Grainfather

[beanstalk]

How far did you push the pipe into the silcine tube? Just to below the jubilee clip?

[Andrew]

How far did you push the pipe into the silcine tube? Just to below the jubilee clip?

About 2mm further

[Will_D]

How far did you push the pipe into the silcine tube? Just to below the jubilee clip?

See reply 112 above!

[Acott]

First brew on the Grainfather today, the Apollo IPA from HBC.

Ended up with a 7 hour brew day due to a couple of mishaps, mainly a blown extension lead and the wort chiller.

Really not happy with the wort chiller, I'm not sure how many grams of hops were added but the pump just couldn't cope. It took well over an hour and a half to cool everything down. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Other than that everything else was great, the urn was incredible too, worth every penny it took 25 mins or so to get to temp and maintained it for the whole half hour I sparged.

I had a pre boil efficiency of 98%, astounded. expected OG was 1.061 ended up with 1.064.

Tried to get a photo of the wort going in to the fermenter as it was crystal clear, this is the best I could do



had a taste and I think this is going to be very nice!

[helmet]

Looking forward to trying this at the next meeting! An hour and a half cool though, jaysus!

[armedcor]

I feel a system like this you have to bag the hops. There's no way it should take that long to chill. Vermelho and i cooled a 21L batch to pitch temp with an immersion chiller in like 10 mins the last brew day. A counterflow should be as capable.

[fishjam45 (Colin)]

I'll be using hop bags during the boil tomorrow, hopefully that'll make a difference.
I'm normally a leaf man but tomorrow's recipe is using pellets (free mash kit)

What weight are the get'erbrewed mash kits, if anyone knows offhand?

[fishjam45 (Colin)]

First brew on the Grainfather today, the Apollo IPA from HBC

What volumes of water went into your GF to mash?
What volume did you sparge with?

[Acott]

It was definitely the hops blocking the pump and not the actual chiller, now that it's been mentioned, hop bags are a must from now on!!

First brew on the Grainfather today, the Apollo IPA from HBC

What volumes of water went into your GF to mash?
What volume did you sparge with?

I used the GF calculator on the site to work it out, mash volume was 19.16L and the sparge was 13.48L, this was for 5.8KG of grain.

I think the wort might of been a little cooler than I wanted, I stupidly pitched so now I'm praying that theres some sort of activity tomorrow 

[arse..biscuits]

I did my first gf brew yesterday. I used hop bags and the chiller worked like a dream.

One word of caution, when assembling, I over-tightened the jubalee clip at the outlet of the pump and managed to tear through the rubber connection. I noticed a leak while doing a first clean, I managed to fix it using a small cable tie. Anyway, don't over tighten it.

[Andrew]

Is there any reason for not transferring the filtered wort to the FV and using the wort chiller there? Added bonus of some heat loss during the transfer too...

[Will_D]

Lets start a list of recommended spare parts to have available at short notice (After all NZ is a loooong way away)

I think the pump connections may be the weakest part of the design.

Please add to this list:

1. The silicon rubber pump connectors and cable ties

[beanstalk]

Starting my first brew today! Made a but of a mess cleaning it. Don't have the right tap fitting unfortunately...

[beanstalk]

Boiling away here but thermostat never reached boil. Its just sitting at 99. Is there a way to calibrate it?

[armedcor]

It doesn't go to 100 apparently