The Grain Father

[Peter Smith]

http://www.grainfather.com/

Mangrove Jacks new all grain unit - its nice

[Paul Finney]

I have used the boiler part from the still they have to do a partigyle a few weeks ago and it held a rolling boil nicely. I started with 25L of wort. I can't tell you how long it took to get it to the boil from mash temp though.

I'm looking forward to seeing how these operate. For those that don't have the skills to make one they look the business. Plus you know it will work as if it doesn't you can take it back (and MJ really don't want a warehouse full of broken ones) 

[Jason Riley]

Awesome maths but you have done the calc for water which has a much higher specific heat capacity around about 60% higher. 

Here's quite a neat explanation about the difference. 

http://www.caseysbeer.com.au/?p=687

[Andrew Graham]

Nothing wrong with the maths. The specific heat capacity of malted grains is about 40% of that of water, thus only heating to mash out is affected as you need to add more energy to heat the grains as well as the water. All other stages on caseysbeer use the heat capacity of water in the calculations.

[Peter Smith]

They will sell a lot, everyone who owns a wwilliamswarn, that's 70 and ten times that out in the extract world easy over the next few years in nz.

[DMAC]

So are there 70 Williamswarns out there?

[Peter Smith]

in nz that is the story, at $32 a week for 50 months you can see why....there will be more offshore.

I know two owners who will definitely buy a grainfather, its a cheap upgrade...

This board wil be very busy in a few months

[Dene McDonald]

Tubedinoz has posted this video of a demo brewday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRByABEdLhA

[Dene McDonald]

Just watching that clip and I've realised how they get the up to boil so quickly after sparging... so obvious we should have all realised. When the malt tube is pulled up it's flicked to boil and then you sparge. So in theory if you sparge for 10 minutes it's been heating to the boil the whole time, so 20 minutes to achieve boil should include the 10+ minutes of sparge time (so 20 minutes to achieve boil).

It actually looks like it's a great piece of equipment. Almost tempting to sell my equipment and get one - but then I remember why I'm moving away from BIAB - the excess trub (kettle and fermenter) and lower efficiency. Also version one will probably have lots of flaws and will cost to upgrade in the future. But balancing that out with the fact that version two and beyond will probably cost more now would be the time to get one.

[Mark Weusten]

Version one having flaws was exactly what the salesman at Brewerscoop advised me. Without knowing anything about magnetic drive pumps, this would be my concern.

[Peter Smith]

I have owned Iwaki mag pumps for many years,  nothing to worry about here move along....  its old proven technology... they will get high eff due to the recirc, even though they can;t control the sparge rate, adjusting the grind could help here.    For an entry into AG its a great machine, you can see that this has had several iterations from people who know what they are doing.   They have to have some limits 10amp plug, under 1k etc etc, shit it can even step mash its pretty cool.  

Its easy to forget that while we tinker with our systems, we are still brewing.  most of the people who buy this will be totally focused on BREWING beer not building systems.    they are going to sell loads of them think for a moment in NZ they have reportedly sold 70-80 williamwarns at 7k....

Whats the market in NZ....    ten, twenty times bigger..... and on a global scale this is a sure thing.  And for us building big 3 vessel systems its going to provide a decent number of potential buyers of said systems.  its all good.

[Dene McDonald]

They should sell these and the kegerator kits as a package and direct competition to WW. For $2k they would beat the pants off WW for over 7k. They could package with a fermentation chamber and stainless steel fermenter and they could do the whole thing for under $3k. Bigger foot print than the WW but it's a real all grain system for less than half the price.

[Peter Smith]

Yeah but its a way smaller market those who have 3k in pocket, people like to add as the pay checks roll in out of there small allowance....  remember the 1st rule of home brewing even before cleaning/sanitising is

Never tell your other half that home brewing will save you money.

In my house I can imagine "So explain to me how spending 3k will save more money then spending 1k......"