Dedicated Grainfather Guide, Problems and Solutions Thread

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
just got my GF and am very pumped to get some brews done on it. has anyone thought of any genius ways of easy sparging? forgive me as i've read through about 20 pages of this thread and gave up :p

EDIT: for clarity, i have a separate kettle and will, thus far, be releasing water slowly through its valve, via silicone tubing into the open GF. wanted to know if people had any clever ways to automate this process more.
 
You can automate it to the extent that you don't have to tip jugs of water in but you will still have to stand there because you never know how fast it will run through. I suppose you could fully automate it with a float valve or something
 
Just went for my biggest grain bill yet in the GF, 6.5kg for an IPA. Was expecting my efficiency would come down some from the 80%+ i have been enjoying up until now but got a poor 61% which has really thrown my numbers out. Had been targeting 1073 but came in at 1058 and that was after i picked up the issue in the preboil gravity and extended my boil time by 30 mins delivering 1L less than anticipated into fermenter.

Can't put my finger on the reason. Mash went as planned, no dough balls, recirc through the grain bed appeared good, no issues with my sparge. Rechecked my mash and sparge water calcs and they were fine. Anyone got any ideas?
 
Haven't had an issue previously doing high gravity in BIAB.
 
Hmm.. having a brew day today and my grain was crushed more than usual and it seems most of the wort is going down the overflow pipe. Well, it's a bit hard to tell but a lot of it is. Is this going to be a problem? I guess I'll see at the end of the mash if my efficiency is 0!

Edit. Grain was definitely too finely crushed. I'll have another go maybe tomorrow or Sunday on another batch. It actually worked out alright in the end. The sparge was slow (took about an hour) and I don't think it's going to be as clear a beer as I have previously experienced, however efficiency was spot on.
 
Has anyone done a 9kg mash in the GF?

I plan on doing it on the reg for some of my house beers to save time by diluting a concentrated wort for a double batch by boiling one batch in my crown urn and the other in my GF.

I've be interested to see what efficiencies people are getting with these large grain bills!
 
If you go for 8 plus kg hold back some of your mash water until after you mash the grain in. Then put the top filter on top and add the last few litres.
I found it a pain to get the filter on with the full water as the mash started escaping through the lifting holes.
 
TwoCrows said:
Large amount of grain requires the correct Ph and grain mill size to convert fully.
Just looked into the published 2014 water report for Adelaide and most areas showing average ph levels of 7 - 8 so well above the optimum 5.3 usually stated for brewing. You may be on to something. Can't work out why I didn't have the same issue pre-Grainfather though.
 
Killer Brew said:
Just looked into the published 2014 water report for Adelaide and most areas showing average ph levels of 7 - 8 so well above the optimum 5.3 usually stated for brewing. You may be on to something. Can't work out why I didn't have the same issue pre-Grainfather though.
Killer there is a lot more involved in hitting the optimum mash PH than just looking at your tap water PH. I suggest reading the water knowledge area of the bru n water site and using their spreadsheet to hit correct mash PH numbers. https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/

I just had a thought when it comes to improving efficiency of large grain bill double batches on the grainfather by utilising more sparging water. Has anyone tried using a larger volume of sparging water (greater than the grainfathers ~30L capacity) and used the pump to pump the excess mash water into a second kettle as extra capacity while recirculating from this kettle this back into the GF using gravity? This would all be done while sparging.

For a double batch you could potentially use all of your dilution water as sparge water which would have to improve efficiency numbers as the volume of sparge water you can use in the GF greatly drops off as the grain bill size increases.

Thoughts?
 
I set up a bit of a dry run to see if this was actually achiveable and it seemed to work no problems at all. The pump was able to move a decent amount of liquid up to that height. Most likely I'll use a cube with a tap instead of a fermenter for the hot wort.

IMG_20160106_224420-1024x1365.jpg
 
Is there a way to punch what you are doing into brewing software? Am wondering what impact it might have on the target SG. To be clear you are talking about siphoning off the overflow post sparge into a separate kettle and doing a mini boil before adding back in to the main vessel once evaporation has created space?
 
Killer Brew said:
Is there a way to punch what you are doing into brewing software? Am wondering what impact it might have on the target SG. To be clear you are talking about siphoning off the overflow post sparge into a separate kettle and doing a mini boil before adding back in to the main vessel once evaporation has created space?
Not quite, I'm suggesting using a second vessel as an accumulator to take the extra volume during sparging but maintaining recirculation of the wort between both vessels during the sparge.

Essentially this allows a greater volume of sparge water to be used. One sparging is finished the batch is split into two and one boil is done in the GF and the other in an urn.

Does that make sense?
 
Futur said:
Not quite, I'm suggesting using a second vessel as an accumulator to take the extra volume during sparging but maintaining recirculation of the wort between both vessels during the sparge.

Essentially this allows a greater volume of sparge water to be used. One sparging is finished the batch is split into two and one boil is done in the GF and the other in an urn.

Does that make sense?
Yep, split batch, got it. I think the way I suggested might also worked and with a more furious boil with a smaller volume in the urn before being put back into the GF could maybe lift the gravity higher.
 
I double batch always with Grainfather , same time but get 2 cubes.

I start with 23 ltrs, at strike temp then leave on mash low heat setting while stirring in,then slowly mash in my 8.5 to 9 kgs max of grains, slow and steady stir and stab with paddle up and down like mixing up concrete.

Usually once I've stirred in about 7 kgs of grain, I swing the top pipe over the top of the grain bed, start pump, and pump approx 2 -3 ltrs of water ontop.
This then makes it much easier to mash the final 2 kgs in.

I usually then mash for 75 mins and do 20 min mash out at 78. This helps with sparging.

Then, I just keep sparging till I see it dripped upto the 30 ltr mark.

I then place the malt pipe into an old esky and sparge it with another 6 ltrs of water and just let the last goodness run out into esky while I boil. You can take top plate of, give the grain a stir and sparge with final water, I find I get the last sugars totally out. Then Usually about 7 to 8 ltrs trickles out into esky which works out perfect for top ups and keeps efficiency up. Sit the malt pipe ontop of a Tupperware container etc to keep it off the floor of esky or bucket to catch second sparge runnings.
I then use this final runnings to top up the boil while doing my additions,
Just top up slowly so the boil is not killed, or I have an immersion heater from my previous brewing days which is use to ramp up the temps in between strike and boils to save time.

When my boil is done, I top right to top , about 10mm from lip with runnings or boiled water .

I then wait for the temp to drop to about 90-92 degrees, then pump straight into 2 x 15 ltr cubes that I saved from fresh wort kits, or you can buy 15 ltr containers.

The full double batch Grainfather fills 2 of these perfectly to the top.

Seal, and leave, I also add my hop additions I would normally use at sub 15 mark into little hop socks straight into the cubes.

What I have now is an over gravity for style 15 ltr cube, actually more like 16 lts.

When time to ferment, I dump into fermenter and top up to 21 ltrs.

I usually get OG of 1.046 to 1.048 which is plenty for me, and I get 2 x 19 ltr kegs from one cook up.

Last sat, while doing yard work etc, I got 2 double batches , so 4 cubes of a nice pilsener and pale ale , and allowing for my immersion heater to save time and everything took about 7 hrs.start to cleaned and packed up. Also managed to mow yard and take kids to shops in between mash times to keep SWMBO happy. Lol
Espescially using no chill, saves heaps of water and about 30 mins per Cook up. It's a no brainer.
Unless doing a high grav brew, double batch all the way.

I've done about 25-30 double batches now, and works a treat.

Hope this helps.
 
I need some advice re Dr Smurtos Golden Ale. Recipe calls for 66 deg mash temp but does not give a time would this be 60 or 90 min ? Also would it be worthwhile to include a protein rest?
 
DSGA is mashed for 60mins at 66c. No protein rest, though I usually throw in a 10 min at 72c then mash out at 78
 

Latest posts

Back
Top