Anvil Foundry (6.5) thoughts and questions

[tacobellscanon]

For those considering it, here are some thoughts on the Foundry, coming from a traditional all-grain guy. (I missed the BIAB craze.)

- I didn't buy the recirculation pump, since traditionally I've just recirculated a few quarts by hand. With a basket, however, I may have to re-think this.
- Aside from that, mashing and sparging was trivial. Temperature changes were quick, even on 120VAC at 80%. (I used ~4 gallons for 6# grain.)
- I sparged with 1 gal.
- Cooling was fairly easy, although took a while: 30 minutes to 80.
- I liked the beeps at 200 degrees. One could leave the lid on until this time, theoretically.
- Clean up was easier than expected. I put it on a chair by the sink, sprayed with water, scrubbed, then tossed out the water. You 10.5 gallon guys must be doing it outside using the spigot?

My questions:

- What kind of efficiency should I expect from a basket and 1 gallon sparge? That is, I figure I should bump my grain bill to account for it, and when entering numbers in a spreadsheet.
- On that subject, what do Foundry owners like as far as a brewing calculator? Brewer's Friend looks comprehensive, but it won't estimate how much water the grains will absorb.
- The cooler arms look too short. If I hang the cooler off the side, there are ~4 loops above 3 gallons. I haven't checked, but I believe the cooler could and should go much deeper. Have people re-bent the ends?

cheers!

 

[Oginme]

I have a first generation Anvil Foundry 6.5G and have been brewing on it for well over a year now making 35 brew days. My first 10 to 12 brews were all scoping out the system and I ended up with something close to where I was when I was doing a full volume BIAB on the stovetop. I did buy the pump for recirculation and from the couple of brews I did without recirculation the pump helps with consistency in extraction efficiency and grain bed temperature uniformity. On the plus side, it greatly helps with transferring the wort and clean-up.

My go to process is a full volume BIAB. I line the bag with my grain bag (I use both a Wilser bag and a Brewbag and both work very well) and do a reasonably fine crush. I get a mash efficiency of around 81% when brewing at 120v and 84% at 240v, most of the difference comes in the increased volume at 240v to account for the additional boil off. When I started brewing on the system, I switched back and forth with a sparge and full volume. My mash efficiency was maybe a point higher when I sparged, but more variable. Statistically, the averages were too close to really claim much of a difference. My conversion efficiency has always been in the 97% to 100% range, accounting for some error in moisture content in the grains.

My software of choice right now is BeerSmith. I have tried BrewFather for a while and it is good as well. This choice is made on my situation and preference. I much prefer to have a printed brewsheet to make notes and follow during the brew day and like the layout of the BeerSmith brew day sheet (or maybe I am just used to it). When I traveled (which I have not done in the past two years) I would take the opportunity to do a lot of work on my recipes, which I much preferred to do off-line due to some of the countries I traveled to had questionable connectivity and security. On my farm, the location I often brew at times has poor connectivity, which is also a good motivator for a computer based program versus a cloud based system. Again, these are all personal choices and I think BrewFather has a very nice layout and full functionality. It has been too many years since I tested Brewer's Friend, so I cannot comment on the present form of that software. Long story short: choose the system which works best for your style and preferences.

The cooler is not meant to go all the way down into the system. According to john Blichmann, it was designed not to rest on or interfere with the temperature sensor on the bottom of the unit. In their design, the chilling of the top part of the wort caused the cooler wort at the top to shift towards the bottom of the unit which induced a recirculation helping to chill the wort effectively. I switch back and forth with my old SS chiller which does reach all the way down to the bottom and it chills maybe 5 minutes faster with the longer chiller. Not a huge difference, but it is 5 minutes less of water usage, so your situation on water availability may dictate which way you want to go.

As with most things brewing, do what works best and most convenient for you.