The Grain Father

[Peter Smith]

http://www.grainfather.com/

Mangrove Jacks new all grain unit - its nice

[ben murphy]

Thanks very much. I appreciate you taking the time to reply as I struggled to get the sparge water to temp on my first brew and was just generally frustrating. Might need to come up with a better plan. On the plus side I threw my Chur Bro into the keg last night, had a little taste and it was 10x better than any kit I had every made. Really looking forward to trying it fully in a week or so.

[Dene McDonald]

When I get mine I plan to use an urn to gravity sparge with. I'm already concocting sparge arms to go on top to slowly and evenly rinse through.

The easiest and cheapest way would be to get a food grade bucket (or fermenter) and evenly drill some small holes in the bottom. Place it on top of the grain basket and fill with sparge water and let it drain through.

Of course as brewers the easiest option isn't always the best and we like to bling things up and usually will go for things like stainless steel rotating sparge arms!

[Peter Smith]

Yeah that chur beer is a proven good selling commercial brew.   Almost all my AG brewing has been pot within a pot then lift out and sparge, just like the GF.  I have not done recirc.    Adding a pump now to see what it changes,   I do run the wort throught the top pot as to try and filter it, its hit and miss as you really need a low run off so the grain remains covered, I normally have more luck if doing a 40L batch as the bed is deeper, I also have my own mill and mill pretty fine.   This is the main reason why I got a couple of kegs, so I could control the sparge run off rate and do the vorlauf - https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/81-a-practical-guide-to-lautering    with any system you cannot control the run off rate you are depending on the grain size to provide the resistance, and in my experience you just cannot get this consistent enough.

I am still using the pot in pot system, adding a pump while I get all the electrics sorted for the 50L keg system.   the base system has allowed me to make a lot of double batchs and put across multiple yeast etc so I now know my fav yeasts and have experimented with different mash temps and these yeasts,  Still working on building body in the beer and carb levels.

[Dene McDonald]

The Grainfather is a really a trade off between exact consistency and ease of use. I see on their forum page people are talking about their efficiency rates. People are claiming OG between 1.054 and 1.068 for the Chur kit which is wildly different considering in theory everyone is using identical crush, water levels and machinery. As mentioned this will most likely be to do with sparging method, but that could be down to a number of things including the hardness of water they are using, using less or more sparge water, boil off rate due to ambient temp etc...

[Peter Smith]

ask them what vol they left in BK then recompare.

[Dene McDonald]

Yeah I'll do that now. It's fantastic to see people who know nothing about beer getting into it. In 6th months time they will be able to talk about mash and brewhouse efficiency, ph levels, yeast count etc...

[ben murphy]

I would second this. I am still a bit lost with all the details but was so very pleased with the tasting result last night. I am sure I will learn more but honest the end result is the most important thing :)

[Dene McDonald]

Brewers friend can give you an idea of your efficiency by inpoputting some basic details. http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/

[Matt Poff]

That's totally it. The Chur kit could've done with publishing target pre-boil gravity and expected yield figures as my measured OG was 1065 and would have (should have) added min of 4L to bring it to the recipe's target 1054. I got a measured FV volume of 20.5 where I think 24L would have been more the go.

That said, I bottled it yesterday and the FG hit 1015 (target was 1012) which I was pretty pleased about as I thought it wouldn't make it that far. Was slow to kick-off fermentation (around 48h) prob because I didn't aerate it enough but it bubbled like hell once under way.

Tastes good green - with clean bittering (I think the CaSo4 addition helped there as haven't done salt additions to previous extract+grain efforts). Just going to have to watch the consumption rate if its sitting around 6.7%!

[Peter Smith]

yeah this is worth a new thread... water additions

[Matt Poff]

Somewhere out there, forget where but think its one of the official MJ "Brewing with the GF" vids they suggest first boiling your sparge water in the GF pouring into a pot, covering and setting it aside with maybe a towel wrapped around it. When you come to sparge it'll be near temp - you can adjust with hot/cold water as necessary and keep a note of the addition.

[Mark Weusten]

interesting you say 76-78 as a target as I have often thought if you sparge out of an urn from a jug at 75 by the time it hits the grainbed I bet it is a few degress lower. When I mash out on the grainfather to 75 the grainbed will be warmer than the sparge water. I think I will set my urn to 78