Speidel Braumeister (brewmaster)

Alchemy said:

My first pull from my first beer brewed on the braumeister, "Pedal Time" a alpine spring clone

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Nice!

Hello everybody,
I'm new to this board and I just wanted to share a few of my experiences with you all. I've had my 20l BM for a about 5 months now with about 25 or so batches under my belt, and I'm very pleased with my purchase. I've forgotten just about everything there is to forget on this thing, I forgot the rubber gasket once which caused the pump to struggle, beer was aborted, I forgot the bottom filter once, the pump became clogged, beer was aborted, and I didn't press the quit button after mash was through once, the pump was still running so a lot of grain ended up in the wort, this was salvageable and the beer turned out great... (I should probably just stick to beer on brew day). I've had one fountain experience which I blame on Northern Brewer, I let them crush my grain and it was absolutely pulverized. As for reliability, I had to replace the stock valve with some brass fittings from Lowe's because the Teflon grommet twisted around to where it was almost completely sealed off, I took it apart and reseated it once but it failed the next brew. I'm currently having an issue with my temperature probe, it's reading anywhere from accurate to about 20 degrees C low. This ruined a batch of beer due to my mash temp being way to high before I noticed it. I emailed Speidel about 2 weeks ago with no response yet. I called morebeer about 1.5 weeks ago and they said they would try to contact speidel, no word back from them yet. So my last batch I did everything manually, which really makes me appreciate how great this setup is when it's working properly. I searched the boards and haven't found anyone that's having the same issue, the morebeer rep has advised me not to try and troubleshoot it myself or it might void the warranty. So anyway, I have plenty of beer to drink for now and I can't wait for summer so I take this puppy outside and get my wife off of my case. Cheers!

Welcome VI. If I were you I would call my place of purchase everyday until you get an answer. These units are still fairly new and with the gap of the ocean and language barrier for some if not most it could be forgotten. You invested a good chunk of coin in this unit and it should run like so.

Wow! 25 batches in 5 months is impressive!

In my current job I do a lot of sitting on my arse, but I have lot's of time off as well. So one of the benefits of brewing more is I burn calories, since I'm always doing something like kegging, bottling, cleaning, testing, I can drink beer but my gut stays neutral. I will use just about anything for a fermentor if I can get it sanitized, my old polarware pots work well, so no problem with multiple batches going at once.

I'll prob give morebeer a call tomorrow, I am starting to get a little peeved.

Sorry, I didn't take pics on the first batch, will do it this weekend when we brew again. Does anyone have advice on the crushing the grain? I used my Corona Mill and adjusted it to be fairly coarse as suggested but the efficiency went down to around 65% on 11kg of grain - I double mashed so one mash with 5.5 kg grain then a second mash of 5,5 kg of grain. I was expecting a bit better efficiency given the second mash and from what I've been reading on the forum. In the end I needed to add a fair amount of DME to get the target OG to where it needed to be.

Any advice here is appreciated.

Cheers

Sounds to me like you need to set the crush a bit tighter on your Corona. I had pretty bad efficiency when I started using it, and had to crank it down to the point where I was scared, then I started hitting all my numbers. Of course, I don't use a Braumeister, so YMMV.

Yeah, in my ice chest mashing system I was able to hit some pretty decent numbers with a fairly fine grind - no problem there, never a stuck mash or sparge. But on the Braumeister I've read that it doesn't handle the finer grinds very well, I'm sure there is a balance in there somewhere. We're brewing again this Saturday so I'll take some pics of the grind and see what everyone thinks.

Cheers

Redstag/Village Idiot

I do live in Munich, originally from California. I actually travel out to Stuttgart on a regular basis for work, and if you look that up on the map you'll see its fairly close to where Speidel produces their lovely Braumeisters - though I have yet to stop by and I'm not really sure if you even can.

If you send me the details about what you've done, who you've contacted, etc I can try to give them a call for you and help move the process along a bit or try to find out why it's taking so long. Just send me a PM and I'll give it a shot, its easy enough to give them a call and ask.

Cheers

How do you delete a message?

becks41 said:

Does anyone have advice on the crushing the grain? I used my Corona Mill and adjusted it to be fairly coarse as suggested but the efficiency went down to around 65% on 11kg of grain.

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I use a Corona Mill from my batch sparge days. I brew mostly beers that are 60-70% malted wheat or have upto 50% raw grains. Tightening down the mill and then some (lots of flour) worked well for batch sparging. For the Braumeister system less flour works better. Grinding less coarsely without too much flour is possible with the Corona mill, it just can't be dialed in like with other mills.
My efficiency is 70-72%, for beers that have high proportions of wheat, and or raw grains with OG's of 1.050-60.

A few of things:
Conditioning (lightly moistening) the grains prior to crushing helps keeps husks and such intact while being more gentle on the grain.

Crush physically different grains separately, and or double crush.
When I double crush the first crush is manually cranked and the second crush is motorized.

While crushing check the results often and tweak the mill gap.

Grind less coarsely with little flour.
-

I have on occasion crushed too fine and got lots of flour, the Braumeister pulled through with some pauses and stirs. Circulation was definetly reduced so naturally the efficiency suffered. I now give alot more attention to crush quality.

I'm thinking you mean grind MORE coarsely to get less flour. Yeah?

I know the description is lacking without measurements and numbers.

Its a graduation of coarse, so rather than very coarse, perhaps medium to low coarseness, so that there are lots of larger crushed particles with some finer stuff and a bit of flour. It is better to start with too coarse a crush and tweak it down each brew until one finds the happy medium between particle size-flour and flow-efficiency.

i'm on a corona as well, it's functional but doesn't fill me with confidence that i can reproduce my results. if i have it all the way open (coarsest crush) i get this, which is not the coarsest possible crush.

dinnerstick said:

what's the consensus among bm users with immersion chillers, do you run the pump once you get down to that point where cooling slows right down? i have been selectively re-reading the thread but couldn't find that many opinions on the subject. how happy is the pump with lots of hop pellet debris and break material? for whole hops i would use a hop sock. thanks

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I use a hop spider and a plate chiller with a pump. I re-circulate during the last 15 mins of the boil and then just let it re-circulate until I see the temp drop. At that point, I put the output into a fermenter and let the pump and plate chiller do it's work. Most days, except in summer, I'm filling the fermenter 10 mins after the boil has finished. I used to have an immersion chiller and it took almost 45 mins.

i've now done three brews on mine (amber ale last night) and i'm getting some familiarity with my system so i felt like reporting. first 2 brews are on tap (1.048 witbier and 1.069 smoked porter) and tasting excellent. with my cool tap water i am down to mid-70's in minutes, and from then with the pump running i'm down to ale temps of 19-20 in about 30 mins. don't particularly like using hop bags but that's what i'm doing with my whole hops so i can run the pump to cool. so far no problems with pellets, irish moss, or the odd escaped grain or hop flower in the pump. but there's always a bit of gunk left in there after the brew run.
yesterday's brew: 1.067 OG using 6.9 kg malt (estimated 71% efficiency) ground as coarsely as i could ensuring that all grains were crushed (did each malt separately, adjusting the blunt controls of the corona accordingly) and starting with 26 L water. the tube was really packed full but i had no signs of channeling, squirting or anything weird. mashout and sparged with 5 L, and the pre-boil was just about 26 L, 60 min boil left me with about 23 L at the finish, which means exactly right for a standard 6 gallon recipe, and a nice full corny keg! i'm pretty pleased, the volume of grain, volume of wort, and potential gravity are really underestimated in the manufacturer's product details, i thought i would have to adjust down.

We crushed the grain with the Corona Mill, I know I should have taken some pictures, but I was a bit hungover Saturday morning while we were doing this, so pictures wasn't one of my top priorities.

We starting by trying to attach my drill to the corona mill, however this just created a huge mess and the grain wasn't getting crushed very efficiently. Either the grains weren't getting crushed or the mill wouldn't turn. So we ended up crushing 13kg of grain by hand (not fun on a saturday morning with a slight hangover). Either way, I have zero confidence that I'll be able to accurately recreate my recipes if I continue to use this mill. I did moisten the grain a bit this time and it seemed to help a bit, though it made cranking the mill by hand a little more difficult.

I think in the end, there will be an adjustable roller mill in my future for my next brew which will be a Pale Ale with an SG of 1.055. I want to be able to hook my drill up to it for future brews as constantly cranking it by hand is time consuming and tiring. I'll keep you updated with what happens, and next time I'll try to take some pics!

becks41 said:

We crushed the grain with the Corona Mill, I know I should have taken some pictures, but I was a bit hungover Saturday morning while we were doing this, so pictures wasn't one of my top priorities.

We starting by trying to attach my drill to the corona mill, however this just created a huge mess and the grain wasn't getting crushed very efficiently. Either the grains weren't getting crushed or the mill wouldn't turn. So we ended up crushing 13kg of grain by hand (not fun on a saturday morning with a slight hangover). Either way, I have zero confidence that I'll be able to accurately recreate my recipes if I continue to use this mill. I did moisten the grain a bit this time and it seemed to help a bit, though it made cranking the mill by hand a little more difficult.

I think in the end, there will be an adjustable roller mill in my future for my next brew which will be a Pale Ale with an SG of 1.055. I want to be able to hook my drill up to it for future brews as constantly cranking it by hand is time consuming and tiring. I'll keep you updated with what happens, and next time I'll try to take some pics!

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I've never use te Corona mill (a lot of my friends do) Im currently using the Barley Crusher and Im very happy with it. Just get also a feeler gauge and you are all set. Switch to any two roller mill and you ll see a great difference plus with the gauges you'll have all the control you want.

Here is my Corona Mill setup. I use the electric drill pictured, going as fast as I want, no mess whatsoever, and hit all my numbers when I mash. Total investment about $25:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-ugly-junk-corona-mill-station-90849/index99.html#post3974135

The thread these pictures are in is 100 pages long, and lots of people have posted pix of their rigs; lots of good ideas on how best to employ the Corona Mill. Yeah, it's some work mounting it, but most people do some work mounting their roller mills, too, so it's a wash.

Thanks for the tips guys! Just ordered the Barley Crusher - was eyeing it earlier and decided to go for it. I like the idea of being able to adjust it - Obliviousbrew - what gap do you use and what efficiency do you get? I'd be very curious to know.

Rico567 - that looks great! If it wasn't for my past problems with my corona mill I might try something like that. I say if the corona mill works for you then go for it!

becks41 said:

Thanks for the tips guys! Just ordered the Barley Crusher - was eyeing it earlier and decided to go for it. I like the idea of being able to adjust it - Obliviousbrew - what gap do you use and what efficiency do you get? I'd be very curious to know.

Rico567 - that looks great! If it wasn't for my past problems with my corona mill I might try something like that. I say if the corona mill works for you then go for it!

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Well I personally think that gap its just a number. You should see what works for you. But if you want numbers on my last porter I used a 0.050 gap and got 81% . And before that I brew an APA a little coarser and got 83%. Im still tweaking the proccess but yet I haven't repeat mash schedules,ingredients or style. So with so many variables its almost impossible to compare. Im with the idea of just adjusting the rollers evenly and taking a look of how the grains look. IMHO If they look good its ok. When using a drill try not to do it at the maximum speed if you do it to fast the crush is not that great.

Does anyone have a method for using the 20L with a no-sparge setup?
I don't have access to additional burners and would prefer to keep it as simple as possible.
Does anyone here just brew the recipe and then add a certain amount of DME to make up for the loss in efficiency? If so, any advice?

Thanks

How many litres/gallons of liquid when the level is up to 8cm left in the rod? How many litres/gallons in the 20L BM per cm/inch on the rod from the top down?

Thanks

1 liter per cm, i just checked. the rod is 41 cm. if the level is 8cm below the top then it should be 33 liters, in theory. the only problem is that if you check the three rod markings which should be 15, 20, 25 L they are actually 1.5 cm higher than expected, ie the 25 L mark is 26.5 cm from the bottom. this could be due to the displacement of the element, temp probe etc.? i haven't ever empirically checked the accuracy of the rod markings (i now realize i should but i have to go to work) but if they are accurate then 8cm from the rod top is actually 31.5 L

brewbush said:

Does anyone have a method for using the 20L with a no-sparge setup?
I don't have access to additional burners and would prefer to keep it as simple as possible.

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the manufacturer's instructions are for no-sparge! but then they have you add back tap water to the boil to make up the volume, so you may as well add sparge water if you can. all you need is an electric tea water heater kettle thingy, if you get 500 ml or 1 L at a time to a reasonable sparge temp you can get a few liters sparge easily, by heating halfway or mixing boiling and cold water in a pitcher, just keep pouring over the grain tube each time you heat a batch.
but i think it depends on what gravity and volume you are going for; the machine is actually pretty flexible as long as you have enough water to mash. for example, start with the recommended 23 L, don't sparge, and don't add the water to up the volume, and you'll get a thick first runnings type wort, but less than 20L. basically there are lots of possibilities by adjusting starting volume, grain load, sparge, water additions, dme, etc. says the guy who has done a grand total of 3 batches on his...

dinnerstick said:

1 liter per cm, i just checked. the rod is 41 cm. if the level is 8cm below the top then it should be 33 liters, in theory. the only problem is that if you check the three rod markings which should be 15, 20, 25 L they are actually 1.5 cm higher than expected, ie the 25 L mark is 26.5 cm from the bottom. this could be due to the displacement of the element, temp probe etc.? i haven't ever empirically checked the accuracy of the rod markings (i now realize i should but i have to go to work) but if they are accurate then 8cm from the rod top is actually 31.5 L

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Thanks a lot! I have also noticed that markings are not accurate, according to my empirical tests, top 25L mark is actually 26L. I'll measure today all the levels after I've cleaned the BM and report then.

DeGarre said:

.. I'll measure today all the levels after I've cleaned the BM and report then.

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Here goes, results are not exactly linear.

actual litres, cm depth, cm from rod top down
5 , 5.5 , 35.5
10 , 10.5 , 30.5
15 , 15.5 , 25.5 - notch
20 , 21 , 20 - notch
25 , 26.5 , 14.5 - notch
30, 30.5 , 9.5
34.5 , 36 (start thread) , 5
39.5 , 41 (top rod) , 0

Close enough for cooking

Well, I can confirm that Northern Brewer mills their grain too fine for the BM.. I am having some jetting issues.. I've solved it for now by levering my SS stir spoon between the hold down bar and the filter plate...

The filter plate was "walking" up the center pole and allowing the grain to move around.

So far, so good.. I'll report back if I have any more issues.

I have had zero issues with AHS kits though.

Nope!

Bent my spoon, grains shot past one side of the filter... So, I grabbed my "extension tube" from my 5ga malt pipe, slide it down the center post and pancaked the grain between the two filters... made it through 2 more phases with no issues.. hopefully this will get me through to the boil. :rockin:

Everything turned out fine with that brew, it's happily bubbling away in my kitchen.

Question for all of you who have ordered from Morebeer4u... did you randomly get a paypal invoice for "import fees" 5-6 months after taking delivery? This seems very strange to me..

Tknojnky said:

Everything turned out fine with that brew, it's happily bubbling away in my kitchen.

Question for all of you who have ordered from Morebeer4u... did you randomly get a paypal invoice for "import fees" 5-6 months after taking delivery? This seems very strange to me..

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Yes. He mentioned that to me at purchase time.

How are you guys getting 80% efficiency on this machine? Today was my second brew day with the Braumeister 50L, and though everything went smoothly, I'm consistently getting like 50% efficiency. My first brew day the measured efficiency was 48% (I used 22.5lbs/10.2 kilos of grain). I thought the crush must have been too coarse so I made it slightly finer. Today I finished with 51.7% efficiency (I used 24.5lbs/11.11 kilos of grain).

My theory is it's a combination of the crush and the PH of the mash. I used about 6 teaspoons of phosphoric acid to bring my brewing water down to like 6.6 ph and 30 minutes after the grain had been added, the PH meter was reading 5.8 adjusted for temperature. I did also use about 1/3 RO water this time to see if this would impact my numbers. Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Regards,

Alex

If you made 50l of average wort (you really didn't give much info) with 10 kilos of grain, that's sounds about like normal efficiency to me. Recipe? Gravity readings? Why the ph adjustment?

As I mentioned, I've brewed 2 batches with the braumeister 50L. I don't tip the unit to get the last of the beer out... I leave about 3 gallons or so behind. When I adjust for this large trub/chiller loss, which means I have to start with a boil volume of approximately 15 gallons (highest notch on the rod).

On both of my brew days, I did a 60 minute boil, where I boil off about 1.5 gallons (somewhere close to the 2nd notch from the top). This allows me to fill exactly 2 better bottle carboys to the 5 gallon mark.

My first batch had a O.G. of 1.041 and I used 22.5lbs/10.2kg of malt. My second batch today had an O.G. of 1.046 and I used 24.5lbs/11kg of malt. I made a diptube—I just haven't used it yet... are you guys boiling down (and starting with a smaller volume) much further than I am?

Umhhh how are you calculating your efficiency whit that OG and grain it sounds like you are actually getting 60 % efficiency... 3 gallons seem a lot to leave behind too

This thread is entirely too long to read the whole way through. Has anyone used the 50L version to brew 5 gallon batches? is it possible? I dont brew 10 gallon batches yet, but might want to some day. I'd hate to spend $2000 now and never be able to brew bigger batches.

SuburbanBrewer said:

This thread is entirely too long to read the whole way through. Has anyone used the 50L version to brew 5 gallon batches? is it possible? I dont brew 10 gallon batches yet, but might want to some day. I'd hate to spend $2000 now and never be able to brew bigger batches.

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Yes. On any site that sells the 50l version, you can purchase a 20l malt pipe separately to do just that.

If anyone has been waiting for a great time to buy a Braumeister, I think this is it. Morebeer4u.com has cut out the customs fees and they're doing free shipping on the 20l and 50l and $75 off. Better get it while it's hot. Thorsten is the only guy I would buy one from!

Yambor44 said:

Yes. On any site that sells the 50l version, you can purchase a 20l malt pipe separately to do just that.

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Now why couldn't I just put the grain for a 5 gallon batch into the tube of the 50L? Wouldn't that allow you to do full boils? Like a starting volume of 7 gallons boiled down to 5-6 gallons.

hi all, long time reader, first time poster.
just wanted to say i have my fantabulous braumeister, have completed one brew, a Fat Yak clone, efficiency 84% straight off the bat, a wonderfully relaxed day of brewing. my only complaint is without the mayhem and mistakes typical of a brew day with my brewing buddy, we had so much time on hands that it was all pretty messy by the end after cleaning out most of a keg of hefe we had from a previos brew...plus my nosey neighbours suspect i am running some type of meth lab in my backyard!

i have a 50l, we did a smaller brew but to ensure sufficient water was in to keep the maltpipe and pumps full we did a 34l brew, which seemed to be about the minimum we could get away with. did a 90 minute boil and worked out to a final volume of 29.5 litres