to lose]

Ya, me too.

I quit drinking again. I quit long ago, then I started having a beer once in a while but rarely, mostly trying homebrews or different stuff, like I had a couple up in Canada to see what theirs is.

Now I quit drinking again, I'll just sniff the fumes and that's good enough

I see your back too, send me an e-mail, how was your trip to Canada? Send pics of the 20' pike you caught while there too, ha ha

[Bruce S]

G-

   I read this on a day from hell.... and had the whole IT department lookig at me in THAT kinda way.

Thanks ever soooooo much for the laugh.

Bruce S

[Bruce S]

I have a $2.00 "J" tube that I put a plastic hose on and vent the CO2 under the plants.

  In the winter, I have a couple hydroponic units that I run so we can have tomatoes and lettuce in the winter. You can get a length of soft copper and gently bend it into an "J" then you could attach a small tube of plastic or gargen hose to the end and lay it other end under the plants.

To keep air out and CO2 excapeing put a small amount of water in the "J" tube. Then just make sure there's no kinks in the line and move it under the plant leaves and to a different plant each day. You should see the leaves go dark green as they suck this lovely stuff right in.

The green house thing is a good idea. We got one made out of metal that had a thick plastic on it, we use this for the young plant outside and it does pretty good. My wife is good a sewing so I got some plastic that is used for Jeeps windows and had her sew velcro on it and shaped it to fit kinda tight . The velcro allows us to open up the sides if it gets too hot.

Good stuff... nice and light and not too expensive, and a whole lot cheaper than buying something like it.

I do make sure that the tube I have starts out high so the CO2 gets a good run up then a gentle fall so it keeps going one way and that's about it.

Have you decided how your going to heat this stuff up once the yeast is finished?

Bruce S  

[ghurd]

They are on the way.

The wife beat me this time with a 45~46" pike.

I might do a little diary with a couple solar (PV and H2O heat), potable water related (modifications so the darn thing runs itself) and fish pics if anyone has any interest.

G-

[nothing to lose]

If you post it I'll read it, not sure what you mean there, but I have an enterest in everything it seems. Read my next post here about garbage

[nothing to lose]

Ok, I have copper tubbing here and thought about basically the same thing for a J tube. I thought that was kinda what you had meant it was, kinda like a drain trap on a sink type thing but small.

 So you have it lay under the plants, I wasn't sure if it should be under the soil and seep out, geuss not. I'll be using dirt/soil for the plants.

We think the same I geuss. I have a heavy CLEAR plastic used for table clothe type covers from an old curtain factory I bought scraps from in the past. It is heavy and crystal clear, I have used it for winter storm windows in the past even. Great stuff!

 I often forget about it, but that is what I think I will make the green house out of.

No I have not decided yet. I have thoughts of various ways I will try heating it. I will probably do what you do and buy a fish tank heater. Also when I know I have done things correctly with the mash I will try to make the truck refiner, Have a few ideas on that. And solar comes to mind also for a little while yet, not sure on that one. Thinking heat a auto coolant in a tank under glass then circulate that hot coolent around an insulated barrel of mash. Not heating the mash barrel directly from sun. To begin with if I need to I'll figure out a way to use an electric heater untill I get something else worked out. Still have to get barrels, so that big one will be at least 2 weeks away. For small batches another thought is an old electric crock pot I have. It works but junk. Cut off the sides and I have basically a low heat hot plate. See what temp simmer is and either use that or if too hot, make a double boiler to sit on it. Heat water with the hot plate and the mash in a container in the water. That should even out and reduce the heat if needed.

 I also have an old pressure cooker here. No pressure valve on it, but it seals well, so I could connect a tube to the hole for the pressure valve and do maybe a gallon on a stove or hot plate.

I am having problems some what. I went to buy barrels today finnally, well the one place the barrels have warning labels about toxic chemicals. They had something used to make fertilizer in them I was told. I don't want those, may kill the yeast or do other harm. Then I drove to the other place, where I normally buy corn oil barrels, teflon lined. Well they are out! Their on a list to be called when they are available, but who knows when?? Maybe a week or perhaps alot more?

 I got one more place to go, if not there then I geuss I will have to go with plastic barrels, but I really wanted metal with removeable lids!!

 If I had a Diesil I would just buy a barrel of corn oil and be happy!

Well now for the Garbage, Garbage, Garbage, stuff :O

Good news, I have a truck load of garbage sitting in my yard from my friends store!

Went to visit him today, I got candy bars, cereal, juices, about a little of everything. Said bring my trailer down and he will load it up for me

 ALL FREE, except gas to go get it. I am stocking up now on garbage, all I can get. Most of this is bad packages, very out of date, or dirty (stuff spilled on it). So I now need barrels, and pigs

 Some of it is actaully  good eatable foods also, he just did not want to mess with it. Sometimes it costs more in labor to clean a few cans than they will sell for anyway, or the label is screwed up bad etc..

 So I also got a few things I will probably eat after I wash the cans. Don't cost me anything to wash em myself

 Anyway I got about half a pickup truck bed full, boxes double stacked even with top of sides. This is why I really need removable lid type barrels. I could just dump all the food into those and store it till needed later for the mash or pigs. No worries about mice or other critters getting into bags or boxes. Then also easier to clean the barrels of the slew this stuff will probably make if the lids pop off for cleaning.

OK, now on the food stuff again. How much are you paying for yeast? Is it worth shipping costs to take a chance on old yeast packages? I got a box of 40 packs for $2 today, I can't find the date on those. Also can get 2 packs of bread yeast, 10/$1 dated sometime 2003.

 I will mix some warm water/sugar and try one from the 40 pack myself tonight just to see if it foams up like it should. If it does I geuss that's a good deal, but it doesn't mean they all will maybe? If you want to try it Bruce e-mail me an address to send it too. Not sure how good a deal it is, but the wife just said for fresh bread machine yeast it's $2 at the normal store for a 3 pack. We buy the bottle for about $6 though. Normally I don't trust old bread yeast for bread, to much expensive stuff to loose if the yeasat is bad and bread ruins. But what the hay, if the yeast for mash is bad just mix in another pack I geuss till you get a good one. That's about 5 cents a pack compared to 66 cents, if you use alot of it could save a bit for awhile.

 Well I got to go and unload the truck and get ready to take my trailer back down tonight or tommorow for more garbage

[ghurd]

The water filter part is confusing.

Unless you tried to use one like it said on the box!!!

Give me til maybe Tuesday.

[ghurd]

Glad I could help,

G-

[nothing to lose]

Gonna go for broke tonight.

Got 44lbs sugar, tons of yeast, and plastic barrels too. I wanted metal, but I was able to get these.

I'll start the sugar mix tonight for sure. Junk food and garbage though will have to wait. I will pump the veggie oil out of a metal barrel into 2 of the plastics and and clean it well, then use it for the food mash. I think I will have enough trash left over with that I should have a barrel I can open up for cleaning.

 Will try to get a decent pic if anything worth taking and post it later.

[nothing to lose]

Well, we seem to be slowing down  here.

I think Sunday is the last day (14days) for the 1gal and 5 gal jugs for fermenting. I'll know if it's done on Sunday I geuss.

This last weekend as I said I would, I started a 30gal barrel also. It has 40lbs sugar and about 28gals water. I used 1 pack of yeast per 5Gal so 6 packs for the barrel.

I also added some yeast to a couple bottles of juice and waited for it to get active and dumped those into the barrel. I did this to be certain first the juice did not contain any preservatives or such that would kill my yeast.

 Today I opened the cap and looked in, fizzing nicely.

I was going to use 44lbs sugar, but the 4lb bag got left behind

 I will get busy on a way to cook the small batches now. I have a riding mower I stuck a car altenator on at the rock house for charging batteries. I think that is what I will burn the first batch in for testing. Also thinking of using the exhaust heat from the engine as part of the cooking process, but first I need some to run the engine on.

I have put alot of thought into the idea of cooking while driving. I am thinking Bruce if your batches are only having 1 quart dead slew per 20quart mash, then if we strained it well, dump into a 5gal container, heat with engine coolant to distill, then we should have 1 quart clean water left. This is not alot to be hauling around! If we strain the solids out before dumping into the tank, then we should only need to drain out the water, not alot cleaning needed. How to prevent overheating the system I am looking into, for my old Ford truck I can get a thermostat set to 180f up to 200f I think.

[Bruce S]

I was beginning to wonder how things were going.

I am down to my last 5 gals. Haven't been able to get started on a new set, even though gas around here is hovering around the 2.50 mark.

I am about to retire my old truck, the front is getting to the point of a full rebuild. I may trade it off to my nephew he pretty good at this and I had him try some of my fuel in his little toyota and he's ready for more.

A little worried about the temperature's your going to be putting the slew through.

If you can keep an eye on the temps by using exhaust of heated temps then I think you should be fine, otherwise you may need to go the route of an electric heater or some other way to control the heat. Of course if you have one of those cute old coffee mugs that heat your coffee while driving then you could use that to bring the temps up and keep them pretty stable.

Send pics of the 30gal.It maybe a good size to set inside one of the 55gal drums and let the run distil down into the 55gal bottom for a good first run.

If you dump the solids from the bottom or top or both then you should have a much cleaner first run.

What HP is your riding mower? my uncle used his fuel in his old 18HP but since he used it only in the summer, he ran 90/10 and it would flat out run. He would drain the tank in the winter and put rubbing Alky in it to winter over, no sticky valves ever.

If you use the hot water from the truck you could use a water valve to control the heat by being able to add cold to it to bring the run up to temp but you'll need to watch it so it doesn't get too far off the 50C mark.

I've started working on an all electric one using peltier chips. I KNOW, they're horrible for eff, but they do make keeping things at an even temp a whole lot easier.

The hardest part was trying to intergrate all the electronics into a circuit board, still don't have it right just yet, the power to heat up the liquids from a room temp is off the charts and I've toasted a few FETS already.

I may drop back and use the good old standard fish tank heater as the cooker for the run a 120vac 100watt heater is easier to handle than a chip that sucks up 12 @ 8.65A for only a delta temp change of 267W. But I can control the chips down to 1/2 degree and get back a minute charge to another battery during rest time by using the heat versus cold effect to maybe throw a trickle into a AA NiCd.

Anyway getting long winded and gotta go move more phones & fax machines.

Cheers;

Bruce S

[nothing to lose]

I been at the other house alot also, so things are working but slow to post progress.

"Send pics of the 30gal.It maybe a good size to set inside one of the 55gal drums and let the run distil down into the 55gal bottom for a good first run."

 I am thinking insulate my tank really well to hold the heat to 180-190F as much as possible.  First run? How many times do you run before you use it as feul? I am planning a second cool tank to condense in. Also I have electric feul pumps I can use to move feul/mix from tank to tank if needed.

"What HP is your riding mower? ... he ran 90/10 and it would flat out run. "

 I have various ones with good engines, mostly aroun 12HP and up, mowers are junk engines good. Is that 90% alky?

"I've started working on an all electric one using peltier chips. "

 Ohh, good grief Charlie Brown :O

Just joking, sounds expensive though, aren't peltiers pretty costly? One of the reasons I have not messed with them yet myself much. Just one from a junk ice chest here. Thought about them for the wood burner flue pipe before but backed off because of cost. That was for making power though, so alot different too.

 Well, I got 2 good bubblers going now

1 week old 30gal barrel of sugar water, copper tube comes out screw cap. I drilled a hole into the cap and used formagasket to seal the tube into the hole. I have a fexible gray plastic pipe on the copper tube and it loops over then drops to the bottom of a jug of water. Man is that one bubblin good!

Second barrel I am slowly starting up. I had old juice, lots of it. Put yeast in OJ, Apple bannanna, and a jug of cranberry stuff. It all worked as it was, did not kill the yeast. So yesterday I dumped those 3 bottles that were bubblin good already into a 30gal barrel. Then I poured in about 8 jugs of the various juices, also some flat soda that was sitting around kids hadn't drank all of. A bit of water also as I was rinsing out the juice jugs. This one is mostly empty, maybe 4-5gal in it so far. I made the same cap tube system. This one bulds a pressure a bit then bubbles alot fast, then it waits a few seconds not bubbling, then bubbles fast a bunch. I'll be tossing in alot of old stuff into this mix. Found about 8 cans of partcaily drank sodas around the house etc..

 Hmmm, finnally a use for those soda's the kid and wife waste so often

Now I think the gal Yams/cranberry is done and also the 5gal jug I had started about 2 weeks ago (close to 14 days today). I still have not built anyway to distill that. I did go to Walmart today and get a $23 fish tank heater, the 30-50gal model says 200watt. I thought about the 50watt or 100watt but decided to get the larger one. I think price was only $2 difference between the 100W and 200W and wasn't sure the $15 50Watt was enough. I geuss it will only eat power when on, and a larger heater should heat faster then shut off, so if I am correct it will use about the same power total anyway, just more at once for a shorter time than the 100watt would for a longer time?

 Also bought a meat thermometer that will read the 180-190F I need easily.

Not sure really how to set that up though right now. I have so many ideas don't know where to start first. How do you use your fish tank heater? Do you lay it in the bottom and let the cord hang in the mix? Says I can do this as a fish tank heater in water, was not sure about in mash. Will the alky eat the cord or seep into the heater? I also have to decide what to use for the container now. I figure it needs to be sealed pretty good and not too large to start with.

As for my truck Idea, I have lots of old metal tanks here of various sizes and types.

 I think I will cut open an old hot water tank, cut to about 10gal size height, place an auto heater core inside, run copper tubbing from core out top for hoses to connect to, all welded up and sealed tight. I'll put a fill spout near the top and a drain at the bottom for filling and draining water. Copper tube will be on top to let out the alky vapor to a condenser tank then also. I think if I strain/filter the mix well enough before adding to the tank then I should not have solids nor need to do much tank cleaning other than draining, does that sound about right to you?

 I am thinking also if I can get the fish heater set to correct tempature I "may" put it into the tank also, not sure on that yet. 200watts ain't that much ( 16.6 amps @12V plus losses) and I have a 300watt inverter I could power it with if needed. So if the truck brought the mix up to say 170F I could just use the heater for the extra few degrees when needed. I will have valves on the engine heater hoses to adjust flow as needed also though for now it will be manual adjustments.

Another thought, how high does an Electric hot water tank turn up? Get a 110V model and set it to 190F and use the existing threaded holes for what we need and plug the extras

It's insulated and ready to go already, could be ran from an inverter, and we can buy elements for them in various watts also. Maybe add a water level type switch to turn it off below a certain level so it don't run too dry and burn out. I think my old trailer house has a small 110V water heater, I just now thought of it

I just connected a battery isolator to my F250 yesterday (had it like 5 years, decided to use it), I noticed I have alot of room under the hood for various things

Maybe a very small tank going in there soon? Had thought of a second battery, but heck I got enough in the bed already. Hopefully tomorrow I will be getting a few used T-105s! Work is a little slow at the rock house, my inverter will power my cheapy HF wire welder fine but the batteries aren't enough, I need more so each battery has less load and I don't drain them as fast. Try to get up to a C20 rate instead of C5 !!

 

[nothing to lose]

I am looking on-line for some "stuff"

Found this site

http://www.beer-wine.com/

Looks interesting to me, anyplace online you recomend?

[Bruce S]

My runs depend on what I'm using it for, but since this is for your truck I'll keep it at that point. Reason being, if I'm using for the truck & now car then one run of clean stuff is enough, if I'm making this as a duel use then the second run is done in the freezer. The cast off of this is then kept for adding to other re-freezing to get all the available Alky seperated from the water.

If you have a drain of spicket close to the bottom of the 55gal, then you won't need to pump it from one tank to the other. Otherwise a gas rated pump should be just fine.

The fish tank heater that you got, does it have seetings on it? If so set it to 50c or 120F, this is what I set mine to. I also just lay mine on the bottom, to cord didn't show any wear on mine (even after I burnt it up). Do be careful though they are brittle and can crack easy.

The mower ran on 90/10 Alky, they're cheaper to try your fuel out on than your truck enigne. Get an old mason jar, and mix alittle Alky with alittle gas and see how it looks, before pouring into tank, this will help tell if your Alky is okay for the tank.

Good call of the 200watt heater better to have the heat available than not.

careful about getting any tank too hot, get past the point of distilling and you get water vapor too.

If you get water in it you can rerun this batch and seperate them but that means more time and ends up making everything cost more.

BTW: Are you keeping tabs on how much you've spent?

I know the sugar stuff pretty much came free but still, I'm wondering about what your is going to end up costinf for the first batch.

If you can finly control a electric water then that may be a better way to go. I just layed claim to a small 10gal 110vac unit and this could be a VERY good use for it.

Careful using that 300 watter, my free one nags me at around 160watts.

Any thermometer you buy, make sure it's a good one, I bought one that is a digital so I could see the instant temp and leave it in the mash.

I'd like to build one that turns off if it gets too hot, my other one didn't and that's what burnt it up.

Here's what you can do once you get to the point of needing to distill this stuff off.

Take the one you have the mash in, stake a small bucket and set in down in side a bucket larger than the one with the mash, cut a couple side holes in the small bucket so it won't float, put a plate of some kind on this smaller bucket so you have a place to set the mash bucket. Set the heater slowly down in the mash, make sure the bigger bucket you have everything setting in has a good tight lid, plumb the wires through the top and seal it real tight, I used a cork. Plug the heater( that was preset to 120F/50 C and let'er go to work.

check after the second day, it'll probably take a day or two to get it up to temp and the mash to start cooking, If your lid is clear , like the one I have up on my pics. You'll be able to see the stuff start to cook. depending on how much you have you might want to check the inside bucket by lifting the lid off. the stuff on the bottom should read above 150 proof. You can pull some out with a ladle if you don't have a spicket on it. This is way I use plastic buckets, if I get one that doesn't have a spicket I can add one pretty easy.

Will take a couple days for thsi to cook off, if your going to try this with your 5 gals of stuff keep a good watch on the inside level after the 4th day , better the stop with stuff left over than to burn and crack the heater. Also don't pull the heater out until the whole inside bucket has cooled, the thermal shock will crack the fragile glass.

Cheers

Bruce S

 

[bparks]

I have a couple thoughts on how to speed this all up & make it more production line.

From what I recall about homebrewing, the yeasts they sell for beer are suppose to die out around 6-8% alc level, but champaigne yeast lives on closer to 20%.  Not sure about baking or other types of yeast that might be able to go higher.  Brewers do save their yeast from batch to batch by refrigerating it, so that is certainly doable.  Maybe grab a quart of wort soon after the Co2 production has really taken off so that you have a lot of yeast in the sample, but lower alc levels than you'll get later.

I'm thinking though, that if you really wanted to make a lot of this stuff you could start a say 5 gal batch.  Once the carbonation has started to slow a little bit siphon off 3 gallons to a secondary fermenter.  Add 3 gallons of fresh wort to the original fermenter, it should take off really fast since theres still a lot of live yeast ready to go.  The secondary fermenter should finish in a day or two. I'd distill it as soon as the fermentation is close to stopping, no point waiting another day or two for that last 1%.

After the initial distillation, the water left behind likely has some residual sugar & alcohol. I'd think you could add some more sugar, or fruit or whatever to it & dump it back in the primary fermenter, since the second batch is probably slowing down by now.  Maybe it would take two secondary fermenters, I have a feeling that adding a fresh 3 gallons of wort to 2 gallons of high density yeast will ferment in a really big hurry.

This would probably get really messy after a while, a bottom drain to remove some sediment would help with that.  Buying the more expensive champaigne yeast would be offset I think by the higher output & fact that you should only have to buy it once.

[ElSenator]

http://www.amazingstill.com/default.htm

even MORE info, because it's interesting.

[nothing to lose]

"The fish tank heater that you got, does it have seetings on it? If so set it to 50c or 120F, this is what I set mine to."

Huh, 120F?? I thought we are trying for higher temps than that? No mine does not have settings, that dumb scale from a fine line to fat line and a mark in the middle.

Seriously, did I mix something up somewhere, I thought we are trying for around 170-180F?? My thermomoter is a cheap $4 meat type with the spike you stick into meats of course. I got that for now because it's easy to read and later I may poke it into the side of a fermenting tank permanat. I saw a digital I thought about getting, has a corded probe to check temps and leave in place and the readout woul be outside the tank, but it said not to submerse the cord or readout part. It has a beeper or something also I think for when it hits the preset temp. Was around $13, may get it latter.

"BTW: Are you keeping tabs on how much you've spent?"

Not too well yet, I will but for now some things have daul uses. Like I bought 6 plastic barrels $6 each, 1 has sugar yeast water mix, 1 has a little free fruit juice water yeast mix. 2 are storing water for the other house and 2 haul the water in my truck to the house. Latter I will probably be fermenting all 6 perhaps. I am thinking homemade beer too

 Once I get rolling here I will keep better track, for now I got $6 barrel, about $16 sugar, 6 packs yeast at $0.30 (salvage a knickle a pack). So that 30 gal barrel is $22.30 so far. Bubbler tube and bottle free scrap

I really should not count the cost of the barrel though I think, I needed barrels anyway so if this did not work out no loss there, and the barrel should last forever, so it inflates the costs of the first batch falsly $6. If I use it 60 times it would cost $0.10 per batch.  How would you figure something like that?

 The 5gal jug was free, I think I have about $3 in sugar and yeast, I think I need to run that batch now, gotta make time! Gallon jug was free garbage, needs run also now.

When you buy sugars watch for gimmicks and deals of course! I just bought another 40lbs yesterday. 4lb bag cane sugar (great value brand) was 1.8 cents per oz, any brand in any size other than those bags was right at 2.3 per oz. I saved half a penny per OZ and how many per 40lbs?

 I was going to grab 4 10lb bags but went for the savings and grabbed 10 4lb bags instead. $3.20 savings, half a penny adds up, about the cost of 2 1/2 4lb bags right there and then figure the extra for sales tax if I had bought the more expensive sized bags.

 So this next 30 gal batch I start will cost about $13.80 for 44lbs sugar, yeast and sales tax on the sugar.

So far this seems cheap to me, mash costing less than $0.50 per gallon here. Are you figuring the biggest part of your $1.80 as equipment then? At $15 a barrel for crude (hee hee) and if I yield results like yours at 4 gallons feul to 5 gallons mash, then  I would be expecting about 24gal feul from a 30 gal barrel of crude. Course I still have to distill it, but this is sounding too cheap to me so far. Is this because I have not yet figured the cost of the heater, electric etc.. ??

So how long does it take to cook now? I may have a 55 gallon barrel in the yard I started to use before for a project, cut a hole in the bottom side and welded on a pipe. Might be good to put a valve on and use for the distiller if I have a good uncut lid for it still some where.

So is this kinda what your saying for a cooker. Place a 30 gal barrel inside a 55 gal barrel, support the 30 gal off the bottom. Fill the 30 with clean mash and drop in the heater. Let the alky steam out of the 30 gallon and condense in the 55gal. Drain from bottom for feul

 Course seal the lid tight on the 55gal so the alky does not escape correct.

This should be doable tommorow. I could do the 5gal in there same way and next sunday be ready for the first 30gal batch if it is done.

[Bruce S]

WOW;-)

 Took me two weeks to work out all the bugs with the plastic, but you're dead on with the idea.

At 30 gal, don't know how long , but you'll want to take a look inside on day 2 & 4. The second day as it'll take the heater a full day to get everything up to temp and day 4 will be a good indication of about how long the rest will take.

Sorry about the confusion on the heater. The hotter will should work too, just keep a close eye on the mash temp if it gets too hot the water vapor will happen as well, not bad , just will need extra time to distill out later or extra water to freeze for seperation.

Don't let the mash heat get too much higher than the 170 mark if you have any adjustment you can make. Let the heater run a full 24 hours on its lowest setting and use the thermometer to check.

The $13.00 sounds just like the one I have. You can use the meat one, just look at the meter and see if it has a conversion table that says brown=185F pink=170 or something like that.

Correct on the costs.

What I do/did was figure what it would cost me if I had to purchase everything brand new and at full retail. This is where the so-called worst case senerio creeps into production costs.

Correct on the other costs as well. Figure what it would cost you if you had to use the most expensive distiller ( electric stove in our parts).

Bruce S

[Bruce S]

ElSenator;

  Just really took a look at you website you posted.

Now that is cool, pretty close to what I have.

Wish I had seen this BEFORE spending so much time and brain power figuaring this out too.

Thanks so much for the post!!!

Hey NTL go over to this site and check out the still, it's so close to the one I have ( a bit smaller tho) it's scary.

This will also be able to give you a pretty good visual of what to do with your 50 & 30 gal barrels.

Cheers!!

Bruce S

[Bruce S]

bparks;

   Good idea. I thought about doing this, someone else put up a similar suggestion.

I haven't tried it basically as I have several pounds of free bread yeast that seems to like to higher sugar content that I use.

If using plastic containers I think it would be pretty easy to add a drain-off tibe to save/ recycle some of the mash. the one thing you want to be very careful about is to do this almost once the yeast starts to slow down, sooner and the incoming air could cause the old vinegar problem.

I have a Worm's way close by work I'll stop and see what the cost difference is.

Champagne yeast should be very useable since it's able to work in 14% and higher vols.

You are correct about the feeding part, kinda like sourdough , jst keep feeding it and it'll keep growing. This would surely help to lower the needs for replenishing yeast cultures.

Cheers

Bruce S