But no need to worry, even without a lid on, the boil was plenty vigorous and I certainly could not achieve the same level of “roll” with a BM with the lid off under similar conditions…always needed to use the dome lid on the BM, even in the summer, to generate any sort of vigour to the boil.
I was prepared to be a little bit disappointed with the boil given my prior experiences when testing with water, where the boil appeared decidedly weak, and the extreme cold I was brewing in.
Of course there could be other things at play…possibly the malt extract potential wasn’t as high as I assumed…we will see how this goes in future brews, but for now I will adjust the assumed mash efficiency downwards for the next brew.Īfter sparging and removing the malt pipe (not an overly strenuous task with just 5.45kg malt) I was pleased to see that not a great deal of grain matter had found its way into the kettle…the samples that I took when measuring mash pH and pre-boil gravity certainly had no more bits of grain in them than in the past when using the BM.
#Beersmith grainfather full#
With the G40, liquor that is pumped from beneath and recirculated on top of the grain bed doesn’t necessarily flow back down through the grain bed…it can find an easier route out of the malt pipe via the four sets of vertical holes that run the full height of the malt pipe….so perhaps the G40 recirculation doesn’t have the same “continuous rinsing” effect that the BM20 does. My overall mash efficiency was lowish at 76%….I will see in future brews if this was a one off or if the G40 is “less efficient” in the mash….thinking about it, I’m not sure that “recirculation” in the G40 can ever be as effective as the BM20, as in the BM the liquor is physically pumped through the malt pipe….it has nowhere else to go except up and through the malt pipe and grain and over the top back into the kettle. Next brew I will put it back to the 0.8L/kg setting and that should see me achieve the correct PBV. I got a lower than expected pre-boil volume (a litre short)but subsequently realised that my BeerSmith grain absorption setting had been changed (reduced to 0.65L/kg) to reflect what I had experienced in practical use with my BM20. I only ever saw it fleetingly drop to 65.5 degrees and then back up to 66, never saw it go up to 66.5. Once the mash reached its desired temperature the G40 held it to within minus half a degree, operating at 10% of full power according to the display. It was also nice to be able to tip my grains into the malt pipe straight from the bucket, in two or three goes (stirring in between), without worrying that I was going to spill some outside the malt pipe….that’s both due to the width of the malt pipe and the narrow gap between the malt pipe and kettle wall. So that was encouraging in that faster ramp times may lead to shorter brewdays. This was faster than previously observed in my initial “sea trials” (and a bit quicker than theory!!) and may have been aided by the double thickness “bubble foil” insulation jacket that I’d made for the G40. That is a rate of 1.54 degrees per minute…or 6 mins 39 for every ten degrees increase. In my garage, where ambient temps were around 2-6 degrees throughout the brew, the G40 raised 31L of mash liquor from 12.6 to 63.5 degrees in 33 minutes, before the PID algorithm started easing back the power as it approached my desired mash temp of 66. Nor did I use the provided counter-flow chiller…still need to figure out some decent means of connecting it to my water supply as the already attached piping is a bit unwieldly and doesn’t readily lend itself to connection to the mains water supply
#Beersmith grainfather manual#
I’ll start by throwing in a summary of the rough notes I made whilst brewing today highlighting various observations…for info I brewed in fully manual mode, just using the app to monitor progress whilst I was away from the garage…so have no comments to make about the app itself in respect of recipe control. Do I, coming from a Braumeister BM20, feel the same way? One of my fellow brew club members who has had the G40 for a little longer than myself, and has “upgraded” from a G30, has described it (having brewed on it 3 times) as “simply a joy to brew on”. So….finally…the opportunity to brew on the G40 arrived last Saturday Posted on 28 January 2022 31 January 2022 by Nick Davis Part 3 – First Brew
0 kommentar(er)
