Grainfather first brew

[gr_baker]

After not brewing for some while I decided to replace my coolbox mash tun etc with a Grainfather. Today was its first outing. For those interested here's a few observations:

I like to brew smaller batches and so bought the micro pipework. As supplied, both this and the standard pipework had the telescoping section fitted upside down. No big deal to swap it but for a first time user it took a little while to work out why the top mash plate wouldn't go down over the lugs on the side of the pipe.

The boil really does throw off a lot of steam and even with ventilation all the windows were steamed up. If it wasn't raining I'd've liked to run this outside.

The water volume calculations of the website and the formula in the manual don't give the same amounts for sparge water. For my small batch the manual suggests about 1 litre more so I went with that and my final volume was spot on.

The silicon pipes for the chiller and the electrical lead are a bit on the short side. I was forced to use an electrical extension lead and even rated at 10A it tripped the reset on the lead twice during the boil.

The chiller works very well but there is a lot of cold break material in the fermentation vessel. With my immersion chiller this would have been retained in the boiler. Having said that, my old chiller would take 40 minutes to get the wort down to 25C whereas the Grainfather hits 20C in about 10 minutes.

Clarity of the wort prior to pitching was remarkable once the cold break material had settled.

I decided not to use a separate boiler to heat sparge water but instead I heated it to 80C using the Grainfather and put it in a fermentation vessel to use later. Then I did the brew in the normal way. This seems to have worked well.

I did a stepped mash and the connect box handles this really well.

All in all I'm very pleased with the Grainfather. Next time I'll try to use it outside.

Russell

[Fil]

welcome back to brewing..

you might find it useful to replace/extend the initial feed to the cfc so you can sit it elsewhere than on top of the kettle, i find it a hamper to adding post boil hops as is.

[gr_baker]

Thanks. Good idea. I think I'll be extending all of those hoses tbh. Do you know of a uk stockist?

Russell

[BrannigansLove]

Thanks. Good idea. I think I'll be extending all of those hoses tbh. Do you know of a uk stockist?

Russell

I bought silicone hoses off Ebay. If I remember right, the chiller hose is 8mm inside diameter, and the recirc pipe is 10mm ID.

[Fil]

ebay is a good source, brewshops may also stock 3/8" ID silicone tube which will have a nice thick wall and will friction fit over 10mm tube ok.

On ebay use "dairy" in the search as the silicone tube sold for dairy use is the 'proper' foodsafe etc type (?platinum cured ?shore40+??) tbh im not 100% on the spec, but suitable for dairy use tube will cross all the t's and dot all the i's

And of course bought from a brewshop it will also be fit for purpose

silicone tube sold for motor modding etc is probably NOT suitable even if it is found cheaper on ebay

[GarethHW]

I agree on the length of the cfc wort in, it's a pain to sterilise with the hot wort while boiling, then add FO hops. I'm surprised they haven't addressed this as it's the main flaw in the design IMO.

I haven't had any problems with power, and I run mine outdoors off an extension.

I recently tried a full volume mash too, as was trying to dodge sparging. Efficiency was way down which I didn't expect (1046 instead of 1054). Going to repeat the experiment with a mashout instead. Might as well make use of the temp control. Anything to dodge sparging! I'd rather add 500g more grain than fanny about!

Overall though I am very happy with my gf.