Linalmeemow
Landlord.
I bought the Bulldog Brewer a month or so ago and finally had the chance to do a full AG brew with it this morning. I intended to take photos of each stage of the process but forgot when I got started then realised the good folks at the Grimsby homebrew shop have done a video that shows the steps:
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiDgIf5iL1A[/ame]
As you can see, this is near-identical to the Grainfather only with an immersion chiller rather than the GF's counterflow chiller. It set me back �ã360 which makes it at least �ã230 less than the GF.
I decided to go with a mash kit from The Homebrew Company with it being my first attempt at AG. I'll put recipes together myself in future but wanted to play it safe first go so I went with this:
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/hbc-the-tempest-milk-stout-48-23-litres-p-3020.html
Nice and simple, one hop addition plus the wife loves milk stout...
Brewday started at 8am. It took about 20 minutes or so to get 14l of strike water to 72c. Added the grain to the grain basket as per the GY video, but my mash was much thicker than I expected. Maybe should have used more strike water, as the recirculation pump had real difficulty drawing the liquor through the grain. Mashed out at 75c after an hour, fitted the sparge plate and sparged with 18l at 72c heated in a separate pot on the stovetop. It took around 50 minutes to complete the sparge. It then took around 20-25 minutes to get up to a rolling boil, and probably 30-40 minutes to get back down from the boil to pitching temperature (22c) after the boil was over using the immersion chiller. The whole process including clean up took almost exactly 5 hours. The OG ended up at 1066, 8 points higher than the recipe predicts. Although I don't have the precise recipe given that it's a kit supplied by a shop I reckon my efficiency is 78-80% having run similar recipes through efficiency calculators. Not sure if this is good or not, if anyone can give me an idea there I'd appreciate it.
Pros:
Pretty much everything works really well, and I'm sure it'll get easier after a few more batches. The controller is very easy to use, it gets up to temperature nice and quickly and the recirculation pump works well. The grain basket design is good and seems simpler than the Brewcrafter 25 and some of the other units based around this boiler with no moving parts that could break.
Cons:
Due to its size it's a pain in the **** to wash in my sink as it's way taller than my taps, though that's my problem rather than being a problem with the unit, and the immersion chiller takes longer to get the wort to pitching temperature than I'd expected, though this will probably improve once we get into the winter and the tap water cools down. My only real gripe with the Bulldog Brewer though is the instructions provided by Hambleton Bard - they are really quite poor in my opinion, to the point that I had to email them to ask what some of the bits and pieces in the box were for. To their credit they came back to me very quickly with explanations but this really should be done right "out of the box".
Overall I'm very impressed with the Bulldog Brewer. My first AG brewday went really smoothly and didn't take a lot longer than the stovetop extract brews with steeped grains that I've been doing recently. There were no hiccups and I've ended up with a wort that seems to be of high quality. I guess I'll find out in a month or two when I start drinking the results. I know there have been reports of faulty units but that hasn't been my experience. I have one of the second generation units, so there may have been an improvement in quality control.
I hope this proves useful - I'll update this thread if anything significant comes up after the next few brewdays. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer for you.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiDgIf5iL1A[/ame]
As you can see, this is near-identical to the Grainfather only with an immersion chiller rather than the GF's counterflow chiller. It set me back �ã360 which makes it at least �ã230 less than the GF.
I decided to go with a mash kit from The Homebrew Company with it being my first attempt at AG. I'll put recipes together myself in future but wanted to play it safe first go so I went with this:
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/hbc-the-tempest-milk-stout-48-23-litres-p-3020.html
Nice and simple, one hop addition plus the wife loves milk stout...
Brewday started at 8am. It took about 20 minutes or so to get 14l of strike water to 72c. Added the grain to the grain basket as per the GY video, but my mash was much thicker than I expected. Maybe should have used more strike water, as the recirculation pump had real difficulty drawing the liquor through the grain. Mashed out at 75c after an hour, fitted the sparge plate and sparged with 18l at 72c heated in a separate pot on the stovetop. It took around 50 minutes to complete the sparge. It then took around 20-25 minutes to get up to a rolling boil, and probably 30-40 minutes to get back down from the boil to pitching temperature (22c) after the boil was over using the immersion chiller. The whole process including clean up took almost exactly 5 hours. The OG ended up at 1066, 8 points higher than the recipe predicts. Although I don't have the precise recipe given that it's a kit supplied by a shop I reckon my efficiency is 78-80% having run similar recipes through efficiency calculators. Not sure if this is good or not, if anyone can give me an idea there I'd appreciate it.
Pros:
Pretty much everything works really well, and I'm sure it'll get easier after a few more batches. The controller is very easy to use, it gets up to temperature nice and quickly and the recirculation pump works well. The grain basket design is good and seems simpler than the Brewcrafter 25 and some of the other units based around this boiler with no moving parts that could break.
Cons:
Due to its size it's a pain in the **** to wash in my sink as it's way taller than my taps, though that's my problem rather than being a problem with the unit, and the immersion chiller takes longer to get the wort to pitching temperature than I'd expected, though this will probably improve once we get into the winter and the tap water cools down. My only real gripe with the Bulldog Brewer though is the instructions provided by Hambleton Bard - they are really quite poor in my opinion, to the point that I had to email them to ask what some of the bits and pieces in the box were for. To their credit they came back to me very quickly with explanations but this really should be done right "out of the box".
Overall I'm very impressed with the Bulldog Brewer. My first AG brewday went really smoothly and didn't take a lot longer than the stovetop extract brews with steeped grains that I've been doing recently. There were no hiccups and I've ended up with a wort that seems to be of high quality. I guess I'll find out in a month or two when I start drinking the results. I know there have been reports of faulty units but that hasn't been my experience. I have one of the second generation units, so there may have been an improvement in quality control.
I hope this proves useful - I'll update this thread if anything significant comes up after the next few brewdays. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer for you.
