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Back to Homebrewing
I have rekindled my love for homebrewing. I’m once again back in a house with space and I have room for all the toys and necessary equipment. In my giddiness I couldn’t help myself and purchased all new brewing equipment. As is common with hobbies I went completely overboard and upon receiving this last month’s credit card bill I felt a tad guilty. However, after a brew day under my belt and my first keg of Founders Breakfast Stout clone kegged and carbonated, I feel vindicated in my irresponsible purchase decisions. This post will simply highlight the new brewing setup. As I learn more about the equipment I’ll go deeper into likes and dislikes.
Brewing Equipment
- Grainfather G30 Connect
- Grainfather sparge water heater
- Blichmann G4 Conical Fermenter
Dispensing Equipment
- Kegland Series X kegerator
- 4 ball lock soda kegs
I wanted to go electric with this brewing setup. My experience with propane in the past was that propane is finicky and imprecise. I had a hard time holding temperatures even with expensive pots. Put simply, getting consistent numbers from batch to batch proved difficult. My theory is that by moving to electric, I’ll be able to increase consistency of my beers. Furthermore, the integrated pump on the grainfather takes a lot faff out of the brew day and makes chilling and transferring less of a MacGyver trick. The Grainfather app was also a pleasant surprise and together with the bluetooth connectivity means I get to spend more time drinking and reading during brew day and less time checking clocks and thermometers.
The Grainfather sparge water heater is wholly unnecessary. I figured it would be convenient. While it is convenient, I found two major problems with it. First, between it, the G30, and all the other things I have running in the garage, I blow a fuse if I use them simultaneously. Second, the water levels are off by about 15% so I had to make my custom markings before brew day.
Finally the Blichmann G4. So far I love this thing. First and foremost, I love it because it looks cool. But second the features are super slick. The aseptic valve makes taking samples clean and easy and does not expose the beer to any nasties of this world. Racking is also easy using the aseptic valve, with the caveat that you’ll need to elevate the fermentor. I did have one messy learning experience that is worth a share. I thought I would get the beer off the cold break and yeast cake but dumping the cake through the bottom of the fermentor. When I opened the valve it all came out super slow, and then all at once beer shot out of it leaving half a gallon of beer on my brewery floor. Finally, I have dreams of proper temperature controlled fermentations and lager brewing and the blichmann cooling system seemed to be the best engineered solution on the market and will make a nice addition sometime later this year.
As far as the new kegerator goes, Kegland seems to be a respectable company out of Australia and the Series X kegerator fits 4 soda kegs inside. What really drew me to their kegerators though were their duotight fittings and ball lock disconnects. The dutotight fittings from kegland are far supioror to the old hose clamps I used in the past. I’m useless with a wrench and hardware and these fittings were no fuss and dead simple to use. My only knock on kegland is that they don’t seem to sell pre-made gas manifolds and the kegerator itself doesn’t have a clear spot to screw in a gas board. I have since ordered all the various duotight parts necessary to build a gas manifold with inline pressure regulators so I can run kegs at different pressures, so we’ll see how I get on with that. Gold help me if I muster the courage to take a drill bit my shiny new fridge…