Do you pull azeo right off the wash or do a stripping run first?
Depends on the price of sugar which fluctuates. Iād say roughly $70-$80 (on the high end) though which includes sugar, yeast and yeast nutrients.
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I have heard of people using corn syrup instead to try to offset the cost of sugar, but Iām unsure what ratio they use of corn syrup to get an equivalent amount of sugar in their wash as using straight up sugar. Or if theyāre even really saving much money.
Yes I do, but you can do a few stripping runs first and run it that way. If you were making it to drink thatād be the way to go but for our purposes it isnāt necessary.
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10 a gallon is much cheaper than 55 a gallon lol I might just go this route instead of buying 190 retail
If you have good column the 10% wash is fine to run to azeotropic without a stripping run. Itāll save you some time and $$ in energy cost. Though its easier to do a strip to rectification run especially when youāre first starting out.
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Until youāre buying 1000gal at a time itāll always be cheaper to make it yourself.
Look for any sugar source, malt extract, corn syrup, whateverās cheapest per kcal!
I hear post extraction biomass is cheapā¦
havenāt figured out how to make liquor with it yet.
but I believe weāve got a working assay for our cellulase(s) (glucose production), so weāre making progress.
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Yup! You need to 140c steam + acid treat it to get it to an efficient extraction potential from what it heard? Iām sure you can get less results with lower steam temps.
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I wonder how annoying the filtration would be
trying to avoid that routeā¦using a biologists toolkit rather than a chemists.
the only reason we have peak oil is that the white rot fungi figured out how to eat dead trees. selection is a powerful tool. fungi, are supremely adapted to seeking new food sources.
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I like where this is going 
Will I get my answers googling hemp cellulose fungi and digging around? Or am I going to need some more expertise digging up this answer? 
Is there any specifics white rot strains?
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Iām gonna guess that query will simply bring you back here 
Iām terrible with names, once you make them Latin, it gets worse. Paul Stametes has done some work on the subject, but did not seem interested in the hemp aspect when I tried pitching a joint effort on the subject. I was chatting with his nextdoor neighbor yesterday, and it might be an anti-cannabis thing. Dunno.
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Psychadeldick envy?
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Convincing the feds that psilocybes are required to effectively scale cellulosic ethanol would be a major boost to the https://psi-2020.org campaign
They are in fact a white rot fungus
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Hhahaha, just called up my most fungally inclined friend. His thoughts; āI think this kinda thing is only useful on scaleā¦ But you might as well just use sawdust if youāre after cellulose. But if youāre gonna put the time in to distill something you might as well just buy some barley or sugar and save yourself the headacheā
So he thinks itās doable. But thereās no shortage of cheap cellulose.
My fear was youād Max out at 1-2% alcohol in your wash with some super rank smells and compounds going along for the ride.
In which case Iām turning spent hemp into fuel, which still seems like a win.
And there is a shortage of cheap fuelā¦
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8 bubble plates might be too high for my basement ceiling lol might need to cut it down to 6 or 7 plates. Also im thinking about going to a 6" column not 4" for speed/throughput. this is for a single wall boiler
would not be getting that infusion pot Gin basket thing attached to the top
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If you are looking to produce azeo, a packed column rather than plates is your best bet.
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The boozer in me really wants that gin box thatās totally unnecessary for our applicationā¦ Actually, that entire setup would be a great excuse to make the dreams of 19 year old me finally come true. On the company dime no less! 
Side note, maybe someone with more experience running a coolant managed system can correct me, but that reflux condenser looks a little short to keep up with that size stillā¦
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