GUTEN

[duncbrewer]

I find the sight glass an absolute pain to clean.
Build a condenser for the top and put a viewing port in the top.

Very relaxed non full batch brewing as so little chance of boilover.

 

[JimsBeerandBrewing]

So I go to brew a batch today as you do and upon cleaning my Guten as I normally would before every brew with sodium perc it trips off, now last brew out I was minutes away from ending the boil and the unit had tripped off, so I thought at the time.............. though it turns out it was my kids switching the power off, anyway, this time back upon cleaning the unit trips off when reaching around 30c-35c this now continues to happen, unit is around 2 years old 40L system, thoughts with the next step, should I just invest in a new all in one system?

 

[bird]

So I go to brew a batch today as you do and upon cleaning my Guten as I normally would before every brew with sodium perc it trips off, now last brew out I was minutes away from ending the boil and the unit had tripped off, so I thought at the time.............. though it turns out it was my kids switching the power off, anyway, this time back upon cleaning the unit trips off when reaching around 30c-35c this now continues to happen, unit is around 2 years old 40L system, thoughts with the next step, should I just invest in a new all in one system?

I had the same problem with my 70lt Guten not long ago and it turned out to be a problem with the screen. I think they are about 35 dollars and easy to replace. Would be worth trying before buying a new system.

 

[JimsBeerandBrewing]

I had the same problem with my 70lt Guten not long ago and it turned out to be a problem with the screen. I think they are about 35 dollars and easy to replace. Would be worth trying before buying a new system.

Where do I go to acquire this part?

 

[bird]

From kegking. It's not on the website but ring them and they should have them.

 

[JimsBeerandBrewing]

From kegking. It's not on the website but ring them and they should have them.

Thanks mate

 

[mynameisrodney]

OK so I didn't get as much time to play today as I'd hoped. Volume on the sight glass looks pretty much spot on. Temp is off by about 0.5 - 1C vs my thermapen so that's manageable. But didn't get enough time to figure out the controls. Still a bit murky on a few things.

What power setting is used during ramp between steps? The previous or next set point?

On my old system I had a simple timer set up to come on at about 6am so that the water was up to mash temp whenever I got to it in the morning. How do I do this with the guten?

Are there pauses between the steps? Seems to be conflicting info.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Fro-Daddy]

I use 3000w for ramping and boiling, and 1000w for mashing.

The programming is pretty horrible on this system. I looked in to it at the start but it's more trouble than it's worth IMO.
I think the steps are 3 hours max each, so for overnight you would have to set multiple.
Then the order of pressing the buttons seemed confusing so I gave up.

Are you going to use the hop spider or did you buy a helix or false bottom?

 

[mynameisrodney]

OK good to hear it's not just me haha. I guess I'll just wing it in manual mode tomorrow for the first go.

Maybe going forward I can rig up one of the presets to sit at 20c for 8h, then go to my strike temp and hold. Have that as a separate program, and just reset the guten and go to the program I want when I'm ready? I'll have to think more on that.

Cheers for the power recommendations. I'd put 1500 in for mash but will dial it back.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[mynameisrodney]

Well all done for the day. No major dramas.

The standing false bottom had hardly anything on it though, everything had migrated underneath.

I also think I need to adjust my mill. I'd only done BIAB before today, and I think it's set too fine for the guten. There was a decent amount of grain husks that had made it out of the malt pipe.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[duncbrewer]

I've used the auto program and it's not that intuitive. I find that I use max power on the ramping up phases but set it to 1 minute at a temp just below by a degree or so. This allows for the overshoot and then have the mash temp set and time as the next step and use about 600w if not a full batch.
It's quite a lot of programming but has worked out for step mashes as well.
I use a home made trub trapper in the bottom of the Guten 70 and don't use the hop spider. I have the helix just laying in the bottom of the kettle and pump out into the fermenter using the recirculate hose.

There is a custom PID that I saw being retrofitted to a brewzilla on a you tube video, it has better software for overshoot prevention etc.

 

[mynameisrodney]

I'll give that a crack next time with a second setpoint to ramp faster. Cheers.

 

[mynameisrodney]

Ok so gearing up for my second brew, the main thing I want to improve on from last time is to have less grain husks make their way through the bottom of the malt pipe.

As I mentioned before, my mill was adjusted pretty tight for BIAB and I hadn't bothered conditioning my grain before. I will give conditioning a go this time, and widen my mill gap. I did throw in 2 handfuls of rice hulls (didn't weight them).

last time I ran without the top screen for the majority of the mash so that I could stir it. Then for the last 10 minutes I put the screen on so that the flow from the return hose didn't burrow a channel through. I did a full volume mash, and had the return pump fully open for the whole time and didn't see the level rise up to the overflow (not game to remove it just yet).

One thing which I think may have contributed was having the pump running while I mashed in and when I stirred. This probably pulled stuff through as I was disturbing it, so I'll turn the pump off for those periods next time.

Other than that, is there anything that sticks out from the above that I should change?

Cheers,
Chris

 

[bird]

Hey Chris.
I leave my pump off for the first 10minutes after mashing in. I find this helps to let the grain absorb all it's moisture before recirculating and helps to get better flow through the grain bed. I also stir the grain every 10 to 15 minutes which seems to help with efficiency. I haven't used the top plate for a long time. I don't find a need for it just move the pipe to a different spot after stirring. I have my mill gap just under a credit card thickness and have never had husks got through the bottom screen.

 

[duncbrewer]

Even with a few husks going through they get caught by the recirculation anyway. If the grist was too fine you'd think less would go through as it would all set, maybe the stirring is pushing the crushed grains through? I don't stir after 15 minutes and just adjust the pump so the flow balances in and out nicely. I tend to use about 3.5 litres per kg of grain in the mash and similar volume to sparge.

 

[mynameisrodney]

Hey Chris.
I leave my pump off for the first 10minutes after mashing in. I find this helps to let the grain absorb all it's moisture before recirculating and helps to get better flow through the grain bed. I also stir the grain every 10 to 15 minutes which seems to help with efficiency. I haven't used the top plate for a long time. I don't find a need for it just move the pipe to a different spot after stirring. I have my mill gap just under a credit card thickness and have never had husks got through the bottom screen.

Ok I think that's about what my gap is now. So maybe I wont adjust that yet, I'll see how I go with just conditioning the grain and not recirculating at the start. Cheers

 

[mynameisrodney]

Even with a few husks going through they get caught by the recirculation anyway. If the grist was too fine you'd think less would go through as it would all set, maybe the stirring is pushing the crushed grains through? I don't stir after 15 minutes and just adjust the pump so the flow balances in and out nicely. I tend to use about 3.5 litres per kg of grain in the mash and similar volume to sparge.

I was pretty surprised that they didn't get picked up by the pump to be honest. Maybe something to do with the standing false bottom? I guess it could have made it through the bottom screen of the malt pipe while mashing, but sat on top of that until after I'd pulled the malt pipe and so didn't get filtered out?

Yeah I think I must have pushed it through. I'm going to stick with no sparge for my first few batches to try to keep it comparable to what I was doing BIAB. Cheers

 

[user 37368]

False bottom will catch everything during the whirlpool where it will cone up in the middle.

 

[mynameisrodney]

False bottom will catch everything during the whirlpool where it will cone up in the middle.

Unfortunately this didn't happen for me. I only ran it for 10min after pulling the chiller. Maybe I need to go longer. Pretty much all the trub was underneath the false bottom. I also couldn't find my whirlfloc on brew day, so maybe this stopped it clumping up enough to work properly.

 

[mynameisrodney]

Ok 4th run done on the weekend.

• I had to disassemble the sight glass before starting as a spider had made a home in there.
• I still am yet to see anything significant build up on top of the false bottom. On Sunday I ran the pump from boiling down to~22. Then pulled the chiller and kept it running another 20min. Then switched the pump off and left it for an hour to settle. Still had probably 90% of the trub under the false bottom.
• From mash -> boil I recirced using the std hose into the hop spider. This did a decent job of catching all the husks etc that had made it out of the malt pipe. But eventually became fully blocked. This probably removed 1 - 2 cups of crap.
• I bent up a copper pipe and drilled holes through it to use for recirculation during the mash. It sinks slightly into the grain bed but not much. It can easily be moved to the side to stir, but doesn't drill right down to the bottom like when I just use the hose that came with it. Seemed to work well.