Paddy
Well-Known Member
I have asked David Heath if he will do one of his comparison videos of the G40/BT40/BZ65 so waiting to see the results, saw one in the LHBS and it looked and felt the goods
Did you use the sparge calculator when rapping up from 75 Deg (mash out) to boil ? This does speed up the time to boil process.First brewday done and dusted with the G40 and i'll post my initial thoughts. I made a Coopers XPA clone, i love it because i am not a fan of overly hoppy and bitter IPA's and i have found the XPA a nice happy medium.
Initial clean was easy enough just a soak of PBW at 60°C for a few hours, brew was really easy with the app, i imported one of my brewfather recipes and it tweaked it a little bit, only downside i found with the app is that it doesn't send push notifications through when the phone is in standby so i missed a hop addition by a few minutes so nbd.
I was a bit surprised to see that i got a bit more efficiency than the app predicted, it predicted an OG of 1.040 for my recipe but got 1.045 after the boil, with 33L on initial mash water i got about 25L of wort that's with the 3.5L dead space and around 3-4L predicted boil off, i guess outside temps will affect the boiloff.
After brew clean up was easy, there are only 2 false bottoms, the grain plate for the malt pipe and the hop filter and both are easy to clean, i found the false bottoms on my robobrew were a pain in the arse to clean, the trub was on the hop filter plate and not on the bottom so hopefully it should minimise scorching as is not directly on the floor right next to the elements and i now have it soaking again in PBW.
A couple of minor nitpicks, Using it on 10a mode wasn't too bad, it took about an hour to warm up 33L of water from 18° to 70° and about 50 minutes to get it from 75° to boil i'll post a pic of the temp graph below, this will probably be quicker if/when Grainfather release an insulation jacket for the G40, it would greatly benefit from being plugged into a 15amp socket although the 15a cord is a separate purchase. A quick read of the website and it's limited to 2300w in 10amp mode but 3300w with 15a.
The cord isn't a standard IEC plug like i thought it was so if you lose the cord you'll probably need to buy a new one from GF and as before in my first thoughts there is no dust cover so you'll have to mindful of not getting water in if you wash the exterior.
Other than that, i found it was really good and easy to use and will be counting down the days until my next brew, it was a worthwhile upgrade for me but of course your mileage may vary.
PS... sorry if this is a bit rambly.
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Edit... to explain the graph, for some reason it didn't log the first soak even though the unit was on, it started to after i opened the app, the drop is filling up with cold tap water (KL fill-o-meter" and a inline filter beats going in and out with buckets of water), and the temp drop after boil is because i used the cooling helix from my robobrew, haven't have the time to find hosing for the cold outlet hose for the counterflow chiller that came with the unit.
I hope he does, as his and Gash's videos are my fav.I have asked David Heath if he will do one of his comparison videos of the G40/BT40/BZ65 so waiting to see the results, saw one in the LHBS and it looked and felt the goods
I totally get it mate, I've been holding off purchasing my first all grain device for so long now. I've got the money, just waiting for the product to be released. It does sound like the Grainfather is very well designed for a release device.I'm in the same boat but don't think I can wait any longer for the brewzilla even though I'm sure it will be a great unit. I'm guessing late year release but will have more demand than supply and I have been waiting so long already.
I was a bit surprised to see that i got a bit more efficiency than the app predicted, it predicted an OG of 1.040 for my recipe but got 1.045 after the boil, with 33L on initial mash water i got about 25L of wort that's with the 3.5L dead space and around 3-4L predicted boil off, i guess outside temps will affect the boiloff.
Good review mate, just wondering what you mean by 3.5l dead space as I thought the mash tun dead space was 6.9 litres? Also I have my boil off set to 2.2 litres an hour but you said you got 3-4 litres boiled off, or was that a 90 min boil?
I reckon another God way to work out efficiency is lots of recipes quote based on a % of efficiency.@RRising Thanks for the update.
I'm learning every brew day as well.
What I have learnt is that with new kit you benefit from collecting as much info as possible. Otherwise you are running a bit in the dark. If you got 25 litres in the fermenter then your brewhouse efficiency was 80% ( assuming temp correction of wort for hydrometer etc) if only 24.5 litres 78.5 %. But all in if you know your efficiency at different stages then you can have a recipe or make a recipe that will hit your numbers and no surprises.
33 litres to start and fermenter 25 litres with grain absorption and hop loss looks like 3.5 litre of boil off but could be more or less, assuming you emptied the kettle to leave only the wort in the hops behind. It's useful to really know that figure as then you'll know your liquid boil off rate.
But the first few brews on new kit are fun, stressful, experimental unless someones worked out all the numbers for that gear. Then I'd still check them against my own process. Luckily we aren't running commercial breweries so a few points here or there aren't that critical especially as the mash and boil is only part of a beers journey to the lips.
@MHB posted this in response to one of my questions and I find it a useful chart
Your mash was 6.95 L:G
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I reckon another God way to work out efficiency
Whether it's nice or not is subjective, what I can say is it's bloody expensive for what you get. Yes you pay for a turn key solution but I reckon $1500 would easily get you the same set up if you can build the serving fridge yourself, and would probably be better quality.Looking to get started and found this kit STARTER BREWERY: Grainfather G30 Complete Brewery + 3 YEAR WARRANTY
Would that be a nice one?
Ok, so you joined yesterday, I will assume you have googled lots, if not, why not?
There's a shit load of how too's on the tube, some of which might be worth looking at.
Having said that there's a couple of things to get sorted, if you want the pub bar font tap thing, your kegerators are the way to go BUT! they are a cheap, noisy, inefficient Chinesium fridges, and usually pour foam on a hot day without serious modification, if you can live with a homemade tap on door type, you will get a superior pour, better "star" rating, and a unit that doesn't die after3 or 4 yrs, Oh and costs half the pennies, I'll leave this for now because I have probably kicked a hornets nest, and it's only fair for the other side to have their say. I'll revisit if nobody wants to help.
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