ANVIL FOUNDRY ALL-GRAIN BREWING SYSTEM

[user 30639]

I've had several request for that. I think I might do one that way as well. (You realize it's like asking me to drive a corvette in the slow lane!!?? Lol)

Just to add, I would love to see a video of you brewing using 120v. I don't have 240v in my garage and right now adding it isn't an option. So I would be brewing on 120v.

 

[user 30639]

So this unit is looking even more attractive after wrapping up my brew day out in the garage. It was 95 degrees today, 65% humidity in the afternoon, and I feel thoroughly disgusting. Completely miserable, even with a fan. I kept getting gusts of hot air from the propane burner, and had to remember to wipe my face so I didn’t drip sweat in the cooled wort. The whole time I was thinking how nice it would be to be inside brewing on one of those foundry units, set up by the stove or in the bathroom nearby an exhaust fan.

Edit: The worst part is it’s only going to get hotter.

Nothing like Texas in the summer...

 

[WesBrew]

So this unit is looking even more attractive after wrapping up my brew day out in the garage. It was 95 degrees today, 65% humidity in the afternoon, and I feel thoroughly disgusting. Completely miserable, even with a fan. I kept getting gusts of hot air from the propane burner, and had to remember to wipe my face so I didn’t drip sweat in the cooled wort. The whole time I was thinking how nice it would be to be inside brewing on one of those foundry units, set up by the stove or in the bathroom nearby an exhaust fan.

Edit: The worst part is it’s only going to get hotter.

I feel your misery. That is the same reason Ive been looking into electric. just got through a two week heat wave in Florida. temps down to low-mid nineties now but the humidity is going up. nothing like brewing in sticky 85% humidity. sometimes worse. My brewery is moving into the A/C soon!

 

[AzOr]

I'd love to hear others report back once people start using the system. For a few years I've been wanting to get away from using my igloo mash tun. I know that people say that the plastic won't leach any chemicals if you keep it under 180 blah blah. I would feel better using all stainless if possible.

I've been using their fermenter for about a year now and I'm very satisfied.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

for anyone who has this system...what is the malt tube height with the legs? I would be concerned that with heavy hops, too much trub would get into the fermenter. Rather a hop screen like the hopstopper 2.0 might actually work but it requires 2.0" of height and the dip tube would have to be modified with an angle on it rather than the flat bottom part of the dip tube.

 

[AzOr]

Do people plan on doing no sparge batches or do you plan to heat water separately for sparging?

Or could you add room temp water after first runnings to heat up to sparge temps? I imagine this would take too long.

 

[Sauls]

Subscribing to this thread

 

[highland_brewer]

Just to add, I would love to see a video of you brewing using 120v. I don't have 240v in my garage and right now adding it isn't an option. So I would be brewing on 120v.

I will do one at some point. I have the smaller version in for review as well. I will be doing a brew day on it on 120V. I will be doing some heat up tests and boil tests for the fun of it on 240V. I bet it is a rocket ship on 240V!!! lol

 

[highland_brewer]

for anyone who has this system...what is the malt tube height with the legs? I would be concerned that with heavy hops, too much trub would get into the fermenter. Rather a hop screen like the hopstopper 2.0 might actually work but it requires 2.0" of height and the dip tube would have to be modified with an angle on it rather than the flat bottom part of the dip tube.

The dip tube does rotate as well.

 

[highland_brewer]

This mirrors my thoughts very closely.

They are now selling the top screen and pipe separately for those who have a pump already. $35ish if I remember correct for both.

 

[cswant88]

Anyone know the thread size for the barb nut on the ball valve? I would want to put a camlock fitting on that valve, since my existing pump and tubing is all camlocked. If that is the same spigot that comes with the bucket fermenter, I'll measure mine when I get home.

 

[highland_brewer]

Anyone know the thread size for the barb nut on the ball valve? I would want to put a camlock fitting on that valve, since my existing pump and tubing is all camlocked. If that is the same spigot that comes with the bucket fermenter, I'll measure mine when I get home.

1/2 npt cam lock fits no problem. I've done it already

 

[cswant88]

1/2 npt cam lock fits no problem. I've done it already

Nice!

 

[pkrist01]

Deleted

 

[bford]

These look like a fantastic option at the price point.

 

[cswant88]

I’ve been thinking about how to use this system to brew bigger beers, should one desire to do so. What I’ve come up with requires mashing in a 2nd vessel. I know that kind of defeats the purpose of an all-in-one system. Benefits: Being electric, you can brew indoors (in the wonderful air conditioning), and easier step mashing (in theory). This assumes that those like myself that are doing all-grain already have an insulated MLT, a cooler mash tun in my case.

No Recirculation No Step Mashing Batch Sparge:

Heat strike water in foundry, transfer and mash in MLT. Heat sparge water in foundry. Drain first runnings into a bucket or kettle, transfer sparge water to MLT. Pour first runnings into foundry, drain second runnings into foundry, boil in foundry.

Recirculate, Optional Step Mash, Batch or Fly Sparge:

Heat strike water in foundry, transfer and mash in MLT, circulate through foundry by gravity draining into foundry and pumping back into MLT. Use foundry to maintain mash temps (or raise it for step mashing). Heat sparge water in 3rd vessel with a 2nd heat source (or heat Sparge water in foundry before hand and transfer to an insulated vessel to stay hot until needed). Drain runnings into foundry, batch or fly sparge, drain second runnings into foundry, boil in foundry. This method requires dialing in good flow rate into and out of the foundry.

That’s what I’ve come up with, it adds complexity, but I feel like it’s a workable solution to brewing bigger beers that would exceed the Foundry’s capacity. Obvious cons, additional equipment needed and you lose the simplicity of the all-in-one concept.
Feel free to point out anything I left out, or flaws in my logic.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

2800W doesn't seem worth it for the 240 conversion. Cool feature, but seems a bit half-a**

I agree. Shouldn't 240 VAC be 4,500 or 5,500 Watts?

 

[Bobby_M]

I’ve been thinking about how to use this system to brew bigger beers, should one desire to do so. What I’ve come up with requires mashing in a 2nd vessel. I know that kind of defeats the purpose of an all-in-one system. Benefits: Being electric, you can brew indoors (in the wonderful air conditioning), and easier step mashing (in theory). This assumes that those like myself that are doing all-grain already have an insulated MLT, a cooler mash tun in my case.

No Recirculation No Step Mashing Batch Sparge:

Heat strike water in foundry, transfer and mash in MLT. Heat sparge water in foundry. Drain first runnings into a bucket or kettle, transfer sparge water to MLT. Pour first runnings into foundry, drain second runnings into foundry, boil in foundry.

Recirculate, Optional Step Mash, Batch or Fly Sparge:

Heat strike water in foundry, transfer and mash in MLT, circulate through foundry by gravity draining into foundry and pumping back into MLT. Use foundry to maintain mash temps (or raise it for step mashing). Heat sparge water in 3rd vessel with a 2nd heat source (or heat Sparge water in foundry before hand and transfer to an insulated vessel to stay hot until needed). Drain runnings into foundry, batch or fly sparge, drain second runnings into foundry, boil in foundry. This method requires dialing in good flow rate into and out of the foundry.

That’s what I’ve come up with, it adds complexity, but I feel like it’s a workable solution to brewing bigger beers that would exceed the Foundry’s capacity. Obvious cons, additional equipment needed and you lose the simplicity of the all-in-one concept.
Feel free to point out anything I left out, or flaws in my logic.

Given that process, you actually want the Digiboil not foundry.

 

[Bobby_M]

I agree. Shouldn't 240 VAC be 4,500 or 5,500 Watts?

For speed sure but 2800 can boil 7.5 gallons aggressively in such a narrow double wall vessel. 240v at 15 amps is cheap to wire as its only 14/2 romex and a relatively cheap gfci breaker.

 

[cswant88]

Given that process, you actually want the Digiboil not foundry.

The majority of the time I would use the foundry as intended, this would just be for the occasional high ABV beer. I agree, digiboil would be a more economic solution if I wanted to use that process all the time.

 

[homebrewbeliever]

I got my hands on one. Here is my unboxing and initial review on it.

Great video, thank you for making that!

 

[Spyderbyte07]

for anyone who has this system...what is the malt tube height with the legs? I would be concerned that with heavy hops, too much trub would get into the fermenter. Rather a hop screen like the hopstopper 2.0 might actually work but it requires 2.0" of height and the dip tube would have to be modified with an angle on it rather than the flat bottom part of the dip tube.

The legs raise the bottom of the malt tube 2.25". The malt tube has a lip/seam that hangs down 0.5" past the bottom screen, and I didn't take note of whether the legs rest on the slightly raised ring on the bottom of the foundry, but if you only need 2" in the center of the vessel you should be in the clear. The dip tube is a separate piece threaded on to the bulkhead, so you can replace/modify it however you need.

Mine arrived Friday and I tested it out today heating water for a PBW soak. Overall I'm quite pleased.

Pros:
-Very easy to use control panel
-Can adjust power in 1% increments (for some reason I thought it was 10% increments)
-Truly all in one. The immersion chiller comes with the vinyl tubing, hose clamps, and even a garden hose adapter. There's even a spare dip tube o ring included. It is clear a lot of planning and consideration has gone into the design and execution.
-Volume markings appear spot on
-Temperature measured within a degree of my thermapen. These were spot checks after a semi decent stir with the foundry probe at the bottom of the liquid and the thermapen at the top so the foundry probe may be more accurate than I measured.
-Double wall vessel should help stabilize mash temperatures and keep the outside slightly cooler to the touch
-The 1/2" hole in the lid is the perfect size for an airlock grommet. As soon as I get a chance to brew I'm planning to try fermenting in it too. One vessel (well okay one vessel, a malt tube and an immersion chiller) to clean from strike to keg? Yes please!
-I have a pre assembled, warrantied, all in one electric brew kettle for under $400. Bobby at Brew Hardware was even kind enough to cover the shipping!

Cons:
-Running at 120 volts it took 86 minutes to heat 8 gallons of water from 59 F to 160 F. However, with the time delay feature I consider this a non-issue. I'm planning to measure my strike water the night before so it's heated and ready to go whenever I want it to be.
-It looks like there's a bit of a gap in the seam between the two walls of the kettle where the bulkhead passes through. I'm concerned any slow leak around the bulkhead will drip down between the walls of the kettle and end up who-knows-where. Hopefully if this happens at least some of it will also run down the outside of the kettle so I can see it and know I need to fix it.

Again, overall I'm quite pleased on first impression and I'm really looking forward to brewing with it! My main goal is to be able to squeeze in brew days without all the planning, set up and cleaning that my current set up requires and I have high hopes it will be perfect for that.

 

[Satedbrewer]

Completed my second brew on this on sunday...after work, which was awesome.

Each brew has taken roughly 4 hours with cleanup. First batch was a NEIPA 12.5lbs overall 70% efficiency. Second brew was a kolsch with 9.25lbs 72% efficiency. I know I can increase those numbers as I was hitting OG but was over on total volume.

Overall super happy with this unit, excited to up it to 240v, I'm still on 120v and have no complaints.

One note the gap on the bulkhead can be a bit if a problem, after cleaning up after the first batch the alignment of the double wall came loose and I didn't notice until I added my strike water for the next brew and it started leaking like crazy out the seams all around the unit. Easy fix though just had to empty, realign, and tighten the bulkhead worked like a charm after that.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

Completed my second brew on this on sunday...after work, which was awesome.

Each brew has taken roughly 4 hours with cleanup. First batch was a NEIPA 12.5lbs overall 70% efficiency. Second brew was a kolsch with 9.25lbs 72% efficiency. I know I can increase those numbers as I was hitting OG but was over on total volume.

Overall super happy with this unit, excited to up it to 240v, I'm still on 120v and have no complaints.

One note the gap on the bulkhead can be a bit if a problem, after cleaning up after the first batch the alignment of the double wall came loose and I didn't notice until I added my strike water for the next brew and it started leaking like crazy out the seams all around the unit. Easy fix though just had to empty, realign, and tighten the bulkhead worked like a charm after that.

View attachment 631764

Just curious, is that 4hrs without the heating strike water time? Curious to see the actual breakdown of timeline. I don't see the strike water heating to be an issue as I can be doing other things during that time. Solid honest review though. Thanks! Looking forward to seeing others reviews too.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

to all who are using this now, Im curious to see how well this controls the mash temps. The biggest knocks I seen on the mash and boil is the +/- 5degree swings. Looking forward to seeing anyones reviews on how well the Foundry keeps mash temps too.

 

[highland_brewer]

Great video, thank you for making that!

Thank you!!

 

[Satedbrewer]

to all who are using this now, Im curious to see how well this controls the mash temps. The biggest knocks I seen on the mash and boil is the +/- 5degree swings. Looking forward to seeing anyones reviews on how well the Foundry keeps mash temps too.

With recirculation it held temps really well, it would drop from set point of 150 down to 148 before the element would kick on, then quickly power up to 152 before powering the element off and even out at 150 with a minute or two then held at 150 for prolly 7-10 minutes before repeating the cycle.

 

[highland_brewer]

With recirculation it held temps really well, it would drop from set point of 150 down to 148 before the element would kick on, then quickly power up to 152 before powering the element off and even out at 150 with a minute or two then held at 150 for prolly 7-10 minutes before repeating the cycle.

My experience was similar. I was running it on 240 volts, with the power percentage at 50% it held within one degree of my set point.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Could I make a no-sparge batch consisting of 13 to 15 lbs. of barley malt grist and 9 to 9-1/3 gallons of water in the Anvil Foundry? This spans my most typical beer brewing recipes at present. And the resultant wort at ~ 6.5 gallons fits my fermenter perfectly, so I wouldn't want to change things much if I transition to the Anvil Foundry unit.

 

[highland_brewer]

Could I make a no-sparge batch consisting of 13 to 15 lbs. of barley malt grist and 9 to 9-1/3 gallons of water in the Anvil Foundry? This spans my most typical beer brewing recipes at present. And the resultant wort at ~ 6.5 gallons fits my fermenter perfectly, so I wouldn't want to change things much if I transition to the Anvil Foundry unit.

Sounds doable. 16 lbs is the max grain bill on the foundry.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

Completed my second brew on this on sunday...after work, which was awesome.

Each brew has taken roughly 4 hours with cleanup. First batch was a NEIPA 12.5lbs overall 70% efficiency. Second brew was a kolsch with 9.25lbs 72% efficiency. I know I can increase those numbers as I was hitting OG but was over on total volume.

Overall super happy with this unit, excited to up it to 240v, I'm still on 120v and have no complaints.

One note the gap on the bulkhead can be a bit if a problem, after cleaning up after the first batch the alignment of the double wall came loose and I didn't notice until I added my strike water for the next brew and it started leaking like crazy out the seams all around the unit. Easy fix though just had to empty, realign, and tighten the bulkhead worked like a charm after that.

View attachment 631764

Thanks for the feedback @Satedbrewer! Just curious if your efficiencies were a no sparge method vs a small 1gallon type of sparge. 70% average is fine with me as long as its consistent.

 

[ApolloSimcoe]

following!

 

[Satedbrewer]

Thanks for the feedback @Satedbrewer! Just curious if your efficiencies were a no sparge method vs a small 1gallon type of sparge. 70% average is fine with me as long as its consistent.

@Noob_Brewer for the NEIPA i went with like a 2.5 gallon sparge and the Kolsch was the recommended 1 gallons sparge. Playing around with different processes to see what works the best for this system, I'm going to try conditioning my grain moving forward for a finer crush to see if i can get closer to 80%

 

[Oginme]

Could I make a no-sparge batch consisting of 13 to 15 lbs. of barley malt grist and 9 to 9-1/3 gallons of water in the Anvil Foundry? This spans my most typical beer brewing recipes at present. And the resultant wort at ~ 6.5 gallons fits my fermenter perfectly, so I wouldn't want to change things much if I transition to the Anvil Foundry unit.

Just ball parking the volumes, 15 lbs of grain displaces around 2.58 gal, 13 lbs 2.23 gal. If you start with 9 gallons of water, your volume will end up in the 11.2 to 11.6 gallon range. If the unit holds 10.5 gallons (and I am assuming that this is with the malt pipe), I don't see a full volume as possible.

 

[Satedbrewer]

Thanks for the video Highland! Always enjoy your videos.

I am looking at one of these all in ones but am wondering about how much grain stuff gets left from the mash into the boil? In watching the Anvil instructional video it shows when they dough in there is quite a bit of grain already floating on the outside of the mash basket. Given the short dip tube it would seem that a lot of this would stay in for the boil. I will have to wait for the reviews as this would be my main concern.

Also, from a low oxygen brewing viewpoint, would it be possible to add your grain to the mash basket prior to sinking it down into the water? Sort of emulating an underletting approach. I wonder if the grain would fall through if you put it in there dry?

@Bassman2003 I've been preloading the basket and lowering it into the vessel to simulate underletting, works fine although the top 2 inches of grain compact and stay on top and requite a little stirring to mix... there is a bit of grain that makes its way through the screen. i've tried remedying this two ways, one was using a Mesh BIAB over the malt pipe, that worked well, and using an old keg hopping screen to recirculate the wort through while heating to a boil, that also worked quite well. I think moving forward ill continue with the keg hopping screen as its 150% times easier to clean after the fact.

Both methods worked perfectly, at the end of brewday all that was left at the bottom was basically pure hop sludge

 

[Bassman2003]

Hey thanks for your reply. I am pretty sure the Foundry is in my future as it looks to be a nice machine. My approach will be to pre-boil my brewing water in an HLT I already have around and run the cooled water down the outside of the malt pipe to truly underlet the mash. I plan on using a BIAB bag inside the malt pipe as well as draining the wort out instead of lifting the malt pipe out. Kind of the extra mile but it will lower the oxygen from trickling as well as give a chance to hose out the extra grain bits before pumping the wort back in for the boil. Easy to do with a pump system setup.

When I did BIAB for a few years I was sometimes shocked how much sediment wound up in the boil kettle that escaped the bag. Unless you can stir all of it up and get it sucked into the recirc its there for the duration.

 

[user 30639]

How does the included pump compare to the RipTide? If money wasn't an issue, would it be worth it to buy the Anvil without the pump and then add the RipTide?

 

[LittleRiver]

...When I did BIAB for a few years I was sometimes shocked how much sediment wound up in the boil kettle that escaped the bag...

I've been shocked at just how little that matters.

Here's a couple of my BIAB beers where everything that was in the boil kettle was put into the fermenter. No fining agents were used at any point, just a cold crash for a few days at the end of fermentation. They tasted as good as they looked.

 

[Bassman2003]

I am always trying to learn and improve. My want to clear the sediment and cold break is not about clarity. Although at this point, there is homebrew evidence that it does not matter. Pros always have clean wort. I am planning on draining from the bottom of the mash instead of lifting to avoid all of the oxygen as well as getting clearer wort.

All of this is purely my opinion/taste/desire and the "normal" way is perfectly fine and dandy.

 

[LittleRiver]

...Pros always have clean wort...

I've had plenty of "pro" beers (from both micro & macro breweries) that were mediocre to just downright bad.

...I am planning on draining from the bottom of the mash instead of lifting to avoid all of the oxygen as well as getting clearer wort...

I'm on the bandwagon for limiting oxygen exposure on the cold side. I do closed transfers from fermenter to keg, and I use captured C02 to prevent oxygen ingress during cold crashing. I'm convinced that it makes a difference in the stability of flavors & aromas.

I'm unconvinced that limiting 02 exposure before the boil/ferment has any meaningful effect.