Looking for homebrewing gift ideas? Check out our previous gift guides here or here!
Also, if you enjoy BrewUnited, please consider doing your Amazon shopping via our affiliate link!
Also, if you enjoy BrewUnited, please consider doing your Amazon shopping via our affiliate link!
A few of you know I bought a Grandfather to avoid brewing out in the brutally hot garage. So starting this to capture some notes and hopefully give others some ideas.
First, unboxed yesterday. Everything was compact and shiny (yeah shiny things) and reasonably well organized. The plastic lid on the controller was loose and when I examined it – the lid had sheared off the tiny plastic lugs it snaps onto. The lugs are part of the controller body – so it will have to be swapped to have a working lid. It just keeps drips and water off the switches and temp controller. Grandfather is taking care of this through my LHBS.
The GF is a BIAB-style single vessel system with a RIMS-like functionality. I chose it for this reason and for the price. A basket insert has a friction fit (silicon gasket and perf metal) false bottom. A pipe attached to the bottom has a telescope function to accommodate various grist bills. A false top is then inserted to rest loosely over the mash and contain the malt. A pump at the bottom circulates the mash through the false top. A machined overflow fitting slips over the pipe and allows roughly 1” of wort to remain on the top of the mash. Any excess wort from pumping simply returns to the bottom to protect the elements.
There are two elements, one for mashing (600W) and one for boiling (1600W), which are switched independently at the base of the urn. On the controller, a thermoprobe sits below the mash and helps to manage mash temperatures. It is active while the device is turned on. There is a pump switch, and a three way rocker for mash – off – boil. Doing a cleaning cycle and wet run of the system yesterday, it took about 1 hour to bring my 84F tap water up to 152F. This was using the boil setting and 1600W element. It seemed to get more efficient as the temp climbed, assuming circulation helped to distribute temps evenly. I ran PBW for 20 minutes, and ran this through the chiller. I rinsed with 5 gallons of strong mix StarSan.
I have cleaned and passivated a lot of stainless. This was incredibly clean – surprisingly so, but I would still recommend the cleaning cycle. Just the smallest amount of oil came up with the StarSan rinse down.
The system comes with a mini-counterflow chiller. This comes with hoses pre-installed, but a bit short for my needs. I plan to extend the cool wort out hose. It comes with the basic adapters necessary to fit either an outdoor or indoor faucet. The hoses are colored conveniently – so clear is wort, blue is cold in and red is hot out.
After the StarSan, I added back in 7 gallons of tap water – and brought this to a boil. It took just over 50 minutes this time to come to a weak boil. I reset up the chiller and circulated the water back into the vessel. This is the recommended method, unless you have cold water to knock out at pitching rates. It also gives a chance to filter out some of the trub and hop matter (if you care to). It took 17 minutes to take my 200F water down to 85F, which is comparable to my big CFC. The initial hot water out was VERY hot – over 180F, perfect to collect for cleaning in a homer bucket.
Setting up the GF profile in BeerSmith has taken some trial work. There are specific formula provided by GF to calculate mash and sparge volumes – and BeerSmith’s add-on profile doesn’t match these. With some tweaking, I was able to get the estimates closer for volumes and will adjust the efficiency to account for my coarse grind. The recommended water/grist ration is not called out, but moving my BIAB mash profiles to 1.75 qt/lb, I got BeerSmith to nearly match the Grandfather calculations. It appears that BeerSmith does strange things with the Lauter Tun Deadspace setting in single vessel profiles – so that needed to be set to 0, and set losses appropriately in Loss to Trub and Chiller.
I need to find a way to heat sparge water, which I can do on my stove. I am thinking of buying a larger electric kettle and using it. Sparging on this system requires lifting the basket out and setting it on stays on the urn. The basket fully drains, and you slowly add sparge water, careful not to exceed the overflow. So I could use a carboy with RO water, refilling the kettle as needed. Will have to work this part out. I can heat on the stove with my 5 gallon kettle, but I don’t have an outlet port – so it would be dangerous to dip with a pitcher. They sell an urn with a temperature controller – so can hold the sparge water at temperature, but it is expensive. I might keep an eye open for a 5 gallon coffee urn instead.
Posted 34 days ago.
> 1 hour to bring my 84F tap water up to 152F.
Ouch :( In the winter i can do that in half the time or less i think with 40-45 degree tap water on the gas stove in the basement.
Ouch :( In the winter i can do that in half the time or less i think with 40-45 degree tap water on the gas stove in the basement.
Posted 34 days ago.
Is it not big enough to do standard BIAB style no-sparge? I thought that was just how it worked, but it sounds like the intended purpose is some sort of fly sparge in a bag (basket?).
Also, pics or it didn't happen.
Posted 34 days ago.
Timing bringing the strike water up to 160F right now - but my water was already at 86F out of the faucet.
Figured out the sparge water issue. My 5 gallon kettle is wide and low enough to heat the 4 gallons of sparge water with my Anova. Will run it to 185F, pour it into my bottling bucket and meter out the sparge.
You can do a no-sparge if your grain bill is under the max, but the volume of the mash cannot exceed the height of top plate... it wants to recirculate. I am sure I could just top up the boil rather than sparge. Experiments for future brews.
Working on the pics. That was posted via email.
Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by mchrispen
I must have set something wrong yesterday. 86F to 158F took just over 30 minutes. Funny, heating is way louder than pumping. Brought the strike temp down two degrees because my grain after milling was still at 88F. Ridiculously hot out there in the garage already.
Posted 34 days ago.
Ok grained in. It’s a little strange as there is about 1.5 gallons under the basket, but some water to deal with grain in. This is a simple little best bitter, so 6 gallon batch with just 10.5# of grain. There is a pipe cap that covers the center pipe to prevent dry grain getting into the pump. Grained in slowly, stirring and finally grabbed a small whisk to break up doughballs. Took a couple of tries to place the false top (I really dislike the silicon gaskets), forced the telecope pipe into position with the overflow part. Plenty of space for double that grain – different opinions on maximum grist. I would estimate 22-24# is maximum and efficiency would seriously hurt.
I think I overshot the grain in temp slightly, but in 5 minutes, the temps stabilized at 152F. It is holding the temp pretty well. The pump is incredibly quiet, almost imperceptible. I have some concerns about the overflow rate, so I reduced the pump volume slightly to have a little trickle over. However, the entire grist is covered in 1 inch of wort so will see. System claims 73% efficiency, users claim slightly higher – but I crush coarsely, so will check wort gravity at 60 and decide if I should extend the mash another 30 minutes.
So far no real mess and cleaning as I go. I bought a cutting table on wheels for this – so it might be a bit tall to lift the basket.
Posted 34 days ago.
Matt are you going to ferment in carboys or one of your conicals.
Speaking of conicals, how do you temp control your conicals?Posted 34 days ago.
The weak boil ... that's what killed it for me. Once they said it was 110V in the US, I was out.
Posted 34 days ago.
Gary, I'm curious what you think about the Zymatic in which the wort never actually even comes to a boil. Both Annie and Denny told me it tops out around 210°F.
One of my contributors, Greg, recently picked one up and has been furiously fucking with it... his experience so far has been very interesting.
Posted 34 days ago.
This ferment is going into a 7 gallon Speidel. For my 1/2 barrels, those are in freezers with temperature controls.
Since this is a Best Bitter – going to use Thames Valley at 68F and then let free rise to room temp. It’s a fairly clean yeast, so it should be ok. Just a throwaway test anyway – will use it to build up that very old yeast (dated to December).
Posted 34 days ago.
I will upload a video of the boil later – it’s stronger than I expected. Somewhere between rolling and strong. There’s a lot of surface area on the bottom for the heat – so happy to see this strong of a boil. Good break so far as well.
Posted 34 days ago.
Marshall, I'm curious to what Greg has found on the zymatic. I've had 0 issues with anything. No off flavors or anything weird with the low boil temp. First pilsner malt beer happens this weekend though so we will see!
Posted 34 days ago.
Are you asking what I think of the sub boiling temps or the Zymatic in general?
Posted 34 days ago.
Well, I guess both? I'm more interested in what people think of the fact the Zymatic, which according to most reports is a great machine, never actually brings wort to a boil.
Posted 34 days ago.
Ok. Casting out has been going for a while. THIS is the achilles heal.
Very happy with boil. The wort is clear and bright. 6 gallon batch. GREAT break material formed right away.
So chilling. Thought I had emailed already but hasn't shown here yet. So to repeat. The small CFC sits on top. The pump immediately plugged up. After some troubleshooting there is a spring lock valve that is depressed when you insert and secure the top fittings. So I removed the spring and ball and once the first plug of trub/hops blew through, the wort flowed very clear and bright. I circulated back into urn and it dropped the temps reasonably quickly. Once I got below 110, cast out to the fermenter. I pulled a gravity sample from the tube and took a temp reading of 84F, just a degree or so above the initial tap temp. Caught the first 5 gallons of chiller water for cleaning.
So the achilles heal is that the pump is running very slowly. The filter is doing a good job on the wort, but it has taken 30 minutes to pump out 2.5 gallons or so. At least the pump is quiet. Looking forward to clean out to see what the filter looks like - I did not bag the hops since only using 3 ounces. I think in the future bagging makes sense, or a little hop spider.
So 76% efficiency with my original crush - not going to mess with that at all. Much less to do while waiting compared to my RIMS. So time to clean up, grab a bite and I will work on the pics and a video of the boil.
Posted 34 days ago.
