Last week I bit the bullet and treated myself to a Grainfather and sparge water heater. I had planned to wait a couple more weeks, but a) the money was available and b) I'd had an extremely crappy week so I thought "sod it".
For my first brew, I decided to do a recipe from the Malt Miller - a Jon Finch Erdinger clone. The recipe is:
130g crisp Munich Malt
1800g Crisp Maris Otter
2000g Crisp pale ale wheat malt.
25g Hallertauer Hersbrucker pellet hops
Mangrove Jacks Bavarian wheat yeast.
Given the amount of wheat in the recipe, I also added 1Kg of oat husks to mitigate the risk of a stuck mash or stuck sparge, neither of which I wanted on my first brew day!
I started off using the Grainfather app to control the system, but I ended up with a stuck app. Sadly, no amount of oat husks would have prevented that! I just switched the app off and used the controller to run the brew. I do like the way that the recipe steps are sent to the controller.
Because of the app issue, I did get into a bit of a tail spin and when the mash finished, I went straight to sparging the mash. Then the system decided to mash out. Oh well, never mind - I figured that pouring water at 75 degrees C through the grain bed would have stopped any enzyme activity anyway!.
The rest of the brew went well other that the hose carrying wort from the counterflow chiller falling out of the FV when I had my back turned!
As the ground water temperature was 21 degrees, I couldn't chill the wort down to below about 24-25 degrees, so just sat the FV in my fermentation fridge for a couple of hours before pitching the yeast.
I slightly overshot my OG and my final batch size was about 17.5 l rather than 19. Some of the "losses" would I guess have been trub, evaporation and the wort that I mopped up with a towel.
Overall, I really enjoyed the experience. The app problems were a bit of a downer, but I was able to work around them and get some wort that tasted good and will hopefully ferment into a nice wheat beer.
I'm doing a brew day at the Malt Miller on Saturday, so I'm looking forward to learning more about using the Grainfather as well as making another beer to put in the fermenting fridge. It's a good job I have room for two fermenters :-)
For my first brew, I decided to do a recipe from the Malt Miller - a Jon Finch Erdinger clone. The recipe is:
130g crisp Munich Malt
1800g Crisp Maris Otter
2000g Crisp pale ale wheat malt.
25g Hallertauer Hersbrucker pellet hops
Mangrove Jacks Bavarian wheat yeast.
Given the amount of wheat in the recipe, I also added 1Kg of oat husks to mitigate the risk of a stuck mash or stuck sparge, neither of which I wanted on my first brew day!
I started off using the Grainfather app to control the system, but I ended up with a stuck app. Sadly, no amount of oat husks would have prevented that! I just switched the app off and used the controller to run the brew. I do like the way that the recipe steps are sent to the controller.
Because of the app issue, I did get into a bit of a tail spin and when the mash finished, I went straight to sparging the mash. Then the system decided to mash out. Oh well, never mind - I figured that pouring water at 75 degrees C through the grain bed would have stopped any enzyme activity anyway!.
The rest of the brew went well other that the hose carrying wort from the counterflow chiller falling out of the FV when I had my back turned!
As the ground water temperature was 21 degrees, I couldn't chill the wort down to below about 24-25 degrees, so just sat the FV in my fermentation fridge for a couple of hours before pitching the yeast.
I slightly overshot my OG and my final batch size was about 17.5 l rather than 19. Some of the "losses" would I guess have been trub, evaporation and the wort that I mopped up with a towel.
Overall, I really enjoyed the experience. The app problems were a bit of a downer, but I was able to work around them and get some wort that tasted good and will hopefully ferment into a nice wheat beer.
I'm doing a brew day at the Malt Miller on Saturday, so I'm looking forward to learning more about using the Grainfather as well as making another beer to put in the fermenting fridge. It's a good job I have room for two fermenters :-)
