Man you've had some seriously bad luck.
Yeah, I have. I got reimbursed for the robobrew though and I’m hoping I will with the Grainfather. But man, I want one of these electric units without having things go wrong!
Man you've had some seriously bad luck.
Yeah, I have. I got reimbursed for the robobrew though and I’m hoping I will with the Grainfather. But man, I want one of these electric units without having things go wrong!
I try hard to keep things simple. I set the heat to 154. when it reaches temp I pour my grains into a wilserbrewer bag and stir to remove clumps. then I wrap a sleeping bag over the whole thing and leave it for an hour. It drops a bit and the heater kicks in once or twice over the hour, I'm not worried about it. Then I lift the bag with the collander and set it above the m&b to drain into the kettle while the temp is coming up to boiling. Its designed with little bolts sticking out to rest on the rim. Since I lose a little water with the adsorption of the grains, I add a bit of semi hot water through the bag to rinse the grains. After the 60 minute boil I use an immersion chiller to get the temp down. I use a recirc pump in my old 10 gal pot to push ice water through the chiller. since i'm in florida that will get me down to 70 degrees in about 30 minutes. I pitch the yeast pop the lock on it and set it in a walmart bucket half filled with water and I float 3-4 frozen water bottles to keep the temp down in high 60's. (i gotta get another fridge). Primary for 3 weeks, cold crash and rack to keg. 3 days at 25 psi and it's good to go.
Just opened one of these as a gift last night. It really seems like it will be a pretty solid upgrade to my stovetop biab set up. I think my wife's motive was to get me out of the kitchen during her workdays (she works from home, I try to brew when she's working so we can spend our rare joint free time together) and banish me to the basement/garage/deck. Looks like I finally have a solid reason to purchase a wort chiller as well.
I see the thread is a year old, but hopefully there's a few users still active that can answer my inevitable string of questions.
The rabbit hole gets deeper....
That's the reason I got my wife to buy me one two (?) years ago or maybe it was just last year (re: step up from stove top). It will be a very welcomed upgrade; I assure you that.
I use my all the time : )
Edit - I take it you got the one without the re circulation pump?
1st upgrade recommended - swap out the basket for one of W's BIABs. I feel that if you don't have a pump the water doesn't do a good job penetrating the grain because the holes are only on the bottom and not up the sides a bit. Anyways, I feel the BIAB also makes cleaning up easier.
ps: You can get a fermentation lid for it should you wish to mail, boil, and ferment inside of it. I find it useful for temp maintaining when it's critical to a certain beer I'm making.
pps: You can distill in the device, too...not sure entirely what you have to buy, but some people have bought it.
ppps: There's an active Facebook user's group, too.
Yep, no pump. I planned on ordering a wilser bag sometime before the new year. A new bag and a wort chiller immediately popped into my head upon unwrapping haha. I was considering keeping the bag inside of the pipe to making draining more convenient, though. I'm sure I could be talked out of that since I hadn't really considered the sides of the pipe were solid walls.
How is the steam output? I'm slightly worried about that causing havoc. Also may need to find a heavy duty extension cord.
I'd prefer to keep everything in the basement, so hopefully that works out. I have a place scouted out to put it down there where I could hang a bag to drain should I go that route. I know enough electricians that getting an outlet hooked up in that spot should be no problem. Need to find an appropriate table to set it on though. Otherwise yep, there's always the garage, but that puts me back to the stove top in the winters. Hopefully I'm just being overly cautious because my wife isn't worried about steam. And she worries about everything, haha. Thanks for the info.
Do you do full volume, no sparge? This is my preference, as my batch sizes are usually 2.5 on my stove. I might increase that slightly to 3-3.25G though. Debating running a test boil sometime this evening to start creating a Beersmith profile.
Doing a lot of reading and researching here.
I figure I will get a bag sized to the kettle itself, not the pipe. Seems to me I'd rather have it slightly oversized for the pipe, than undersized for the kettle.
Any issues with errors constantly tripping when not using the pipe? Without the pipe, doesn't the grain bed just sit right on top of the heat element and cause scorching if/when the element kicks in?
The other thing I'd suggest is a hole so you can easily access the reset switch. I can't do this with the chair and had my first E4 error last brew.
Assuming my new (first!) immersion chiller shows up on time tomorrow, I plan on breaking in the first brew on my unit. I have an idea in mind for the short term when it comes to a stand/table, but really looking for something more convenient. Everything I have come across seems to be just a few inches too short, or way too tall for my liking. I think something in the 16-18 inches high range is about perfect for me height wise, and still be able to drain into my tallest fermenter. Wheels are probably mandatory as my brewing area and chilling area will probably be across the basement for the foreseeable future. I saw a link to a wheeled printer stand on an earlier post in this thread, but the ones I've seen have seemed flimsy for something that going to be full of boiling liquid. Does anyone have any suggestions for something that isn't custom built? Although, I'd appreciate the custom builds as well. I always do have beer to buy labor...
I don’t think that they do. I’ve just been using a few different online calculators and always come up short (which is better then having too much since I can always just add a bit more water to the sparge) but I’d obviously like to be able to have some correct calculations before starting the brew day. I’m just not sure where I could be “loosing” about a gallon of pre boil volume or needing to add another 2 gal of sparge water depending on which calculator I use. Just one of those things that will bug me. Obviously making corrections while sparring isn’t an issue but I figured I’d ask if anyone had any ideas what I could be doing wrong that other people seem to be using similar calculators and collecting the correct amount of pre boil volume. As you said just add a 1/4 gal to the sparge but in the calculators eyes I should then have a volume of 7.75 gal when I would in reality have about 6.75. I just don’t know how people with similar grain bills (13lbs) use 8 gal to get to 6.5 gal pre boil and I have to use 10. Can grain crush factor in to this equation at all? Not sure what other variables there can really be if someone’s using the same system..Just add 1/4 gallon to your sparge. Does the M&B have a calculator in their book or do they have an app?
It does sound like there's something going on. What calculator are you using? I've used Brewers friends and biab calculator. Bru'n water will get you a pretty good number as well. I calculate my strike water with 1.7 qt/#. Then I'll heat up my sparge water with a little extra. I just sparge until I hit my desired volume. I use a biab bag inside the grain pipe. Letting the grain drain thoroughly and squeezing the bag gently will also help to get a little more wort into the kettle.Hi everyone! I’ve been using the Mash and Boil for a few batches now and now that I’m trying to “perfect” my beers a little bit more I’ve been starting to pay more attention to mash/spare volume and pre and post boil gravitates in a effort to make more consistent beers. The one issue that I’ve been noticing is that for the life of me I can’t collect the correct amount of wort using any calculator that I’ve found online.
For instance
Currently brewing a IPA with 13lbs of grain. I am trying to get a total of 6gal into the fermentor.
The calculator says I should be mashing with 4 gal and sparging with 6gal to get a total volume of 7.5 gal pre boil (assuming .25 gal to trub loss and 1 gal loss from the fermenter to the keg) which is obviously more then I would need to collect. But after adding the above stated amount I am still only ending up with 6.5 gal collected in the mash and boil (pre boil). Ideally I would have liked to have about 6.75 total pre boil so I would be able to get closer to 6 gal in the fermemter but it’s not the end of the world. Just very frustrating that I can’t get the numbers dialed in. After reading this thread I’ve seen people with similar grain bills using 4gal to mash and another 4 to sparge and coming up with 6.5 gal pre boil and I’m just not sure what I’m doing wrong..
TLDR: I can’t get mash and sparge numbers to equal projected pre boil volume. Any idea what I could be doing wrong?
Your going off of a calculator . One that is probably just a general one . It really matters what your vessel does . Lots of notes will help you figure out your amounts to a T. Check out the Grainfather app . Maybe it's close to that of the M&B . My Gf boils off 1 gph. The app is dead on the amounts on every single beer .
@Heer4beer beer what are you using for the following; grain absorption, boil off, kettle trub loss?
preboil = mash water + sparge water - grain absorption - system losses(assume none in an all in one)
13lb of grain will absorb almost a 1.5gal unless you use a bag and squeeze it dry. Even when I squeeze the crap out of a bag I still get close to .1gal/pound grain absorption which is no where close to .6gal/pound some calculators use.
I put my hops in bags and a 5 gal batch of beer gives me a half gallon of settled trub. If you dump it all in the fermentor that will compact to maybe .25gal.
If you measure volume of hot water you need to account for expansion.
It does sound like there's something going on. What calculator are you using? I've used Brewers friends and biab calculator. Bru'n water will get you a pretty good number as well. I calculate my strike water with 1.7 qt/#. Then I'll heat up my sparge water with a little extra. I just sparge until I hit my desired volume. I use a biab bag inside the grain pipe. Letting the grain drain thoroughly and squeezing the bag gently will also help to get a little more wort into the kettle.
Me too. Maybe there is a dead space value hidden somewhere in the calculator.13lb grain bill
By the math: 4 (mash) + 6 (sparge)= 10 gal - absorption rate (X) pre boil gravity = 6.5 can “X” for absorption really be 3.5 gal? I think that seems very excessive
Me too. Maybe there is a dead space value hidden somewhere in the calculator.
Preboil = package volume + boil off + kettle loss + fermentor loss
Assume .5gal lost to kettle trub
Assume 1gal/hr
Assume .5gal lost to fermentor trub
Assume 5gal packaged
Preboil = 5 + 1 + .5 + .5 = 7gal
Assume .12gal/pound 13lb will absorb 1.56gal. mash + sparge = preboil + absorption = 7 + 1.56 = 8.5gal
Plug in your number for my assumptions and see what you get and how that matches to your last brews.
Every system is a bit different, just be consistent where you can and make adjustment as needed to find what works for you.
edit: the above assumes a batch sparge type situation, if you fly sparge then that is not enough, extra water(a few gallons maybe) is required and you need to control when you stop the drain.
Does anyone have a BrewFather equipment profile for the Mash & Boil that's been working for them?
My only guess would be your eq settings show zero deadspace and a matching higher than actual boil-off.But I either have a brew problem, a software problem, or both. I've nearly always used beer smith, and it has been consistent as can be when I was brewing stovetop batches of all sorts of quantities. I noticed since I upgraded to the M&B, I hit my volumes, I hit my pre boil gravity, but miss my OG by a point or two, while still ended up with the correct volume into the fermenter.
Review time here. I brewed my first ever batch of all grain beer the other night with my brand new Mash & Boil. No fancy mods, or recirculation. Held mash temperature at a steady 150 during the 60 minute mash. Didn't really notice the dramatic temperature swings on the control panel like a lot of other users have talked about. Achieved a good boil about 50 minutes after getting my pre-boil volume in the kettle. Overall, I feel it's the best $299 I've ever spent on homebrewing.
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