These are comments from my first use of mine and some from a fellow user.
After a comment by madscientist in his feedback on my recipe, I rang my supplier of the Braumeister to check on full volume mashing ala BIAB. They said a full volume mash was fine to do and the guy I spoke to has a 20L version and that's what he does. So we went full volume and didnt sparge, just left the malt pipe to drain into a pot and added back those runnings. I think we collected about 2L.
The malt pipe wasn't quite full with water but was when we mashed in.
We made a mistake putting the grain in, essentially we left the pumps running so the malt pipe overflowed and we ended up with a lot of grain outside the malt pipe, we ended up with maybe 2kg of grain as trub, this was present during the boil as we didnt realise just how much was there until we drained into the fermentors.
This didn't seem to affect the pumps but when we cleaned them we found a lot of grain inside, this cleaned out easy enough.
My supplier emphasised making sure it was level to get an even flow over the full rim of the MP otherwise efficiency would suffer.
On two or three occasions we had water spurting out
, we took the top plate off and stirred and this fixed it up. After the 2nd or 3rd time it didn't happen again. I have since read elsewhere (AHB I think) that this can happen until the grain is fully soaked or if too fine. Mine was crushed for me and I don't think it was fine but it's my first all grain so what would I know ? Some of our numbers were off, we didnt hit GIB or GAW not sure why
but I think the efficiencies are still OK for our 1st all grain and a new system. I did add at least 2L too much water due to my lack of understanding of TWN & SWN, this would not have helped but probably not the total cause. I have read that a 90 min mash helps efficiency especially with larger grain bills.We had a couple of other minor issues/learnings, the Braumeister stops the clock if the temp falls too low, which we didnt realise. we were outside and it got windy and wet at one point (unit was under cover) so it was hard to maintain the rolling boil, when the temp drops (below 98 I think) the clock stopped until temp came up again so our boil was longer than planned. on a manual assessment it was more like 90mins instead of the planned 60mins.
[quote="Lylo"]...I found that to keep a good vigourous boil going, I put a double layer of tin foil over 1/2 the kettle and push it down a bit in the center so that condensation drips back into the pot rather than down the sides of the BM. I also use the insulation jacket.[quote="Lylo"]
I emailed my supplier about the boil and he pretty much said what Lylo said, he suggested leaving the lid half on (which we did do and it worked) but I like Lylo idea. Seems a pain but my supplier said its due to being outside in the cold without a thermo jacket. I guess the elements just aren't big enough.
[quote="Lylo"]I am really liking the system and the flexiblilty it gives me. Have you found any other good BM sites?
I like these http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/57118 ... cks/page-1
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/speidel ... er-229225/[quote="Lylo"]
I haven't found any other sites, I have read both these threads, some good points in there. I also listened to the podcast with the award winning brewer who has a BM, I think it was on J.Palmers podcast?
[quote="Lylo"]BIABrewer.info is still my go to site for accurate and well presented info.
I think that the BM system is so similar to BIAB that most infor and ideas are very applicable to us. Have fun with it and welcome to the best beer site going.[quote="Lylo"]
Completely agree Lylo I have had nothing but positive feedback/comment since joining.
from me!If anyone else has one perhaps you can share your experiences.
Cheers
