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Anyone buy a Guten?


Fergy1987

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2 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

Ha, it was that woman's video about the Guten, which got me to get one. 🙂 

I agree with @Norris! Although I want to know how he knocks over a brew day in 3 hours 🙂 I usually start at 9 in the morning and finish by 2 in the afternoon, so about 5 hours. That includes cleaning up, soaking the bits in sodium percarb and filling the kettle with the same to soak overnight. I must say, I do run the Guten at 2200W, not on full power. I'm not even sure full power is possible. 240V on a 10A circuit allows for 2400W, so 2500W might be a little more it can handle. and I have a Bluetooth sound bar attached to the same outlet. So the lower power setting makes things a little slower when heating up but I don't think it makes more than 5-10 minutes overall. 

 

I have only done it twice, but I set up the night before, mill the grains and add the water to the Guten.

Next morning I get up and start the Guten and when it gets to temp mash in, but only a 60min mash, no mash out and then right into the boil with a 60 min boil. I clean the malt pipe during the boil and everything I can. Then drain into a cube and wash down the guten and then fill a little ways to heat up to a 70c or so to add sodium perc, once the water is clear and ran through the pump, I rinse out let dry and have a beer.  It takes less than 3 and half hours but closer to 3 and some change, maybe 10 minutes.

 

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1 hour ago, Norris! said:

I have only done it twice, but I set up the night before, mill the grains and add the water to the Guten.

Next morning I get up and start the Guten and when it gets to temp mash in, but only a 60min mash, no mash out and then right into the boil with a 60 min boil. I clean the malt pipe during the boil and everything I can. Then drain into a cube and wash down the guten and then fill a little ways to heat up to a 70c or so to add sodium perc, once the water is clear and ran through the pump, I rinse out let dry and have a beer.  It takes less than 3 and half hours but closer to 3 and some change, maybe 10 minutes.

 

I think I will have to streamline my operation a little. If I can get things down to 3.5h, I can brew 2 batches per brew day and give myself a weekend off every now and then. Most weekends are dictated by brewing. Saturday is usually bottle day and Sunday is brew day. 

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21 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

I think I will have to streamline my operation a little. If I can get things down to 3.5h, I can brew 2 batches per brew day and give myself a weekend off every now and then. Most weekends are dictated by brewing. Saturday is usually bottle day and Sunday is brew day. 

Probably do not have to do much more than rinse off the gunk between brews too.

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4 hours ago, Hairy said:

I find that the temp of the sparge water stops it from boiling. Any slow sparges I have had have finished with the temp in the mid to high 90's but never hit boiling. Perhaps one day I will learn a lesson.

The Grainfather, in programmed mode with the app, seems to hold off the boil around 96-97°C if the sparge goes overly long.

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29 minutes ago, Norris! said:

Yes it does. You can get a cord called an amphibian to plug it into any outlook or upgrade your outlet for 15a.

https://www.bunnings.com.au/our-range/brands/a/ampfibian

Yes but an amphibian in any of its models only adapts (legally) a 15 amp plug to a 10 amp outlet, it does not allow you to use more power (watts) by pulling more amps through your 10 amp circuit.  You may be able to draw slightly more than the 10 amps from your standard 10 amp outlet (using the amphibian adapter) provided there are no other devices or appliances on the same 10 amp wire from the meter box. The only difference with a 15 amp outlet is that is has no other outlets on that circuit whereas a 10 amp may have several outlets on its circuit.

Remember the circuit breaker or fuse is not there to protect the appliance or the devices, its there to protect the wiring between the meter box and your outlets / appliances.  You do not want your wiring in your roof or walls glowing like a toaster element.

The amphibian does not magically boost your power available and if you look at the circuit breaker in the amphibian it will be a 16 amp job the same as all the standard 10 amp outlets hang off in your meter box.  I know, I have one, and amphibian max and use it for my caravan when running it off a Honda 2 kVA generator which only has a 10 amp outlet.

I suggest save your money on buying an amphibian (unless you have another need for it as per above caravan scenario) and spend the money on getting a licensed sparkie to install a dedicated 15 amp outlet for your brew gear, that is if you require more than 2400 watts.

Cheers - AL

 

Edited by iBooz2
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1 hour ago, Aussiekraut said:

I think I will have to streamline my operation a little. If I can get things down to 3.5h, I can brew 2 batches per brew day and give myself a weekend off every now and then. Most weekends are dictated by brewing. Saturday is usually bottle day and Sunday is brew day. 

I am constantly looking for things to do on the brew day to make it shorter, anything you come up with please share and I will see if I can take it onboard.

The main thing I found was to be a few steps ahead with my prep and keep working and cleaning. During the boil, I am done cleaning after around 30min is left in the boil. With the stuff soaking in sodium perc or cleaned and shiny. I am beat after a brew day, but I am also fat and broken from my previous career.  But it feels good to see the finished product.

For a normal brewday I average about 4 hours give or take. There isn't much I can do if I mash longer and/or boil longer. I have been doing a 80 min mash and 10 to 15 min mash out, on most brews and then the 60 min boil, that is 2.5hrs and some change right there. I have thought about shorting the boil but I have to check how much it would mess with my gravity readings and overall efficiency.

My last 4 brews I have seen that I am hitting 73-77% efficiency at 45-60 min into the mash so I could stop it short there. But since I was having efficiency issues earlier on I have just kept it, probably my should revisit that step, since it has messed with a few brews lately, coming in high.

If I added the total time, it would be close to 5 hours with the set up, weighing grains, milling, water and weighing up ingredients but if I do some of those early or during a step, like the boil or mash, then that is where I save time, but not energy, haha.

Hope some of that gibberish helps

Norris

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6 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

Yes but an amphibian in any of its models only adapts (legally) a 15 amp plug to a 10 amp outlet, it does not allow you to use more power (watts) by pulling more amps through your 10 amp circuit.  You may be able to draw slightly more than the 10 amps from your standard 10 amp outlet (using the amphibian adapter) provided there are no other devices or appliances on the same 10 amp wire from the meter box. The only difference with a 15 amp outlet is that is has no other outlets on that circuit whereas a 10 amp may have several outlets on its circuit.

Remember the circuit breaker or fuse is not there to protect the appliance or the devices, its there to protect the wiring between the meter box and your outlets / appliances.  You do not want your wiring in your roof or walls glowing like a toaster element.

The amphibian does not magically boost your power available and if you look at the circuit breaker in the amphibian it will be a 16 amp job the same as all the standard 10 amp outlets hang off in your meter box.  I know, I have one, and amphibian max and use it for my caravan when running it off a Honda 2 kVA generator which only has a 10 amp outlet.

I suggest save your money on buying an amphibian (unless you have another need for it as per above caravan scenario) and spend the money on getting a licensed sparkie to install a dedicated 15 amp outlet for your brew gear, that is if you require more than 2400 watts.

Cheers - AL

 

 Note that I don't run it at full power and never above 2500w, so I do take into account that it hasn't magically made it a 15a plug. By the way I have tried to get sparkies over to do the job, the wait is 3 months, I have called and reached out 10 to 12 different ones. I have a Mate who is licensed but he keeps saying 2 months at best. Trust me I am aware of the limitations and have been trying to adjust but I made the mistake of not reading the fine print on the bigger Guten and had to do something or wait.

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6 minutes ago, Norris! said:

 Note that I don't run it at full power and never above 2500w, so I do take into account that it hasn't magically made it a 15a plug. By the way I have tried to get sparkies over to do the job, the wait is 3 months, I have called and reached out 10 to 12 different ones. I have a Mate who is licensed but he keeps saying 2 months at best. Trust me I am aware of the limitations and have been trying to adjust but I made the mistake of not reading the fine print on the bigger Guten and had to do something or wait.

Gee that's a bugger Norris, I feel your pain re sparkies and have been mucked around no end with some jobs I have needed done in the past.  Buggers say there will there on Tuesday and never show up.  Now when I am dealing with any tradie particularly sparkies and plumbers, I send a email purchase order (so to speak) and note on it the day and time that they say they will do the job and I put immediately below that "this contract will expire if not completed by 5 pm on that day" (if its a one day job) and will be given to someone else.

The trouble is they want the big jobs because it takes just as long to tool up and tool down for each job, they see the little jobs as a PITA.

Could you not rough it up in readiness for you mate to finish off both ends if he gave you the right gear?  Bribe him with some tasty home brew.😉

Try reminding your mate that there are billions of people in a country to our far north that would be quite happy to come here and do all/take all the work for 1/2 the price if only they can get a 457 visa.  I think there is a new business opportunity for me here as a visa sponsor, if only I was several years younger ha ha.😁

Cheers - AL

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29 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

Gee that's a bugger Norris, I feel your pain re sparkies and have been mucked around no end with some jobs I have needed done in the past.  Buggers say there will there on Tuesday and never show up.  Now when I am dealing with any tradie particularly sparkies and plumbers, I send a email purchase order (so to speak) and note on it the day and time that they say they will do the job and I put immediately below that "this contract will expire if not completed by 5 pm on that day" (if its a one day job) and will be given to someone else.

The trouble is they want the big jobs because it takes just as long to tool up and tool down for each job, they see the little jobs as a PITA.

Could you not rough it up in readiness for you mate to finish off both ends if he gave you the right gear?  Bribe him with some tasty home brew.😉

Try reminding your mate that there are billions of people in a country to our far north that would be quite happy to come here and do all/take all the work for 1/2 the price if only they can get a 457 visa.  I think there is a new business opportunity for me here as a visa sponsor, if only I was several years younger ha ha.😁

Cheers - AL

Mate you might be onto to something!

You have revived me I will keep trying em and do the email thing with the date and time. I understand about it being a small job but dang, they are busy as here.

Cheers Al.

Norris

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Firstly, am really enjoying the conversation from you guys, & learning a lot. 👍

I have a question about mash out. I only know it in a very basic theoretical sense at this point, not in a practical sense as I've not had to ever apply it with my small volume stuff to this point.

The literature says it is to denature the enzyme. I have always taken this as shutting off the conversion of starches to finalise the fermentability of the wort. What I've never understood is why the temperature needs to be held for 15-20mins & why you can't just shoot past that straight to the boil?

What happens @ 76 -78°C for 15-20mins that doesn't happen beyond it?

Now that Norris has explained the programming shifts, I think I'd program any shifts when raising temperature at max power & program to hold for 1 min, then have the unit lower wattage to hold temp for the remainder. i.e. mashout completes, program max power for the unit for 1 minute to reach boil, then reduce wattage to hold rolling boil. Although purchasing the Guten, I noticed the Brewzilla 35L unit has two power switches on it. One for 1900w, one for 500w. I'm pretty sure the unit can hold boil at 1900w. The Daft Cat brewing woman also made mention in her Guten demo video there is no need to run full wattage to maintain the boil. So I will be doing something close to this regime.

For any temp shifts I would want the unit to move to them as swiftly as possible & try to save brew day time where I can.

Keep the info coming, loving it! 😎

Lusty.

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You will have to bring it up to 99.9c for a minute then the boil step, as you can only have 1 boil step. I do my last few boils at 2200w but have also done a lot at 1800w,if it is cold and windy I will adjust the power up to have a rolling boil. I do start it at 2500w for 1 min then boil for 60min at whatever is needed.

You only have to do about a 10 min mash out, but you can skip that also. The goal is to get the wort and sugars more fluid and easily extracted from the grain bed. That is why it is recommended to sparge with a higher temp water. It also helps prevent stuck sparges and recipes with ingredients that are known to gum up. So that is the point of increasing the temp at mash out. Why 10 minutes? I am not sure but in theory if you are sparging with 76c water, you should be able to skip the mash out as it is redundant since the goal is to warm the grain bed to extract more sugars.

I set my mash at 800c but 2500w to get there at the start.

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Hi @Hairy & @Titan.

11 hours ago, Hairy said:

Not sure if the Guten works the same way but I switch it to ‘boil’ when I lift the basket to drain. Then by the time I have finished sparging it isn’t too far off boiling.

 

10 hours ago, Titan said:

Very similar to Hairy although i wait to see how quickly my sparge is going. A couple of times i nearly hit the boil before sparge was done. I would run your first 2 brews in manual to get a feel for how your system is performing.

 

9 hours ago, Hairy said:

I find that the temp of the sparge water stops it from boiling. Any slow sparges I have had have finished with the temp in the mid to high 90's but never hit boiling. Perhaps one day I will learn a lesson.

I was quite interested in this short conversation between the two of you.

What are the sparge volumes both of you are using, & roughly what are your gravity related efficiencies by the end of your processes. If you are both sparging different volumes, this would affect timings to hit boil/maintain boil etc. yes?

Just curious & trying to learn,

Lusty.

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But the temps depend on the environment and ingredients and such. We all have different preferences for what is a rolling boil and the like. That is the fun part playing with it. When you run water through it the first time track the amount against the markings and get a stick or mash paddle and mark it to your levels.

You can also check the power levels and try them out and try to run a program. I have fumbled my way through several brews days where many times I have said forget it and gone all manual controls! But if I learn from that then it is a good mistake. If I do it three times, I am stupid and you cannot fix that.

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6 minutes ago, Beerlust said:

Hi @Hairy & @Titan.

I was quite interested in this short conversation between the two of you.

What are the sparge volumes both of you are using, & roughly what are your gravity related efficiencies by the end of your processes. If you are both sparging different volumes, this would affect timings to hit boil/maintain boil etc. yes?

Just curious & trying to learn,

Lusty.

Lusty, you just need to get it out of the box, give it a clean and have a crack. You will work out your own system.

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Hi Norris. 🙂

1 minute ago, Norris! said:

But the temps depend on the environment and ingredients and such.

Yep am aware of that, but thanks for mentioning.

2 minutes ago, Norris! said:

That is the fun part playing with it. When you run water through it the first time track the amount against the markings and get a stick or mash paddle and mark it to your levels.

A few of the guys with these systems have mentioned etching these markings. A shame they aren't already there on these units?

3 minutes ago, Norris! said:

You can also check the power levels and try them out and try to run a program. I have fumbled my way through several brews days where many times I have said forget it and gone all manual controls! But if I learn from that then it is a good mistake. If I do it three times, I am stupid and you cannot fix that.

The more I can have the unit work its way through a brew schedule via pre-programming, the better. I will invest good time & experimentation to reach that point given this is the main reason I bought it over an urn. 😉

Eventually the b@$#@*d of a thing will do as I tell it! 😂

Cheers & good brewing,

Lusty.

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OK, here's the first one you AG'ers can have a good chuckle about at my expense...

What the @#$% is the purpose of the "malt pipe" & why might I need to adjust its length?

I've really tried to understand it, but just can't get my head around it given what I've been doing 'pots & pans' style with grains to this point.

I don't often invite taking the p!$$ out of me, but I'll wear any comments that do on this one. I hope someone can help me understand it among the comments that will likely follow.

Cheers,

Lusty.

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The reason for a 15min mash out is to raise the temperature of the grain to the same temperature as the wort. A little like cooking a thick steak medium rare, really hot on the outside but in the middle, way cooler. The surrounding wort will hit the mash out temperature fairly quickly but in the middle of the grain bed it can be significantly cooler. Then your sparge will be less effective. 

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They are there but not exact. Some say close enough but I am pedantic.

21 minutes ago, Hairy said:

That’s way too hot mate!

What do you mean? That temp is perfect, just put my hands in to grab my paddle that fell, felt fine to me?

51fWMpE1bPL._AC_SL1000_.jpg

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As Easy - E once said " "for easy access baby." 

7 minutes ago, Beerlust said:

What the @#$% is the purpose of the "malt pipe" & why might I need to adjust its length?

If your parents haven't gone over this, I am not game too either.

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20 minutes ago, Hairy said:

Lusty, you just need to get it out of the box, give it a clean and have a crack. You will work out your own system.

If I don't learn these things Hairy, I may as well stay an extract/partial based brewer. I just want to speed up that learning process as best I can to brew better quality beer that all you AG'ers have been telling me for as long as I can remember.

I'd rather ask all the questions I think I need answers to now, then figure out the rest myself later. I don't plan to pester guys for ever.

I just want my first AG brew to turn out OK & not @#$% it because of a simple mistake of not understanding the unit & the basics involved in using it.

That's all.

Lusty.

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17 minutes ago, Beerlust said:

OK, here's the first one you AG'ers can have a good chuckle about at my expense...

What the @#$% is the purpose of the "malt pipe" & why might I need to adjust its length?

I've really tried to understand it, but just can't get my head around it given what I've been doing 'pots & pans' style with grains to this point.

I don't often invite taking the p!$$ out of me, but I'll wear any comments that do on this one. I hope someone can help me understand it among the comments that will likely follow.

Cheers,

Lusty.

Hold the grain mate. That's it. Malt pipe = The bag in BIAB. Don't know why you would need to adjust the length.

It does for me cause efficiency issues on my 1st gen robobrew when you make big ABV batches as it tends to compact in the pipe. A bag would allow more liquid to circulate around the grains.

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