Grainfather finally bought and quickly delivered by The Maltmiller. Grainfather, Sparge heater, paddle, aeration stick, grain coat, hopspider, wortometer, storage bag, few more extras and a keg and attachments.
Never brewed beer before so started off with a DIYDOG kit from BrewUK, that has everything you need in it to make Punk IPA, you can also find all the ingredients for there whole back catalogue on the Brewdog Website.
Fairly easy to assemble, sliding the perforated plate down the inner basket drove my patience but got there in the end. Download the Grainfather app and connect it to the Grainfather, then you can either load up a pre made recipe or write your own and then your phone will alert you to next step along the way.
All set up and ready to go, Add required water and start the program or boil to 67'C. Insert the inner basket and add the 2 bags of grains, Extra Pale and Caramalt.
Make sure you have the Grainstopper in when adding grain then slide on the top perforated plate down to the top of the grain bed.
Once that's done, remove the grainstopper, i got the additional overflow filter to stop any grain going back into the overflow pipe so put that on top of plate first then place overflow inlet in the middle.
Attach recirculation pipe and away you go.
That then recirculates for 75 minutes at 67'C releasing and breaking down the sugars in the grain.
Halfway through the mash the app will alert you to fire up the sparge heater to get the water at the right temp in time. the last ten minutes of mash temp increases to 75'C and your sparge water should also be that temp. Then its just a case of inserting the handle and lifting up the inner basket and turning 45 degrees to get the 4 feet to stand on the support ring. Pour the hot water through the inner basket, not all at one go, there shouldn't be more than an inch of water above the top perforated plate. So let it drain through before adding more.
Once all the sparge water is in the grainfather body, remove the inner basket all together.
Mash then boils at 100'C for an hour and you add hops as you go, this mash wanted Chinook and Ahtanum Hops at the start, same again after 30 minutes then with 5 minutes to go add Chinook, Ahtanum, Simcoe and Nelson Sauvin.
The only thing that went wrong was this part, i put the lid on and it boiled over at the beginning which resulted in hops everywhere and a lot more cleaning to do, does say in the instructions don't put lid on but of course i didn't read them haha, lesson learnt.
Now to chill the wort/mash to put into fermenter. Put the lid back on and attach the counterflow wort chiller, at first put the outlet pipe back into the mash and turn the pump on for a few minutes this then sterilizes the pipes. Attach the Blue pipe to your cold water tap and turn on, make sure the red is in your sink. When you feel the outlet pipe getting cool you can then turn off the pump and then put the outlet pipe into your fermentation bucket/vessel. Turn the pump back on and let it fill up.
Hydrometer showing 1.044, target on recipe was 1.053 but for my 1st attempt I am very happy with how it went. I will now slightly cheat as this will only give a projected ABV of around 4.3% so i will add 500g or sugar that ive melted in a pan with boiling water this gives around 1.009 increase so perfect to bring it up to target.
Now give it a good aeration, there are many ways to do it but i have a special paddle to churn it all up, this will oxygenate and help fermentation. I put a heater in there especially at this time of year to keep it at 19/20'C and then pitch yeast.
We still have more hops to add after fermentation, recipe states its best to add once fermentation is complete and to add the hops for 5 days to get the best aromas.
Now we wait.
Any questions or advice il be happy to accept any.