Farra Engineering nano brewery

[Hugh Grierson]

At the Beervana I took the time to check the very sexy looking Farra Engineering Nano Brewery, think it was 60 L batch size. Has anyone got one of these or even used one? I really want them to build me a shinny mash tun, with sprinklers...

[Alan Knight]

No, there is no filter system. The kettle outlet is raised slightly and a decent whirlpool will settle the trub perfectly. The PHE needs to be backwashed after every use but then they all do. What sort of dramas did you have?

[denimglen]

Almost every time I used it I had clogging issues, to the point of the wort only trickling out when I went to run off. When it did work it cooled bloody great but I felt it was a bit too risky.

To be fair I wasn't whirlpooling but I did bag my hops.

Ended up going back to an immersion chiller - easier to use and for a 20L batch cooled probably twice as fast.

[Alan Knight]

Whirlpooling, plus the use of a teaspoonful of kettle finings like Koppafloc will fix the problem.

[denimglen]

Yeah, although I would advise against standard irish moss - that was blocking the chiller as well.

I'm gonna stick to my immersion chiller though, it never clogs ;-)

[Barry]

Alan,
kind of tyre-kicking here, but wondering why only 2 vessels? Where does the hot liquor come from in your system? Looks awesome by the way.

[Alan Knight]

Hi Barry,

OK...My system starts off with the brew water in the kettle. You bring it up to 80C and then mash in the mash/lauter with the water from the kettle. Then you top the kettle up a little and cut back the gas to keep it at 80C until the mash has converted. The run off from the lauter is directed into a bucket and recirculated until the wort runs clear. By the time you've filled one bucket you have enough space in the lauter tun to sparge all your remaining liquor from the kettle leaving it empty. You then pour your bucketful into the kettle and set it to heat while the other thirty litres or so of wort lauters.
I have owned four full grain mash breweries for home use over the years and I have never really seen the need for the extra vessel just to hold and heat the water. It's a nice addition for sure but not at all vital to the process.

[Barry]

Thanks for that explanation Alan, exactly what I was after. Understand completely. Cheers.

[Alan Knight]

By the way, here's a picture of my own hundred litre brewery in action.....

[JoKing]

How do you get on with making a full 50L batch of a high gravity beer then? I'm tyre kicking a bit too...

[Alan Knight]

Tyre kicking is fine. These kind of breweries are quite new to the NZ market so I'm happy to explain them to anyone interested. As far as high gravity brewing goes, remember that the mash/lauter vessel is a full 60 litres capacity. That's plenty of room for twenty kilos of grain. If you wanted to go even higher, then I'd recommend mashing part of the grain in a seperate vessel like a chilly bin then combining the lot for lautering. That way you'll be able to fit twenty five kilos of grain in.
I average just ten or eleven kilos of malt in most brews I do. That hardly fills the mash tun half way.

[JoKing]

Cheers for that mate... I was curious how you'd get on with that. Here's a couple of shots of a 60L system that I fabricated myself - the vessels are 82 to the brim, but the yield into the fermenters (especially with really big hoppy beers) doesn't quite translate to your straight vessel size.

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/profiles/blogs/1st-brew-on-the-libe...

I even got a bit excited and added a video too:

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/video/home-brewing-with-joe

It does give you the flexibility to mash to the brim... if that's the kind of beer that you like! I think it's quite interesting that in the last month - there have been 3 completely different home brew setups getting put together from various areas in the country... it's great shit!

[Alan Knight]

Personally, I'm annoyed I didn't get this going sooner. I had hoped to be the first on the market. Still, I'm relying on my experience in the brewing industry to convince potential customers that I'm probably a safe bet to buy a brewery from.

Still, the main point is that every home brewer needs to be making full grain mash beers. So the more breweries there are to do it with the better.