Dedicated Grainfather Guide, Problems and Solutions Thread

[wambesi]

Well I still usually drop straight in the fermenter with no sock or anything else to contain the hops.

They settle out during cold crashing and never had a problem so far.

 

[butisitart]

just doing a cost analysis of my gf -- i keep an excel of all my costs v amount of beer produced, projected out to carton (=24x375ml) price. admittedly i had a lot of background stuff like fermenters, scales, but..
cost of gf plus all ingredients, plus hopspider, starsan and beersmith, average cost of all cartons brewed on gf after :
1 brew ..... $412.33
5 brews ...... $91.43
10 brews.... $54.74
15 brews.....$39.94
17 brews.... $36.13

i hit equivalent retail price at about brew 12, and at brew 17 (which is where i am now), that's equivalent to a mid strength special price at auntie dans. and i don't shop for the cheapest grains. given the difference in quality, and that my price is going to keep coming down, nuff said, i think.

 

[nads]

I have a question re efficiency. I'm on my 4th Grainfather brew and so far have not bothered to work this out. My next brew recipe suggests to add water to 28 Liters if volume after sparging is below this. Do I take an OG reading straight after sparging or after adding water if needed to make up the 28 liters.

 

[Coodgee]

So I tried sparging without lifting the grain basket up as described a page or so ago. The runnings were quite clear using this method. However when I removed the grain basket I noticed there was plenty of "trub" material in the bottom of the grainfather. I didn't tip this out, I just poured my collected wort on top, which probably negated the point of the exercise. I don't think it was worth the effort and probably won't do it again. I did notice when I was pumping the cooled wort into the fermentor it was brilliantly clear most of the time.

on another note, my method of aerating the wort is simply to hold the outlet pipe of the chiller up as high as possible and let the wort fall down into the fermentor. This creates a huge amount of foam so I am hoping it should be adequate aeration.

 

[Coodgee]

I have a question re efficiency. I'm on my 4th Grainfather brew and so far have not bothered to work this out. My next brew recipe suggests to add water to 28 Liters if volume after sparging is below this. Do I take an OG reading straight after sparging or after adding water if needed to make up the 28 liters.

When sparging, if you look down through the gap between the lifted grain basket and the side of the main vessel , you can actually see the litre graduations on the side of the grainfather, so you can just keep sparging until you have collected enough wort and then immediately remove the grain basket. This should get you maximum efficiency. Every extra litre that washes through the grain is adding more sugars into wort. If you top up the boiler with water straight out of the HLT then that is water that could have gone through the grain bed and washed out some more malt sugars.

But to answer your original question, you can take a pre-boil gravity reading before or after the top up, you just need to use the corresponding wort volume to do the efficiency calculation, which is a measure of how much sugar you have extracted from your grain as a proportion of the maximum potential amount that is there to extract. So to work out how much sugar you have, it's just the concentration times the volume - hence you must use the volume that corresponds to the SG reading. if you add additional water you would want to give it a good stir first so that the gravity of the whole solution evens out. This pre-boil gravity and volume allows you to calculate your mash efficiency.

The original gravity (OG) calculation usually refers to the the reading you take once the wort is in the fermentor and you use the volume in the fermentor and the OG reading to work out your brewhouse efficiency - that is, the total efficiency of your process from the amount of potential sugars in the grain to the amount that ends up in your fermentor.

That's how I understand it anway, more experienced brewers may correct me.

 

[carniebrew]

I have a question re efficiency. I'm on my 4th Grainfather brew and so far have not bothered to work this out. My next brew recipe suggests to add water to 28 Liters if volume after sparging is below this. Do I take an OG reading straight after sparging or after adding water if needed to make up the 28 liters.

It depends on what's more important to you...the volume/batch size of your beer, or the gravity/abv. I prefer the latter.....i.e. I don't care if I end up with 23 litres or 20 in the fermenter, I'd prefer to hit my target OG/FG, so I get the strength of beer I was going for.

So after my sparge I'll remove the grain basket and take a gravity reading with my refractometer. If for some reason I'm over gravity, I'll dilute accordingly. If i'm under, I can add dextrose or DME to adjust, or just boil longer. Although I've never been under with the Grainfather, I set my efficiency to 78% in BeerSmith as it's easier to add top up water than to add gravity.

 

[tugger]

I came across this a few days ago.
I like the unit and don't mind paying the high price but check out how this guy aerates his wert.

http://youtu.be/UtsPy6-6R4M

 

[HeavyNova]

Just got one of these units on the weekend. Can't wait to fire it up!

The chiller that came with mine is on a bit of a lean so it doesn't sit that nicely on the lid, as it is supposed to. I have a plate chiller though and was toying with the idea of a hoprocket at some stage in the near future too. With both of those using 1/2" fitting, has anyone looked into how easy it to upgrade the output on the grainfather to accept 1/2" fittings?

I've seen a video somewhere on youtube where a guy has swapped out the ball valve and added a quick disconnect for easy on swapping of recirculation arm and counterflow chiller.

 

[wobbly]

I've seen a video somewhere on youtube where a guy has swapped out the ball valve and added a quick disconnect for easy on swapping of recirculation arm and counterflow chiller.

See page 4 on this topic from the Braumeister forum for how someone else has done it using quick disconnects https://forum.braumeisters.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=490&start=45

Cheers

Wobbly

 

[arzaman]

Hi
The Open ArdBir team is working to adapt the single vessel BIAB/Rims controller developed during last two years to GrainFather

Few guys around the world has already replaced the original controller (simple ST200 thermo regulator with on/off power control) with ArdBir that allow full process controls in all steps, recipe management, PID /PWM power control, pump control plus all other ArdBir feature with complete set up of all unit and brewing parameters...it's a huge step head compared the original controller at low cost / low effort

and is all open and free !

The controller from integration and HW perspective using the specific All in One board is almost plug and play, we are preparing a full guide and an optimized settings for GrainFather

Here some sample picture from one Italian guy supporting ArdBir project that has performed conversion

 

[Coodgee]

it's only a matter of time before MJs release a more programmable controller you would think...

on another note, my next brew is going to be a Jacked Up APA kit that I got for free with my grainfather. It consists of 4.9 Maris Otter and 380g Crystal. Then pacific Jade for bittering, columbus, citra and centennial added at flame out and citra centennial and summit to dry hop. It's a pretty big beer with 256grams of hops all up. Kind of takes a bit of the fun out of it not designing my own beer but it will be nice to try. The only change I think I will make is to swap out the MJ M44 West Coast for US05. I have heard some bad stories about M44. Hopefully I can still get the US05 to drop clear. I have a lager in the fermenting fridge so hopefully timing works out and the fridge will be available for a couple of days to cold crash.

 

[tugger]

I have my sparky making me a cord to plug the heating element into a keg king fermentation controller so I can have 0.1 degree temperature resolution for the mash.
Still using the gf controller for the pump and boil.
It's just a female plug and a male wall plug.

 

[arzaman]

it's only a matter of time before MJs release a more programmable controller you would think...

I would not be so surprised to see in a near future an official premium controller “cloning” ArdBir
Quite difficult to imagine a control system for single vessel/BIAB process with additional features and functions not present in current ArdBir release

Davide

 

[Gorgar]

I came across this a few days ago.
I like the unit and don't mind paying the high price but check out how this guy aerates his wert.

http://youtu.be/UtsPy6-6R4M

Seems like a great solution, The one I went with is a little less userfriendly but for 250 SEK (~40 AUD) it is very good and fits right in the Grainfather without modification since it is the same form factor as the STC-200.
It is a (programmable, bought one from China that didn't have the programming points) STC-1000 with a modified firmware that allows for stage mashing, hop additions and so on, more info on this (opensource) project can be found on https://github.com/matsstaff/stc1000p-ovbsc

Where I bought it they also sell an already modified version if you don't want or is able to do it yourself, then it is 400SEK (~65 AUD)

 

[McMelloW]

I am looking for a modified STC-1000+ OVBSC for some time. Where can I buy a piec like this?

 

[Coodgee]

Where I bought it they also sell an already modified version if you don't want or is able to do it yourself, then it is 400SEK (~65 AUD)

Could you please share the URL? sounds like a good upgrade and I can't be bothered effing around with programming firmware...

 

[arzaman]

Enjoy this nice video of a brew day with Grainfather and Open ArdBir controller (courteously from cherryphilip )

http://www.magisto.com/embed/aFEFPVAVQj0_BhBiCzE?l=vem&o=w&c=b

Davide

 

[HeavyNova]

See page 4 on this topic from the Braumeister forum for how someone else has done it using quick disconnects https://forum.braumeisters.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=490&start=45

Cheers

Wobbly

Thanks wobbly, I had a look at that but I still don't know if it's simple to do on the GF. Does anyone know if a 3/8" fitting will screw on to the GF outlet?

I'm hoping it's that simple but I don't have an 3/8" female fitting to test it.

 

[Gorgar]

Could you please share the URL? sounds like a good upgrade and I can't be bothered effing around with programming firmware...

I am looking for a modified STC-1000+ OVBSC for some time. Where can I buy a piec like this?

I don't know the rules for sharing store pages, if I'm breaking them please just remove this and I'll PM instead

It is a Swedish page so I'm not sure about the freight costs and time, it's a small package so it shouldn't be too expensive!
The address is: http://www.storagrytor.se/s/stc-1000
Translated to english: http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.storagrytor.se%2Fs%2Fstc-1000

The STC-1000+ is the one for fermentation and the STC-1000 Brew is the OVBSC version.

 

[dschoemaker]

Rawlus,

What size did you get?

Like Wazzac, mine is from Utah Biodiesel Supply. They have a large variety of options
https://utahbiodieselsupply.com/brewingfilters.php