The Grainfather

I walked into my local homebrew shop today and Julie (who shall be called Sue) said “have you seen my Grainfather?”

I’d never heard of this thing. I’d seen some stuff about the PicoBrew Zymatic, which is a box that you pour grain into and beer comes out the other end (after waiting a while and taking $2000 out of your bank account). This is the breadmaker of the homebrew world.

But the Grainfather is a bit different – this is a mash tun, boiler and wort chiller all built into one device. You still have to do the actual brewing, but it’s all done with the one piece of equipment.

How does it work? Well it looks like this:

(Image from http://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/)

So it’s a five gallon boiler with a recirculating pump built into the bottom (left hand side on this photo). This allows you to mash with a temperature controlled heater (the black box on the side).

Once the mash is done, the grains are lifted up in a sort of inner basket, which allows the wort to drain below and sparge water to be added.

Once all the wort is collected, the Grainfather becomes a boiler and boils your brew. Finally the pump is used to pump your wort through the counterflow chiller (right hand side of the top photo) and into your fermenter.

Neat!

And the price? £599. But if you were starting out you wouldn’t need to buy a boiler (£150), a mash tun (£75) or a chiller (£75). OK, so the Grainfather is twice that, but it’s still pretty cool.