The Grain Father

[Peter Smith]

http://www.grainfather.com/

Mangrove Jacks new all grain unit - its nice

[Dene McDonald]

Well, guess who owns a Grainfather now...

[Dene McDonald]

I'm taking a guess that the wholesale price is $775 judging by what I paid. I'd say that Allgrain have bought it as a test vessel in the shop, performed some instore demos, sold their stock and then sold this one off at cost to recoup their outlay. Still, I'm happy. Should arrive Tuesday next week so will brew in the weekend. Already have plans to pimp it including a possible upgrade to a PID controller.

[Dave]

You certainly got a great deal! A PID controller sounds like a great idea, might be a future addition by the manufacturer.

[Mark Weusten]

Excellent

[Chris]

I don't regret it at all.

I knew I was a guinea pig when i brought it.

They are just minor annoyances that have been mentioned above, but every new system has its quirks and pretty much all the fixes are cheap to implement.

All the problems we are facing and working through I hope will be fixed in the next iteration making it an even better purchase in the future.

I too had problems with the courier company.

[Dene McDonald]

I am really tempted to buy one and have the skills to overcome all of the small issues, but I just don't want the chiller as it isn't good enough. If they had beefed up the cooling ability with a higher inside diameter copper then I'd have the ability to recirc back into the vessel to whirlpool and eliminate most of the trub. I'd be happy to pay $800 and source my own chiller, or even use my current immersion chiller which can cool a 25 litre batch in the vessel in 17 minutes. But I don't want to pay for something I can't use or can't sell.

Does anyone want to buy a grainfather chiller from me!

[Peter Smith]

I remember the post where they mused over 799 for gf and 999 with chiller, clearly the chiller doesn't cost 200 to make so they are protecting margin for the LHBS and themselves, better to say nothing so channel doesn;t get expectations that cant be fulfilled.   Still 100 sold in NZ bodes well for 1-2 k in the us first few months.

man they must wish they had a decent conical to package with it.

[Peter Smith]

shows how smart the brewshop boys are tho

[Mark Thomas]

I reckon you wouldn't have too much trouble selling the chiller on trademe for about $100-200, as there don't seem to be that many available in NZ. Not ideal, but it's an option

[ben murphy]

Dumb question for a moment. Is there any reason I can't use boiling water for the Sparge? Does it just have to be over 75 degrees or ideally it must be as close to 75 as possible?

[Barry]

Yeah don't use boiling water. High temps cause tannins to be extracted from the grain husk and give you a puckering astringency.

[Peter Smith]

Ben, this is why people buy an urn and temp control it, as its a pain the ass to keep boiling jugs at 3L a time while also providing 10A for the boil kettle elements,   in the end you tend to tire of that (although it works for an economy solution) and you get an urn or Hot Liquor Tank.   I sparge at about 76-78 as a target, with modern grains most of the conversion will have been done in the first 30mins of the mash, you are really just trying to wash the sugar from the grain during the sparge read these.   The one thing that any systen like the grainfather cannot do is allow you to vary the sparge run off rate,  ie you pour the sparge water in the top and you cannot control the flow through speed, vs having a tap at bottom of the mash tun, allowing you to slow down the rate..

time will tell if this makes much of a difference to taste of the beer,   it could to consistency if you could not get the same grain mill size every brew...

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/index.html

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Theory_of_Mashing