Grainfather - Lessons Learned

This post documents a couple problems I’ve had with the Grainfather. I also document my attempts to overcome those problems. To be clear, the Grainfather is a slick homebrewing appliance that automates away a lot of the mundane work of brewing. I absolutely recommend one if you have some extra cash burning a hole in your wallet. It does come with its own sets of quirks though and these two are the primary quirks causing me most grief.

The first problem with the Grainfather is the false bottom built into the basket used to hold the mash grain. The false bottom fits at the bottom of the basket and contains the grain bed. The false bottom is a perforated metal plate fit to the bottom of the basket. In order to secure a snug fit and ensure the perforated plate doesn’t scratch and claw the basket, a silicone seal fits around the plate. The silicone seal is a complete PITA to fit to the perforated plate and slide into place at the bottom of the basket. It never fits the first time and takes about a half dozen attempts to secure at the bottom of the basket. The issue is that the silicone seal pulls away from the perforated plate, leaving a gap through which particulates can escape. My first 30 minutes of any brew day is spent simply trying to get this piece together.

The solution I’ve found to this problem is lubrication, a lot of it. Simply ensuring the basket, perforated plate, and silicone seal are wet isn’t enough lubrication to get the false bottom to slide into place. Lately, I have been fully submerging the basket, seal, and plate in water, then slidding everything into place. This method isn’t foolproof but seems more successful than the Grainfather recommended method.

The second problem I’ve had with the Grainfather is the post-boil transfer process. In simple terms, it takes too long and the filter is prone to clogging. I have found it critical to use hop bags to lesson the chance that the filter gets clogged. A strong whirlpool is also critical to ensuring trub and gross stays in the kettle instead of transferring to the fermentor. However, I’ve also found that a whirlpool step is leading to further hop isomerization and adding a considerable amount of bitterness to the final beer. Accounting for this is proving difficult as most of the bitterness formulas do not add IBUs for post-boil steps. The result of all this are beers more bitter that I intended. I have yet been able to reliably account for this in recipes.