The Postman's been!

[Spoon]

After eBay's 20% off offer last week I finally bit the bullet and bought an all-in-one BrewDevil microbrewery from Angel homebrew. I always wanted a Grainfather as they were on Kickstarter not long after I got back into homebrewing but the cost was prohibitive for a hobby that I was trying to sell to the one who wears the trousers in our house as at least cost neutral when you consider the cost fo a crate of beer or two per BBQ over a summer. Fastforward a couple of years and everyone's jumped on the bandwaggon with cheaper variants and she agrees that three big buckets of hot sugary liquid in the kitchen is 'a bit messy' and brew days really do take all day once the all the equipment and kitchen is clean. So here it is, a smidgen under £300 delivered. (yes the hallway is being redecorated, I don't actually live in a house with salmon walls and green carpet out of choice, the monkeys however are all me).

Now I know it's cheaper than a Grainfather, and having seen a Grainfather and Braumeister I can see that there's been a lot of thought put into it building something that is pretty much perfect in terms of being able to brew consistently good beer without having to make a mess doing it, and the GF comes with a decent chiller. This looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but is actually being served in Wetherspoons with pancakes and plum sauce rather than Duck a l'orange at the Fat Duck.

I'm not starting from scratch, I already have a decent enough 3 vessel system so that influenced my decision because I already have a plate chiller, a spare pump, loads of silicone tubing, a HLT, etc etc. If I was starting from scratch I think the extra versatility of the grandfathers connections (pumping out to a fermenter for example rather than having to lift this onto a worktop) and the counterflow pipe chiller would definitely be a factor. A £350+ factor, hmmmmmmm?

Initial criticisms and stuff I need to get:
A Hop spider. There's a small inlet screen on the pot outlet to the pump (and a larger one on the tap), but both would be inaccessible during the boil if there was a blockage say during the whirlpool. On the upside, the pot is 32cm across the malt-pipe supports so one of the big grain basket type ones should fit giving really good utilization.

I might build a small 3 gallon HLT with an STC1000 to heat sparge water, although to be honest a big pan on the stove with a thermometer will do the job just fine.

Stay tuned for an actual brewday (see poll for what I might actually brew), more critical musings, and some head-scratching over what to do with all my free time whilst it washes itself up with some PBW.

 

[Dads_Ale]

Nice bit of kit. Good luck. If you are used to a 3v system it may take a few brews to get your eye in.

 

[pms67]

Get the box opened for us to have a gawk!!!!

 

[Spoon]

Out of the box:
2018-03-28_06-36-33 by thisisnotaspoon, on Flickr

Tap outlet and pump outlet, the tap outlet is held on by a jubilie clip, the pump strainer is on a 1" stub of pipe that just slides in:
2018-03-28_06-34-29 by thisisnotaspoon, on Flickr

Grain basket and overflow pipe, the pipe is in two unequal length sections, so you can use the short, long or both depending on the grain bill:

2018-03-28_06-34-44 by thisisnotaspoon, on Flickr

2018-03-28_06-35-03 by thisisnotaspoon, on Flickr

Overall I'm very happy, I think it's fantastic value. I've been reading the other threads and while I like some of the upgrades/tinkering some people have done to make it closer to a grainfather I don't think I'll bother. I feel like I've served my time making life difficult for myself with 3 vessels and having to juggle pipes and fittings. Any mods to this will just be simple ones or stuff that makes life even easier, not mods for the sake of them!

In the short term I'll just add an insulating jacket to the pot itself and the pipe to keep the mash temp stable as the positioning of the thermowell and element mean that the wort is heated, then goes through the cold pipe before going through the grain so grain temp<set temp, not that it should matter as the enzymes are in the liquid but I already have a roll of foil bubble wrap spare..

 

[AdeDunn]

Awesome, I personally would love one myself. Here's a simple, pain saving, tip, buy a set of caravan steps. Instead of hoisting your brewer up and down, just climb the steps. Et voila, you can get far enough down to set the controls, and with a couple of steps you are high enough up to lift the grain basket. Unless that is, like me, you're over 6 foot and can do this anyway, without steps (the controls on my boiler are at the same hight)...

 

[Spoon]

Haha, yes I did wonder why they put the controls at the bottom. The guy in the unit next door at work* have a braumeister, it does make them do some funny contortions. Thankfully I'm also 6ft but do have a set of steps just in case.

*I work between a brewery and a pie maker, living the dream!

 

[Ajhutch]

So shiny! Good luck with it, I’ve been pretty close to buying one of these a few times. Have held off so far as I’ve got a few other Home related things to tick off before I can buy more brewing gear!!

 

[ElvisIsBeer]

cool as.........

 

[AdeDunn]

Haha, yes I did wonder why they put the controls at the bottom. The guy in the unit next door at work* have a braumeister, it does make them do some funny contortions. Thankfully I'm also 6ft but do have a set of steps just in case.

*I work between a brewery and a pie maker, living the dream!

I don't have an all in one, just an ACE mash tun/boiler with the controls on the bottom. However I've never needed to use steps, or move the boiler. I do however put it on a folding table set to the lower hight. This puts the controls at, uhm, crotch level, and the top of the boiler just below nipple hight. I can understand anybody having trouble though trying to use one on a normal kitchen worktop, I just was having a bit of fun at the expense of the more vertically challenged.

I rarely use steps to be honest, I can paint our ceilings and change lightbulbs no problem. I did use to have to use a set to reach the bottom of an aquarium I once owned... Just as well really as I don't like heights.

All I can think of is, the designers look and think "Oooh, there's a load of unused space there, we can put the controls in there!" as they're possibly not brewers, so blissfully unaware that if they design them to detach from the machine the user can put the machine at near floor level and use it with more ease and stability. That and it's probably cheaper to manufacture them like that. With the Bulldog Masterbrewer going for a detachable unit though, way may see more manufacturers move towards this design, sadly passing the extra cost onto the buyer...

Oh and a small suggestion, that bazooka looks like the one that came with my boiler. I'd do yourself a favour and switch it out for a longer one, with a coarser mesh. Otherwise you're going to find your brewdays marred by a clogged bazooka over and over when you come to transfer the wort to your FV. They're a PITA to clean too, as you can only remove them by undoing the jubilee clip first. If you fit a 1/2" BSP socket onto the thread, and screw a new bazooka into it, in future you can just unscrew the bazooka to clean it. :thumb1:

 

[Spoon]

Good point, the bazooka on my old kettle is ~10" and I've fitted a 90deg elbow to route around the side so after whirlpooling it's away from the trub. It does come with a 90deg stretchy silicone elbow which with a bit of pipework would allow whirlpooling if the pump outlet was routed to the tap, although the gauze and whirlpooling manually is probably more effective.

I'll do some experimenting, I'm getting a hop spider so that should do 90% of the bazooka's job, then if I do the same mod as my kettle the whirlpool should separate the hot break and any residual hops. Might get (build, I'm too tightfisted for Bilchmann stuff) a hop rocket to act as a 2nd filter before the plate chiller too. I want to do some split batches with similar hop ammounts via whirlpool, hop-rocket and dry-hopping as my last big-ish IPA was just dry hopped and seemed to have much more of the citrus/pine/spice hop aromas and flavours and a lot less soapy/hoppy flavors which was nice.

 

[AdeDunn]

I tried putting my boil hops in a bag once, all that happened was that the break material blocked the tiny bazooka faster.... lol That's when I decided to fit a larger one, and stop using pellet hops wherever possible. :thumb1: That way, you can let the hops do all the work of filtering your wort for you.