Which all in one?

[Hudson1984]

so, i'm going all in one....it's decided :)

but which one?!

ok, so, I want to keep the initial budget to £500 all in. From this £500 I'd like to produce 1 batch too.

I'm happy buying used, don't mind a little fettle.

so all, please help me spend my money :)

I have plastic fermenters which I'll use for the time being, I also have kegs and a brew fridge so those items are not required. Purely brew equipment only.

 

[Clint]

If you haven't already...have a look on here for Dave Heath.....Dave does the odd brew or two and has made a couple of videos about all in one systems. You can find his stuff on YouTube...

 

[Stonedhouse]

Yep, David Heath has done a lot of comparison videos which cover a lot of ground.

I'm a Robobrew user so will obviously be a little biased but I originally considered it against the Grainfather. Both are very decent bits of kit, similar in many ways but the savings the Robobrew gave could not be ignored especially once I realised I was not personally interested in the more advanced Grainfather control system. It's good if you are in to that kind of thing but doesn't appeal to me.

Like you I just use plastic fermenters (and will probably stick with them as they are easier to modify and cheap to replace) and am a total keg convert !

HTH

 

[trueblue]

Watch out for Black Friday deals. I bought my Grainfather from the Maltmiller and if I remember right they reduced it by around £100. I know the Grainfather is a bit more expensive but to me it is worth it for the counter flow chiller and the control panel.

 

[The Baron]

Go for the Robobrew/Brewzilla much better value than the Grainfather and as good IMO

 

[Hudson1984]

I'm tempted to go larger than I initally planned, as perhaps it's best to plan for more capacity than I need just in case I fancy making a large batch in the future.

With this in mind I am tempted by this:
https://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/bre...ider/78-wort_chiller-30_plate_ss_wort_chiller
slightly over budget, but with 50L brew and plate chiller instead of the imersion - which I like the idea of as I could mount the plate chiller to make it easy to clean and connect to a hose for example. Or if I do my plan of adding a sink in the garage, I can mount it below the sink with a couple of isolation valves and it's sorted.

any thoughts?

 

[The Baron]

I personally do not like plate chillers as they are very hard to clean thoroughly again just my opinion

 

[Hudson1984]

not the only one to say that....worth heeding the advice given....especially as it saves me money

 

[Stonedhouse]

I personally do not like plate chillers as they are very hard to clean thoroughly again just my opinion

Same here - it's a "me" thing though I know as I'm paranoid about cleanliness / sanitization. Many brewers use plate chillers or counterflow coils very successfully but I stick with immersion chilling as I don't like my wort going places I can't see lol. I did start to look at other methods as my cooling was taking 40 mins but now I've added a whirlpool arm that has reduced it to 16 mins - which is handy anyway as I often use it as a hop addition point anyway.

 

[St00]

I have the Grainfather, but as I understand it the comparable systems i.e. Robobrew do the same job for less now and there's not the reported quality gap that their was initially.



If I won the lottery I think I'd go Brewtools.

 

[MickDundee]

I'm tempted to go larger than I initally planned, as perhaps it's best to plan for more capacity than I need just in case I fancy making a large batch in the future.

With this in mind I am tempted by this:
https://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/bre...ider/78-wort_chiller-30_plate_ss_wort_chiller

You can also do no sparge 20L-30L batches in the 50L which is handy if you are stuck for time. I don’t know what your method is at the moment but “all in one” should actually be “all in 2” because you need something to heat your sparge water. I’m lucky that I upgraded from BIAB so just use my old boiler for my sparge water.

I have the 30L BrewDevil and can’t fault it.

 

[Stonedhouse]

You can also do no sparge 20L-30L batches in the 50L which is handy if you are stuck for time. I don’t know what your method is at the moment but “all in one” should actually be “all in 2” because you need something to heat your sparge water. I’m lucky that I upgraded from BIAB so just use my old boiler for my sparge water.

I have the 30L BrewDevil and can’t fault it.

Yes - a sparge heater is a nice addition to an all in one system - I'm guessing the name "All in One but you need a sparge heater" didn't quite have the ring to it the Marketting departments were looking for !

Coming from 1 gall batches and making a right mess of the kitchen / cooker etc, the jump to a 30L all in one was a major breakthough in itself ...... but you soon start wishing for that extra vessel !

 

[Hudson1984]

 

[Hudson1984]

have I missed anything?

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Looks great! You might want to get a conical flask for building starters... not really necessary but looks SO cool and I'm a sucker for lab glassware

As others have said we are all biassed towards our own setups - as it really comes down to what best suits your process and other preferences :-)
Vive la difference, Rodney as Del Boy might say

Personally I used a (good) immersion cooler before I made a tube-in-tube counterflow and I have to say the immersion one has stayed in the cupboard ever since: the counterflow is more thermodynamically efficient and does not require stirring whereas ( I found ) the immersion chiller does ...

When it comes to cleaning a counterflow, shoot me down but honestly I'm not that fussed - after the boil I just run a couple of pints of boiling wort through it (which gets poured back into the boiler) and then very soon after I've used it I attach the hose to it and flush through with mains water. Bob's your uncle.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Forgot to add, that if I was buying any kind of all-in-one I'd have a look at how many other users there are in the UK and whether it's easy to get spare parts here etc :-)

 

[Hudson1984]

well i've heard that there are some black friday deals coming so i'm going to hold fire till next friday, see if I can squeeze a Fermzilla into the mix within budget too!

 

[Clint]

I'd also look at who has any stock....

 

[Covrich]

You can also do no sparge 20L-30L batches in the 50L which is handy if you are stuck for time. I don’t know what your method is at the moment but “all in one” should actually be “all in 2” because you need something to heat your sparge water. I’m lucky that I upgraded from BIAB so just use my old boiler for my sparge water.

I have the 30L BrewDevil and can’t fault it.

I have to say you make a great point with this

I bought the 45l hopcat and I was a full volume BIAB in a 50l pot before and I sold my pot and just no sparge full volume in my hopcat now..

Nothing wrong with either method I just like the simplicity of it all and the recirc pump I still get a good 70% out of it every time.

 

[trueblue]

For a sparge heater I use the one I used in my 3V set up which as a plastic bucket fitted with an element from a Tescos value kettle. As you never need to get it to boiling point will last for ages, mine is over 10 years old.