First Grainfather batch in the books. Long post but this is the story...
Everything went well I'd say. There are certainly a few process timing things for me to adapt to. I'm used to brewing 10G-15G batches with obviously more water, propane burners and related time swing for getting strike/sparge water ready.
I prepped my strike water (put it in the Grainfather to mash volume), started the brew session in the App and the thing started heating right away. This thing heats pretty fast; I barely had enough time to weigh my grain and crush it before it was time to dough-in. lol I'll do that stuff ahead next time...
One thing to note, I had been prepared to heat the strike water higher than mash temp to account for heat loss from adding the grain. The app even tells you it's going to do that so that you're at mash temp after dough-in. But you only see that once; next thing you see is that its getting to target mash-temp.
At dough-in, both the app and the controller read mash temp instead of what should have been a higher strike temp. I doughed-in anyway but the temps never dropped below mash target.
So maybe the app produced a higher strike temp but never shows that to you when in its "auto" mode? Not sure but I'll have to try manual next time to see.
Anyone have info about this? It was a little confusing but in the end, no problems.
Grain in, re-circulation mash begins. I have to say this part is really awesome. I've wanted to re-circulate the mash on my bigger system before and now I have to make that happen.
While the mash is underway, I start getting my sparge water ready in one of my smaller kettles. I've got everything ready, including my chugger pump and hoses so that I can fly sparge. In my head, I'm guessing when to start heating it. And when I was getting ready to light my burner, the app beeped with a notice that I should start heating sparge water now. lol Another pretty awesome thing.
Mash time has been hit, the Grainfather now starts a mash-out on its own. (with a notification of course..) This was really cool too and my first ever mash-out, I always batch sparge.
Mash-out complete, time to fly sparge. I found that lifting the grain basket up and twisting it onto the resting clips took a little more effort than I expected. It wasn't that hard but the weight of the grain and wort plus the height and position you are in requires a little upper body strength. I'm not sure I'd want to do that on a bigger system. Or maybe I just need more time in the gym... lol
Once you start the sparge process in the app, it starts heating to boil temp right away.
Sparge complete. Now I'm letting it sit on top, waiting for it to finish draining. This is a little awkward because you cant really see whats happening or know if its finished or not without lifting it to see. But lifting it causes a little more dripping. ha
So for me, I wound up just leaving it there until the wort temp was ~205. I set it aside and got ready for the boil to begin.
I started to see some pre-boil action and resulting foam buildup. I'm not a skimmer but for some reason I wanted to skim this time so I went to get my spoon and pitcher. But before I could start skimming, the boil was already beginning and I had a large buildup of foam nearing boil-over.
I started stirring like a mad-man and even had to scoop some off with my pitcher but was able to prevent a bad boil-over even though a small amount did run over and down the outside. But a very small amount luckily. Hot break happened and crisis was avoided.
Most of the semi-negative posts I've seen about the 110V G30 are related to a slow/low boil vigor. I can tell you that this is NOT a problem for the 240v G30. This thing heats pretty fast and produces a vigorous boil.
Once the boil finished, its time to chill with the counter-flow chiller. Another first as I use immersion chillers. I've been really skeptical about this being able to cool to pitching temp from kettle to fermenter but folks seem to say good things.
Fermenter sanitized, chiller attached, bucket of ice water and extra ice bags ready for being pumped through the coil...
My result? Wort temp was ~81.7 in the fermenter and that was with me using ice water through it. I cant imagine this being very effective with ground water.
Thats hardly pitching temp IMO. I typically prefer to pitch at or slightly below fermentation temp. But no real problem, I put the fermenter in my ferm-chamber and let it cool the wort to pitching temp.
Now its time to clean. Cleaning the grain basket was pretty easy. I simply dumped the grain out, washed and wiped the stuff down with a hose and sponge.
But cleaning the Grainfather itself I find to be a little laborious. But this is only because of how may times I had to disconnect the controller and hook it back up again from start to finish. Take it off for initial hosing out of trub. Put it back on again for a hot PBW cycle, through the chiller and re-circ arm. Off again to dump and hose out PBW solution. On again for the clean water rinse...
This wasnt hard but it was a little tedious and certainly added to overall time on brew-day. I feel like any time gains I had from the faster brew process were lost in clean-up.
So there ya go. Thats how it went. My target OG was 1.064 and I hit 1.063 so I'm pretty happy with that. All in all, its a pretty cool system and I look forward to brewing on it again. I'm sure that the more I brew on it, the more in-tune with it I'll become and maybe find some process improvements along the way.
I may have to seek a more efficient chiller though. If anyone has tips for how to improve this, let me know. Maybe slow the wort flow so it spends more time in contact with the cold water its passing through?
