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Posted: 7/25/2024 1:10:07 PM EST
Unfortunately my schedule changed a bit and what used to be my brew days were pretty well covered up.
I just bought a Grainfather turnkey electric system and took it on its first voyage last night.  It wasn't without some quirks, but nothing I can't get at least 95% cleaned up by next time.
I'm really looking forward to it.  My other system(s) are cooler mashtun/propane burner setups, so the advantages of this will be many:

1) Brew in the comfort of the AC/heated kitchen year round
2) Super fast and easy to hit exact temps (and can easily try some step mashing now)
3) The sparge/lauter process is going to go faster and will be overlapped with heating towards a boil, so I will save a huge amount of time at this interchange
4) As with the mash, getting to and holding a very precise temp for hop stands will be very easy.

Overall I'm really looking forward to being able to do weeknight brews after work... I'm back in the saddle.
Link Posted: 8/4/2024 8:56:59 PM EST
[#1]
I just started brewing and am doing BIAB on the stove.  I'm pretty happy with my manual system but those all-in-one electric brewers are the bees knees!  If I get really serious about it, I'll get one of those.  

Right now, I'm focusing on the cold side. All of my brews have had "off" flavors that are most likely the result of my lack of temperature control during fermentation.  My next purchase will be a small chest freezer and a stainless steel fermenting bucket that is compatible with a thermowell.  I'm holding off on brewing anymore beer until I have those things in place.  I'm just been lazy in selling some other toys to purchase these new ones.
Link Posted: 8/6/2024 8:29:38 AM EST
[#2]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Originally Posted By corwin1968:
I just started brewing and am doing BIAB on the stove.  I'm pretty happy with my manual system but those all-in-one electric brewers are the bees knees!  If I get really serious about it, I'll get one of those.  

Right now, I'm focusing on the cold side. All of my brews have had "off" flavors that are most likely the result of my lack of temperature control during fermentation.  My next purchase will be a small chest freezer and a stainless steel fermenting bucket that is compatible with a thermowell.  I'm holding off on brewing anymore beer until I have those things in place.  I'm just been lazy in selling some other toys to purchase these new ones.
View Quote


Nice...
I don't know what kind of volume you are doing, but you can get a BrewHardware "Hot rod" to supplement your stove burner... it is versatile and can be used to accelerate your times to mash and boil.  I might be using it in the Grainfather as well.
Second brew with it is done, and getting fine tuned on what to expect for volumes and efficiency... a Marzen is up next.

My 2c... yes, the two places where newbies, especially using newbie HB kit type equipment suffer, is fermentation temp control and cold side oxygen exposure.  A chest freezer with an Inkbird is a great investment if you have the space, and was one of my early upgrades; very well worth it.  I did the "swamp cooler" (putting the fermenter in a large water/ice filled cooler) before that, but the accuracy and convenience are orders of magnitude apart.

On the oxygen exposure, the easiest way to address it is definitely to get into kegging, and put the beer into a CO2 purged keg... even without a fully closed transfer, this will expose the beer in the keg to near zero environmental oxygen during transfer if you are careful.
If you are bottle conditioning/bottling with a wand from an open bottling bucket, you're getting a lot of o2 exposure, and your quality is going to be capped until this can be addressed as well.
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