Dedicated Grainfather Guide, Problems and Solutions Thread

[carniebrew]

The two Dr Smurtos lacking fizz have both conditioned long enough I think. The first was bottled 26/9 and the last one 8/11 and at temps over 20 degrees. In the second one I used table sugar not dex thinking this may increase the bubbles but they are both pretty much the same. The other thing I noticed about these two brews is that they took a lot longer to finish fermenting than the earlier Citra APA's at around two weeks.

I'd be a bit suss on yeast health/viability. What was the yeast you used, and how did you prepare it for pitching? Any off flavours in the end beer such as green apple? Certainly nothing wrong with your bulk priming practice from what you've said.

One of the guys in our club had batch after batch coming out with acetaldehyde...finally figured out it was the yeast he was buying...this shop was re-packaging bulk US-05 into their own sachets, poorly it seems, hence he was significantly under-pitching each batch. He went back to original us-05 and the problem disappeared.

 

[nads]

I used US05 which I also used on my previous Citra APA and that was fine. Purchased from the same hb store which always keeps everything fresh, never had an issue with anything purchased there. The beer tastes great except it's lacking bubbles. I always pitch the yeast by aerating the wort and sprinkling the yeast on top.

 

[Spookism]

Shout out to the guys from GrainFather.

Misplaced my black cap on my filter, sent an email asking for just that.
They sourced a whole new filter and sent it out.

Great customer service

 

[Mattress]

Gave my Grainfather it'd maiden run 2 days ago, had a couple of issues which I think are related to my grain crush being too fine, but I thought I'd check with you guys to see if there is anything else I should consider.

When I ran the G/F through it's test cycle a few days earlier using just water, the wort chiller worked brilliantly, with the water coming out of the outlet hose quite warm. On brew day it didn't work quite so well, the outlet hose water temp. wasn't that much different from what was going in, and the hose into the fermenter quite slow and not that cold either. When cleaning up I found a heap of malt/break material all over the pump screen, but not much from my hops. The hop material was mainly left on the side of the G/F about 3/4 of the way up on the wall of the unit.

When working out my recipe using beersmith, I used the equipment profile posted by Wambesi earlier in this thread, using a total efficiency rating of 75% I ended up with an estimated O/G of 1.054. On Brew day I ended up with an O/G of 1.060.

When I crushed my grain I fiddled with the rollers and ended up with grain that wasn't crushed enough and a lot of kernels uncracked, so I ran it through the mill a second time, which unfortunately resulted in a fair bit of flour

Will going to a coarser grain crush help with these problems?

 

[Coodgee]

The filter is always covered in break material. That is normal. The water coming out of the hot pipe of the chiller should be too hot to touch. If the wort was flowing out of the chiller and not trickling then it should be working ok.

 

[HBHB]

I used US05 which I also used on my previous Citra APA and that was fine. Purchased from the same hb store which always keeps everything fresh, never had an issue with anything purchased there. The beer tastes great except it's lacking bubbles. I always pitch the yeast by aerating the wort and sprinkling the yeast on top.

Beer lacking bubbles is just a problem with bottle carbonation. Could be insufficient sugar at bottling, could be leaking caps, could be lack of time in the bottle, could be the yeast has flocked out and might just need more time. Nothing to do with how it was pitched if it's fermented out properly.

Hope that helps a little.

 

[welly2]

Having a bit of a mash efficiency problem. Got 64% efficiency today. Was expecting 1.050 pre-boil gravity, got 1.042. OG ended up at 1.047 - was expecting 1.056. I think it's one or a combination of a few things -

• grain crush isn't right - I'm using 0.50 on my keg king malt muncher. Next brew day (next weekend probably) I'm going to try closer to 0.25.
• sparging is too quick although it did take about 20 minutes today. Perhaps should slow it down even more.
• mash/wort ph not right?
• Oh, perhaps the calculations on beersmith - which really isn't suited to the grainfather - were off but I guess aren't a million miles off.

I'm going to start with the next batch by changing the grain crush and then will see about sparging. Other than that, brew day went well! Was making a strong IPA, now it'll be a moderate pale ale, which is fine too!

 

[carniebrew]

Having a bit of a mash efficiency problem. Got 64% efficiency today. Was expecting 1.050 pre-boil gravity, got 1.042. OG ended up at 1.047 - was expecting 1.056. I think it's one or a combination of a few things -

• grain crush isn't right - I'm using 0.50 on my keg king malt muncher. Next brew day (next weekend probably) I'm going to try closer to 0.25.
• sparging is too quick although it did take about 20 minutes today. Perhaps should slow it down even more.
• mash/wort ph not right?
• Oh, perhaps the calculations on beersmith - which really isn't suited to the grainfather - were off but I guess aren't a million miles off.

I'm going to start with the next batch by changing the grain crush and then will see about sparging. Other than that, brew day went well! Was making a strong IPA, now it'll be a moderate pale ale, which is fine too!

What's the 0.5? Is that a KK thing? Do you know what gap your rollers are set at in mm? I've found 1.2mm with my mashmashter minimill is giving me the best combination of efficiency and sparge speed. I'm around 74% and can sparge 10 litres in less than 10 minutes. I have had over 80% efficiency in some early brews but my sparge would take 45 minutes. Bugger that for the sake of a few cents.

My crush is looking a lot like this these days: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TLGDDxIoOyo/VjohqmkSb8I/AAAAAAAAAgY/ZA3dcGZnRW8/s1600/ideal%2Bcrush.JPG

 

[welly2]

What's the 0.5? Is that a KK thing? Do you know what gap your rollers are set at in mm? I've found 1.2mm with my mashmashter minimill is giving me the best combination of efficiency and sparge speed. I'm around 74% and can sparge 10 litres in less than 10 minutes. I have had over 80% efficiency in some early brews but my sparge would take 45 minutes. Bugger that for the sake of a few cents.

My crush is looking a lot like this these days: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TLGDDxIoOyo/VjohqmkSb8I/AAAAAAAAAgY/ZA3dcGZnRW8/s1600/ideal%2Bcrush.JPG

Actually I think it is 0.050 and I reckon they might be referring to inches so 0.050 of an inch? Perhaps or maybe it's just some proprietary measurement. Your crush looks a bit more crushed than mine. I'm going to try the credit card gap trick and see how that is. I've got some throwaway grain I can test it out on anyway. I'd make another beer this weekend coming if I had the room in my fermenting fridge to ferment it. Oh well.

I've just checked and 0.050 is 1.27mm. I'm going to try a little narrower anyway with this test grain and see what the go is.

 

[welly2]

Couple of questions. I used the grainfather chiller for the first time. Worked pretty well given it was a hot day in Sydney yesterday. It didn't bring the temperature down to pitching temp but did bring it down to about 33c. I stuck it in my fermenting fridge overnight to chill for the rest. It was a bit low this morning when I went to pitch the yeast - about 16 but that's within US-05s parameters so pitched it anyway. It looks like cold break has formed overnight - I think it must have been a bit of a colder night - I'm getting a heat belt to hopefully fix that though, my STC-1000 currently only has the fridge plugged into it.

Question is - will cold break in my fermenter have any adverse effects? Secondly, is there a more economical or a better way of running the chiller on hot days? Perhaps I could use my pond pump to use iced water in an esky rather than coming straight from the tap. I used surprisingly little water (which may explain chilling only getting down to 33c) - I reckon about 30 litres, perhaps a bit more.

 

[postmaster]

Hi welly2 I have the same crusher. I have settled on .39 of an inch or .99 mm (.39 x 2.54 = .9906mm). It take me about 20 minutes to sparge. 16 litres. I use beersmith and my average total efficiency is 78%. Mash efficiency 85%. I use a preboil volume of 29.25 litres for a 60 minute boil for batch of 23 litres. Usually my gravity is within 1 point either way. Hope this is of some help..

 

[Coodgee]

Couple of questions. I used the grainfather chiller for the first time. Worked pretty well given it was a hot day in Sydney yesterday. It didn't bring the temperature down to pitching temp but did bring it down to about 33c. I stuck it in my fermenting fridge overnight to chill for the rest. It was a bit low this morning when I went to pitch the yeast - about 16 but that's within US-05s parameters so pitched it anyway. It looks like cold break has formed overnight - I think it must have been a bit of a colder night - I'm getting a heat belt to hopefully fix that though, my STC-1000 currently only has the fridge plugged into it.

Question is - will cold break in my fermenter have any adverse effects? Secondly, is there a more economical or a better way of running the chiller on hot days? Perhaps I could use my pond pump to use iced water in an esky rather than coming straight from the tap. I used surprisingly little water (which may explain chilling only getting down to 33c) - I reckon about 30 litres, perhaps a bit more.

what makes you say you've got cold break in the fermenter? are there a lot of white coagulated particles floating around in the wort? I think classic brewing technique teaches that we should try to let that cold break settle in the kettle and only put as much clear wort in the fermenter as possible but I don't think many people care about this any more. particular the no-chillers who dump 100% of the cold break in the fermenter. I try to let the wort settle in the grainfather for about 20 mintues after chilling it down to about 30 degrees to let the suspended particles drop out a bit, but I don't think it's critical.

 

[tugger]

Cold break in the fermenter Is good for the yeast.
The only way is to pre chill the water going into the cf chiller with your old immersion chiller in line And in a bucket of ice.

 

[welly2]

what makes you say you've got cold break in the fermenter? are there a lot of white coagulated particles floating around in the wort? I think classic brewing technique teaches that we should try to let that cold break settle in the kettle and only put as much clear wort in the fermenter as possible but I don't think many people care about this any more. particular the no-chillers who dump 100% of the cold break in the fermenter. I try to let the wort settle in the grainfather for about 20 mintues after chilling it down to about 30 degrees to let the suspended particles drop out a bit, but I don't think it's critical.

There was a fair bit of protein looking substances in the fermenter that looked a lot like cold break but actually I've since read this morning that some cold break is good so I'm not going to worry too much about that.

When you say you let the wort settle in the grainfather after chilling - are you recirculating through the chiller back into the grainfather rather than out to your fermenter? Or are you not using the counter flow chiller that comes with the grainfather?

 

[Coodgee]

There was a fair bit of protein looking substances in the fermenter that looked a lot like cold break but actually I've since read this morning that some cold break is good so I'm not going to worry too much about that.

When you say you let the wort settle in the grainfather after chilling - are you recirculating through the chiller back into the grainfather rather than out to your fermenter? Or are you not using the counter flow chiller that comes with the grainfather?

I'm recirculating it for about 20 minutes back into the grainfather. anyone who says the CF chiller is meant to work by running it through once and straight into the fermenter has not tried it during a QLD summer. that would give me a fermenter of wort at about 45 degrees.

 

[Killer Brew]

Secondly, is there a more economical or a better way of running the chiller on hot days? Perhaps I could use my pond pump to use iced water in an esky rather than coming straight from the tap. I used surprisingly little water (which may explain chilling only getting down to 33c) - I reckon about 30 litres, perhaps a bit more.

Increasing the flow through of water and running the wort out slowly maximises heat transfer. Obviously the lowest temp you can achieve using the CFC as designed is that of the tap water. You could try something like you suggested but is it really worth it? For me the main function of the CFC is to bring the temp down quickly to below the level at which any chemical changes continue to happen, so setting the flavours as such. I'm happy to give the wort the extra time it might need to get to pitching temp. Throwing it in the fridge for an hour generally gets it there.

 

[carniebrew]

Increasing the flow through of water and running the wort out slowly maximises heat transfer. Obviously the lowest temp you can achieve using the CFC as designed is that of the tap water. You could try something like you suggested but is it really worth it? For me the main function of the CFC is to bring the temp down quickly to below the level at which any chemical changes continue to happen, so setting the flavours as such. I'm happy to give the wort the extra time it might need to get to pitching temp. Throwing it in the fridge for an hour generally gets it there.

This is exactly what I do this time of year. In colder temps I can get my wort down to 18-22 at which point I'll pitch straight away. But the last couple of brews have been closer to 25C, so 1-2 hours in the fermenting fridge gets me to 22 and I pitch.

The pond pump likely won't work well as it won't be able to create the high pressure/flow rate you need to optimise heat transfer. Pre chilling the water before it goes in would certainly help, but it's more costly and time consuming so I don't bother.

 

[welly2]

Fair points and that all makes sense. I'm possibly going to make another brew on Saturday so will take all this advice onboard!

Cheers

 

[HBHB]

I'm recirculating it for about 20 minutes back into the grainfather. anyone who says the CF chiller is meant to work by running it through once and straight into the fermenter has not tried it during a QLD summer. that would give me a fermenter of wort at about 45 degrees.

Pre-chilling the cooling water is definitely a plus at this time of year. You only need about 4m of copper in a small esky with ice, water and a handful of pool salt to crank the temp down low.

 

[Batz]

I have an old water cooler (the drinking fountain type) I used it to cool chiller water at one time. Works and has a 1/2" ball value. Bit old but free to anyone who wants it.