First all grain brew

[JakeSimmii]

Howdy all!
I've been home brewing cider and and extract beers for a couple years now, but recently obtained a grainfather all-in-one system. This will be my first all grain experience, so i was wondering if you guys and gals had any tips for brewing, fermentation, bottling, etc.?

 

[Clint]

Have a search through the forum... I'm sure Strange Steve did quite a comprehensive guide to new users of the GF.

 

[Richie_asg1]

Welcome to the forum and congrats on becoming a grainfather brewer.
I've just started all grain too, and found the calculators at the top of the page very useful, the guys here very helpful and good humoured, and if you search the forums there is loads of information here.
The recipe builder is good too.

It seems the best route forward is control, and the brewing systems are very good at that. The rest is experimentation to find out what works well for you.

 

[DixeySJ]

Welcome to the world of Grainfather brewing! You should find plenty of tips and 'I wish I had known this' posts .. for me, the one most useful is about positioning the filter to stop it being knocked off when stirring (put it in with the black cap against the temperature probe). Also, the supplied tubing really is too long for grain bills much under 4Kg, so obtaining the optional set of micro tubes is definitely worth it if you are going to be doing any lighter beers / small batches. Otherwise - enjoy! the biggest problem is deciding which recipe to choose ...

 

[svenito]

Welcome to AG brewing and congrats on getting the grainfather.

As above, plenty of advice to look around, but for me, the biggest unexpected thing was the time it takes.

1 hour mash + 1 hour boil = 8 hour brew day

I wasn't prepared for this on my first all grain brew day, so figured it'd be worth mentioning
The time basically comes from waiting for various water requirements to heat up, for the lauter and sparge to finish, for the boil to start, and then finally cooling, transfer, cleaning, and clearning.

 

[DixeySJ]

Good point about the time. You can get a bit ahead of the game by doing any water treatment you might need the day before, and - assuming you have a separate boiler for the sparge water, you can get that heating up while the grain is mashing. Some people advocate setting the GF to come on to heat up to mash temp on a timer so its ready for you when you start, although I haven't done that myself. Collect the hot water from the chiller for cleaning - I like to clean as I go, so there is just the main boiler to sort out at the end.

 

[svenito]

Good point about the time. You can get a bit ahead of the game by doing any water treatment you might need the day before, and - assuming you have a separate boiler for the sparge water, you can get that heating up while the grain is mashing. Some people advocate setting the GF to come on to heat up to mash temp on a timer so its ready for you when you start, although I haven't done that myself. Collect the hot water from the chiller for cleaning - I like to clean as I go, so there is just the main boiler to sort out at the end.

I recently got a Brew Monk and in the process sold my mashtun and boiler I had before. So I researched cold sparge and people are getting equally good results with a room temp sparge compared to a heated sparge (75C). Going to try this for my next brew and report back.
So not having to heat the sparge will save time also

 

[Horners]

I recently got a Brew Monk and in the process sold my mashtun and boiler I had before. So I researched cold sparge and people are getting equally good results with a room temp sparge compared to a heated sparge (75C). Going to try this for my next brew and report back.
So not having to heat the sparge will save time also

Does not heating the sparge water really save time- does it not just mean everything takes longer to get to the boil?

 

[svenito]

Now that you mention it, that is correct. There's probably not much time saving between the two, in fact, bringing sparge to temp during the mash will save you more time.

I redact my above statement about saving time as being a complete flight of fancy on my part.

Thanks Horners for correcting me