As I am a newbie in the Grainfather club I have been watching your videos, however in no particular order. I was wondering about your frequent use of Kviek yeast and the scale limits of the Blichman. This review cleared everything up. I bought the wortometer with my GF before even seeing this. Thanks for all you practical advice!
I just cut up the original hose approx. 10cm from one end and then plugged the wortometer in between. Saved me from having to order/find an additional, fitting silicone tube.
Thanks for this review David! Immediately got one as i saw them go on sale over here in the Netherlands. Next big upgrade will be a conical fermenter, also per your recommendation! Please keep up doing your awesome videos!
Thanks for the review David. I always thought the Blichman Thrumometer was grossly over priced for what it is and would have been better £8 less than it is at most outlets. Though very handy the Blichman is, I look forward to the wortometer.
Hi David. Nice review. I missed a shot of the actual connection spot to see if this could connect to other types of digital thermometers besides the GF connect?
Thanks. I actually show this in other videos. The fit doesnt need to be the same. I find that as long as you have internal contact then most temp probes will return an accurate temperature.
Nice. I may want to get one. So far, I've just been using my handy Thermapen to keep tabs on temperature, but that requires me to occasionally pull the hose out the fermenter slightly to stick the probe into the outflow.
Oh man! Sorry that this is off topic but I have to unload it somewhere :) Today I was brewing my first beer in like 15 years. I've finally bought all the little nick-nacks and ingredients I need to do a brew, along with a small BIAB system. No Grainfather yet. So I did the whole mashing, sparging, boiling and cooling and everything went very well. I hit great numbers and I got a surprisingly clear wort and everything. So then I started transferring the wort to my fermentation bucket and to put the kettle on an angle I grabbed a kitchen towel and put it under the pot but it didn't really work that well so I adjusted the pot a little more and... the towel fell in my bucket! Damn it! The whole day's work spoiled! The language I expressed at that time should be heard by no man! The day was still a good learning experience overall, I realized that the 15.4L BIAB system isn't really big enough for my liking. I don't want to spend all day for only a few liters of finished beer, so I will definitely order a Grainfather pretty soon. The BIAB system is not wasted though, I will still need the pot to heat sparge water for a Grainfather brew. If I ever chose to use leaf hops I guess I would have a use for the bag as well. It's too coarse for pellet hops. I still put some yeast in it to see what I get but I don't have high hopes for that batch. 9L i got out of the brew day in total. Pretty strong though at 1.064 OG, I could probably have diluted it down a bit to 1.054 or something to get some more beer but with a flavor of dirty kitchen towel why bother?
Sounds like an Interesting day! You could find that it will be ok. The main concern is an infection. I would of brought it back up to the boil again to protect it.
A small update: my Kitchen Towel Ale has been bubbling away down in the basement at 18C all week and the activity has now come down significantly. I've been checking up on it several times over the week and it hasn't shown any signs of sickness so today I used my autosiphon to grab a sample of it to taste. Amazingly, it doesn't actually taste bad. It's clearly not finished yet but there are no traces of any infection. The color is deep golden, it's decently bitter, not over the top and the there is a noticable taste of alcohol so I think it's pretty strong yet one can still taste some sugar left. I used 9% Weyermann Caramunich 1 so I guess it will have some sugary taste even when finished. I didn't add too many hops to it, especially late addition hops because my idea is to make a hop tea on Azacca and mix that in when I bottle it. I'm only going to get about 6-8 liters from this batch so I will put it in one 5L party keg and a couple of bottles. I've ordered a Grainfather which I expect to arrive late next week so from thereon I will be able to brew proper batches. I figured I could have continued using the 15L pot and just do a series of batches over a couple of days but I've wanted a Grainfather for some time now so I figured I'd just go ahead and get one.
So my Kitchen Towel Ale stopped bubbling so I decided to put it into bottles. I measured the final gravity and it came to 1.013! With an OG of 1.064 that's almost 7% alcohol! Holy cow! There is an odd flavor in it but I'm not sure if it's kitchen towel, bacteria or just my recipe that didn't work. It's not outright bad, just a bit strange. Hopefully it will be better when I get some carbonation in it. I got one 5-liter party keg and 7x 0.5L bottles out of the batch. I wanted to make a hop tea with Azacca hops but I don't think I did it right because it's not very noticable. I put 15 grams of hops in a tea bag (those big ones you use to make a whole pot of tea) and heated 400 ml of water. When it boiled I took the pot off the stove and put the bag in and let it steep for 15-20 minutes but the hops swelled up to a big lump and I didn't get much taste out of it so I ripped open the bag and boiled another 300 ml of water and dumped the hops in it without the bag. All of this went into the fermenter, I lightly stirred it a bit with a sanitized spoon and let it sit for a while to let it mix and have the trub fall to the bottom again. I then proceeded to bottle it but I messed up quite a bit trying to get the bottle filler to work nicely with the autosiphon so I ended up with a huge amount of trub in my party keg. Now I guess I'll just have to wait a couple of weeks to get carbonation in it and see how ti turns out in the end. I am a bit surprised that the towel accident didn't actually ruin the batch completely, maybe the wort isn't as sensitive as everyone says it is?
Thanks for all your exellent videoes and sharing of knowledge. Watching your review of the BrewZilla 65, made my decision easier and according to your recommendation I replaced the original one for a CFC. Now looking for an inline thermometer and asking if the wortometer could be an option for me in combination with a regular dial type thermometer ? Any suggestions David - Finding one as short, with a probe that will fit the Wortometer might be difficult I guess.
Hi David. I've enjoyed watching your videos from Aus and I am new to brewing. Please explain to me the benefit of using the wortometer as opposed to simply re-circing back into the kettle until the existing temp probe reads close to pitching temp and then transferring to the fermenter?
Hi Luke, a counter flow chiller is not designed to be used that way. You will find if you use the CFC this way then it will be very slow. Use it the way it has been designed and it is very fast. I have made a couple of videos that explain its use fully:- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JRNdMxKaDIE.html
This looks great. How essential is the extra length of hose? Could you cut into the existing hose? And did you find any problems positioning it because you're limited to the length of the temperature probe cable?
Hi David, can PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) be used to clean the Wortometer? I see bare copper inside it so was curious as some people have issues with PBW and copper.
Maybe this is a very dumb question but what do you put in place of the temperature probe when you remove it from your Grainfather to put it in the wortometer and avoid the liquid coming out of the probe hole?
I’m new to brewing but wouldn’t a better way be to recirculate the wort in the G30 until it reaches your desired temperature and then stop the water flow and pump to the fermenter?
Or you could just stick a $5 thermometer in the wort flow. Once you've use the counter-flow a few times you get to know it, especially if you use the same tap/water source. I can set my tap pretty much bang on in one go and my wort comes out at about 18-20C. I let it cool to the lowest preferred temp of the yeast I'm going to use, pitch, then warm from there. What is the benefit of having a more accurate reading on the way out?
You can stick a thermometer in the wort flow sure but this is easier, just like the Thrumometer it offers convenience. Many people will find that the temperature of their water will vary, so the cooling results will vary also. The benefit of an accurate reading on the way out is that you can dial out the right temperature for your yeast.
Thanks for a great review! I have one question about the product, does the temperature probe make contact with the wort or is there a thermowell for it? I would also like to know, as a general question, how often do you cold crush?
No, the probe has no contact with the wort. I seldom cold crash personally. I find Irish miss in the boil and using gelatin before bottling work really well.
Hi David! I decided to add to my system a thermometer of some kind (at the moment just using a regular thermometer at the end of the hose and that is just time consuming an inconvenient). I am using GF system and was thinking of adding Bicman thrumometer. The thing is I don’t feel comfortable of replacing the systems probe all the time. Doesn’t it wear out in time? Is it safe to do it every brew? Blickmans product is fixed and if it brakes I can just throe it out. Not shore if I can do anything if the probe wears out or contact messes up from moving it. What is your experience? Best regards!
If what you are using is working and accurate then really no need to change. No need for a replacement of the systems probe, mine is still going strong after using these and over 400 Brews.
Dear David, i have a question about the fuse, in the new (2nd edition) grainfathers i heard they moved the fuse instead of the mash/boil button, and now i bought it and it seems that this button is now a fuse, but still the fuse underneath the grainfather remains and the only time in reset it was the one underneath. do you have a second edition grainfather and does it reset sometimes? Thank you very much.
Hi :) Yes, I have the first edition GF. All GF units can reset. This is caused by having too many small particles on the bottom plate that leads to hot spots. Usually a less fine graincrush will solve this.
Great overall review, but I do think you're not doing the Blichman device justice by omitting the fact, that the wortometer obviously is only useful if/when connected to the Grainfather's electronic unit. Otherwise it's just a fairly useless piece of metal. The Blichman device has an actual temperature reading included so it can also be used much more independently on any setup. Of course, when comparing in the context of a Grainfather setup the wortometer clearly comes out on top for all the reasons you've listed. :)
Thank you. I thought that I made it clear that this product is really designed for just GF users? Having said that I actually use it with other brewing systems also by simply adding a temp probe. You can see this in many of my recent videos where I use other equipment with the CFC that I have attached this to. It works very nicely like this also :)
Thanks for the review David. Did you try any method of confirming the accuracy of the reading? I ask because on other thermo probes I have used I have found they are only accurate around the range at which they were calibrated. Is the GF probe accurate at both 65-70 deg for mashing and also down at 20 or less for chilling?
Hi Gary, nice to hear from you. Yes I tested this extensively when I did the brewing system comparison videos. See the data there. I also did a test on the wortometer and found it to be accurate to the degree Celsius. The response time is fast when going up and down. All reassuring stuff. I was going to add this data to this video but settled for wording around accuracy instead. I try my best to lower the watch times where I can!
Glad you found it useful :) For my statement on pronunciation please see this video!!! :- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XtAQmlODNLY.html
The wortometer is great, but how do you clean it? It is made out of copper and it’s plated on the outside. Copper doesn’t rust, but it corrodes and make at green layer on the surface after som time. I have tried to clean it, but the tube that the temp.probe goes into gets in the way. So how do YOU do it?
I run it as part of my cleaning routine. I also run pbw through the CFC (also copper) with it attached every 3 brews or so. This keeps everything in check nicely :)
Hi Dave, great idea from GF. It’s $25 bucks in New Zealand. Does it work on the Original Control Box ? On the GF website it says to be used with the blue tooth connect box. Cheers
I would buy the Brewzilla 35L. It may not have a fancy controller but it has more up to date heating elements and camlocks as standard, plus a false bottom. I would buy an after market counter flow chiller for it but I would still have a saving in price, even adding this to it compared to a GF.
The temperature inside the hose is significantly lower than that of the whole wort. From my experience with the G30 while chilling - as soon as the main temp control goes below 70C, I start racking into a fermentor. The temp inside the actual chiller is 25C maximum at that point (I only brew saisons/wild ales).
So you use this to determine when the wort is cool enough to transfer to the fermentor, and you recirculate via the counterflow chiller back into the grainfather, and not straight into the fermentor? Doesn't that take much longer to cool?
Is the temperature probe i direct contact with the worth, or is it in an enclosed part of the wortometer? (Do I need to sterelize the probe, or just the wortometer?)
There is no issue with this on the Wortometer. To be fair, as I mentioned in this review, there is no issue with boiling wort on the Thrumometer either. I know Blichmann say not to but I have done this way over 100 times without any adverse effects.
Just had my temp say 67 F was like nice pulled hose out and started to transfer to fermenter. Then my temp started to rise all the way to 120 F I was like what the F
This gadget seems futile. The grainfather chiller will chill wort to the temperature of the incoming water in a single pass, you just need to measure what that is.
Its important information as far as I am concerned. Like many I used a Blichmann thrumometer before this came along for this purpose. Its about timing and control.
