Grainfather

Grainfather all-grain brewing systems

A Grainfather does the whole hot side in one vessel. Mash, sparge, boil and chill, on a single power point, with the pump and counterflow chiller built in. For most brewers it is the step that turns brew day from a garage full of pots into something you can run in a kitchen and finish in an afternoon. If you are coming from kits or extract, our guide to brewing beer at home sets out what changes when you move to all grain.

Australian Home Brewing is an authorised Grainfather dealer. That matters more than it sounds. Grey imports carry no Australian warranty, often ship with the wrong plug, and leave you without support when a pump or control box fails three years in. Everything here is genuine stock with the full manufacturer warranty and parts we can actually get.

G30 or Connect G30?

We stock the 30 litre system, which brews around 23 litres into the fermenter. It fits a kitchen bench, runs off a normal power point and handles every standard batch size. That is a deliberate choice rather than a gap in the range. For home brewing, 23 litres is the batch size almost everyone actually wants, and the money saved on a bigger boiler buys fermentation control that improves the beer far more.

• Grainfather G30 V3. The standard system. Manual control, everything you need for a full all-grain brew day in one vessel.
• Grainfather Connect G30 with Graincoat. The same system with Bluetooth connectivity, so you can run and monitor mash steps from your phone, bundled with the insulating Graincoat.

The honest advice: if you brew single-infusion mashes and stand near the thing anyway, the standard G30 is plenty. The Connect earns its money if you run step mashes, or if you would rather watch the mash from inside the house on a cold morning. Either way you will want our brewing calculators open on brew day for strike water, gravity and dilution.

Either way, most people are better served by the G30 plus a conical fermenter than by spending more on the hot side alone. Brew day capacity is rarely the bottleneck. Fermentation control usually is.

Conical fermenters and temperature control

This is where the beer is actually made, and where the Grainfather ecosystem earns its keep. Our guide to temperature control explains why it moves the beer further than anything on the hot side does.

• Conical Fermenter Pro. Stainless, with a cone that lets you dump trub and harvest yeast without opening the vessel.
• Cooling Pump Kit. Adds active temperature control, which is what separates consistent beer from beer that changes with the weather. Available bundled with the conical.
• GC42 Glycol Chiller. Stainless glycol chilling for brewers running lagers, or anyone who wants to hold a precise fermentation temperature through an Australian summer rather than hope.
• Pressure Transfer Unit. Moves finished beer to keg without picking up oxygen, which is the single biggest cause of beer going stale and dull in the keg.

Accessories worth having

The Graincoat is an insulating jacket that cuts heat loss during the mash and boil. It shortens time to boil, holds mash temperature more steadily, and reduces power draw. On a cold Melbourne brew day it is the difference between hitting your mash temperature and chasing it. High Performance cleaner is the Grainfather-specific cleaning powder, formulated for the pump and pipework rather than the general purpose stuff.

Every system ships Australia-wide from our Melbourne store, with the full manufacturer warranty and local support. We have been supplying Australian brewers since 1968, and we brew on these ourselves, so ask us before you spend the money rather than after.