Bought a grainfather a few months ago, and I have been really happy with it, on the whole. However I seem to have a problem with the chiller unit. I have never been able to chill a brew down to 25ðc in under an hour. Used my old copper coil last time at the same flow rate, and the brew to 25 minutes! Has anyone else had this problem? Is a slow or fast rate of cold flow best?
Grainfather 'problem'
- Thread starter Ali
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Soton
some random guy
I can get my wort down to 20c and pump straight into my fermentation bin almost straight after the boil! ,but it might be my cold water is cooler then yours
Try closing the ball valve down a tad to slow down the speed your wort is passing through the chiller, also maybe turn you cold tap on full when running your wort through the chiller
Try closing the ball valve down a tad to slow down the speed your wort is passing through the chiller, also maybe turn you cold tap on full when running your wort through the chiller
Graz
Landlord.
I haven't got a Grainfather but as the chiller is of the counterflow type it should be more efficient than an immersion chiller not less.
Are you plumbing it in correctly i.e. the cold water goes in at the end where the cooled wort exits?
Are you plumbing it in correctly i.e. the cold water goes in at the end where the cooled wort exits?
Are you expecting it to cool within the GF boiler down to 25c? If so, you don't need to do that, just run the hot wort thru for 5 mins to sanitise then turn on a good strong flow of cold water and pump out into the fermenter after a minute or two of cooling.
how stupid can one person be??
Thanks for all the help guys, just chilled as you suggested, and I'm done in 10 minutes! Really should pay more attention to the instructional video
It took me about 5 brews to figure it out so I wouldn't worry, the instructions that come with the kit aren't that thorough.
Very kind of you, trying to spare my blushes!
You are right, the instructions really aren't that clear, and the cleaner tells you to do the opposite to the instructions! Looking back at the video, it is more obvious, once you have a clue (given in this thread), but, if I hadn't been a member of this forum, may have struggled on, or sold it out of frustration. For people like me the instructions need to be idiot/bomb proof. Any instruction that assumes (albeit maybe unwittingly) some prior knowledge is liable to cause confusion. After all, if I already knew how to use it, I wouldn't need the instructions
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