ANVIL FOUNDRY ALL-GRAIN BREWING SYSTEM

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Thanks, I'd found that too... from what I can tell they might be the only place to have any left in-stock.

I placed the order w/ them, and cancelled my order @ MoreBeer. I elected for free shipping, so not sure when it will actually get here. Not that I'm going to have time to brew in the next couple of weeks anyway, sigh...

As an aside, I was and am still a bit annoyed with MoreBeer as their website never said it was out of stock. And as of today it will still let you add it to your cart and checkout... only after you place the order do they alert you via email that the item is backordered until the end of October. :(

True, I just went to Morebeer.com and ran thru the ordering up to the point where you had to set up an account with your e-mail. Nothing about in stock or out of stock. That should be right under the price in the listing...
 
For those who have used this or similar systems maybe you can help answer a question about the purpose of the perforated disc that covers the mash. I have used a 3 vessel system mashing in a cooler and have used a pump to vorlauf prior to mashout and sparging. Its been a few years since I have brewed but have never heard of a mash procedure like this. What does the disc do for the mash? Help keep the grain bed evenly compacted? Prevent channeling from flow of pumping the wort over the grain bed?

I have a chugger pump already so was going to get the system without the recirculation kit. On the fence weather or not to buy the perforated disc from Anvil, make a DYI version or not use one at all.

Anyone know the diameter of the disc?

Thanks in advance!
 
For those who have used this or similar systems maybe you can help answer a question about the purpose of the perforated disc that covers the mash. I have used a 3 vessel system mashing in a cooler and have used a pump to vorlauf prior to mashout and sparging. Its been a few years since I have brewed but have never heard of a mash procedure like this. What does the disc do for the mash? Help keep the grain bed evenly compacted? Prevent channeling from flow of pumping the wort over the grain bed?

I have a chugger pump already so was going to get the system without the recirculation kit. On the fence weather or not to buy the perforated disc from Anvil, make a DYI version or not use one at all.

Anyone know the diameter of the disc?

Thanks in advance!
I have a Grainfather. I have been following this thread because this seems like a good alternative.

I think the perforated plate is there to prevent channeling during recirculation. The holes distribute your wort across the grain bed. They also distribute your sparge water across the grain bed. You can definitely run the Grainfather without that plate but I have not done so for more than a few minutes. So, I am not sure what would happen if you didn’t use it at all.
 
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My Foundry 10.5 with no recirculation arrived this morning, two days after ordering from Great Fermentations.

Took the unit out and looked it over today. Also swapped the hose Barb on the output valve for a quick disconnect so I can just use my current hoses and riptide pump. I will do a leak test, passivation and cleaning on it tomorrow. Looking forward to using the system very soon. Also looking forward to trying a kettle sour in the system.
 
I had to contact great fermentations about the 6.5 gallon system I had ordered from them. Mine was leaking and upon further investigation I found what I believe is the problem. It looks like the hole through the inner wall is positioned too far down. The outer wall keeps the flange of the spigot from making a good seal. I sent the picture to great fermentations and they agreed with me and was going to contact anvil this week. Is that how anybody else’s look?
 

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I had to contact great fermentations about the 6.5 gallon system I had ordered from them. Mine was leaking and upon further investigation I found what I believe is the problem. It looks like the hole through the inner wall is positioned too far down. The outer wall keeps the flange of the spigot from making a good seal. I sent the picture to great fermentations and they agreed with me and was going to contact anvil this week. Is that how anybody else’s look?

I don't know what that is but it doesn't look right.
 
If a 2800w/240v element is plugged straight into a 120v socket, it will run everything at 1/4th power (700 watts). With the way the Foundry only goes from 1600w to 2800w, that tells me that there must be multiple elements in there and some of them stay at 120v even after switching to 240v. It shouldn't blow a breaker though.
.
PS Not sure, but the math works out if there is a 1200w element that runs at 120v all the time and a 1600w element that just runs at 1/4th power (400w) when plugged into 120v.
Thanks -- I was curious how they "idiot-proofed" something that could potentially be a really bad time if the aforementioned idiot just flipped a switch on the unit (even if that switch is protected by a screwed on cover). It's good to know that the worst case scenario seems to be a really slow and underwhelming brew day rather than instant destruction.
For those who have used this or similar systems maybe you can help answer a question about the purpose of the perforated disc that covers the mash. I have used a 3 vessel system mashing in a cooler and have used a pump to vorlauf prior to mashout and sparging. Its been a few years since I have brewed but have never heard of a mash procedure like this. What does the disc do for the mash? Help keep the grain bed evenly compacted? Prevent channeling from flow of pumping the wort over the grain bed?
I have a chugger pump already so was going to get the system without the recirculation kit. On the fence weather or not to buy the perforated disc from Anvil, make a DYI version or not use one at all.
Anyone know the diameter of the disc?
Thanks in advance!
I was similarly curious and channeling was the same response. The robobrew has a similar screen that the videos imply is to hold the grain down while sparging rather than letting them floating up in the wort. My $0.02 is it probably serves a few functions, none of them seem to be absolutely crucial to brew day. Especially with the recirc kit on backorder, I'd be tempted to buy it without right now and add on a more sizeable pump (and maybe some sort of screen/disc).
It's for use with the recirculation pump, to break up the stream of wort coming back in the top and prevent channeling. You can also pour your sparge water through it for the same purpose.
 
I had to contact great fermentations about the 6.5 gallon system I had ordered from them. Mine was leaking and upon further investigation I found what I believe is the problem. It looks like the hole through the inner wall is positioned too far down. The outer wall keeps the flange of the spigot from making a good seal. I sent the picture to great fermentations and they agreed with me and was going to contact anvil this week. Is that how anybody else’s look?

This is very disappointing, I would really like to get the 6.5 gallon system with the pump but I'm a bit concerned with some of the quality issues.

I really like anvil products however they seem to be experiencing QC issues with their first run units. I know they will make good on your purchase but its still frustrating to have to return a new product.
 
This is very disappointing, I would really like to get the 6.5 gallon system with the pump but I'm a bit concerned with some of the quality issues.

I really like anvil products however they seem to be experiencing QC issues with their first run units. I know they will make good on your purchase but its still frustrating to have to return a new product.

I picked up my 6.5G system from my LHBS this past weekend. Unboxed it on Sunday, put it together and did some initial testing of volume markings, pump recirculation, and dead space after draining and had no problems so far. It will be a couple of weeks before I get a chance to brew a batch on it. So far no issues with leaking, turning on, or initial heating. I did not put it through the full cycle.

After the initial issues, I ordered mine so that it came in from Anvil/Blichmann after some of the electrical problems had been addressed. John Blichmann stated that these are far exceeding their expectations on sales and are currently back ordering systems and quoting delivery dates in October. Bryan Johnson of Great Fermentations stated that they sold 21 units over the past weekend which wiped out their inventory. When you see the issues like above (and this misalignment has been noted in a couple of cases before, you need to put it in context with how many have been sold.
 
I picked up my 6.5G system from my LHBS this past weekend. Unboxed it on Sunday, put it together and did some initial testing of volume markings, pump recirculation, and dead space after draining and had no problems so far. It will be a couple of weeks before I get a chance to brew a batch on it. So far no issues with leaking, turning on, or initial heating. I did not put it through the full cycle.

Thanks for the update and I'm glad your Foundry is without issues.

I do agree the reported issues do not seem excessive compared to overall sales but I have always been adverse to buying first production runs of new products.

I will be purchasing the Foundry at some point and it seems it will be later than sooner because of the back order situation. It's great that sales have exceeded expectations, shows they have a winner of a product.

Looking forward to your report of you first brew with the Foundry.

Cheers!!!
 
Has anyone done a small batch (2.5-3 gal) on the larger unit?
Anvil responded that due to loss of efficiency they do not recommend batches less than 2.5 gallons.
Not a deal breaker as I only brew smaller batches once or twice a year.
Out of curiosity I tried a partial boil (8 pounds of grain in 4.5 gallons strike, topped off with about 2 gallons of water after chilling). I don't have the best notes (see above- I was brewing with two kids) but it looks like it saved me about half an hour of strike water heating time, 10-15 minutes of ramping to boil, and I would guess about 15 minutes of chilling time. Since I aim to set everything up the night before and use the delay timer, that means a smaller batch is only 25-30 minutes faster on brew day. (But it would save an hour if you wanted to set up and start the same day)

The volume markings on the 10.5 gallon Foundry only go down to 5.5 gallons, so I couldn't use them to measure my 4.5 gallons of strike water. Also, the perforations on the malt tube extend to approximately 5.5" from the bottom of the Foundry, which is an approximate total mash volume of 2.5 gallons. With all of that said I would definitely feel comfortable (especially with recirculation) having a total mash volume of ~3 gallons. Once you remove the grains and boil off ~0.5 gallons in an hour I would expect a finished volume of 2 gallons or less. I could see how efficiency might suffer on this scale though, so 2.5 gallon minimum batches make sense.

Pumps aren't needed, but can help provide more consistent temperatures while mashing or quicker cooling after the boil. Either of those could be achieved by intermittent stirring for less money (and cleaning of equipment).
I found it worked just fine to stir instead of recirculate, but it did require some tending during the mash to keep temperatures even. If all goes according to plan tomorrow I will brew another batch without recirculation, and I may try to keep a temperature probe submerged near the bottom of the mash to investigate thermometer differences vs stratification.
I brewed two more times without recirculation and used a temperature probe under the malt tube. I found that it took lots of stirring (and some lifting and resubmerging of the malt tube) to try to keep temperatures even during the mash. I suspect that even with all of the perforations, the malt tube is acting as a barrier to temperature equilibration. I can stir very aggressively within the malt tube but I'm still relying on mostly diffusion to exchange with the wort outside of the tube. Recirculation would draw from outside the malt tube and distribute it over the grains, which should keep temperatures more uniform than stirring alone.

I'm also now using the Foundry as a fermenter for the second time and have been remembering to plug it in and turn in on occasionally to monitor fermentation temperatures. It has spiked to about 6 degrees F above ambient temperatures, which I consider manageable. I've considered drilling holes in the lid and using the immersion chiller as fermentation temperature control but I think I'll wait at least until replacement lids are available...
 
Out of curiosity I tried a partial boil (8 pounds of grain in 4.5 gallons strike, topped off with about 2 gallons of water after chilling). I don't have the best notes (see above- I was brewing with two kids) but it looks like it saved me about half an hour of strike water heating time, 10-15 minutes of ramping to boil, and I would guess about 15 minutes of chilling time. Since I aim to set everything up the night before and use the delay timer, that means a smaller batch is only 25-30 minutes faster on brew day. (But it would save an hour if you wanted to set up and start the same day)

The volume markings on the 10.5 gallon Foundry only go down to 5.5 gallons, so I couldn't use them to measure my 4.5 gallons of strike water. Also, the perforations on the malt tube extend to approximately 5.5" from the bottom of the Foundry, which is an approximate total mash volume of 2.5 gallons. With all of that said I would definitely feel comfortable (especially with recirculation) having a total mash volume of ~3 gallons. Once you remove the grains and boil off ~0.5 gallons in an hour I would expect a finished volume of 2 gallons or less. I could see how efficiency might suffer on this scale though, so 2.5 gallon minimum batches make sense.



I brewed two more times without recirculation and used a temperature probe under the malt tube. I found that it took lots of stirring (and some lifting and resubmerging of the malt tube) to try to keep temperatures even during the mash. I suspect that even with all of the perforations, the malt tube is acting as a barrier to temperature equilibration. I can stir very aggressively within the malt tube but I'm still relying on mostly diffusion to exchange with the wort outside of the tube. Recirculation would draw from outside the malt tube and distribute it over the grains, which should keep temperatures more uniform than stirring alone.

I'm also now using the Foundry as a fermenter for the second time and have been remembering to plug it in and turn in on occasionally to monitor fermentation temperatures. It has spiked to about 6 degrees F above ambient temperatures, which I consider manageable. I've considered drilling holes in the lid and using the immersion chiller as fermentation temperature control but I think I'll wait at least until replacement lids are available...

very informative spyder. thanks! What were your efficiencies on the two non recirculation brews? 68%ish? 70% thanks.
 
First brew day completed Tuesday night. Did a dark mild recipe and ran the 10.5G system at 120v. Set it to delay start at 16:00 and when I got home from work at 17:45 it was at strike temp. That was pretty much awesome. From dough in at 18:00 brew day was 4 hr and 5 minutes with clean up. That's about the fastest I can do with my propane setup and prep the night before. Looking forward to seeing what this system can do at 240v at some point but for right now I'm pretty happy. The hardest part was waiting from dough out to boil that took 1 hour and 15 minutes to go from 67C to boil.

Also I ended up with a pretty compact mash that was pretty much stuck. That was a first for me. Needed to stir the mash pretty good to get it flowing again. At the end of the day I still got 75% mash efficiency which is slightly better than I normally get using my cooler tun or BIAB setups. Used my Riptide pump for recirculation and had to restrict the flow down quite a bit. Also used my counterflow chiller at the end of the boil rather than the stainless immersion that came with the system.

I might consider using a heat stick to help speed things up a bit more between mash and boil at least until I can wire 240v to my brew space.

Looking forward to seeing how the beer turns out.

Cheers!
 
First brew day completed Tuesday night. Did a dark mild recipe and ran the 10.5G system at 120v. Set it to delay start at 16:00 and when I got home from work at 17:45 it was at strike temp. That was pretty much awesome. From dough in at 18:00 brew day was 4 hr and 5 minutes with clean up. That's about the fastest I can do with my propane setup and prep the night before. Looking forward to seeing what this system can do at 240v at some point but for right now I'm pretty happy. The hardest part was waiting from dough out to boil that took 1 hour and 15 minutes to go from 67C to boil.

Also I ended up with a pretty compact mash that was pretty much stuck. That was a first for me. Needed to stir the mash pretty good to get it flowing again. At the end of the day I still got 75% mash efficiency which is slightly better than I normally get using my cooler tun or BIAB setups. Used my Riptide pump for recirculation and had to restrict the flow down quite a bit. Also used my counterflow chiller at the end of the boil rather than the stainless immersion that came with the system.

I might consider using a heat stick to help speed things up a bit more between mash and boil at least until I can wire 240v to my brew space.

Looking forward to seeing how the beer turns out.

Cheers!

Just curious - did you restrict flow on your pump AFTER you realized the mash stuck or BEFORE? did you use Rice Hulls? 75% pretty great though. Just got my foundry in the mail today. Pretty psyched to get started once I have remaining parts of brewery together. So every bit of info on processes here helps. Thanks.
 
very informative spyder. thanks! What were your efficiencies on the two non recirculation brews? 68%ish? 70% thanks.
Those two were right about 68-70%. I don't have a very good sense yet for how much of my post boil volume is trub so I don't have very precise post boil wort volumes. My very first batch was closer to 62%, but as I mentioned for that one I suspect I get poor efficiency from my LHBS crush on red wheat malt and it was 23% of that grain bill.

68-70% for no recirculation and no sparging is just fine by me. I'm sure I'll experiment with both in the future but I'll aim for a few more batches without any changes to get a good sense of this baseline.
 
Just curious - did you restrict flow on your pump AFTER you realized the mash stuck or BEFORE? did you use Rice Hulls? 75% pretty great though. Just got my foundry in the mail today. Pretty psyched to get started once I have remaining parts of brewery together. So every bit of info on processes here helps. Thanks.
I used no sparge for my first run and went with a bit more water as I was okay with a bit more in the fermenter than I normally do. I think I ended up with 22l (5.8G) into the fermenter. I restricted the flow on the output of the riptide pump with the linear valve. I had the value pretty much closed so there was only a trickle flowing back to the top of the mash. As the mash was happening I tended the grill and sat and ate dinner with my family. Checking to make sure the pump wasn't running dry and that things looked okay and the mash temp was within 1 degree C. I didn't stir the top 1/3 of the mash per the recommendations. Toward the end of the mash when I was prepping for mash out I decided to give the top 1/3 of the mash a stir only to find it was pretty compacted. I used my normal cooler tun grind on my mill and no rice hulls. The recipe was mostly grain with a very little malted wheat in the recipe so I didn't give it a second thought. When I pulled the basket it was obvious that the wort on top of the grain bed was going to take a very long time to drain so I stirred the two 1/3 and didn't see any real change so I stirred deeper and deeper until I got some flow. Then I did a recirculation through the newly stirred grain bed. Not an ideal process so I'll look to improve and learn as I go here. Maybe I pulled the basket up to quickly compacting the grain more than it was in the mash?

I'm always happy with 65-75% mash efficiency. I get I could do better with a different configuration but a couple dollars more in grain to keep the process the same, on what it is now my couple systems, is fine with me. Much more important to make a good product than the cost of spending a couple dollars more one way or the other.

I would still say this was a much easier / quicker brew day then setting up my three vessel setup with propane. That was nice for a week night brew day post work!
 
Mine arrived on Thursday, and I've been so busy I only got to unbox it this morning. :(

First brew probably won't be until next weekend...

I will say, I'm not sure if this is Anvil / Blichmann or Great Fermentation's work, but it was packaged PERFECTLY for shipping... note to other retailers, THIS is how you're suppose to ship products like this!

[URL]https://imgur.com/a/A7PP2dL[/URL]
 
Has anyone given any thoughts to use the malt pipe as a hop spyder
So funny, I was actually thinking about that today as I was browsing hop spiders on Amazon. My concern would be that the slots on the side of the pipe, and the holes in the bottom, are much larger than a typical hop spider / mesh / bag, and would probably let more hop material through.

But hey, it couldn't be any worse than using nothing at all... can't hurt to try!
 
10.5 Gallon Efficiency?

I'm scaling down one of my go-to recipes for my first brew session on the Foundry, and I know I'm going to get a lower efficiency than I get on my regular brewing rig (~85%).

I was going to just plug in 70% and then see how it goes... but has anyone actually measured their efficiency (mash + sparge) on the 10.5 gallon Foundry? Using someone else's measured efficiency would likely be more accurate than just guessing...

Thanks!
 
10.5 Gallon Efficiency?

I'm scaling down one of my go-to recipes for my first brew session on the Foundry, and I know I'm going to get a lower efficiency than I get on my regular brewing rig (~85%).

I was going to just plug in 70% and then see how it goes... but has anyone actually measured their efficiency (mash + sparge) on the 10.5 gallon Foundry? Using someone else's measured efficiency would likely be more accurate than just guessing...

Thanks!

Users in the Anvil Foundry Brewing System users group on facebook reported a mash/lauter efficiency 72% to 74% most often. There were a few lower and a couple reporting higher. I did my first brew on my 6.5G Anvil today and ended up with a 80.9% mash/lauter efficiency. I was getting 85% to 86% with my BIAB rig, so this is more than an acceptable level for the other advantages.
 
Users in the Anvil Foundry Brewing System users group on facebook reported a mash/lauter efficiency 72% to 74% most often. There were a few lower and a couple reporting higher. I did my first brew on my 6.5G Anvil today and ended up with a 80.9% mash/lauter efficiency. I was getting 85% to 86% with my BIAB rig, so this is more than an acceptable level for the other advantages.
Awesome, thanks for the info! (I'm not on Facebook, nor will ever be, so I wouldn't have seen that. Neat that there's already a group for the Foundry tho!)

I think I'll use 75% as my starting point... obviously I'll figure out my efficiency soon enough, but I just want to make sure I don't miss the target too much on the inaugural brew.

I cannot wait to brew on the Foundry... just been so busy the last couple of weeks since I got it. :(
 
Maybe I missed it in the thread and I’m sorry if I did. Is there heat up times for the 6.5 gallon system out there?
 
Yesterday it took 53 minutes to go from 66 F to 159 F using the system at 120v.

Do you have a heat up time to boil? I put 4 gallons of water to just test the time to get to a boil and after two and a half hours it had only gotten to 203. It was on 120v. Is that on par with an all in one like this?
 
Do you have a heat up time to boil? I put 4 gallons of water to just test the time to get to a boil and after two and a half hours it had only gotten to 203. It was on 120v. Is that on par with an all in one like this?

I emailed Anvil and was told from mash ( 153) to boil is 24 min using 120 volts.
 
I believe he is talking about the 10.5 gallon foundry.

I was referring to the 6.5 gallon unit
 
I emailed Anvil and was told from mash ( 153) to boil is 24 min using 120 volts.

My time from mash out temps of 168 F to boil was 23 minutes using 100% power on the 6.5G Anvil.

Edit: Note that it took 4 minutes to rise from 154 to 168 for the mash out.

Edit 2: Cover was on during the rise to boil but I was also checking it often.
 
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Are you heating with the lid on?

No. The instruction manual said to not do that. I called anvil and the guy on the phone told me to try it with the lid on. After one hr remove the lid. He told me to go from 70 degree water to a boil should take 1 hr.
 
Can you put a bag inside the basket so a more fine grind can be applied to the grist in order to achieve greater yield?
 
Can you put a bag inside the basket so a more fine grind can be applied to the grist in order to achieve greater yield?

That is how I brewed with mine. Brew bag inside and draped over the rim. The handle ends for the malt basket do extend into the inside a bit, so you need to be a little careful when pulling it out. I had 2.24 kgs of grain crushed as I normally would for BIAB and it worked fine. I ended up at 81% mash/lauter efficiency, which is on the high side of what most people were reporting. I probably could have crushed a bit finer.

I lifted the basket and allowed that to drain for 10 minutes while I set the system to boil and collected samples for testing. From there, I pulled the bag and squeezed similar to how I would for my BIAB set up. Overall, the basket made it easier though I did end up with slightly higher water retention in the grain.



20190804_055750.jpg
 
Brew bag inside and draped over the rim. The handle ends for the malt basket do extend into the inside a bit, so you need to be a little careful when pulling it out.
Good advice. The last brew day I did on the system I used a bag in the malt pipe. After the bag/pipe drained and before I pulled the bag out I removed the handle so I didn't have to worry about putting a rip in my bag.
 
No. The instruction manual said to not do that. I called anvil and the guy on the phone told me to try it with the lid on. After one hr remove the lid. He told me to go from 70 degree water to a boil should take 1 hr.
I just read the manual, and I can see how you could be confused, but the lid should be on while you are ramping up temperature, then take it off right before it hits boil.

Warning: Always remove the lid before bringing the wort to boil. Boiling wort can cause severe burns and damage to equipment. Do not set the unit to boil with the lid installed

This is just a warning to prevent boil-overs.
 
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