Nice offer! Anybody here from Sac?? Go enjoy a cool brew day with Nate, Try a Brewie beer, take some pics and report back. Wish I was closer. Thanks Nate.
Fwiw if there was a forum for marriages no one would ever get married.
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Fwiw if there was a forum for marriages no one would ever get married.
Yes- ESPECIALLY if they can help me get my grain mill going!!I will even provide beer for that!
I uploaded three pics for my current brew. About 17# of grain on this one, so we will see (I think the max is about 20). Not sure what kind of video you want- the process is about 6 hours long. The existing Brewie vids are pretty close to what happens.
LOL to the marriage. I think more so for women than for men though.
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Well the brew is in the Conical! Machine is self-cleaning as I type.
Here's my gripe- used about 16-17 pounds of grain. Efficiency was roughly about 50% ( + or - about 5%).
Here's the irony- if you want a higher gravity beer, you need to use a lot more grain. But the more grain you use, the lower the efficiency. Catch 22.
Last brew I (cheated) and added some DME and DRE. (Less than 2 pounds total!). Beer came out nice, but has just a hint of sweetness- maybe the DRE?
Anyways, this brew is all grain- no cheating. OG of 1.060, but I will double check before I pitch tomorrow.
Any Brewie (or otherwise) user have a tip to boost efficiency? I used 0.5 pounds hulls again. Short of a custom build for this thing, I am not sure what else to do. But hey- so I add 2-3 more pounds grain to make it up- still is nice to be sitting here while the machine is cleaning.
HarkinBanks
Well-Known Member
My brand new B+ arrived last weekend and after a few restarts updated to the latest software, passed the short clean cycle and passed the test brew cycle. I still had one last free Brewie pad so I figured what the heck, let's do this. It was the Rusty Rex pad. I decided to put the B+ head to head with my Robobrew v3 and brew two beers at the same time. I figured my odds were decent that I would get one beer out of the session. After a bricked screen upon start up, and an unplug it "reset", much to my pleasant surprise, the B+ performed flawlessly. As much as I wanted to grab the mash bag and stir it, I let the machine do its thing. Rusty Rex is 8.8 lbs of Munich malt into 6.9 gallons of total water volume. My pre-boil was 1.038 and my post boil was 1.042, so with .12 gal/lb absorption that is 68% efficiency. I am pretty shocked (in a good way) by this result. Based on my CB20 experience, 68-72% is the max one can expect on a two-vessel continuous sparge system.
A few notes:
-Robobrew brew day beat the B+ by over an hour, including cooling. The Robobrew recipe was 13.25 lbs of malt with 70% efficiency at 1.056 pre boil and 1.062 post boil
-B+ boil is very mild; the Robobrew boil is much more of what I would call a rolling boil
-B+ total brew time was 6 hrs, more with clean-up, but it truly was hands off until clean-up
-B+ app worked perfectly and connected whenever I wanted during the brew session - a big upgrade from the first versions
-Clean-up with B+ is much easier than Robobrew
-Robobrew is messier, both during the brewing process and with cleanup
-Robobrew is much more user intensive, mash in, mash out, temp changes, heavy lifting, hop additions, cooling
-I really think a malt pipe will help the B+ with efficiency so that I could stir at mash-in
So, chalk up one successful brew for the B+. I will report back with all future results, good or bad.
A few notes:
-Robobrew brew day beat the B+ by over an hour, including cooling. The Robobrew recipe was 13.25 lbs of malt with 70% efficiency at 1.056 pre boil and 1.062 post boil
-B+ boil is very mild; the Robobrew boil is much more of what I would call a rolling boil
-B+ total brew time was 6 hrs, more with clean-up, but it truly was hands off until clean-up
-B+ app worked perfectly and connected whenever I wanted during the brew session - a big upgrade from the first versions
-Clean-up with B+ is much easier than Robobrew
-Robobrew is messier, both during the brewing process and with cleanup
-Robobrew is much more user intensive, mash in, mash out, temp changes, heavy lifting, hop additions, cooling
-I really think a malt pipe will help the B+ with efficiency so that I could stir at mash-in
So, chalk up one successful brew for the B+. I will report back with all future results, good or bad.
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I posted here back in May 2017 (post #756) as I was on the fence then about buying a Brewie. With all the problems reported I held off but subsequently pulled the trigger in March 2018 when the Brewie+ was announced.
6 ½ months later (!!!) my pre-ordered Brewie+ finally arrived and I put it through a mock water-only and a real brew since.
Since I have gotten a lot of information from this thread, I want to report back, the good AND the bad from what I experienced so far with future reports to come, so others can benefit as well.
I set up the instrument with automatic water inlet but no automatic cooling. I have a very efficient cooling system with 32F inlet water and a plate chiller where the used water is captured again for the next brew. Since Brewie’s automatic chilling wastes a lot of water, I decided to stick with my system.
Upon first setup, Brewie connected to my Wifi with no issues. It then initiated a software update and got stuck. I had to pull the plug (power button was not working) and it re-did the software update and succeeded this time. Calibration was easy and succeeded on the first try. With all the problem stories on this thread, I decided to play it safe and run a mock brew with water only first. This was a good thing as I blew the breaker multiple times in my garage and found that I needed to use another circuit. The machine resumed the interrupted “brew” at the correct position every time though. I ended up with only 4.25 g of “wort” but didn’t read too much into it, since this was a mock brew and I told the machine that there were 12 lbs of grains in it, which was a lie.
Yesterday I did my first real brew on it, a German-style Pilsner. In anticipation of low efficiency, I adjusted my recipe a bit, programmed a 52C-62C-72C step mash with a 78C sparge, loaded up the hops and the grains and hit the Brew button. After only 5 minutes, the machine had filled with water at that point, I got an error message that no inlet water hose was connected. This one is likely on me, as the irrigation sprinklers were also running, which cause a significant drop in water pressure. I will keep an eye on it and report back, if this is an ongoing issue. With the sprinklers turned off, the machine resumed and performed flawlessly.
I only ended up with 4.4 gallons off wort with an OG of 1.053. 12 lbs of fermentables were used. That is an efficiency of around 56%. I did open the bag and stirred the grain on mash-in to break apart dough balls, after that I pretty much left it alone. I think next time, I will manually add about ½ gallon of water after the machine has filled to make up for the low final wort volume. There was enough space in the boiling tank so it shouldn’t cause an overflow.
I will report back how the beer turned out, I make this Pilsner recipe a lot and can therefore compare to previous brews. As for my fermentation setup, I have two SS Brewing Chronicals with their glycol chilling system.
I don’t want to make this post any longer, so if you have any specific questions, please just ask.
6 ½ months later (!!!) my pre-ordered Brewie+ finally arrived and I put it through a mock water-only and a real brew since.
Since I have gotten a lot of information from this thread, I want to report back, the good AND the bad from what I experienced so far with future reports to come, so others can benefit as well.
I set up the instrument with automatic water inlet but no automatic cooling. I have a very efficient cooling system with 32F inlet water and a plate chiller where the used water is captured again for the next brew. Since Brewie’s automatic chilling wastes a lot of water, I decided to stick with my system.
Upon first setup, Brewie connected to my Wifi with no issues. It then initiated a software update and got stuck. I had to pull the plug (power button was not working) and it re-did the software update and succeeded this time. Calibration was easy and succeeded on the first try. With all the problem stories on this thread, I decided to play it safe and run a mock brew with water only first. This was a good thing as I blew the breaker multiple times in my garage and found that I needed to use another circuit. The machine resumed the interrupted “brew” at the correct position every time though. I ended up with only 4.25 g of “wort” but didn’t read too much into it, since this was a mock brew and I told the machine that there were 12 lbs of grains in it, which was a lie.
Yesterday I did my first real brew on it, a German-style Pilsner. In anticipation of low efficiency, I adjusted my recipe a bit, programmed a 52C-62C-72C step mash with a 78C sparge, loaded up the hops and the grains and hit the Brew button. After only 5 minutes, the machine had filled with water at that point, I got an error message that no inlet water hose was connected. This one is likely on me, as the irrigation sprinklers were also running, which cause a significant drop in water pressure. I will keep an eye on it and report back, if this is an ongoing issue. With the sprinklers turned off, the machine resumed and performed flawlessly.
I only ended up with 4.4 gallons off wort with an OG of 1.053. 12 lbs of fermentables were used. That is an efficiency of around 56%. I did open the bag and stirred the grain on mash-in to break apart dough balls, after that I pretty much left it alone. I think next time, I will manually add about ½ gallon of water after the machine has filled to make up for the low final wort volume. There was enough space in the boiling tank so it shouldn’t cause an overflow.
I will report back how the beer turned out, I make this Pilsner recipe a lot and can therefore compare to previous brews. As for my fermentation setup, I have two SS Brewing Chronicals with their glycol chilling system.
I don’t want to make this post any longer, so if you have any specific questions, please just ask.
Have you thought about why you are 1/2 gallon short. Manually adding the half gallon, if it turns out to be routinely necessary, would piss me off if I bought that machine.
I thought about re-doing the calibration procedure and might still do that. I used the maximum amounts of mashing/sparging water that was allowed in the recipe editor. If it is not a calibration issue, it is possible that they are just really conservative with the water amounts right now to avoid boil overs. If that's the case you can probably trick the calibration to avoid the manual addition. I agree with you though, not optimal.
Happy to hear first brew worked. A few things:
I have the original brewie. On that model, the power buttom on the side only turns the machine on- to turn it off, you must use the master power kill switch. I know on the brewie+ there is no master power switch.
I learned the hard way i could not run the dishwasher on the same circuit as the Brewie. But is is cool how it boots up to the same place when it shut off.
Did you add any hulls to the grain bill? I have tried this but don't notice any difference.
I always add my own water, so i have not had the calibfation/ total batch size issue you have had. I had one batch that boiled over a bit. What a mess! I think that was 7 gallons total pre-boil. Last batch was about 6 gallons. Much better. I like that the receipe editor calculates for the machine. You can get BeerSmith profiles from the Brewie user group (not the official brewie page- the owner group page).
Keep us posted please! If anyone gets a plan/process/trick to get to 70% efficicency please share!!!
I have to hold the Power button for about 6 seconds before a shutdown option appears on screen. After confirming the shutdown the machine performs a power down sequence, presumably to put hardware in a safe or known state before it turns itself off. Maybe it is similar with the original Brewie?
I have not added rice hulls yet, maybe another thing to try.
I did some more experiments today, maybe they help you as well:
1. Volume/overflow risk in boil kettle
Measured: with 5 gallons in the boil kettle there is about a 3 ¾ inch space to the rim
Measured: with 6 gallons in the boil kettle there is about a 2 ¼ inch space to the rim
Calculated: 7 gallons ¾ inch space to the rim, 6.5 gallons 1 ½ inch space to the rim
I estimate that I got about a 1 inch hot break rise the last time, so 6.5 gallons is the absolute maximum volume I would try. This should also help with eyeballing if the wort volume is correct pre and post boil.
2. Whirlpooling: While the square vessel is obviously not great for getting a circular movement in the liquid, I got a pretty good whirlpool going with my Hangover device. The few “particulates” I added all settled in the middle of the kettle. The next beer will be a hoppy pale ale with 6 oz of hops at flameout, which will be the real test.
3. Alternate grain bag to improve stir ability
What do you guys think about this? I know this is kind of a Mickey Mouse solution and not as elegant as a drop in malt pipe with a handle and screened bottom, as suggested here before. But at least it should let you stir the mash much easier. I think I will give this a try at some point.
Lid still closes (with some weight)
Hope that thing doesn't boil very vigorously. I boil in a 10 gallon pot with 7.3 gallons at the start. I have at least 6 inches to the lip and it is very easy to get a boil over if I am not watching carefully.
From what I have seen on my first brew the hot break is managed very well. Brewie spends about 20 minutes at temperatures between 96 and 98 C breaking down most of the proteins, before transitioning to a full boil. It achieved a rolling boil (temps up to 100.5 C) afterwards without much of a hot break rise.
In my other system I have managed boil overs with 5 gallons of head space, but I bring the wort to a boil as quickly as possible.
In my other system I have managed boil overs with 5 gallons of head space, but I bring the wort to a boil as quickly as possible.
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sniperd
Well-Known Member
I didn't know about holding down the power button, I've just been unplugging it. Good tip! I like that outside the box (heh.. get it?) thinking with the 'external' grain bag. What I've been doing is using about 12 pounds of grain, split into 2 of the brewie bags. One on top of the other. And then I toss in about 4oz of rice hulls in each bag. During the mash I'll 'rotate' the bags so the one on the bottom is now on top. Then I'll just move them around a bit. From my experiments adding the 4oz of rice hulls to each bag, having 2 bags, and having a sparge time of about 45 minutes has put me to about 70% efficiency, which is fine. Without those steps (and pre 3.x software) I was getting just over 50% efficiency.
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70% efficiency would absolutely suffice for me. Thanks for sharing this! I guess I will have to order another Brewie bag...
Isn't this appliance supposed to be more of a plug and play thing? I would say if people have the get used to the machine and idiosyncrasies, it is still not ready for market....
sniperd- this is good to hear! Thank you! I have used rice hulls but only in one bag. I will split it up. Also- you say 45 minute sparge time- did you change this from when you getting 50% efficiency? If so, what was your sparge time before? Temp? I would be curious to know to try to replicate your success!
kh54s10- yes, yes, yes- Brewie is not a magical do it all machine. The original marketing campaign was (shocking!) not entirely honest! I will say- when I brewed my very first batch (Call me Grainy) by using their Brewie Pad- the beer came out great- and it was all plug n play. I don't want to spend $40 on a few select pads however.
However- in the last couple of posts, us Brewie owners have been using this forum for what I assume the heart of this website is for- helping each other brew better beer.
If the Brewie is not for you, no worries- don't buy it. If you are thinking about buying one, read this thread. It's buyer beware at this point.
For all of us who are using the Brewie/ Brewie+ though- I would love the get any tips/ pointers, as so far it has been a pretty awesome machine.
Thanks all!
Volx- this is pretty cool. For your bag that is binder-clipped to the sides- did you use a Brewie bag? If not, what type/size of bag did you use? Have you tried it yet? Results?
As for power button- Brewie (original) has a rocker switch by the water outlets by the plug. The power button will only turn it on- holding it in does nothing. You "kill" the entire system with the rocker power switch.
You described my question about this machine. It was supposed to be - add all the ingredients into the machine and start it. There were multitude of problems with the first version, then they added another version and it still doesn't seem to do what it is supposed to. The Brewie is not for me for several reasons. 1) I am already all grain set. 2) I enjoy the manual form of brewing. 3) It seems limited. 4) It is expensive. 5) It seems all the bugs have not been worked out yet.
Good luck to all you that bought it. It seems there is a good community that will share experiences, fixes and work arounds.
a little naive. this is significantly more than a bucket and a pump. After 5-7 years there are only two auto products in the market this and the Pico systems. It is obviously a tough nut to crack: and to do it well. These will be some interesting times.
The Brewie bag is too small to fit around the sides. The bag I used fits a full keg and is way too big for this but I had nothing else laying around. Morebeer has reasonably priced nylon bags in multiple sizes, I might try a different one, if this method has promise.
No results yet, I will report back when I have tried it.
You just confirmed my point. It was supposed to be one of the two auto products in the market. It is a tough nut to crack and I give credit for the effort. IMO, they have not completed the do it well part. I'll have to keep watching, but it seems that a high percentage of buyers are still having problems with the units.
I think that’s a fair assessment. The Brewie+ in its current form is not fully plug-and play, as advertised. Yet. But it is close.
If you decide this machine is for you, whether or not you will like it will depend a lot on your expectations. I worked for a biomedical company for 17 years and have seen a lot of products there go from concept phase to market. We had instruments work nearly 100% of the time in our (lab) environment and barely at all in customer hands during alpha tests. The original Brewie, from what I read, was clearly an alpha instrument. It probably should have never been shipped out to customers, or these customers should have been offered a free or at least at cost upgrade to the Brewie+. I don’t want to excuse the company, but a lot of this is probably due to the whole Kickstarter construct.
Anyway, Brewie+ to me smells more like a pilot instrument. It may need a few more software tweaks AND potentially even minor hardware changes (let’s hope not), but it is getting close to working as advertised. Pilot instruments are usually mechanically identical or very close to the production version and it is not uncommon that they are shipped to customers.
Here are the reasons why I bought this and really want this to work:
I like the brewing process in general but also get bored with my beers sometimes and want variety. That is why I am brewing 5 gallon batches and not bigger. Lately, I am trying to keep 6 taps on at all times, which means I brew a lot. I am still going to brew bigger beers, maybe even super-hoppy beers on my old system but I like the idea of banging out some year-round core beers with minimized effort on an automated system. Like many on this board, I probably have enough automation knowledge to be able to throw some Brewie-like abomination together. But this would be a huge time commitment and at the end, let’s be honest, it would probably end up costing close to the same (iterations, failures, blown hardware) and work about the same (or likely worse) as the current Brewie+. That’s why I pulled the trigger when Brewie+ was announced and that’s why I am still positive on the thing, even though it is not perfect. This might all change very soon, if it blows up on me on a future brew and the customer support doesn’t take care of it quickly.
End of ramble.
HarkinBanks
Well-Known Member
Guys, I highly suggest you use fermcap with this system. You will never have a problem with boilovers if you do!
Lol. Bought some for this reason then forgot to use it! D'oh!! One drop, right? Doing batch #5 tomorrow.
No, about 10 drops for a 5 gal batch.
I attempted a brew of a hoppy pale ale today and rigged my trusty brew bag that I have used for years as shown in post 1089. The intention was that I could periodically stir the mash and thus improve efficiency. The short: DO NOT EVER TRY THIS!
The long: despite having the false bottom in the machine, it burned the bottom of my grain bag. The grains seeped out, made it below the false bottom and got baked onto the bottom of the mash tun where the heating element is. Fortunately, I smelled something burning, had a hunch that this might have happened and stopped the machine. The damage was done though: the wort was not savable, it smelled and tasted burned, and it took me over two hours of scrubbing to get the burned wort of the bottom of the mash tun.
In addition, the mash tun was clogged on not draining. Manual attempts with the rubber declogging thingy that came with the machine were in vain. I remembered that I saw a declogging cycle under the Extras menu, so I tried that and it worked. The Brewie is fine otherwise, I put it through a mock brew with water and it had no issues.
So not a fun brew day today but really my fault for “optimizing”. I will try this again tomorrow without deviating from the protocol and letting the instrument do its thing.
Why my brew bag burned up though is beyond me. The only thing I can think of, is that Brewie's false bottom conducts heat better than the one in my setup.
The long: despite having the false bottom in the machine, it burned the bottom of my grain bag. The grains seeped out, made it below the false bottom and got baked onto the bottom of the mash tun where the heating element is. Fortunately, I smelled something burning, had a hunch that this might have happened and stopped the machine. The damage was done though: the wort was not savable, it smelled and tasted burned, and it took me over two hours of scrubbing to get the burned wort of the bottom of the mash tun.
In addition, the mash tun was clogged on not draining. Manual attempts with the rubber declogging thingy that came with the machine were in vain. I remembered that I saw a declogging cycle under the Extras menu, so I tried that and it worked. The Brewie is fine otherwise, I put it through a mock brew with water and it had no issues.
So not a fun brew day today but really my fault for “optimizing”. I will try this again tomorrow without deviating from the protocol and letting the instrument do its thing.
Why my brew bag burned up though is beyond me. The only thing I can think of, is that Brewie's false bottom conducts heat better than the one in my setup.
sniperd
Well-Known Member
Thank you for the update. Although my 2 bagger with rice hulls strategy has been working well, I was thinking about trying your big bag that I could swill around. Now I know not to try that!
HarkinBanks
Well-Known Member
My guess is you got an air pocket under the bag and it scorched the bag in the process. I have done that with my old e-biab system, certainly not fun. You run that risk with a direct fired mash system. I wish you could recirculate the entire mash at full volume and only fire the boil kettle to regulate temps.
A metal mash basket is the way to go with this system like the robobrew, but I’m not skilled enough to build one. I’ve considered using my malt pipe from my robobrew but then the weight sensors would be all wrong.
A metal mash basket is the way to go with this system like the robobrew, but I’m not skilled enough to build one. I’ve considered using my malt pipe from my robobrew but then the weight sensors would be all wrong.
I had a better brew day today than yesterday, albeit only slightly. Again, it wasn’t Brewie’s fault directly, it had more to do with deviating from my trusted brewing process and learning what I cannot do.
Everything went fine today until flameout. The recipe called for 6 oz of hops during the whirlpool. I got my whirlpooling contraption going, as shown in a previous post, and had a trub catcher on the bottom of the boil kettle. After 20 minutes of settling time I started the drain. It drained about 4 gallons of wort and then stopped. I was convinced the Brewie drain port had clogged since the trub catching was only 70-80% (guess - see picture) successful. I ran the unclogging cycle, no success. I ended up syphoning another ½ gallon of wort into the fermenter, about ½ gallon was lost.
A postmortem revealed that it was actually my plate chiller that had clogged up. This was somewhat surprising since that has not happened to me in years.
I will start using a hop spider (hop bag) on future brews that call for a lot of flameout hops or use a filter in front the plate chiller.
My efficiency was the same as the last brew, since I didn’t really change anything that would help with that.
Everything went fine today until flameout. The recipe called for 6 oz of hops during the whirlpool. I got my whirlpooling contraption going, as shown in a previous post, and had a trub catcher on the bottom of the boil kettle. After 20 minutes of settling time I started the drain. It drained about 4 gallons of wort and then stopped. I was convinced the Brewie drain port had clogged since the trub catching was only 70-80% (guess - see picture) successful. I ran the unclogging cycle, no success. I ended up syphoning another ½ gallon of wort into the fermenter, about ½ gallon was lost.
A postmortem revealed that it was actually my plate chiller that had clogged up. This was somewhat surprising since that has not happened to me in years.
I will start using a hop spider (hop bag) on future brews that call for a lot of flameout hops or use a filter in front the plate chiller.
My efficiency was the same as the last brew, since I didn’t really change anything that would help with that.
If calibration is done with the metal basket in there it should work. You could try it and run a mock water-only "brew" as a check. Time consuming though...
Its been a bit since i've last posted. It sounds like people are starting to have more success and repeatability. I had settled in to being content with ~50% efficiency and had just been making up the difference with more grain (or DME in to the boil). This was kind of a losing proposition though as people have noted that the efficiency decreases as you use more grain.
I recently saw sniperd's post about using 4oz rice hulls per bag, using two bags - one on top of the other, and a 45 minute sparge. I tried this today and got about 70% efficiency! I did a 125*F/143/154 (20/20/40 min) step mash (i have done variation on the step mash in recent batches without noticing any real efficiency change). I'm not sure which variable did the trick or if it was a bit of all three, but i'm certainly happy with the outcome. I'll keep notes on the next few batches, but sounds like i'll be buying a large bag of rice hulls in the near future.
Previously, i had been using two bags, but in a side by side orientation (one front and one back to allow the water inlet to flow in between - the facebook group recommended this long ago). I have a feeling that this actually created more channeling (or rather more water just went straight down the middle without rinsing the malt). I had also been doing a 30 minutes sparge and the extended time may have helped as well. I also stepped my grind back down to about where i used to on my old all grain system (past few batches i tried to grind very fine to help efficiency - didn't help) which i don't have a measurement for, but was at the point where it would nicely fracture the grain without shredding the hull.
I hope this helps corroborate some of the information out there. To sum it up:
1) normal grind (compared to my manual all grain setup)
2) 4 oz rice hulls per bag (i do 6-7 lbs malt / bag, on average)
3) 2 bags, one of top of the other
4) 45 min sparge
= ~70% efficiency (up from low 50s)
I recently saw sniperd's post about using 4oz rice hulls per bag, using two bags - one on top of the other, and a 45 minute sparge. I tried this today and got about 70% efficiency! I did a 125*F/143/154 (20/20/40 min) step mash (i have done variation on the step mash in recent batches without noticing any real efficiency change). I'm not sure which variable did the trick or if it was a bit of all three, but i'm certainly happy with the outcome. I'll keep notes on the next few batches, but sounds like i'll be buying a large bag of rice hulls in the near future.
Previously, i had been using two bags, but in a side by side orientation (one front and one back to allow the water inlet to flow in between - the facebook group recommended this long ago). I have a feeling that this actually created more channeling (or rather more water just went straight down the middle without rinsing the malt). I had also been doing a 30 minutes sparge and the extended time may have helped as well. I also stepped my grind back down to about where i used to on my old all grain system (past few batches i tried to grind very fine to help efficiency - didn't help) which i don't have a measurement for, but was at the point where it would nicely fracture the grain without shredding the hull.
I hope this helps corroborate some of the information out there. To sum it up:
1) normal grind (compared to my manual all grain setup)
2) 4 oz rice hulls per bag (i do 6-7 lbs malt / bag, on average)
3) 2 bags, one of top of the other
4) 45 min sparge
= ~70% efficiency (up from low 50s)
Awesome news! Thank you for sharing. Please keep us posted as you discover more!
HarkinBanks
Well-Known Member
I’d say the longer “sparge” (ie a full volume recirculation) definitely helps. My ideal program would be a 20 min mash then a 60 min full volume recirculation followed by a 170 mash out. I emailed brewie and unfortunately this program is not possible. This is what I used on my two vessel system and it hit 70% pretty consistently.
sniperd
Well-Known Member
Somebody read what I wrote and tried it! This makes my Monday. I'm so glad that worked. It's awesome to hear that you had similar results bumping efficiency by =~ 20%. I wonder sometimes when I change something in brewing if it's just coincidence since I don't have a real control, perhaps the phase of the moon was my efficiency problem?
Thank you for sharing your results, it's what makes this site so great.
sniperd
Well-Known Member
Previously I just had all =~ 12 pounds of grain in 1 bag, no rice, mash for 60 (same) at 152F (same as now), sparge at 172F (same) and about a 15 minute sparge and that got me low 50% efficiency.
Now I mash at 152F for 60 minutes, split the grain bill into 2 bags (stacked), put 4oz of rice hulls mixed in with each back, flip them around once or twice during mash and/or sparge (not sure if that matters?), and sparge at 172 for 45 minutes which is now giving me just over 70% efficiency. Sorry for my late reply
Thanks for clarifying!Previously I just had all =~ 12 pounds of grain in 1 bag, no rice, mash for 60 (same) at 152F (same as now), sparge at 172F (same) and about a 15 minute sparge and that got me low 50% efficiency.
Now I mash at 152F for 60 minutes, split the grain bill into 2 bags (stacked), put 4oz of rice hulls mixed in with each back, flip them around once or twice during mash and/or sparge (not sure if that matters?), and sparge at 172 for 45 minutes which is now giving me just over 70% efficiency. Sorry for my late reply
Do you mill your own grain? I have heard various opinions on mill size (from.3mm to .45mm or so) and what a finer grain can do. For the most part i have not heard a good size either way- i.e. other varibles (like you lay out above) contribute more.
Thanks
Hey all. Original Brewie version 1 is on sale today only at More Beer today! $999 only. (Deal of the day. Good until 8:59am PST tomorrow 10/16).
Not as good as the deal before (i checked!) but still a good deal.
Just remember if you get it: Before you brew- update the software several times and calibrate it.
Highly suggest you run a brewpad or test run to see how it works before you tweak it.
For what it is worth the brewpad (my first brew on the machine) has been the best. But they are pricey.
Not as good as the deal before (i checked!) but still a good deal.
Just remember if you get it: Before you brew- update the software several times and calibrate it.
Highly suggest you run a brewpad or test run to see how it works before you tweak it.
For what it is worth the brewpad (my first brew on the machine) has been the best. But they are pricey.
sniperd
Well-Known Member
I do indeed mill my own grain. I have a JSP malt mill. I can tell you from using the 4 local homebrew shops that how it's milled absolutely contributes to the efficiency. It was driving me nuts. Years ago when I got it I adjusted it _slightly_ tighter than the default, but I can't remember what that was! I think mine must be .3mm or .35mm. I remember a 3?
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Got it. Thank you. I am looking forward to the next brew. Going to do a Pilsner, so using about 10-12 pounds of grain. Will split it up into 2 bags. Will update on results.
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