The Grainfather

Ponster

Nothing really to say besides that I've just bit the bullet and splashed out on a Grainfather which should arrive sometime next week.

This is a step up from plastic buckets and SS brew pots but I'll report back here on how things work out should anyone else be tempted by one in the future.

UnknownSpecies

Ponster wrote: »

Nothing really to say besides that I've just bit the bullet and splashed out on a Grainfather which should arrive sometime next week.

This is a step up from plastic buckets and SS brew pots but I'll report back here on how things work out should anyone else be tempted by one in the future.

Just a bit of a step up! :pac:

You'll have to do a post on your first brew with it.

mickotoole

I have one of these ... they're great. Not quite as fancy as a Braumeister but they work a treat. The Grainfather app is very handy too and comes in very handy on brew day.

A few things to note however ...

1. For the Grainfather you have to use their calculations for the amount of sparge water required despite what any recipe etc tell you.
2. Watch out for the glass lid, there is no handle and putting your fingers into the hole on the top to remove it can lead to scalds.
3. A small annoyance is the controller ... when it reaches boiling it will beep to let you know, that's fine however if you're like me and will be boiling outside or near a back door etc the temperature fluctuates between 99 & 100 degrees so the controller is constantly beeping.

I'm sure that you've done your homework already but there are some neat hacks for this unit. One of the best being the replacement of the controller for a flashed STC-1000. This will give you more control over your brew, allowing tyou to program step mashes etc.

Anyway, all the best with your Grainfather.
Mick

Ponster

So.....that's the first brew day over and here's how it went!

I decided to do a Mild. It was the first beer that I ever made (partial mash) as at the time I lived in the USA and it was impossible to find. As well as that, it only needs 2-3 weeks to ferment and I need something low in ABV for my 7-hours online gaming sessions.

Began at 10.30am, worked out the water calculations as per the Grainfather equations and heated 14.5L from 14C to 70C in 30 minutes.

I added grain, 500g at a time, stirring as I went. Once all was added the temp had dropped 2C to 68 but soon worked it's way back up.

Sparging was a bit of a mess. My urn decided that it had had enough so it was time to get kettles and saucepans boiling. So rather than keeping 10mm of water above the grain bed as instructed I sparged when I had 1L of water at the right temp. In saying that there was always water dripping down into the wart so I think that I got away with it.

I starting to ramp up to the boil while sparging and so it only took 35 minutes from beginning to sparge to boiling.

After the boil I started the pump. There was no flow, just a dribble coming out so I had to stop the pump, disconnect the cooler, remove the lid and stir the hops around the filter. Once everything was back it was just fine.
I took a temp reading of the hot water coming out of the cooler and it was an impressive 67C! It took very little time to get the wort down to temp and I transferred to the fermentor. from the start at 10.30am I was all done at 3pm. I think that I could get it down to 4 hours with a bit of practice.

Things I learned:

a) Leaks. I found that when undoing either the cooler or re-circulation pipe I ended up undoing the stop-cock underneath. I can understand now all the forum posts looking for a better connection method as when that metal is hot it's more than awkward to manage.

b) Begin the boil during the sparge.

c) Glass lid gets hot, thanks mick !

d) A mild is generally between 3% and 4% and my grain bill ended up being fairly small at 4kg. I hadn't realised that the Grainfather has a different calculation for grain bills under 4Kg. It didn't seem to matter in terms of water amounts as I ended up with the expected 23L and had a pre-boil gravity of 1.035

Over all very, very happy with it. Temp control worked well and the pump and especially the cooling was excellent. Now it's just a matter of waiting

Penkins

How long did it take to cool roughly?

Ponster

Penkins wrote: »

How long did it take to cool roughly?

I took some notes...

Temp of cold water going in :13C
Temp of hot water coming out : 67C
Grainfather Display at start : 98C

It took less than 9-10 minutes to get the temp down and when I first measured it was 17C. It may have been even faster than that but I didn't try to measure any sooner as I thought there was little point.


I didn't bother to take any real photos as there are plenty available on the 'net but here are a couple:







And a very, very short video of the rolling boil.

Penkins

Ponster wrote: »

I took some notes...

Temp of cold water going in :13C
Temp of hot water coming out : 67C
Grainfather Display at start : 98C

It took less than 9-10 minutes to get the temp down and when I first measured it was 17C. It may have been even faster than that but I didn't try to measure any sooner as I thought there was little point.

Very nice! I would have thought that the wort would have needed more than one pass through the chiller to get to such a low temperature.

Ponster

Penkins wrote: »

Very nice! I would have thought that the wort would have needed more than one pass through the chiller to get to such a low temperature.

Me too. I'm still a little suspicious as to how fast it was but maybe it was due to the temp of the cold water and the speed of the water flow which was pretty slow?

Ponster

Just completed my second brew, a porter.

4Kg Pale Ale Malt
0.4Kg Oat Malt
0.4Kg Flaked Barley
0.17Kg CaraAroma
0.24Kg Carafa Special III

60g Bramling Cross 90 Mins
40g Bramling Cross 5 Mins

90min boil

Nottingham Yeast


Things I've learned :

1. Scrape the hops off the bottom before running the cooler.

2. Run the wort through the cooler for 5 minutes while boiling to sterilise and then transfer to the fermenter. There's really no wait at all to get the temp down to 20/21C

3. After a LOT of reading online it seems that the sparge water temp is not as important as I thought that it was. I didn't replace my broken urn and instead heated 15L to 70C in the grainfather and then transferred to a bucket. By the time I started to sparge the water was 45C. Hotter water would have meant a shorter time to get to boil but it doesn't seem to have had a huge influence on efficiency.


preboil SG = 1.042
after boil = 1.048 (Beersmith estimated 1.049; I'm not good enough to read it any more accurately)

Timings

3.50pm heater on. 17L @ 15C
4.10pm water @ 50C
4.20pm water @ 66C
4.25pm 5Kg grain added. pump on.
5.25pm begin boil and sparge (15L @ 45C)
5.40pm all sparge water added. wort @ 78C
6.20pm boiling. 27.5L for 90 min
7.55pm cooler connected - 5 min 'rinse'
8.00pm cold water in cooler
8.02pm not happy with flow. remove cooler, scrape hops above filter
8.05pm cooler back on
8.08pm wort coming out of cooler into fermenter at 21C
8.25pm collected 21L and time for a rest before cleaning

So spot on 4 hours from adding grain to having beer in fermenter.

BPH

Hi, just got a used grainfather. Everything there plus a plastic insert at the bottom, I'm thinking it was for packaging/transport and can't see any use for brewing. Not needed I'm thinking, anyone else can confirm this? Thanks.

feylya

Get rid of it. It's just to stop the grain basket from denting the walls.

BPH

Yip, thinking as much it was for the bin, I was thinking something to do with transport.
Can I get favor from grainfather owners, I'm missing the silicone end cap for the pump filter, homebrew company have them on delivery but I'm looking to see if  I can get something else. Can someone measure the diameter of it for me ?
Thanks.

Muahahaha

good thread, Im interested in automated brewing as Im a lazy fcuk=) . Hoping for more products to come to the market and prices to come down before I take the plunge.

Ponster

BPH wrote: »

Yip, thinking as much it was for the bin, I was thinking something to do with transport.
Can I get favor from grainfather owners, I'm missing the silicone end cap for the pump filter, homebrew company have them on delivery but I'm looking to see if  I can get something else. Can someone measure the diameter of it for me ?
Thanks.

https://imgur.com/a/Cljer

BPH

Thanks for that. I ordered one at the weekend, hard enough to find, most out of stock or charge silly transport costs.

Ponster

There are a couple of very active Facebook Grainfather groups where people have good ideas about replacing the entire filter as sometimes when stirring/whirlpooling it's possible to knock off the plastic cap and make your life hell to properly filter and pump the wort.

BPH

Good to know, I joined one for recipes but they seem to be based in US and mainland Europe. I'll take look into the other groups, TBH I just got the grainfather and haven't used it yet, this week hopefully. One thing I read is the silicone seal coming off when stirring the wort. I'll be careful starting off and look into improving it if needs be.

feylya

BPH wrote: »

Good to know, I joined one for recipes but they seem to be based in US and mainland Europe. I'll take look into the other groups, TBH I just got the grainfather and haven't used it yet, this week hopefully. One thing I read is the silicone seal coming off when stirring the wort. I'll be careful starting off and look into improving it if needs be.

Just rotate the filter so that the silicon cap is pinned against the temperature probe. Luckily, I've never had my filter come off during a brew.

JohnnyB23

I'm looking to buy a second hand Grainfather, don't see any on Donedeal and Adverts.ie. Can anyone advise where I might find one please?

Ponster

JohnnyB23 wrote: »

I'm looking to buy a second hand Grainfather, don't see any on Donedeal and Adverts.ie. Can anyone advise where I might find one please?

I'm not sure if the Irish HomeBrew market is large enough for there to be many Grainfathers available second-hand. Looking through the UK sites I can only find reasonably priced examples on ebay.

Besides that I'd keep an eye on this forum.