Day 38:  The beginning of my last week.  Arrived this morning to see this crane already in action.  I really wish I could show pictures of the process involved installing this continuous still.  It is something to see.  If you can take the time to come and see this facility, and meet the team that runs it, it is worth the trip.  The top two sections which include a dephlegmator and refraction column were hanging in mid air from the cable attached to the crane.  The entire still is made of stainless steel except for this copper 5 place refraction section.  The Crane came in through a small hole in the cupola on top of the distillery.  The top two sections got lifted all the way up and the rest of the still slid in underneath.  Once it was all attached the plumbing began.  Nick had left the day before and Klaus stayed to complete the basic install and construction, before leaving to head home to Germany.

 While the side show continued, we got started mashing in a 4000L contract run of my rye whiskey.  I did a cleaning loop on the Mash tun which took most of the morning as the steam didn't heat it up as fast as we thought.  After the loop we put in our base water and got ball the ball running.  Jake, Justin, and I worked for quite a while loading the bags into the mash tun by hand.  80 of them to be exact.  Here is Justin taking his turn at the loading end.  This took the whole

day and Justin stayed late when the last cool down to pitch yeast went late into the evening.  I got word around 11:30 it finally got cool enough to pitch.  We are cooling with city water which is around 70-75 F and takes a long time cool the mash tun.  The crew is definitely looking forward to the arrival of the heat exchanger and a chiller.

The bags were piling up down below.

Final bag going into the mash tun.

I got a face gull of Rye flour dust.   Added a few years to my age for a few minutes.  My whole face was sticky by the end of the 80 bags.  Jake and I had made a run to the hardware store to get some dust masks.  Definitely a smart move.

Jake hanging out below the mash tun as we put in the last few bags.  As you can see we didn't get anything new done to the grain hopper.








Gravity feeding some low wines the hard way.