ACE Microbrewery

[soupdragon]

Exactly the same as the Ace

Cheers. Tom

 

[soupdragon]

no don't get any clicking sound from it

It is quiet so is easy to miss during the vigour of the boil

Cheers. Tom

 

[madoIII]

Does the Ace come with a wort chiller? I've seen a few for sale without one.

And can you do small brews in one? I'm thinking of 10l and possibly 5l.

On my first brew on the Ace I aimed for 11L in the FV. It is true, you will need some extra 6.5L in the mash tun, as otherwise the grain bed will not touch the water. I then used a less sparge water.

Had it not been for a way too vigorous boil (remember it should be set to 1800W for the boil), I would have ended up with 11L approx in the FV.

So, I suppose that it can be done.

(Mind you, I have not actually tried the beer from that batch :whistle:)

 

[MarkMayf]

Where did all the £300 ones go? All the ones I can find now have a 1 in front of the price.

 

[IainM]

The ACE guy adds a thousand to Ebay when he is out of stock. The klarstein is also out of stock at the moment. I was going to buy either one yesterday but didn't because of this, and so I got the bulldog brewer instead.

 

[Bigcol49]

Where did all the �£300 ones go? All the ones I can find now have a 1 in front of the price.

Hi!
Have patience!
They will be out of stock, so to maintain a listing on ebay and to deter new orders until stock arrives, the price is increased to an impossible level.
The same thing happened with the ACE mash tun/boiler.

 

[Brewhound]

Got mine three weeks ago, two brews done. A landlord clone first to test with, next was a jack hammer clone. Landlord kegged and in the brew fridge, jack hammer dry hopping. I've come from biab, and have done a couple of brews with a grainfather so knew what I was getting into but couldn't get a gf or bm past the spending committee. Time will tell, but so far, using BeerSmith and a modified grainfather profile, I've pretty much hit all measurements and the clarity of the wort into the fermenter is excellent. The control panel takes a bit of working out, and you need to be careful with power settings to avoid burning on the bottom over the element (similar to grainfather) but for the money, you can't go far wrong. The only down side is that you need to elevate it as the pump doesn't attach to the tap for draining at the end of the brew which makes lifting the grain basket harder than if on the floor. I'll know better in a week or two when I get to drink a few of the finished article, but the results during the brew and what I saw going into the fermenter and bottles, I'm pretty happy with it so far.


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[soupdragon]

you need to be careful with power settings to avoid burning on the bottom over the element

Lemon juice left to soak brings it off with a sheet of kitchen roll and a wipe :thumb:

Cheers. Tom

 

[MarkMayf]

Hi!
Have patience!
They will be out of stock, so to maintain a listing on ebay and to deter new orders until stock arrives, the price is increased to an impossible level.
The same thing happened with the ACE mash tun/boiler.

Makes sense. Thank you!

 

[foxy]

I think there might be confusion with the term 'dead space' my belief is dead space is the liquor left under the tap when draining, so goes into the calculation of liquor lost along with grain absorption and boil off, as the wort is recirculated the liquor under the false bottom is pumped to the top of the grain bed.Aussie Home Brewer also has a thread on these units under another name Guten, probably aptly named for the German market.
https://byo.com/bock/item/410-calculating-water-usage-advanced-brewing

 

[Bigcol49]

. . . spending committee.

Hi!
One member, female, I presume :grin:

 

[Brewhound]

Yes, I get away with the 'smell' of making beer, by supplying swmbo with home brew wine. Small price to pay I reckon ;-) On the dead space element, I found assuming a loss of 2.5l to fermenter and no dead space gave me a very thick mash (very hard to mash in with a 6kg grain bill) on my initial two brews. I'm going to add a 4 litre dead space to my calculations for the next brew. This should cover the 6.5 litre gap before the bottom of the grain pipe. Having hit all the numbers in the past two mashes though, a bit of extra paddle work wasn't too much of a chore. If someone wants to try it before me, I can share the BeerSmith profile I've created for the next batch, technology skills allowing...


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[Brewhound]

Thanks soupdragon, I'll try that [emoji106]


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[Brewhound]

Hi foxy, I'm a bit confused by this, I went with 2.5l initially for my calculations but, as described above, got some thick mashes. My next brew will be with 2.5l loss to fermenter to hopefully get the volumes right, and then adding 4l as dead space. If I recall correctly, the dead space is supposed to be the level under the grain basket, but making this 6.5l leaves less to sparge with, so I'm going to try 4l and see what happens.... hopefully tasty beer [emoji482]


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[foxy]

There is no hard & fast rule for liquor to grain ratio, a thinner mash will give better efficiency, so as long as you know what liquor volume you mashed into what you will lose to absorption and the 2.5 litres in the bottom of the boiler you can work out your sparge water so as to hit your pre boil target. If you do tend to want to go to a thicker mash all you have to be careful of is running out of liquor under the grain bed, as with a lot of things in homebrewing there are no perfect answers, what you might try to improve in one area could cause problems in another.

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi!
I read somewhere that German brewers favour a wet mash, 3.5 to 4 l/kg. I tried it with my last brew (heated recirculation mash) and it worked a treat. All of my calculations were manual, however. Still getting to grips with Beer Smith 2.

 

[IainM]

There is no hard & fast rule for liquor to grain ratio, a thinner mash will give better efficiency. ... as with a lot of things in homebrewing there are no perfect answers, what you might try to improve in one area could cause problems in another.

A case in point: a thinner mash is more efficient, but has a higher pH, which can counteract the advantage depending on the liquor and grist.

 

[foxy]

You can adjust the pH of your mash, my next brew I will be doing a no sparge so the volume of liquor is going to be quite high, as for the loss in efficiency I will be adding in more grain. Palmer has the calculations which should be easy to look up.

 

[Fil]

its probably easier to carry out a simple post mash iodine test
(drop a drop of iodine onto a few grains and a lil liquor from the end of the mash - if any unconverted starch is left it will colour the iodine jet black, while if all the starch has been converted the iodine will remain reddish brown, its advisable to do the test on a white plate or (spare) wall tile as the white is a good contrast to illuminate colour differences)

IF and only IF your not converting the starch and find black in your test need you bother worrying about mash ph etc as if the test proves the conversion is complete then the efficiency loss MUST be down to sparging/rinsing probs..

 

[foxy]

What I have done is entered my water profile into Brewer's Friend the salt adjustment calculations are then matched for the recipe entered, theirs must be based on Bru'n water calcs because they are just about the same. For the sparge water I try to achieve around 5.7pH.
But for the 'No Sparge' here are the calculations.
http://byo.com/malt/item/1375-skip-the-sparge