One of the often hidden costs of distilling is the amount of cooling water that is used in the distillation process. With help from the cooling experts at Aqua Cooling we have reduced our water wastage at Thunderflower Distillery to zero.
When we distill a gin we are heating up alcohol to create a vapour that passes through a basket of botanicals to collect flavour. That vapour then passes through a condenser unit which cools it down back to a liquid - in this case our delicious Thunderflower Gin.
The most common way to run a condenser unit is to run cold water through it. But unless the distillery is located next to a natural water source (such as a whisky distillery next to a loch) the water used for cooling, especially in craft-distilleries, is simply tap water that provides cooling but goes straight down the drain. Since a distillation run can last for 10+ hours that can add up to thousands of litres of water each distillation run.
One of the alternative solutions to cooling with mains water is to operate a closed loop chiller system. This uses a small amount of water that passes through a chiller unit on it's way to the condenser unit. The hot water leaves the condenser and heads back to the chiller unit to be cooled down, and the water runs in this way continuously in a loop, providing cooling but with no water wastage.
Now obviously you are saving water, but instead using electricity to power the chiller...but if that electricity is provided by solar, then the whole solution becomes sustainable and this is the system we now operate.
Working with Aqua, we were able to install an Aqua Pro Process Chiller Unit that is quiet, low energy and suitable for the size of the cooling task.
Now each time we do a gin run, we are saving around 3,000 litres of water that would otherwise be wasted. Another step towards sustainable distilling.
Want your own closed-loop chiller? Contact Aqua by phone on 0333 004 4433
or via their website: https://www.aquacooling.co.uk