I’m receiving a Robobrew unit today with an agreement with MoreFlavor that I will write a detailed review. Does anyone have specific questions about the system that you want answered?
After the winter we had I've been looking at the v3. I'm curious how long it takes to boil and cool even though were at different altitudes, how well it holds the set temperature and how good it vorlaufs with the screens. Also like to know if you get a stuck mash. It seems like a good system.
“Recommended max. grain bill - 18 lbs.” If you assume an efficiency of 60% it would appear that the highest OG beer you can brew (5-6 gallon batch) is 1.073. Is this the biggest full volume beer that Robobrew can produce? Cheers!
My intent if I want to do big beers is to do reiterated mashes. I’ve heard some robobrew users claim 90% efficiency. I’ll be crushing to ASBC recommendations and confirming my crush with a malt sieve.
Is there any way to roughly translate that to malt mill gap setting? For example, I use a Barley Crusher set at the factory default setting of 0.039". Would that be close to "ASBC recommendations"? Please report back what efficiency you obtained (with other needed information like amount of malt, etc.). Cheers!
Without a sieve, your best bet is what you’re doing. All grain needs different mill settings for it to be accurate. For example, the Maris Otter I use needs a much tighter gap than the Weyermann Pils that I use. For roasted Barley, I use a very wide gap since it is so brittle already.
Personally, my approach to efficiency as a home brewer was very different to how I approach it commercially. My last commercial brewhouse it was only possible to get about 80% efficiency since the lauter tun was not nearly as wide as it should have been. Above 15°P and we were looking at more like 75% efficiency. At our volume, that meant we were blowing an extra $250k in grain every year in comparison to a well designed system with 90-93% efficiency. At home, I don’t like to be under 70% just because it feels wasteful, but I don’t feel like 90% efficiency is a goal worth trying to achieve, especially if it means longer lauters.
I would love to know where the line falls in regards to crush setting and optimum efficiency versus optimum flavor. Amazing efficiency is cool and all but can’t it also lead to negative aspects in the overall flavor profile of the beer? I know Kimmich has said he wouldn’t be allowed to make Heady the way he does in someone else’s brewery, his final running’s are rather high in gravity. Which means a lower efficiency correct?
I’ve heard that interview with John when he said that they stop collecting at 5-7°P and it sounds to me like he’s describing exactly what everyone does when they brew a high gravity beer. Your efficiency will always suffer as the gravity increases and you will always leave behind higher gravity runnings.
So this is a bit of an open-ended question, but I would be curious how compatible the Robobrew is with "LODO" brewing practices. In particular I can't tell how the sparge works from the description online, but more generally I would be curious if it's suitable for someone trying to brew LODO beers.
As far as efficiency vs flavor, I think there is some myth about too good of extraction resulting in tannins and polyphenols. In a properly designed system, you should stop collecting runnings when the runnings are at 2°P. For most of us, with mid gravity beers, we aren’t getting near that. When you design a brewhouse, you should optimize the width of the lauter tun to the average gravity wort you want to produce. My lauter tun is a little wider than most because it is designed for optimal conditions for 17°P wort. I can go down to 12°P and up to 22°P without sacrificing too much efficiency or risking off flavors. Anything below 12°P and I have to stop collecting and dilute the kettle to get to the correct gravity. I do that pre boil, lots of brewers dilute post boil. Above 22°P and I’ll have a very slow lauter and significantly lower efficiency. But so many factors go into that also... again, checking crush with a malt sieve being a big one of them. Too fine a crush and your efficiency might go up, but so will your tannin extraction because you will have ground portions of the husk into a flour. Then there’s mash filters which can get nearly 100% efficiency and don’t sacrifice flavor to get there.
There are a few different recommendations depending on the amount of rollers and the type of system. I use ASBC 1: 2000 micron 1400 1000 600 250 150
Could you explain or link a reference? Sounds like you use 6 sieves in conjunction. Do you then weigh out portions from each particle size, with some sort of formula like Z% particle size a, Y% particle size b, etc.?
Yeah, so you want an assortment of each particle size. I’m not near my notebook and I don’t have them memorized, but if I remember correctly, it’s something like the largest pieces (husks) should account for 27% of the total weight, the coarse flour should account for 7%, and the fine flour should account for 3%. Don’t quote me exactly on those numbers though. Then when you have it separated by size you should look at the color of the fine flour and you don’t want to see it tan which would indicate that you ground some of the husk into a flour. It is hard to get the numbers to work out completely correctly and it took milling a couple hundred pounds of each type of malt I use. Then I check periodically to make sure it hasn’t shifted and I check when the lot number changes for each malt. When I don’t use the sieve on a brewday, I still do a visual inspection for any abnormalities.
Here is a presentation with more detailed info and a slightly different procedure... http://www.craftbrewersconference.com/wp-content/uploads/ImprovingBrewhouseEfficiency-Havig.pdf
There’s a great MBAA podcadt from this Spring on brewhouse efficiency with Van as well. It’s super informative. I’d be interested to see how course of a grind he’s talking about as it sounds rather course. Looks like it’s similar to a Grainfather in execution which is what I’ve probably got 100-120ish brews on. Interested to hear your opinion and if you can come up with the best way to get optimum efficiency. With the Grainfather mill setting makes a huge difference but it has more to do with how fast your runoff is when sparging than anything else I think. Fine mill setting (less than .04) and the bed compacts, sparge is slow, efficiency is good. Course mill setting and the Sparge is way too fast and efficiency sucks. Same with if you condition your grain, at least for me. Efficiency went way down just due to short sparge time. The more adjuncts actually the better I’ve found. Never had a stuck Sparge and they slow everything way down so efficiency improve. I seem to get better efficiency with a slightly thinner mash as well. These devices might be better if they were shorter and wider but again small footprint is one of their selling features. Also I end up using something similar to a nylon bag on the outside of the basket to catch as many of the lose particles as possible. When you mill finer so much particulate will make it through the bottom screen and into the kettle. Nylon strainer bag helped that big time. Also no you can’t technically brew “Lowdo” on these unless you install a pulley system to lift the basket very slowly as to create no splashing. This might be my biggest beef with these types of systems and does make me question what impact all that splashing of the wort has on my beer? Maybe none? I don’t know, but I wonder.
Also reading that presentation bring up another question yet again... Recommended Mash PH and temp measurement. I always assume mash PH is stated at room in textbooks and when professional brewers talk and everything I read says it should be much lower than that for many other reasons than effficiency... confused again And again And again
