Grainfather Micro pipe smallest batch?

[Soton]

Dose anyone know what the smallest brew batch the Grainfather can mash with the Grainfather Micro pipe works fitted?
I'm thinking it would be about a 6L batch, it takes 3L of water to cover the pump filter, 4.3L of water to reach the bottom of the grain basket when lowered, that would leave 1.7L of water wetting the grains and in the pump arm, or do the grains need to be submerged completely and not just being washed over?
Keeping the water at about 6L would allow a sparge to be done to top up before the boil
Do you think it that 6L might be a bit small even with a fairly light grain bill
Has anyone used the micro pipe for small batches and what size were they?

Can anyone answer the same questions about the Speidel Braumeister 10L, whats the smallest batch that can be brewed in a Speidel Braumeister 10L?

 

[hamster]

Good question... Commenting here so I can see the answer too...

I suspect however the grain needs to be submerged in order to mash correctly

 

[Brewdoug]

Not absolutely certain without checking but I think there's 6 litres below the mash basket

 

[Soton]

Not absolutely certain without checking but I think there's 6 litres below the mash basket

4.4L of water and you can just see it at the bottom of the mask basket

 

[Slid]

I sort of think that this is an interesting question, but kind of missing the point?

So few kitchen utensils and pots are needed to make brew up to 10L that it is sort of irrelevant to enquire the shortest brew length that can be extracted from equipment designed for a different purpose?

Like, asking a modern "Craft Brewing" operation if they can do a "full length" 25L brew with their stuff?

 

[Soton]

I sort of think that this is an interesting question, but kind of missing the point?

So few kitchen utensils and pots are needed to make brew up to 10L that it is sort of irrelevant to enquire the shortest brew length that can be extracted from equipment designed for a different purpose?

Like, asking a modern "Craft Brewing" operation if they can do a "full length" 25L brew with their stuff?

That is very true, but I ask the question because Grainfather have brought out the micro pipe work to do smaller batches, and it got me wondering if you could do less then 10L as it would be handy once you had the Grainfather in action to also brew some small test batches to tweak recipes, or even just brew small batches with it so you get maximum use of the Grainfather for you outlay, it would be a good idea to use the Grainfather for that purpose rather then have the Grainfather in one corner of the kitchen and a BIAB on the go on the stove that would create a whole lot of clearing up to do later

 

[aamcle]

I hope to buy the GF small batch micro pipe soon, but I am planning 12.5 - 15 litre batches.

Aamcle

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[Soton]

I hope to buy the GF small batch micro pipe soon, but I am planning 12.5 - 15 litre batches.

Aamcle

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

I am just mashing a 13L wheat beer now with it and it's working a treat

 

[Hoddy]

I have the 10L BM short pipe. If I'm honest I've hardly used it and it hasn't been that useful. I've found that the time and space needs of a 10L brew is basically the same as a 24L batch. So why not make more beer?

Also I've gone across to kegging these days so again having half a keg to fill isn't that useful.

The most I've squeezed out of my short pipe is 13L and the smallest I've got out is about 8L.

Your biggest restriction with the BM and most commercial breweries is your limited in size to where the heating elements are. They need to be covered by a minimum of the diameter of the element at all times otherwise they will burn out.


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[Slid]

That is very true, but I ask the question because Grainfather have brought out the micro pipe work to do smaller batches, and it got me wondering if you could do less then 10L as it would be handy once you had the Grainfather in action to also brew some small test batches to tweak recipes, or even just brew small batches with it so you get maximum use of the Grainfather for you outlay, it would be a good idea to use the Grainfather for that purpose rather then have the Grainfather in one corner of the kitchen and a BIAB on the go on the stove that would create a whole lot of clearing up to do later

Yeah, that's a fair point. Have you heard, though, of the idea of obtaining more than one beer from a single batch of malt?

This used to be known as "parti-gyle" meaning "multiple brews" or some such.

Basically you would use the GF as the main mashing vessel and then draw off some wort, using the mashing handle, into a stove pot, use that to add hops and boil it up for one (stronger) beer.

The remaining wort & grain in the GF gets topped up with more water (@ ~ 65C) and perhaps steeping grains like crystal malt to give a weak-ish beer that you re-mash for as long as you see fit - 20-30mins?

Then proceed as usual. A smaller sparge for the second brew might get you 10L strong-ish beer and 15L weak-ish beer that could easily be blended to get something in the middle as well.

 

[Soton]

Yeah, that's a fair point. Have you heard, though, of the idea of obtaining more than one beer from a single batch of malt?

This used to be known as "parti-gyle" meaning "multiple brews" or some such.

Basically you would use the GF as the main mashing vessel and then draw off some wort, using the mashing handle, into a stove pot, use that to add hops and boil it up for one (stronger) beer.

The remaining wort & grain in the GF gets topped up with more water (@ ~ 65C) and perhaps steeping grains like crystal malt to give a weak-ish beer that you re-mash for as long as you see fit - 20-30mins?

Then proceed as usual. A smaller sparge for the second brew might get you 10L strong-ish beer and 15L weak-ish beer that could easily be blended to get something in the middle as well.

Yes I am thinking about doing that, oddly enough I did a 13L wheat beer today and split it and added a small amount of citra at flame out to one half and put Fermentis Safale S-04 yeast into it and the other I used Mangrove Jack's Bavarian Wheat M20 yeast, it will be interesting to see how much difference it will make to the taste

 

[Zephyr259]

The issue with going with smaller volumes is that the (+ 3.5) L in the mash water calculation gets to be a bigger and bigger part of the mash water so your sparge gets smaller and smaller until you're essentially doing a no sparge mash.

I like the idea of doing a partigyle batch to compensate for this but haven't got round to experimenting yet, also with partigyle you'd normally want a reasonably thick mash for a high OG, small mashes are more dilute so won't give the same strength of first runnings. In the grainfather blog under baltic porter they say you can reduce the mash volume from (2.7 x kg) + 3.5 to (2.3 x kg) + 3.5 to give a bit more sparge volume. I've not tried it yet but plan to do so next time my sparge volume looks a bit low.

Personally, I've gone as low as 2.4 kg malt but this wasn't a small batch, just a small grain bill as 50% of the fermentables were from honey. I did get 86% efficiency on that batch though.

 

[Dads_Ale]

Interesting thread this one.

After years of slowly upgrading my brew gear to get a bigger brew day on the premise that it takes the same time to brew 23 litres as is does 40 litres I have have found myself lacking in the experimental department.

Fast forward to an evening drink with JFB and I am missing out big time.

So what options do I have:

Brew less in my current set up - non starter as I cannot resist adding extra malt to fill it up.

Build my own smaller system - tempting but also need ability to do stepped mashes. One for the future

Grainfather with small malt pipe - possibility but not cheap and temptarion to add more malt and already have a top notch cfc. Plus storage may be an issue.

Braumeister 20l - same as gf but with more accessories to spend money on.

Braumeister 10l - expensive but less accessories to spend money on. No temptation to do bigger brews. Multi step mashing. Small footprint.

So after much deliberations I am going with a BM10l and some smaller fermenters to allow me to experiment. Should keep me busy for a while 😀

 

[Hoddy]

Interesting thread this one.

After years of slowly upgrading my brew gear to get a bigger brew day on the premise that it takes the same time to brew 23 litres as is does 40 litres I have have found myself lacking in the experimental department.

Fast forward to an evening drink with JFB and I am missing out big time.

So what options do I have:

Brew less in my current set up - non starter as I cannot resist adding extra malt to fill it up.

Build my own smaller system - tempting but also need ability to do stepped mashes. One for the future

Grainfather with small malt pipe - possibility but not cheap and temptarion to add more malt and already have a top notch cfc. Plus storage may be an issue.

Braumeister 20l - same as gf but with more accessories to spend money on.

Braumeister 10l - expensive but less accessories to spend money on. No temptation to do bigger brews. Multi step mashing. Small footprint.

So after much deliberations I am going with a BM10l and some smaller fermenters to allow me to experiment. Should keep me busy for a while í*½í¸€

The only thing to be aware of. And I've found with my BM is the minimum amount of grain you can get away with. To little and you end up with channeling and what can only be described as a wort fountain.

I've found I can just about go down to 3.5kg in my 20L pipe. But then that is really pushing the limit.

It's just something to bear in mind with hoping to do small trial batches in a BM.


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[rank_frank]

Since buying my Grainfather all but two of my brews have been 10L using the small batch pipework. It works well but you do end up with a fairly slack mash with a 1048 beer and for that reason I'm not sure how much lower than 10L you could go unless you were making a monster beer. At 1048 you're looking at around 1.8Kg of grain. That's not a lot.

There's the 2L at the bottom of the Grainfather that you can't recover using the pump. I don't bother but if you were making a very small batch you'd probably want to pour that out through a sieve and add it to your wort or your efficiency will be very low. With a 10L batch my efficiency is 75-80% and that's fine for me.

 

[Zephyr259]

There's the 2L at the bottom of the Grainfather that you can't recover using the pump. I don't bother but if you were making a very small batch you'd probably want to pour that out through a sieve and add it to your wort or your efficiency will be very low. With a 10L batch my efficiency is 75-80% and that's fine for me.

I noticed the same on my last batch aimed for 15L but only got 13 weirdly at the right gravity... I thouoght it was because I had some extra boil time after knocking off the filter so I racked it into a fermenter, cleaned out the trub then poured it back ad did a 10 - 15 min boil. Guess I'd have been a bit low without that extra boil. Efficiency worked out at 75% thought it was due to losses cleaning out trub (but I sieved it to recover the wort) but it would have been 86% if I'd recovered that last 2L of wort fro below the pump.

So yeah, just a long-winded way of agreeing that the dead volume under the pump can really hurt your efficiency figure on a smaller batch.

 

[suffolk]

As I only did 15l in extract I am doing the same with the GF
I used the normal pipe on a 3kg grain bill and it was too long
Today I used the micro pipe and things are going much better