Badseed1974
Member
Evening all :)
So I was lucky enough to get a trial of the Grainfather and I thought I'd share my experience with it here for anyone who's still on the fence.
My normal brewing gear is pretty ghetto, just a big plastic boiler, home made cool box mash tun, and a big pot for the sparge water, but with this pretty basic set up I've been able to make some really good (and some not so good) beers, so I was intrigued to see if the GF would improve the end product.
Let's start at the start :)
Getting my water up to mash temperature was noticeably faster than with my boiler so straight away I'm shaving a few minutes off my brewday, which was a bonus as I normally don't start brewing till 7-8pm.
The mash itself is a huge improvement, offering total control over temperatures, takes the worry out of checking for temp drops etc and also eliminates the need for a stir mid mash due to the recirculation system. Both the brews I made had SG 3 points higher than target as well so efficiency was great.
Sparging was a bit more hit and miss for me. My first brew was a clone of Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast and sparging took an absolute age. No doubt this was due to the ungodly amount of flaked oats involved (1.65kg :-o ) but I imagine beers with a high wheat content might struggle here as well. This is only a minor complaint though as my next brew, an IPA loosely based on Mikkeller's Simcoe IPA had no problems at all at the sparge stage.
Getting up to boil temp was again very fast, and once there gave me a more vigorous boil than I'm used to.
Next up is the real star of the show, the counterflow chiller. Getting my brews chilled down to pitching temp is an area I've always struggled with but with the GF I had no problems whatsoever. Once it was all attached I went from 20l of near boiling wort to 20 degrees in around 30 mins (I was a bit daft here and didn't time it exactly!) I've read some reports of the pump clogging up when cooling but as I used hop bags I had no problems :)
Once the wort is safely in the FV all that remains is the cleaning, and that too is a doddle using the supplied cleaning material.
Does it make better beer though? My Beer Geek Breakfast was amazing, easily one of the best beers I've made, and my IPA, though only a week and a half in the bottle, is shaping up nicely. I have made beers as good as these before though so while it might not make better beer as such, I imagine it makes repeatability much easier.
It's an expensive piece of kit, but I'd recommend it to anyone thinking of buying one.
I best get saving up I guess
So I was lucky enough to get a trial of the Grainfather and I thought I'd share my experience with it here for anyone who's still on the fence.
My normal brewing gear is pretty ghetto, just a big plastic boiler, home made cool box mash tun, and a big pot for the sparge water, but with this pretty basic set up I've been able to make some really good (and some not so good) beers, so I was intrigued to see if the GF would improve the end product.
Let's start at the start :)
Getting my water up to mash temperature was noticeably faster than with my boiler so straight away I'm shaving a few minutes off my brewday, which was a bonus as I normally don't start brewing till 7-8pm.
The mash itself is a huge improvement, offering total control over temperatures, takes the worry out of checking for temp drops etc and also eliminates the need for a stir mid mash due to the recirculation system. Both the brews I made had SG 3 points higher than target as well so efficiency was great.
Sparging was a bit more hit and miss for me. My first brew was a clone of Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast and sparging took an absolute age. No doubt this was due to the ungodly amount of flaked oats involved (1.65kg :-o ) but I imagine beers with a high wheat content might struggle here as well. This is only a minor complaint though as my next brew, an IPA loosely based on Mikkeller's Simcoe IPA had no problems at all at the sparge stage.
Getting up to boil temp was again very fast, and once there gave me a more vigorous boil than I'm used to.
Next up is the real star of the show, the counterflow chiller. Getting my brews chilled down to pitching temp is an area I've always struggled with but with the GF I had no problems whatsoever. Once it was all attached I went from 20l of near boiling wort to 20 degrees in around 30 mins (I was a bit daft here and didn't time it exactly!) I've read some reports of the pump clogging up when cooling but as I used hop bags I had no problems :)
Once the wort is safely in the FV all that remains is the cleaning, and that too is a doddle using the supplied cleaning material.
Does it make better beer though? My Beer Geek Breakfast was amazing, easily one of the best beers I've made, and my IPA, though only a week and a half in the bottle, is shaping up nicely. I have made beers as good as these before though so while it might not make better beer as such, I imagine it makes repeatability much easier.
It's an expensive piece of kit, but I'd recommend it to anyone thinking of buying one.
I best get saving up I guess
