Strange BrewBC-50900 The Grain Father - All Grain Brewing System (120V)

Brewers, this is amazing! Since the purchase, I have brewed six 5 gallon all grain batches from my kitchen. Mashing grains has never been easier or cleaner. The only reason I haven’t brewed more is that I’ve filled all my kegs.The process still takes about 4 hours from mash to final cleaning. Still, the Bluetooth functionality from your phone allows you to walk away and get other things done around the house.A couple of things to know:1. I have brewed from 7% beers to 5% beers, IBU’s from 25-70. For higher ABV beers, the mashing takes longer and for big hoppy beers, trub permeates the system. This unit can handle big beers, just make sure you run a good cleaner and sanitizer after each use.2. I use the hop spider rather than mesh bags or directly pitching the hops. I have not noticed any loss of hop flavor or bitterness. Quite a bit of trub makes it out of the spider, but it reduces the clutter around the pump filter and the machine runs more smoothly. I’ve also used the hop spider for other ingredients added for flavor.3. The grainfather website and app are amazing. They keep all your recipes on file and step you through the whole process from mash to drink. It’s a free database that records the OG and FG and finally ABV. It also helps calculate the style of beer you want, quantity of grains and hops for ABV, IBU, color and clarity.4. I brew at 4,500 ft altitude. Boil temp at this altitude is 206, not 212. I can adjust the grainfather to hit the boiling target I want. I would recommend placing the lid on the grainfather and covering the hole on top to increase the boil roll. This requires high temp gloves or pot holders to remove and replace the lid.5. The wort chiller is phenomenal! I can plug the blue cool line to my sink, run the red expel line back into the sink, turn on the pump and cool the wort from 206 degrees tp 65 degrees in 35 minutes. So amazing!This unit with the control box is totally worth the investment in time, quality of beer brewed, and experimentation. Brew on my friends!

Don't buy this thing until they fix the clogging issue... they say it won't clog, it will. They say they've tested it and they never had an issue... I find that very hard to believe. Six brew days now and six clogs.With hop bags. Without hop bags.With whirl pooling. Without whirl pooling.With the safety valve in. Without the safety valve in.I've flushed the pipes. I've cleaned the thing repeatedly.No matter what, this thing clogs when it comes time to chill.It works okay for mashing and on a 110v outlet the boil is just enough provided that you purchased the coat or made one.I might use it again but no chance that will involve the counter flow chiller.More than likely, I'm going back to the old Igloo mash tun.Not worth the money until the fix the design (that being said, if they do, it would be a nice product).

I was very excited to order my GrainFather, I live in city apartment so I thought it would be great. It has issues coming to a boil, the boil off rate is horrible. It constantly gets clogged, it has a safety reset that will randomly kick on mid boil and turn off the heating before you know about it. Constant issues with power, it cannot use an extension cable or anything like that. This brew system that is meant to be easy, is in reality not. I would not purchase this item again.

I acquired one of these through their Kickstarter in 2015.I've brewed maybe 10 batches in it since then.As others have noted, it's a pretty simple process. Fill it with water, heat that to mash temp, stir in the grain, turn on the recirculation pump, and wait until the mash is finished. Lift out the grain basket and position it over the kettle. Pour in sparge water, wait for it to drain, set aside the basket, and discard the grain. Set the controls to boil, boil the wort, then use the included counter flow chiller to almost-instantly bring the wort down to yeast-pitching temperature.Cleanup involves running powdered brewer's wash and hot water through the unit, gently scrubbing off any residue, and rinsing well with water. Cleaning the grain basket is a bit more of a nuisance since it comes apart and has to be cleaned inside and out, but isn't bad. You're talking about maybe 20 minutes to do all the cleanup.If you follow the manual's instructions and take some time to learn about all-grain brewing, you'll get good beer out of The Grainfather on a consistent basis. Skip steps or don't follow them correctly, and you'll find you have issues here and there because of it.The unit has a built-in scorch protection feature in the form of a thermal cut-off switch that will "pop" and turn off the heating element. To get the brew back on track, you'll have to clear any sediment off the heating element in the bottom of the kettle using a spoon or paddle, then tilt the unit so that you can reset the switch, which is inexplicably located underneath the unit in the very center. There is no visible warning that this has occurred except that you notice your wort temperature consistenly dropping. The switch could be better located and an audio-visual warning (beep, blinking light) would be helpful.The counter flow wort chiller is amazing to use. When my wort is at a 212F boiling temperature and my tap water is about 57F, the wort coming out of the chiller is about 64-65F. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes to pump all the wort out of the kettle, so you're basically chilling 5 gallons of beer from boiling to 64F in 10-15 minutes. That blows the doors of immersion chillers and other methods I've used.Generally speaking, from ingredient measuring through the end of cleanup, it takes me about six and a half hours to brew a batch of beer with The Grainfather. Your mileage may vary. That's longer than my extract brews took, and longer than some of my friends with propane based setups take.The Grainfather folks support the unit well. If you ask questions, you'll generally get an answer within 24 hours.Although this is not intended to do extract brewing, you COULD use it for that. If you do, I recommend dissolving liquid extract elsewhere before introducing it to the kettle or you'll trip the scorch protection - which is pretty sensitive to liquid malt. The advantages to using this in extract brewing stem from being able to steep your grains in a device that maintains temps well and the amazing counter flow chiller.The biggest issues I've had with the device involve grain sediment plugging up the pump filter and causing it to have trouble circulating wort or pumping it into the fermenter and accidentally tripping that scorch protection switch (which means tilting the entire unit full of hot wort to reach it). Apart from these complaints, it seems to be a reliable and well-made device.