thatguy314 wrote:It says the 20 liter system only holds 4-5kg of grain according to the instructions. Also hopping appears to be limited. I'd call that pretty locked in myself. Plus it's a no sparge system, which kind of suggests to me that 8-10 pounds of grain aren't going to get you very far. Being generous (70% efficiency) that maxes your batches out at 1.052 without addition of extract.
Hopping can't be limited?? You put in however many hops you want whenever you want, same as any other system.
It is natively no sparge, but I've never understood this whole no-sparge equates to low efficiency thing... I brewed maybe 100 no-sparge brews and always set my promash recipe formulation for 75% efficiency, that in a mash tun with dead space... This system has no dead space. if you got less than 75% mash efficiency out of it on normal strength brews I would be very very surprised indeed.
And you can sparge in it anyway... A brewer I know runs 5L of water through the malt pipe as a sparge and averages 80% into the kettle efficiency.
Yes, the grain capacity is limited, my understanding is that you can go up to about 5.5kg of grain and after that the pump isn't up to the job of recirculation.
At any rate, that is a limitation of the system, not being "Locked in" to doing it their way or not at all - it's no more nor less than the limitation you might have with a 20L mash tun in a normal system... You want to brew more beer or bigger beer... You buy a bigger system, a bigger mash tun, a bigger kettle, or in this case the bigger braumeister... The 50L model naturally holds twice as much grain, and there is no-one telling you you can't brew only 20L of much stronger beer instead.
And the price is pretty damn good... i can have one of these things sitting at home, shoving out 50L batches for a decent sum less than I could have any of the systems I can buy locally that have similar capacity and functionality & for way less than I could possibly get a brew magic or similarly functional B3 sculpture.
