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the grainfather

Started by davebhoy1975, December 01, 2016, 10:24:46 PM

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davebhoy1975

Big thanks to Guggs for the demo on the grainfather. Always appreciated when a homebrewer opens his home (and his fridge) to other home brewers during a brew day. I'm sure Alex is sold on the grainfather, I'm quite possibly converted(if the wife gives me access to the bank account) and I think C.J. was always gonna go down that road any way.

I wonder if any of the home-brew suppliers wild a deal on 3 grainfathers ? You never know lads, you never know !

It'll be an interesting meet over christmas or in January when we hopefully get to taste the black IPA from todays brew.

Any way thanks Guggs


BigDanny84

Sounds like ye had a good afternoon boys.

I am tempted alright, but it would be a stretch. I think Gugs had some issues on his brew on Friday with the pump, so I would have some concerns over that.

On the other hand, my mash tun is loosing a good bit of heat and I either need to do a job on it, buy a new one or put it all towards a grainfather.

davebhoy1975

Can you insulate the mash tun?

BigDanny84

I've been insulating it with blankets but found that it dropped a bit every 15/20 mins yesterday. Had to add warmer water a couple of times. Could look at building a box around it and filling the space with insulation.

johnrm

Are you mashing indoors or out Danny?
You could preheat the Mashtun.

armedcor

I always bring my strike water a good 10 degrees above my initial strike temp to let my cooler heat up. Also how big is your mash tun? Mine is a good 65 litres and I found it easier to just dump all my water in and do a no sparge for my sub 6% beers.

BigDanny84

Im mashing indoors. I have been adding a kettle of boiling water 20-30 mins beforehand to warm it up. I think it's a 45L cooler.

All along I found it lost about 1 degree over a 60 mins. But on Sunday it seemed to loose up to 0.5 degrees every 20 mins. I added hot water twice to bring it back up.


johnrm

A kettle is about 2l and is going to be sitting at the bottom of your tun.
The heat from the (relatively small body of) water is going to be lost to the lower part of the tun quite quickly and not heat up the full contact surface.
Consider adding v.hot mash liquor to fill your space.
Let it get down to temp or you can add cold if you can't wait.
Add cold, stir, down to temp? No > Repeat
Cooling at this stage is easier than heating after Grist has gone in.
Adjusting temp of a mash is difficult unless you are recirculating.

BigDanny84

Cheers John. That makes more sense than my method. Will try that the next time, thanks.