The Grain Father

[Peter Smith]

http://www.grainfather.com/

Mangrove Jacks new all grain unit - its nice

[Taubin]

I've watched the vid about a dozen times and it hasn't helped much.  I guess I'm too dumb to use the software. 

[Peter Smith]

nah it takes a while to learn.....   stick at it , its a great package   if you set euipment to 13 gal/50l pot biab it will prob get close if you then set the tot eff to about 80

I am guessing here a bit, last brew how many litres where left in bottom of the grainfather....

[Taubin]

Thanks, I'll give that a shot. It's just a bit of a messy UI and things aren't laid out nicely for beginners I think 

[Peter Smith]

keep perfect notes on grain weights, volumes of water used at each point and most important waste volumes at the end, take a gravity reading pre boil as well, as time goes on you will be able to tweak the tot eff based on CONSTANT grain crush, but you need to dial in the losses in your system due to waste,  boil off is also important to know for system.    It would help for MJ to provide a downloadable profile...... they must have the numbers, makes release look a bit rushed not having it imho, at a grand I would expect a free profile.

[John H]

You can try these settings - take with a pinch of salt... Hoping not to make my name too arse!!!!

[John H]

The GF manual states 3.5L + 2.7L/Kg which I couldn't work out doing in Beersmith so I use 3.4L/Kg.

[David M]

Hi John - thanks for posting - anything anyone is doing is most useful.

In my calcs I assumed the 3.5 was for mash tun dead space in the tun and 2.7 was the grain water ratio.

If I use that then beersmith calc for strike water is correct.

The problem I have is it then says to add far too much (4.5 L too much) water for fly sparging.

I have been going off the calc in the grainfather manual and trying to set beersmith to match with little success.

I am not sure how it calcs the fly sparge water volume as very little I change in settings seems to affect this. Will explore further.

The one assumption I am making is that iMake will have better calcs for their own product in their manual than Beersmith. As of yet I am not sure if its my settings that are giving different results or completely different logic between the two sources.

[Brew bin]

If they state to use 2.7L/KG of grain I probably would not change that. 

[Dene McDonald]

The software certainly hasn't undergone any usability testing! It's a dog to learn but once you have your settings dialed in you don't have to touch it.The easiest way is to set up a new equipment profile using the wizard. IF you don't know what something is just use the default.

[Taubin]

I'll give it another shot. I want it mostly for finding and scaling recipes. It's going to be one of those things where the more you use it the more you learn it kind of thing. It is however one of the worst UI designs I've ever come across. 

[Mark Thomas]

If you want to try something different, I reckon www.brewtoad.com is nice and user friendly.

I don't tend to get too high tech with my brewing, probably because I've been BIABing only one brew a month on average. You need to get the mash/grain ratio about right, but with the sparge you can just keep sparging until the water level gets up to the 28 litre mark. And I'll usually aim on the low side, and top up with cold clean tap water in the fermenter to hit the right OG.

Of course, if you want to get really good and consistent, you should measure everything. It'll probably be easier to be consistent now with a Grainfather instead of BIAB.

Some prefer to boil off the chlorine from the tap water too, which is a downside of my casual approach.

[Peter Smith]

I also think that brewtoad is a pretty cool interface.... and I also tend to brew a bit stronger then dilute back...