The Grain Father

[Peter Smith]

http://www.grainfather.com/

Mangrove Jacks new all grain unit - its nice

[Dene McDonald]

I found with my current (soon to be previous setup) I always had to have my strike and sparge water 2-3 degrees higher than the target as by the time it was transferred over it had dropped below where I needed it to be.

[Peter Smith]

if you can't keep the grain bed covered in water its all a hopeless task Mark, think air con cooling tower...     but if the sparge runoff rate is significantly slower then the rate by which you are adding the water you can keep the grain bed covered by 1-2cm and then sure you can maintain temps, as soon as the hot grain gets exposed to air its going to cool rapidly.   at the bottom of the Grainfather inner basket you could put in a plastic (or stainless if you are a purist) disc...  ie if you block 1/3 the area up then the sparge is going to flow through slower, I think the braumeister does this? seen it somewhere..   I find that the deeper the bed the better it acts so the GF has an inbuilt advantage being tall and slim, and big grain bills would also help this ie I program 63%  EFF in my pot system if doing a 21L batch and 66%  if doing a 42L batch.

I also milled finer then BC or brewshop, but have recently gone to a thicker mill and I think my beer tastes better now...   who knows really changed to dif yeast etc etc as well  now I am a huge 1272 fan.

[Dene McDonald]

With the Grainfather they recommend that you pull the "malt pipe" out and let it drain completely then dump in your sparge water. That may mean that a slow sparge won't work as it needs a larger flow to get through or else you get a stuck sparge. 

Really the best thing to do would be to pull the pipe out and start the sparge as soon as possible so as not to compact the grain bed too much. Also explains why there have been quite a few people complaining that they got a stuck sparge.

Karl at Allgrain did this video to show what is possible in sparging. A side note, that's my Grainfather that is winging it's way to me as I type this!

[Mark Weusten]

Hey just getting back to the excessive trub thing with the GF. I bought some hopballs from brewshop to use in my saturday brew. I dont even plan to dangle them but will toss them in. I have 3 at 15,10 and 0 with a combined weight of 150 grams will be keen to see how trub goes into the fermenter.

[Dene McDonald]

Make sure you leave plenty of room for expansion. Those hops will puff up! Am very interested in what thee outcome is so keep us updated.

[Nathan]

I bought some of these from Stevens awhile ago I used them once to dry hop and found that they wernt big enough to house and let any decent amount of hops do there thing......In saying that though I just put some into a keg of bland brew I had and made a difference straight away..

[Dene McDonald]

A hop spider is what you need. You can buy them here, or even better make your own from bits that you can get from Bunnings.

[Mark Weusten]

They may well prove to be too small and a hop spider is the answer. I wanted to make my own one but cant find any metal rings, I heard pvc leach some horrible stuff.

[Ryan Perkins]

These might work.

http://www.bunnings.co.nz/bbq-buddy-egg-rings-4pk_p00302117

You could also cut one to fit inside the other to hold the steel mesh in place.

[Matt Poff]

I bought a five pack of food grade strainer bags from Moore Wilsons (for Welly folks) - was about $5 and mesh seems to be pretty good at containing hop material. Added advantage is that you can clip the drawstring on the bag to the rim of the vessel if you don't want it bouncing around down near the source of heat. They clean up well too and have different coloured ribbon tags so you can identify your addition if necessary. Use them for dry-hopping as well.

[Crusader-Rob]

The Egg Ring looks pretty good, if you can bend the handle it'd sit over the edge of the pot/grainfather and the you just attached your bag and bob's your uncle.

[Mark Weusten]

Yeah it would do the trick. I have decided to flag the hopballs for the boil and just use them for dryhopping. Tomorrow I will fashion a spider out of a coat hanger, paper clips and mesh bag. Will post a pic so you can have a laugh.