Hi guys! Ed here,
I’ve been distilling spirits for quite a few years now. I started with a reflux column on top of a 50L beer keg heated by a gas burner. After setting my deck on fire I decided to go electric.
A few years later, the Grainfather became my main beer brewing system and at some point I decided to try out distilling with it. I got the simple T-500 lid and the (alembic) pot condenser since I mainly make spirits for flavour (fruit brandy, whiskey, gin) and don’t mind double distilling.
What still appeals to me about this is the much smaller foot print (no second vessel needs storing), the quick set up and pack down and the easy clean up. You just need to pour the wash into the Grainfather, attach the condensing lid with column, attach the garden hose and cooling water out hose and you’re away. When finished, the integrated pump helps with removing the spent wash and then it’s an easy hose out and maybe running a cleaning cycle.
Compare that to moving a full 50l keg, trying to find a place to tip it out - that was an utter nightmare.
During the times I used the keg with the immersion element, the wash had to be completely free of solids. As soon as you’d have a fruit skin or something sneak in there, it had a good chance of it touching the element, charring and therefore ruining your spirit with burned flavour & aroma. Even worse that would sometimes burn out the element and it would need to be replaced.
The Grainfather on the other hand uses the bottom as a heat plate. Additionally, you have a malt pipe with metal screens that can be used to contain solids - perfect. Not only do you not have to worry about any solids getting into the vessel, you can purposefully ferment and distill with solids for maximum flavour!
I’ve distilled plum brandy, fermenting on the fruit and then doing the stripping run using the whole lot. Then I soaked fresh plums in the spirit after the stripping run for a few days and then poured it all into the malt pipe for the spirit run.
I’ve distilled gin after macerating the herbs, spices, zest, sprouts etc in clear alcohol and just poured it all into the malt pipe for the spirit run.
I wonder now if/how I could ferment a whisky wash on the grain and distill that - let me know if you think that's a good idea or not!
Last but not least there’s the distilling mode built into the G30 controller. Since the G30 is a PID controller it has the ability to finely adjust the heating output. It’s used mainly during mashing to hit target temperatures without overshooting. However, the wonderful people at Grainfather also thought of distillers. Hold the “Heat” button for 6 seconds and you get a mode where you can adjust heat output in 5% steps. Now you can get to temperature at 100% heat, then dial it down to maybe 10-30% when the spirit run starts for better separation of your heads, hearts and tails.
I hope this little write up gave some of you brewers inspiration about what else you can do with your Grainfather!
About the author
Ed started his brewing career eagerly making up batches of wines and spirits, but refused to bother making beer until he tried a homebrew he liked. A bottle or two of Mike's partial extract Munich Dunkel back in 2008 rapidly changed that, and in the years since it's been rare that he has had an empty fermenter for more than a few days. Ed follows most of the major brewing podcasts and is always keen to try new techniques and ingredients.
