I’m more familiar with their use for apple juice rather than wine. It would seem to me that you would get an inappropriate amount of tannic acid from the material if you used a filter press on grapes. But, I really don’t know enough about ALL the ways they process wine.
I think I missed the reference to using EtOH to make shatter. I’d like to read more about that.
@Soxhlet I’ve seen it. Very nice, and made of stainless too.
Winery’s around here use filter presses. My neighbor makes a grape juice concentrate that is sold as a color ingredient for wines. The process uses a “ultrafilter” to remove just the pigments. Red juice goes in, white comes out. They sell the color, and the stripped juice. They call the juice that comes out “white grape” then Welchs juice buys it.
my biggest concern is what are we doing with all the skin and bones? (spent biomass & sticks.).
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I want to make my extraction solvent with it. via cellulosic ethanol production. @Shadownaught has enzymes that might enable that (in case someone else wants to try).
Fungi are the correct answer, whether selected or engineered, or even just as a source of the enzymology. introducing a half dozen novel genes into a hi-test Belgian yeast to enable hemp cellulose as a carbon source and 17-20% starting wash would not be that difficult these days. we’ve had those strains tamed for awhile.
Interesting. See, I thought white juice from red grapes was accomplished by removing the skin of the grape. I know more about Welch’s pumps than their juice anyhow.
I like your style, every part of the buffalo! The feds might get kinda mad if they didn’t get to steal some of your hard income for distilling your own etoh… lol
The winery settles the juice on the crushed skins to pick up the pigments used in the process. Juice company’s love buying cheap sugar to sell in bottles! They also extract polyphenolic compounds from grape seeds and sell it as a supplement. You should see a 2 story cromotography columm!
So I start by doing it as a separate trash collecting service to make fuel. I’m not sure I can get subsidies to do that in the US any more, but if I’m charging to take away the spent biomass and selling fuel, I’m not sure taking tax dollars as well would feel right.
I’ve also heard folks are feeding it to ruminants. although that’s harder with the post ethanol waste product.
Ethanol laden biomass would be fine, 'cause I started with boozey yeast, but CO2 or Hydrocarbon would work. I’d charge more for taking away the flammable stuff (ethanol), and it would already have fuel in it!!
Edit: I’ve also heard folks are feeding it to ruminants. although that’s harder with the post ethanol waste product.
Two reasons I see, one is I’d like to be doing this at cryogenic temps and the amount of surface area at a surface press may interfere with those temps considering the surface area + compression, resulting in pulling more undesirable compounds like chlorophyll and plant lipids and waxes due to the increased temperature
Second is (and I don’t have data on this nor the play money to buy a filter press to test out) but I’ve heard that they squeeze more undesirable stuff out regardless of temperature, I’m moving towards cryo extraction to avoid having to winterize on the back end so that would also be self-defeating
Has anyone tried using the “cheap” explosion-proof top-loading Chinese centrifuges? Seems they spin fast enough to recover 96%+ of the ethanol from the biomass and are under $10,000. My main bottleneck right now is extraction and I am running out of options that aren’t over $100k.