Fermenting bins

[Drunkpartridge]

Hi all, been a bit quiet recently had a lot on in my private life. Anyway not to bore you all with that, I am getting married hopefully in September. I want to make some of my own brew for the party. I have a t500 and have tried several of the turbo options and I am happy I can produce a good enough spirit to add some flavourings to make rum whsky etc.

What my question is, if I want to produce more, can I just get a larger fermenting bin and multiply the quantities and let it ferment out. I am thinking of getting a 205 litre drum and maybe making the recipe up 7 or 8 times in one go. Is there any reason this will not work.

Finally would any one suggest maybe trying a tpw in this quantity, never done a tpw before and wondered if I should try a small one first, is it worth doing this for a wedding, will quality be increased by a lot.

Would love everyone's thoughts on this.

Thanks

[YHB]

Congratulations I hope you both will be very happy together.

Before I talk about the fermenter, just one word of caution. As well as making your vows, it sounds like that you will be anouncing to the world that you make illegal booze, is that something that you really want to do? It's your call but give it some thought.

Yes - just multiply all the ingredients by 7 or 8 and you can make 7 or 8 times the wash. The draw back is that if anything goes wrong it is a significantly more expensive mistake, £50 pounds worth of sugar. Infection and the like is more likely as you will be racking of 7 or 8 times with the rest of the wash sitting in the fermenter without its CO2 cover for a longer period.

Some people do it all the time with no problems, but I would prefer the other way.

Get three or four 25 litre fermenters and start them off at two or three days intervals and recycle the fermenters. As soon as one is complete, strip it and refill the fermenter.

Whatever you chose - have a great Wedding and an even better life.

[Almanac]

+1 what YHB said

My tuppence worth is that you should definitely match your fermenter capacity to your boiler capacity.

I use 60l fermenters but I only do 45l washes because, although my boiler is 50l, the max wash it can take is 40l to leave sufficient headroom and avoid puking.

For running a t500 I'd definitely take YHB's advice and use 25l fermenters in sequence.

AM

[Drunkpartridge]

Thanks for that info, all taken on board. With regards to telling everyone we make it, We have a numerous amount of empty bottles labelled up from when I used to make a variety of drinks from buying the alcohol, sloe gin etc, so I was thinking of using them and no one will hopefully be none the wiser. But will give it more thought.

Looks like I will maybe just buy a couple more 25 litre fermenters then. Or get a bigger still. If only I had the time I would make one. One day I will get round to it. And thanks for your kind words.

[acanthus]

Hi there, I am a new comer to the site. I was wondering if anyone had any insight into how to produce alcohol using cellulose [algae] as a feedstock instead of corn or grain? A

[Almanac]

I'm not an expert in the field but I was warned, long ago by someone who is, to avoid the use of anything with a high cellulose content, in fermenting for consumption or distillation, at all costs.

Apparently, when the cell membrane is destroyed during fermentation you get Methanol being produced in quantity.

This is also a problems in using whole apples where the skin contains cellulose.

AM

[Gaztops]

25 litre fermenting tubs are ideal in my opinion, because it will take me about 4 hours to distill 25 litres leaving the rest of the day having a session of quality control.

I've read a few posts on people taking time to clear their sugar washes. As soon as I finish fermenting, I rack it straight into the boiler and have not had any issues with sorching or burning on the base.

I run a 17 litre stainless steel stock pot with a liebig condenser.