The Grainfather

[gm-]

So I just pulled the trigger, it was on special before the holidays, so I grabbed one, even though I won't have brewing space until we receive the place that we just bought. Very compact unit, fits nicely on the corner of a regular sized desk.

Will post a detailed review once I brew on it!

[MitchK]

I look forward to your review. Right now my short term plan is 5 gallon biab on the patio but I would love to be able to move my shit indoors if the grainfather is worth the cash.

[jtmwhyte]

I look forward to your review. Right now my short term plan is 5 gallon biab on the patio but I would love to be able to move my shit indoors if the grainfather is worth the cash.

You can build a lot of system for 1200 bucks. I'd go all out on BIAC before buying one of these

[gm-]

I look forward to your review. Right now my short term plan is 5 gallon biab on the patio but I would love to be able to move my shit indoors if the grainfather is worth the cash.

You can build a lot of system for 1200 bucks. I'd go all out on BIAC before buying one of these

BIAC is ofcourse on another level, and 4x as much with a chiller (3913 USD).

Sure, you can build nice system for $1200, and I thought about doing so, but it got expensive fast, and my time is valuable.

For example from Everwood, amazon and obk:

Anvil 10 gallon kettle $399
False bottom $100
Chugger pump $185
Element ~$20
Fittings ~$17
Counterflow chiller $149
BIAB bag $35

Just that is $905 before shipping and tax, and does not include silicon tubing, a control box nor wiring for the element. You could do that cheaply with an SRC dimmer style control, or go with a temp controlled one for bit more or a lot more.

You could of course get the price down by buying used, building stuff yourself etc, all depends on how valuable your time is. The plug and play of the grainfather was definitly worth few hundred extra for me, but different strokes for different folks and all that.

[jtmwhyte]

I happened to be in the city today and popped into Noble Grape for a pound of acid malt and saw they had one of these. It's far sturdier than I imagined and they claimed that the benchmarks for heating sparge water and heating to boil are ~25 minutes each (which is far better than I thought). I could see buying it at this price point after seeing it in person.

[MitchK]

I assume you mean heating strike water since the main downside imo is that you still have to heat sparge water elsewhere (or just use hot tap water - a recent post I saw on another forum suggested even cold water makes for a better sparge than no-sparge)

[sleepyjamie]

I considered Jimmy's system but the thing is around $4K USD which is insance. There is another similar product slightly cheaper. I haven't seen it in action or any reviews.

http://brausupply.com/products/copy-of- ... rew-system" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[LeafMan66_67]

I assume you mean heating strike water since the main downside imo is that you still have to heat sparge water elsewhere (or just use hot tap water - a recent post I saw on another forum suggested even cold water makes for a better sparge than no-sparge)

You could always heat your sparge water to boiling prior to your mash and store in a cooler until needed ...

[gm-]

Yup, that is what I plan to do, have a 5 gallon home depot cooler for that purpose

[Comforteagle]

I haven't seen anyone address the venting for these. The humidity inside would be really something.

[MitchK]

It would be no different from boiling 6 gallons of water on the stovetop, your kitchen fan should be able to handle that.

[Jimmy]

I'd never brew inside without proper ventilation again. The first time I brewed with my indoor setup, my basement was a steamy mess..condensation everywhere.

Most kitchen fans simply blow the air around in the house, and do nothing to get rid of humidity.

[MitchK]

Oh yeah, I guess some people have crappy hoods with the filters in them.

I should correct that to if you live in a modern house with a proper hvac and whatnot your kitchen hood should be a real exhaust to outside, which would work fine.

[mcgster]

The apartment i'm in has a proper air exchanger setup and i just take the diffuser off and snap in a piece of flexible duct and put it over the boil kettle, it takes pretty close to 100% of the moisture out. If you don't have a way to direct it into the air exchanger you will have condensation problems on the ceiling, i brewed without it once when i first arrived and had small droplets form on the ceiling in a few spots. The exchanger eventually dried it out but i said i would never do it again lol

I just take the flexible pipe off when i'm done and it folds up nicely.

[John G]

Do you have something on the end of the flexible duct (like a funnel or fume hood) to collect all the steam from the kettle?

[mcgster]

I just cut the bottom of the flexible duct to splay it open then used the foil tape to make it a semi funnel. I'll track down some pics. I have brewed about forty batches on it and it's showing some wear now so it's not so pretty.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[John G]

Perfect. Would love to see the setup. I'm looking to do something similar.

[MitchK]

There's one of these sitting at everwood right now. Luckily it was still in a box so the amount I could drool over it was contained. I am such a sucker for shiny new toys.

[elreplica]

Mitch, I too have a weakness for shiny stainless things. Was there a price on this at Dave's? I do shop NG when in town, but usually try to patronize Dave's as much as possible. His prices, as he's a Brewnoser and offers the discount - are better as well.

[mikeorr]

I think it was $1099?

[MitchK]

I think 1090 or 1099 or somewhere in that range.

[gm-]

Decent price, is that without the 10% brewnoser discount?

[GillettBreweryCnslt]

Decent price, is that without the 10% brewnoser discount?

$1099 is the list price.

And I'll have it out of the box for store hours tomorrow so come over and check it out. I'm just cleaning/creating a display space for it at the moment. I also hope to get it up on the site today or tomorrow.

Cheers

[GillettBreweryCnslt]

Now available in store at Everwood!

https://www.everwoodavebrewshop.com/pro ... ng-system/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Dave83]

Just picked up a Grainfather as an upgrade to my stovetop biab. I will post a review after I get a couple brews done on the unit.