Anyone using a Grainfather SF50

Rento · Nov 6, 2023

I’m thinking about an SF50 to match my G40, does anyone use one?

As I currently have really good temp control through a fridge setup and a bench with heatpad I’m concerned about going backwards as I’m not for spending crazy money on a glycol setup.

My main questions are

how do you control temperature (cheeply and accurately)
how do you transfer to a keg, is it high enough to just drain into kegs

Thanks

R

Rento · Nov 10, 2023

As it doesn’t seem like anyone else has one, I went for it! New shiny for my double batches as using 2 buckets was becoming a PIA!

I also acquired a free Klarstein SS fermenter and did my first brew with it the other week and have to say I’m very impressed with that as well, so much easier to clean SS than plastic!

Rento · Jan 10, 2024

An update on the SF50 after a couple of uses….I love it! Easy to clean and kept a constant temp even in the garage with just a simple brew belt, inkbird and an diy foil insulation wrap.

The only thing that’s no great is when you do a yeast dump the beer drops lower than the pickup so you could loose a fair amount. In second use I didn’t bother dumping yeast until cleaning time. Note for cleaning I softens the yeast cake with some water and dumped the first 4 litres to a bucket using the built in valve. Then for proper cleaning in attached a hozelock thread and a piece of hose to the drain for ease.

I also did semi closed transfer to kegs with the co2 keg out recirculating into the top bung which worked great as it does hold a little pressure similar to the GF30.

I definitely recommend it

Griffo · Jun 4, 2024

Rento said:
An update on the SF50 after a couple of uses….I love it! Easy to clean and kept a constant temp even in the garage with just a simple brew belt, inkbird and an diy foil insulation wrap.

The only thing that’s no great is when you do a yeast dump the beer drops lower than the pickup so you could loose a fair amount. In second use I didn’t bother dumping yeast until cleaning time. Note for cleaning I softens the yeast cake with some water and dumped the first 4 litres to a bucket using the built in valve. Then for proper cleaning in attached a hozelock thread and a piece of hose to the drain for ease.

I also did semi closed transfer to kegs with the co2 keg out recirculating into the top bung which worked great as it does hold a little pressure similar to the GF30.

I definitely recommend it

Hi, I've also got hte SF50, and just got my first brew. I also noticed there's about a 4 litre loss in the cone, that's a lot of beer to lose every brew. I'm hoping to minimise the loss, probabaly by tilting the fermenter.
I'd appreciate it if you could tell me what you used to extend the dump valve, as I have my legs on the lowest position, so can't get anything under the dump valve.

Cheers.

MashBag · Jun 4, 2024

Complete aside. Love the steam extraction

tigertim · Jun 4, 2024

I wish Grainfather would release a GF40 or GF50 alongside the GF30. The GF30 is such a fantastic fermenter with pretty much everything you could reasonably want for fermenting at atmospheric pressure, I'm amazed they've never released a larger capacity version.

Rento · Jun 4, 2024

Anyone using a Grainfather SF50

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