Anyone ever heard of the Grainfather? It’s supposedly an all in one system currently sold in New Zealand & Australia. I stumbled across this on Kickstarter where they’re trying to raise cash to bring it to the US. I don’t have the space to go all grain, but this looks like a really compact system that could make it possible for me to go all grain. Thoughts? Thanks
I’m very eagerly awaiting a bit more detail, but this appears to do what the Braumeister and Picobrew do (all electric, ability to step mash) at a much lower cost. Doesn’t have quite as many bells and whistles as either of the options I just mentioned, but at half the cost it’s a fair trade-off IMO.
I showed this to some friends and everyone was worried on how this thing can keep a decent boil running on only a 1,600 watt element. The Grainfather folks said they will post a video in the next few days showing that it can boil vigorously enough. There are videos all over YouTube of the AU/NZ/UK 2000w version, and it definitely has a nice rolling boil, so we’ll see once that gets released. They’ve stated it carries a 7% boil-off/hour rate for the US version, but I’m guessing if you wrapped it in reflective insulation, you could push that up a few more %, which I for one would be more comfortable with. 7%/hour might be fine, but that’s getting into the gray area where there is some debate about whether you are boiling off enough.