Bently Heritage: Mixing old and new in Minden, Nevada

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1 Bently Heritage: Mixing old and new in Minden, Nevada By James Ludford-Brooks and Johnny Jeffery Introduction Bently Heritage Distillery is the brainchild of owner and visionary Christopher Bently. Chris grew up in Minden and set his mind on offering something back to Minden town. Building a distillery was a natural fit with his ranch, which could offer the malt and grain to produce the wide range of spirits Bently Heritage Distillery now has planned. The project is an interesting mix of old and new. The distillery equipment and engineering is modern, automated and includes a number of novel features to reproduce traditional practices designed to achieve a distinct character. This new multi-spirit distillery will be housed in two iconic and until recently, derelict Minden buildings: the Minden Flour Mill and the Creamery (Minden Butter Manufacturing Company Inc.). The malt distillery will be built in the Mill Building and the grain distillery located in the Creamery. The Creamery will also house the malt whiskey casks, the filling and disgorging system, and some product storage. John Jeffery, Head Distiller at Bently Heritage Distillery, and James Ludford-Brooks, Process Engineering Manager at Briggs of Burton have put their heads together to provide you with an overview of the project to date. Briggs has a long history and reputation for providing state of the art mashing equipment. More recently this has extended to both batch and continuous still house design and spirit handling, involving a number of innovative solutions for significant energy reduction and overall sustainability. As part of the Bently project, Briggs has provided a number of bespoke equipment designs including a grain cooker for the Creamery and an external wash heater, or Calandria, on the wash still, which will sustainably and safely recreate the direct fired character sought by Chris

2 and Johnny. Below is an overview of the project and some of the interesting engineering designs and challenges faced in mixing old and new. Fitting it all in Designing and equipping the existing Minden Flour Silos with a modern, fully automated single malt whisky distillery has been no mean feat. In essence 4 Silos of 21 ft diameter by 50 ft contain the entire production process from mashing to new make spirit. To maintain the integrity and history of the building, the silos have largely been kept intact except where some reinforcement was required to house the new equipment. It is interesting to note that a distillery is quite a hot environment with all the cooking and distillation operations. The still house ventilation is managed by routing all the associated ventilation pipework through the silo roof, gable walls and facias. Putting pipework through the silos would have detracted from the overall project s aesthetics. Other considerations include the vessels that have been designed to fit the curved walls without intruding too much into the space, and stacking of equipment such as heat exchangers to make best use of the height, all without compromising maintenance access. Extensive use of Briggs in-house 3D modelling capabilities have been used to define the overall installation concept and allow coordination of all the trades that contribute to the project, into a single coherent and aesthetically pleasing design. Hopefully you can see an example of this in the pictures of the flour mill silos housing the grist bin, mashing equipment, fermenters and two pot stills. In addition to the production space, a large portion of the Mill Building will be dedicated to tasting room and retail, with bottle sales and tastings to take place on-site. The character of the 19 th century flour mill will be maintained so the visitors experience will give a sense for the historic nature of the site. The tasting room area in the Mill will allow viewing of the copper Forsyth s stills and production floor. Tours will include both production buildings, and eventually viewing of the barrels in the state-of-the-art rickhouses, which will be located at the Bently Ranch. Minden itself, sees a great deal of

3 road traffic, being situated just 20 minutes from Lake Tahoe, and 2 hours from the Mammoth Lake and Yosemite parks. The hope is to attract visitors from these locations as well as from spirits enthusiasts worldwide. Mashing In and Graining Out Across the road from the Minden Mill is the Creamery building, which contains the grain distillery that will produce Vodka, Gin, Specialities, Wheat, Rye and Oat Whiskies. To produce all these different distilled spirits the distillery requires a large variety of mashbills that include corn, barley, oat, rye and wheat. The malted barley will be prepared at the Bently ranch using the traditional floor malted process, fulfilling Chris Bently s commitment to providing a from ground to glass experience. Botanicals for the gin and vodkas will be sourced locally too, from the ranch and the nearby national forests. Preparation of all the raw materials for the malt and grain distilleries will largely been done at the ranch. This decision was driven by the space requirements and aesthetics of the milling equipment, which doesn t really add to the visitor experience. People tend to recognise the mash tun, fermenters and stills. The raw materials for the distillery will be transported from the ranch by truck and transferred into dedicated grist bins located in the two distilleries. In the malt distillery, the Grist Bin has a storage capacity of 4,850 lb. This grist is transferred to a Steeles Masher, which ensures that the grist and water are homogenously mixed prior to conversion, and allows an effective grain bed to form for subsequent lautering. The 9 8 full Lauter Tun is designed for a maximum cycle time of 6 hr for each batch, although the cycle time is of limited concern on the Bently project. The real benefit of the full lauter system is that the mechanical rig comprising of arms and knives can be raised and lowered whilst rotating, which can influence the wort haze allowing a number of different characters to be emulated from clear to cloudy worts. Coupled with the calandria on the wash still, this is expected to offer significant capability in providing different spirit characters. Initially the bed loading will be at a 45 lb/ft 2.

4 However, this can be increased and allows production to ramp up in the future. All the sparge water is collected through a weak worts tank, which is beneficial in maximising the total extract from the grain and achieving high alcohol yields, as well accurately mimicking the Scotch whisky process. It should also be noted that the operation of the entire process is automatic, providing control and repeatability of the full spirit production process. In the creamery a grain cooker is used to process the unmalted cereals for the production of grain neutral spirit (GNS) used in the Vodkas and Gins, and also for the grain based whiskies. Enzymes are used to reduce the grain cooking temperature, compared to more traditional jet cooking based processes. A cooking temperature of 165 F is used with a combination of endo- and gluco-amylases that will hydrolyse the starch in the grains. The whole mash is then transferred to the fermenters and distillation equipment. Yeast and fermentation Converting all the sugars in the wort and mash into alcohol is down to the efforts of the yeast. At the distillery various dried yeasts are pre-mixed and held in a 13 US gal tank and dosed in-line after the wort and mash coolers en-route to the fermenters. A combination of wooden and stainless steel fermenters will be used. The Mill building housing the malt distillery will use 2,380 gal wooden fermenters. Whereas the Creamery building contains both 5,500 gal stainless steel fermenters for the production of grains neutral spirit (GNS) and wooden fermenters of the same size used for the oat, rye and wheat whiskies. The mixture of fermenter construction materials is designed to cater for the different spirit types, where the porous nature of wood is recognised to harbour resident microflora that can contribute to the fermentation. From an engineering design perspective the stainless steel fermenters will have a sealed top with wash viewing window, manway, and side entry agitator. The fermentation temperatures will be managed using chilled water through an internal cooling coil, which is important during the summer to accommodate the high ambient temperatures and allows processing of high gravity

5 mashes. Fermentation times will be 95 h and expected to achieve an 8 % ABV prior to distillation. Distillation The Bently site will be equipped with two separate and unique stillhouses designed and engineered by Briggs for the head distiller to practice his craft. For the Mill, Chris and Johnny had a very specific style of malt whisky in mind. After much sampling their ambition was to be able to recreate rich, caramel spirit characters usually obtained from direct fired stills,whilst also designing a stillhouse that is modern, safe and efficient. During early engineering design reviews the principles of direct fire still heating were evaluated but discounted due to their noise, inefficiency, and the safety aspects of confined space working, which all would affect the visitor experience and overall project vision. During his time at Briggs, James Ludford-Brooks has worked on a number of distilled spirits projects, specifically reviewing still house design, safety, and opportunities for energy recovery. He has also been extensively involved in the brewing industry working on projects involving mashing equipment and external wort heaters. He was very familiar with the production of caramelisation and maillard reaction products such as furfural in the brewing industry when wort is boiled excessively in the wort kettle. It was noted during some background research that maillard reaction products are significantly reduced in stills heated with low pressure steam at less than 30 psig steam. He therefore applied his experience and devised a novel external still heater or calandria using a thermal fluid. The calandria uses a closed loop heating oil to heat the still externally via a recirculation loop. This allows operation at high temperatures without suffering from excessive fouling and film boiling prevalent in similar steam systems, as well as eliminating significant flash steam loss usually present when utilising high pressure steam in atmospherically vented condensate systems. The Bently calandria represented a significant challenge both in process and mechanical engineering terms as the system needs to accommodate

6 significant expansion and contraction over each production cycle. Safety was also a prime concern, allowing operation of the fluid at low pressure (30 45 psig), opposed to steam at 145 psig. A picture of the calandria in Briggs workshop is shown. The Mill employs an energy recovery and storage system via multi-pass condensers and dedicated sub-coolers, allowing recovery of hot water for still and water pre-heating during production and also Cleaning In Place (CIP). The hot water circuit allows rejection of any excess energy via fin fan coolers rather than cooling towers, which significantly reduces the distillery water and chemical usage. The creamery contains a fully integrated and automated still house comprising of Headframe Spirit continuous stills and Carl batch stills, which gives a very flexible plant, capable of providing a wide range of distilled spirits. Final Word Everyone is excited to see the Bently Heritage Distillery project developing, particularly Chris who is starting to see his vision come to life. Johnny has a lot of ideas for the different spirits planned and is keen to get his hands on the new equipment. Producing so many different types of distilled spirits across two historic buildings is a dream come true for the Bently Heritage Distillery team. The Briggs team have enjoyed the challenge of designing and building a modern and energy efficient distillery in two beautiful old buildings. All parties involved in the project have got to practice their craft and will be keen over the next few months to get all the plant equipment installed and commissioned. The overall project is expected to be completed around Q and Bently Heritage Distillery will be pleased to welcome visitors Q

7 Historic photograph of Mill Building

9 3D model shots of Mill Building showing the malt distillery contained in the silos Construction phase with modification of silos in preparation of the equipment installation

10 Manufacture of grain cooker in Briggs factory based thermal fluid complete in Briggs factory Calandria for external still heating using oil

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