Los Osuna Distillery - Grinding the Pinas Part 1

Before I start the blog I have to tell a tale on myself. We got in the Jeep to go pick up our friends to go to the distillery. I brought out a bottle of cold water to refill our thermos bottles that were in the car. As we were driving I took the cap off one thermos and poured the cold water in it. The only problem was - IT ALREADY was almost FULL. So where did the cold water go, well right in my lap of course. A lot of it before I reacted. Nuts! So the thermos is full to the top, I took a couple of sips thinking I took enough to recap it - it has a cork protruding from the cap. As I screwed it back on MORE water ended up in my lap. It ran through my light coral colored skirt, between my legs and into the THICK sheep skin seat covers. So not only was my skirt wet front and back I was sitting in a sopping wet seat cover. What to do. By now we were picking up our friends. She took a look and said it really didn't look to bad. I grabbed a thick towel from the back of the jeep and put it on the seat cover. Bill said it will dry by the time we are there. So off we went. Well the front dried by the time we were there. But the back was still wet. Jackie said she would walk behind me until it dried. The towel soaked up some of the water from the seat covers. Long story shorter - it did dry, I didn't get any funny looks and by the time we left the towel was dry too. 
So - - - back to the distillery. Took this using the oil painting setting on my camera.

We were there to watch the pinas being squished/ground to extract the liquid. So this will be a long blog with a couple of video. They had already started by the time we got there. This is how the pina looks after it is cooked for three days. It is kind of sweet to the taste. 

This picture is from Tuesday, the day  before, when we went out there. The pinas were still cooking in this oven. See the steam coming out. Very distinctive smell too. 

The pinas were placed in the burlap bags and lowered into the ovens, several bags per oven. This bag had just come out of the oven when we got there. The worker is getting ready to attach it to a scale. More on that later.

This is the machine that does the grinding. The pinas are put into the part of the machine on the left that sticks up. It has a flap on it to keep most of the debris inside. The pinas go down the chute as they are squished. Then the fiber goes up the conveyor belt, the liquid is extracted and goes into the rectangle tank. The fiber goes out the other end into a wheel barrel. 

You can see the tank and some liquid coming out and the fibers going into the wheel barrel. 

After all the big pieces of pina are thrown into the machine the workers open the bag completely and take out all the small pieces that are left. They put them in the white buckets and dump them into the machine. Nothing is wasted.

Bringing another bag out of the oven. Lots of steam coming out too. 

It goes up to be weighed then it slides along an overhead system to get to the grinder. 

This bag had 500 pounds of cooked pina in it. 

What has he been up to?

Just a butterfly that caught my eye. And a good place to stop and insert a video. There is sound, but it mostly of the machine running. Some garbled words in the background. I wouldn't bother with it. 

What you'll see - kind of - in the video Part 1. By the time we got there Wednesday morning they had already started grinding the pinas. Quite a few in fact judging by the amount of fiber piled up. When the processing is going on the liquid is extracted and the fiber remains. The workers are taking the small pieces of the cooked pina out of the net it is cooked in. The larger pieces have already gone through the machine. In the background you can see a full bag just removed from the oven. It is on a pulley and about to be weighed. It will travel bag and all on the metal frame work over to the grinder. The big pieces of the pina are thrown into the grinder first. See the steam coming up from the belt when a piece is dropped in. Then the fiber moves up the belt. 
Now we know why he was smiling. 
Water spraying on the fiber. Some liquid leaking onto the floor! The fiber being taken away from the machine and the liquid pouring into the tank. From the tank the liquid is piped into the fermenting barrels. 

This is long enough and we haven't done too much the last few days so I'll leave it here and finish in my next post.
Just found out the construction workers will take Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. Thank Goodness.