Beer Forum

Let me give you a little background on this story. I work in Agriculture Research with an emphasis on crop production and soils. The past few years we have been working on biofuels research using sweet sorghum, switchgrass, and corn.

This year my boss has decided that we need to ferment some of the extracted sugars from our sweet soghum. Immediately I think this is a great idea believing that I'd get to pick up some homebrew equipment for work. The next thing I know he wants to use the old 7,000 gallon tanker truck we have for fermenting a few acres of this stuff. It's a two compartment tanker, and everything looks like it can be done. I've decided today to make some large blowoff hoses for the two lids. I have no idea how much CO2 this thing is gonna put off, I just know I don't want to blow it up.

I'm sure I am going to have a lot of questions on this, but I thought I'd put my situation out there and see if anyone had any ideas/thoughts on it that might make the process go smoother. Thanks in advance!

Mattress

Sounds awesome! Keep up posted. Pictures?

I'll try to get some pictures when we start. We should be starting this next friday, and the sorghum juice has to be fermented immediately, so it should be an interesting week.

Cleaning and sanitizing a vessel that big, not nec. designed for fermentation should be fun!!!

ApresSkiBrewer wrote:Cleaning and sanitizing a vessel that big, not nec. designed for fermentation should be fun!!!

If they're fermenting it for biofuel, is rigorous sanitazation necessary? I, personally, don't care if my biodiesel has a bit of lacto sourness or some other off flavor.

andy77 wrote:

ApresSkiBrewer wrote:Cleaning and sanitizing a vessel that big, not nec. designed for fermentation should be fun!!!

If they're fermenting it for biofuel, is rigorous sanitazation necessary? I, personally, don't care if my biodiesel has a bit of lacto sourness or some other off flavor.

derrrduh. beer constantly on my mind. i shouldn't be allowed to post w/o drinking.

ApresSkiBrewer wrote:

andy77 wrote:

ApresSkiBrewer wrote:Cleaning and sanitizing a vessel that big, not nec. designed for fermentation should be fun!!!

If they're fermenting it for biofuel, is rigorous sanitazation necessary? I, personally, don't care if my biodiesel has a bit of lacto sourness or some other off flavor.

derrrduh. beer constantly on my mind. i shouldn't be allowed to post w/o drinking.

I hear the Seibel course is very intensive. Beer must be the only thing on your mind!

Update: I walked in this morning and was told that I needed to either build/buy at still for purifying the ethanol.

Though I don't think I'd drink anything from this tanker, I convinced him to let me fill a carboy for testing purer samples. Man I love my job.

So now I'm sitting here shopping for a still. We'll see how this goes.