Dedicated Grainfather Guide, Problems and Solutions Thread

[Paddy]

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

 

[RRising]

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.



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.

 

[postmaster]

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.

View attachment 121283

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.

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.

 

[Bourkie]

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 hope he does, as his and Gash's videos are my fav.

 

[Bourkie]

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 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.

 

[Truman42]

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?

 

[RRising]

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?

Sorry, i thought i heard somewhere that the G40 dead space was about 3.5L, actually that makes more sense, guess the boil off was about 2L after all, i got 24.5L of wort from 33L of strike water which is still within the predictions of the Grainfather app.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

[duncbrewer]

@RRising So 8.5 litre of loss for grain absorption, boil off and hop / trub loss and still 24.5 litre of wort at 1.045.

You don't say how much grain you used so very difficult to appreciate this devices efficiency. Grain absorption around 0.8 l per kg and hop loss about 13g water per g of hops used on my Guten.

All depends on how much grain you used, but 5 kg of gladfield ale malt and these figures is suggesting an efficiency of just over 70 % brewhouse.

Can you update on your malt and hop usage to confirm your figures and really pre boil gravity and volume useful to show " real efficiency " , brewhouse is a bit related to how much trub you throw in your fermenter.

 

[RRising]

@duncbrewer, Sorry, i thought i put the put the grain bill in my "review", looking back i should have waited for the next day to do a write up, was tired and a couple of beers deep so that's the reason its a mangled mess.

My grain bill was -

• 4kg of Briess Pale Ale malt
• 300g Wheat malt
• 250g Rolled Oats
• 100g dark crystal
• 100g Acidulated malt

Hops were 25g of Simcoe at 60mins, 25g of Lemondrop at 15mins, i didn't use the biggest grain bill as i was running out of some grains, as for initial strike water, i used the no sparge option the app gives so i didn't use any additional sparge water

I am still a fairly novice brewer so im not all that know on brew efficiencies, all i know is i got a little bit higher OG than what the Grainfather app predicted but it's probably still within the margin of error.

 

[duncbrewer]

@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

 

[rayhaynes62]

@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

View attachment 121286

I reckon another God way to work out efficiency is lots of recipes quote based on a % of efficiency.
Brew the exact recipe and see how close you are. I brewed one the other day that quoted 78% and I hit the exact OG. So that would mean GF getting 78%.
Yes or no

 

[duncbrewer]

@rayhaynes62
Yes it would, provided your volume was the same as they quoted.

I reckon another God way to work out efficiency

Praying to higher deities not so reliable though!!

 

[caiocezart]

Looking to get started and found this kit STARTER BREWERY: Grainfather G30 Complete Brewery + 3 YEAR WARRANTY

Would that be a nice one?

 

[Grmblz]

Looking to get started and found this kit STARTER BREWERY: Grainfather G30 Complete Brewery + 3 YEAR WARRANTY

Would that be a nice one?

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.

 

[caiocezart]

I was just trying to play safe to get started. Kegerators price seems to all be around the same price 1.2-5k. Any recommendation of a nice DYI conversion kit? Or any guides to point out?

Thanks

 

[Grmblz]

Ok, so you joined yesterday, I will assume you have googled lots, if not, why not?
There's a **** 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.

 

[caiocezart]

Ok, so you joined yesterday, I will assume you have googled lots, if not, why not?
There's a **** 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.

Thanks for that, yeah I did my research hence finding this forum with a lot of content to help. I’m a bit worried in trying to build one myself, those series x ones looks easy enough

 

[jgriffin]

Anyone else had an issue with the triclover fitting on their Fermenter?

For some reason, on one of the fermenters, as soon as i start to tighten the clamp, it pushes the spigot off-centre and it naturally does not seal correct. It doesn't seem to happen on the other fermenter. I've had like 10 goes at it, my brother has had a go at it, and it keeps happening.

Any thoughts?

 

[RRising]

I'm a few brews deep on my G40 and a few issues are starting to rear their head mostly due to the pump and bottom hop filter/ false bottom.

I made an experimental tropical/ fruity type lager but only had about 40g of hops and it clogged the filter enough that i couldn't pump out the wort into my fermenter, i had to lift up the screen to be able to pump into the fermenter and as such got quite a bit of hop debris in the FV so maybe for future brews stick with the hop spider.

Secondly is when you go to use the counterflow chiller, it says to pump boiling wort through to sterilise but i have found that because of the heating elements it can cause voids around the pump inlet on the bottom and cause the pump to run dry for a few seconds before more wort could be sucked through. last issue with the pump is the whirlpool action when its nearly empty and again could cause the pump to suck air and might cause damage later on in its lifespan.

 

[one1985]

Can someone tell me how to use the boil power control on the G40. I would like to use a steam condenser because I have a small apartment, but I can’t get the boil power control working. It’s in the app but doesn’t seem to work.