Grain father system

[Chaz]

Afternoon all. Hope everyone's well under the circumstances.
I have a question re grain father brewing system. I have never used it before but have come across a home-brew recipe that requires either this or a cool box mash system, again a system that i have never used.
So i suppose the question im asking is their a cheap home made alternative to spending hundreds on a grain father system (can i make a system myself) and why cant i just brew it the old fashioned way by boiling my ingredients in a pot then using fermentor/keg would it really make a difference.
Thanks

 

[strange-steve]

Yep a Grainfather is absolutely not necessary for brewing all grain. Google brew in a bag (BIAB) for the cheapest and simplest option. Or have a look at the following thread: Have a go at simple AG

 

[Chaz]

Thanks strange-steve thats really put my mind at rest i was about to give up on all grain until you helped me out.
one question on that thread though, do i still need to add sugar when bottling/kegging, if so how much for a 5ltr brew?
Thanks again

 

[Banbeer]

You don't have to buy a Grainfather to make a decent AG brew as @strange-steve pointed out but there are budget versions of a GF, I use a Brewster Beacon a third of the price of a GF and can't fault it I'm on my 12th AG brew with it, conventional AG brewing is good and I still have my Mash Tun and use my old Liquor Tun as a Liquor Tun for the Brewster.

 

[strange-steve]

do i still need to add sugar when bottling/kegging

Yes you'll need to add priming sugar to produce carbonation, something like 20g would be about right for 5L.

 

[peebee]

I use my Grainfather as a "BIAB" system! It stands in for the 3V system when I'm "modifying" it again, like now, or when I don't want to brew the 40L minimum that the 3V system churns out. On "another forum" I scribbled this:

A very stylised illustration of a BIAB system (I've repurposed some earlier illustrations) might go like:

The "Bag" containing the grain is immersed in a boiler, which has a tap, a heating element (E) and a temperature probe (T). The probe is probably part of something like an "Inkbird" ITC-308. It might well be controlling the heating element, although such an arrangement is doomed to fail because there's nothing but inefficient conduction and perhaps a tiny bit of convection (if the mash is thin enough) to spread the heat through the grain bag.

Some may try to improve on this by attaching a pump to the tap and recirculating the wort. It does need a fairly robust pump, 'cos of the mash debris in the wort:

The outlet pipe might need a valve to throttle the flow of the recirculating wort (the upstream tap on the boiler cannot do this). I've seen examples of this layout where the "bag" is simply tied onto the pump's outlet hose.

Doesn't that look like a "one-pot" brew system? (i.e. like a "Grainfather").

I use the Grainfather in a full-boil-volume-mash mode (or no-sparge) so it is very like a full-boil-volume-mash BIAB system. Many BIABers don't follow the full-boil-volume-mash model, but for an 18L batch of OG1.040 beer, and a 30L boiler capacity full-boil-volume-mash is more than adequate.

I "mis-used" the Grainfather to churn out the last brew. I'll probably rewrite that up on this forum soon? I'll be drinking it tonight - eight days after I started brewing it! It also used other techniques, like fermenting in the keg; there's no "priming" or transferring from vessel to vessel, I haven't seen the beer (apart from in a drinking glass) since the day it was made. "Crisis Brewing".