I just purchased a Klarstein Maischfest 35L brewer
Hi, I'm relatively new to Homebrewing too and have the Klarstein Maischfest. I've made six batches of all-grain beer, five really good ones and one bad, which was my fault for being careless with cleaning and pitching out of date yeast.
The Klarstein is great, a bit of a pain when raising the grain basket and sitting it on the ring, but having help with that bit from a mate ,or even spouse, helps a lot.
I recommend...watch "The Ginger Brewers" on YouTube, and you'll see how easy it is to get started. If you want any advice or tricks then drop me a message.
My advice for using the Klarstein is:
Start with a simple all-grain recipe, a 'SMASH' is ideal, as the guys have said. I actually did a wheat beer with Wheat, Pilsen and Munich and Hakkertauer hops,, which easy and great ! Also, use a dry yeast as the easiest pitching experience.
You'll see from the Ginger Brewers, I used a jug to cycle some wort every fifteen minutes through the hour long mash. I used the (clean) jug and a Colander to sparge (I mashed with 4 gallons, sparged with 2 gallons of fresh water, heated up to about 120F with boiled water from an ordinary kettle). I boiled for an hour with the hops in from the start (use a little hop bag for a bit less mess), I then add 1/2 teaspoon of Irish Moss at 15 mins to go until the end of the boil.
I use two small lengths of silicon hose on the ends of the cooling coil, held on with hose clamps onto garden hose fitted with adapters with push on barbs (you can get all of that from Lowes). Coolingnusually takes me about 30 mins, my advice, stir all the time as it really speeds up the cooling.
Pour into a plastic fermenting bucket (definitely get one with a spigot) with plenty of splashing to help oxygenate the cooled wort. Put the lid on, your (StarSan'd) thumb over the airlock hole and shake vigorously for a minute or two. Take inside and when the wort has cooled further to about 70-75F sprinkle in your dry yeast, put the lid on and your (empty) airlock in. Then fill your airlock with some of your StarSan solution. Drink a beer and clean up !
One piece of specific advice on the Klarstein, when you set your temperature for strike-water (your mash temperature) set it 8F higher (typically mash at 152F so set it to 160F) as the grain will lower the temperature when you put it in. Then, set it to 152F for your mash. The Klarstein will let the temperature drop by about 6F and then start heating again, don't worry about that, let it do its thing, the software is averaging the temp at the bottom (where the temp sensor is) and the temp at the top. Also when you cycle a jug of wort every 15mins, this keeps the core temperature at 152ish. I usually set my temp to 216 for the boil after I mash-out and sparge, then once I've removed the grain basket, I stir regularly until I reach the boil. I heat up with the lid on, then take it off when the temp reaches about 200F, watching out for the sudden boil and "hot break" which is when the wort suddenly starts to boil and froth up. Then I leave the lid half on, stirring regularly through my housing boil. You need to have the top basically open for steam to escape as there are undesirable elements being boiled off in the boil phase ! Good luck, enjoy, give me a shout if I can help, Phil.