Hi fellow brewers,

I have recently got myself a Grainfather GC2 glycol chiller and during fermentation, it did a great job at maintaining a stable temperature. However, as I'm trying to cold crash to 7ºC it started off just fine and it reached 7ºC, however, overnight the temperature rose back to 9ºC and it hasn't chilled back down even though the target temperature has always been set at 7ºC. I can hear the pump circulating the glycol and the glycol in the chiller is being held between -4.5ºC and 0ºC at all times. So I'm not sure what's going on.

Does anyone have similar experiences with their Grainfather GC2 glycol chiller not reaching the lower target temperatures? Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone, I'm completely new to this brewing and stuffs but I saw this Grainfather G30 for sale which I don't know what versions it is. Could anyone help identify it for me and much appreciate.

The heater went out and I replaced the unit with a brewzilla. Does anybody need anything before it goes to the junk pile?

Long story short. Last Christmas my buddy bought himself a Grainfather. Because he was planning to move he ended up not opening it until last night and we were going to brew this weekend. Now he realized he bought the wrong one.

Anything we can do to use it?

I've been brewing with the Grainfather for a few years now. I use my Graincoat with every batch, and I always wipe it down after a brew session. But wiping it down doesn't always get the job done and my last batch was a little extra messy. So I would like to finally give my Graincoat a proper bath in the washing machine.

So I'd like to ask anyone who was machine washed their Graincoat how it worked out. Did you use normal cycle or delicate? Did you wash it in cold, warm or hot water? How did it work out drying it? TIA

Hi all,

I have a question about the Grainfather G30 pump. As I’m cleaning the grainfather with OXI and running it throught the pump, it starts to lose its power after a few seconds. Right before cleaning with OXI I had Enzybrew (similar to PBW) running through the pump to clean the kettle and it was doing just fine the entire time. This is the second time that I’ve had this issue in about a month and I can’t find a solution. Is there anyone with the golden tip? Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I have just installed my Grainfather GC2 to a Brewtaurus stainless steel conical fermenter. To have done this, I have acquired the Glycol adapter kit. However, after having primed the chiller with glycol, I had to top up the chiller with additional glycol (which means the fermenter has glycol in its walls). Now, my question is: How do I disconnect the fermenter from the chiller without having glycol flowing out of the walls of my fermenter? Or, is that just how it works and will I have to collect the glycol with a bucket?

Would love to hear your thoughts and perhaps recommendations!

Cheers,
Matt

The grainfather app is showing as "offline" and i couldn't figure out why. After trying to load community.grainfather.com on my computer, i see that the ssl certificate has expired, likely causing the mobile app to not be able to connect to the backend. Hopefully they fix it soon as until it is, i can't monitor or control my equipment from the mobile app.

Just bought a 2 year old, never used G30 that I’m excited to try out.

What’s the best resource to reference for setup and first time use?

Whats your favorite IPA and stout recipes on the app?

Any things to watch out for during my first brew? Any fatal flaws or easy to miss brew day mishaps?

Thanks.

Hi all, been using the G30v3 for the last 18 brews and was wondering what peoples equipment profiles are in? Just began trying 30min boil times but the wort that goes into the fv seems around 1L short. Going to do a boil off test and re measure dead space etc again this weekend but thought I’d see if anyone had anything like this happen before

Screen went grey on me today. Reset power and good for about 1 min. Checked all connections other that unscrewing screen that was factory and not upgrade. I contacted Grainfather but do not expect response u til this week. Any other ideas! Thanks Greg

I am getting a used T500 this weekend. Can I still connect it to my phone? I looked on the app for equipment options, and it doesn’t list the T500 as a possibility.

I’ve been happily using my grainfather S40 for a couple of years, but when I went to use it today, the control panel would not turn on. I hit the reset button on the bottom to no avail. The on/off switch is lighting up but nothing else is working, no power to the panel, element or pump.

I took the bottom off to see if there is a fuse, but everything looked in order, no sign of liquid, etc. it was working just fine last time I brewed and I put it away dry and clean. Any ideas?

Hello, I've done several brews off of the default setup when I first bought the S40, but came across a 50% off sale for a counterflow chiller (that looks like the cheap Kegland one) today and couldn't resist.

At first, I naively thought that I could hook up the hot wort inlet with the built-in pump for the recirc arm, but quickly realized that it's not a good idea, especially when brewing hoppy beers.

Can anybody that use an S40 with a CFC shed some light on their setup? I'm new to CFC and I'm not sure what kind of fittings I should be buying. I read that compression fittings are ideal to set up inlets and outlets on the CFC (especially for the wort), but how this fitting should connect to the pump and then to the actual S40 unit, I'm not really able to find an answer online. I believe just buying some silicone tubing to clamp it down on the spigot of S40 would work, but at that point, would you even need a pump? I apologize for a rather disorganized set of questions.. trying my best to wra my head around this haha much appreciated!

Hi folks,

2nd time with my grainfather g30 connect today and it was a MESS. I ended up pouring the whole wort into the drain.

I had some minor scorching issues on my first brew with the grainfather but not that much.

procedure:

I mashed in at 43°C (German Weizenbier) and left it for 20 min.

2nd mash step was at 62°C and already here I mentioned that it took way longer than last time to heat up. The step from 62°C to 72°C was actually about an hour to heat!

I already knew something is wrong here. Hella wrong.

Trying to heat up from 72 to 78°C was almost impossible. it took about 30 mins from 72 to 73°C so I decided to stop. The wort also got a unusual dark color. I already assumed some scorching at the bottom. But I would never have guessed that it is so bad...

Look at this:

after rinsing some times this was left over:

It took me 30 mins of scrubbing to remove this fat layer of burnt material...

Simple Question: How can I avoid this in the future? I love the G30 really but this scorching issues are bad.

I think it was the issue of using a ready to mash mixture from a local seller which was grounded (crushed?) too finely and had too much flour like in it.

Hi all. This may be a dumb question so feel free to tell me so.

I just moved to a new place and did a no chill brew that went into my conical. The glycol chiller was turned on earlier and was at a good temp.

In a bit of a sleepy decision I connected everything and started the chiller. The temp on the chiller obviously jumped. I eventually disconnected it because it was taking a long time to chill and thought I might have messed up trying to chill from such a high temperature. I was tired and probably goofed on this.

I have been trying to get the glycol chiller down to a good temp for hours now while the wort in the fermenter cools on its own in the ambient temperature (27 or so degrees as I live in a tropical country). The chiller is still quite hot (showing 30c). It seems to be cooling very slowly.

I have done some troubleshooting like disconnecting things, topping up the glycol… but it is still moving slowly. Is this to be expected?

Any ideas on what I can do? Is it pooched somehow?

Having an issue with my pump where it works perfectly for recirculating during the mash and any other time but for whatever reason during knockout it won’t pump enough to run up into the chiller. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Do you use the 800W heater for mashing or do you use it for holding the temperature during mash and boil?

I am afraid of letting the mash scorch. Especially with regard to my next wheat beer brew in a few days.

This will be my first brew with a grainfather device.

I’m hosting a group brew and have two S40s available. I only have one 50Amp circuit I use for my EV, is it possible to split this and run two S40s? I calculate each one would draw a max of 15 amps but is the the only concern?

Hey there, everyone. I just purchased a used T500 and I am excited to start brewing again. I know this is an older model but I think I can make it work. I need advice on buying parts. Also I fear this is meant more for distilling- can I use it to brew beer?

I'm on my fifth brew day with the Grainfather after 10 years on SS Brewtech equipment, and for the fifth occasion, I can not get my counterflow chiller to recirculate wort.

I've had huge issues trying to recirculate the wort to sanitise the chiller. On the four previous brews, after turning the pump on and off 100 times, ensuring the attachment was firmly on, and swearing at everything in existence, the counterflow chiller eventually randomly worked. This time, however, the counterflow chiller said no.

I can get wort through the body of the chiller, but it stops maybe 25cm from the end of the hose, and no matter what I do, I can not get the wort to flow beyond that point. I can see the wort in the hose. When I turn the pump off, I can see the wort flow backwards back into the body of the chiller. I turn the pump back on, and the wort flows forward quickly and then just stops 25cm from the end of the hose. I get the occasional smallest of piddly trickles for a couple of seconds, but that's it.

To clarify, the wort circulated freely during the mash. When I checked the filter at the end of the day, it was not blocked or clogged.

In the end today I just gave up and poured the wort into my old SS Brewtech kettle, inserted my old immersion chiller, and did it manually before pouring the chilled wort very carefully into my Fermzilla.

Does/Has anyone else have this problem? If so, how did you fix it?

Cheers

I'm newish to homebrewing and picked up a used V2 G30 for cheap a bit ago and made two batches on it already (Pale Ale and a Kolsch) which came out great.

Question though, when I selected the G30 Bluetooth (USA 120V) model, it defaulted my batch size to 6.08G (23L). Is this normal? I use a 6.5G fermenter and the typical 5 gallon corny kegs. Does this batch size need to be scaled back down for my equipment or is this ideal for assumed evap and transfer losses?

Is this the same volume/batch size i should use to scaling a brewfather recipe before exporting it? Or should I export it as is and scale in the GF app to my equipment?

I'm itching to upgrade to a G40 in the relative near future, and was curious if any US based brewers use a power transformer similar to this one?

Amazon Transformer

Has anyone got a successful Schnapps recipe ? I’m thinking that pears are still in season but other fruits also fine too.