Category Archives: Electric Kettles

Hands on Review: Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil Electric Brewery + Limited Time DEAL

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil

I reviewed a number of electric all-in-one brewing systems a little over a year ago. As a collective group, these systems offer a lot to the homebrewer. They provide the flexibility and control of brewing process of all-grain, and the equipment simplicity of brew-in-a-bag. The fact that they’re electric gives you the ability to brew inside and convenience of not having to chase propane tank fill-ups. The electric systems also have the ability to set a target temperature and control to it, giving you better control of your brew day. All of these combine to create a more streamlined and less stressful brew day.

Each system has its own strengths and they all span a wide price range. The units I tried last year ranged from $470 at the low end to $2,500 at the high end. When I saw the Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil coming in at $300, I was intrigued to see how this unit would work and if you really could go all-grain with an electric system at such an affordable price point.

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Hands on Review: BrewZilla Gen 4 + Choose from two DEALS

 

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.


TWO BrewZilla Deals…

#1 On Sale at William’s Brewing

Brewzilla 35 Liter Gen 4 110 volt

  • For a short time William’s Brewing has this on for $549.99
  • Shipping is free or reasonably priced flat rate to addresses in the contiguous US depending on your order size for most items.

Brewzilla 35 Liter Gen 4 110 volt

#2 Save on Ultimate Combo Pack at MoreBeer

BrewZilla Ultimate Combo Pack | Gen 4 BrewZilla All Grain Brewing System | WiFi/Bluetooth/RAPT Enabled | Neoprene Jacket, Hop Spider & Wort Chiller Connection Kit Included | 9.25G | 35L | 110V

From MoreBeer:

  • The Ultimate BrewZilla Combo Pack! Get the Gen 4 BrewZilla & our most highly recommended accessories at an unbeatable price!
  • Includes all of our favorite accessories for the BrewZilla including the Neoprene Jacket to speed up heating times, Hop Spider to keep vegetal matter out of your wort, and Chilling Connection Kit so you’re ready to use the Immersion Chiller out of the box
  • We think all BrewZilla brewers will eventually upgrade their systems with these accessories, so buy them together and reap the savings!

As of this posting this combo is on sale for $649.99. Shipping is also free to many US addresses. No coupon code is required, check product page for avaiablility.

BrewZilla Ultimate Combo Pack | Gen 4 BrewZilla All Grain Brewing System | WiFi/Bluetooth/RAPT Enabled | Neoprene Jacket, Hop Spider & Wort Chiller Connection Kit Included | 9.25G | 35L | 110V AG581


Hands on Review BrewZilla Gen4

I’ve brewed on several different all-in-one units. Like any brew system, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I did a hands-on review of the Robobrew when it first came out in late 2016. It has since changed its name to BrewZilla and is on the 4th generation of the brew unit. As you’d expect with repeated generations, they’ve been able to focus on fixing deficiencies in their previous models and also introduce new features.

The basic premise of an all-in-one brewing system is that your mash and boil kettle are in the

same vessel. So just like Brew In A Bag, after mashing, you pull the grains out and the wort stays behind to be boiled. They use electricity for heat, so they can be used outdoors where you can reach power or indoors where you have a venting system that can take care of all the steam you make during your boil.

BrewZilla Without Jacket

Stamped Volume Markings

Here are some basic stats on the Gen4 BrewZilla. It’s available in a 35-Liter form (for 5-6 gallon batches) with either a 110V setup, or 220V. There is also a larger 65-Liter that is only 220V (targeted to 10-12 gallon batches). The 35L unit holds 9.25 gallons, the mash basket can hold up to 23.5 lbs. of grain, and its electric heating elements can output up to 1500W of power (110V system) or 2400W of power (220V system). The 65L unit holds 17.1 gallons, the mash basket holds 41.5 lbs. of grain, and 3500W of heating power. All the Gen4 units have a pump bolted into the base. The pump can be used not only for wort recirculation during the mash, but also to pump beer through your wort chiller apparatus (should you choose to not use the immersion chiller coil included with the BrewZilla). The pump is more modular and accessible than previous Gen models. To protect the pump from clogging with hop debris during the boil or whirlpool, there is a filter screen (a perforated stainless disc that sits at the bottom of the unit) that sits at the bottom of the kettle. The small magnetic drive pump has a pump head rating of 1.5 – 2.1 m (4.9 – 6.9 ft) and a max flow rate of 11-12 L/min (2.9 – 3.2 gal/min).

Control Panel Notification During Mash Profile

One of the key upgraded features of the Gen4 BrewZilla is the controller. RAPT Is Kegland’s line of wireless connected brewing devices. The BrewZilla now has a RAPT controller so it adds a lot of features that can be monitored and controlled over Wi-Fi. This includes basic things like monitoring temperature from your laptop/cell phone, but also allows you to program complex mash programs online and then download to your BrewZilla. You can also adjust control parameters on the fly such as pump output duty cycle and heater output level. If you get the optional Bluetooth thermometer, you can stick the temperature probe into the middle of your grain bed, and then have the controller use that as its control signal in combination with the built-in temperature sensor that sits on the floor of the unit.

Bluetooth Temp Probe in Middle of Mash

Although All-in-One units are essentially BIAB, they use a stainless steel basket with holes in the bottom of it instead of a bag, and call it a “malt pipe”. These provide functional improvements over a nylon bag. The obvious one is they are way easier to clean. But they also allow you to ensure you get full flow through your grain bed by having holes only on the bottom. This means recirculating wort has no sneak paths out the side. The other benefit is malt pipes have simple brackets/feet welded onto the outside that allow you to lift your wet grains up and prop the malt pipe on the brew rig to drain or sparge. The BrewZilla has 2 sets of feet for this. One set is halfway up, allowing you to do the deadlift of grain & wort halfway and then let the liquid level drain down. Then when you lift it the full height, it’s not as heavy. It’s simple, but makes the process much better.

Welded-on Carry Handle (top) and Tip Handle (bottom)

There is a cool feature in the BrewZilla which normally only comes on much higher end systems, and that’s the central drain. With a concave bottom with a drain at the lowest point in the center, you don’t have to leave wort behind or goof around with tilting it to get the last drops of wort out at the end. This also enables the malt pipe to extend down lower and thus you can hold more grain (30% more than their Gen3). If you compared to other All-in-one units in the “5 gallon batch” size range, the 23.5 lbs. grain capacity is 30 – 50% more. This of course only matters if you’re trying to make high gravity brews. The drain in the floor is plumbed to the inlet of the pump below, and then you can direct pump output either to an external spigot for fast/easy transfer of wort out after brewing, or up the recirculation pipe for wort to get directed down on top of the mash.

Polished Bottom with Center Drain and Built-in Temp Sensor to Side

Bottom Side of Pump Filter Plate

To help with mash efficiency and mash temperature uniformity, they offer a Heat Exchanger Dish, which is just a stainless dish/plate that sits below your malt pipe and above the central drain. Without this dish in place, the flow of recirculating wort tends to go through the center of your grain bed, and straight out the drain. With the dish there, it directs the flow around the full circumference before it gets to the drain, which helps ensure a broader portion of the grist sees the flow.


Compare Prices, Review Continues Below:


This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Another helpful option is the neoprene insulation jacket. This helps keep mash temperatures more consistent by cutting down heat loss through the walls of the unit. The jacket on BrewZilla also smartly covers the recirculation pipe to minimize heat loss during wort recirculation. The overall mash temperature response with a multi-step mash was impressive, with more detail provided in the Hands On section, below.

Hands on Trials

First off, all of the different parts were well made with good quality manufacturing. As I’ve found with all Kegland gear, it’s of good quality- but nothing flashy. The one exception was probably the smooth and highly polished dished bottom. That was flashy. And being a previous owner of a 1st Gen Robobrew, I was very happy to see the camlock fitting on the recirculation pipe and see that Kegland was obviously tuned in to customer feedback on their products.

Mashing-in Sequence

Sparging

I brewed three different batches before writing this review. Two of them followed a simple single temperature mash, and the third one I exercised the RAPT Controller more with a multi-step mash profile, with lots of monitoring via my smartphone. I was impressed with the mash efficiency I achieved. There can be a misconception that BIAB = lower mash efficiency, but really, it’s “full volume mash = lower efficiency”. I had previously done experiments with an Anvil Foundry that showed a sparge step can get you mash efficiencies > 80%. Therefore, my batches in the BrewZilla were all done with a sparge step. I rested the malt pipe at the top while pouring heated sparge water through it with a 1-gallon pitcher. The perforated plate sitting on top of the grain bed made it super simple to sparge like this and get a good water distribution pattern. The perforated plate also allowed me to push down very easily and squeeze out remaining liquid in the grains. If you’re in the school of thought that squeezing the grains is bad for your beer, this isn’t relevant for you. For the rest of us, being able to easily squeeze that out without making a mess was awesome. And it meant when I picked up the basket of spent grain, I didn’t have a trail of sugary malt drippings to clean up after. My first batch achieved 77% mash efficiency, the second one 80%, and the third 81%.

Recirc Flow Rate After CFC

I experimented a bit with the Bluetooth RAPT wireless thermometer, but I didn’t properly understand it at first. I thought the concept was I could choose whether to use the built-in sensor at the bottom of the unit or the Bluetooth thermometer, but that wasn’t the case. When you add the Bluetooth thermometer, it will then control to that temperature, but it still uses the built-in sensor as part of your heating in a way that lets you fine tune how the system as a whole responds to temperature steps in your mash. After tinkering with it a bit, I realized it has some really powerful potential, but requires a deeper dive and some experimentation to back it up. So I’ll save that for a future write-up.

Bluetooth RAPT Thermometer

My typical brew system uses a 10-gallon kettle with a pump recirculating wort through a 240V RIMS with a 3500W heating element. With that set-up, I get about 3.1 degrees/minute temperature rise when doing multi-step mash profiles. I was therefore expecting this 120V/1500W system to be slow but was shocked to find similar performance that averaged around 2.5 degrees/minute. I attributed this capability to the neoprene jacket. On the plus side, that means you can do multi-step mashes even on only a 120V outlet and not take all day. But leaving the lid on as you heat to a boil is still a must. With the large opening in its domed top, it still can allow any volatized compounds to flow out.

BrewZilla Mashing by Itself in Basement

I found the RAPT software a bit non-intuitive and as such, had a learning curve to it. Luckily, I did a trial run just with water in it so I could get a feel for where various controls were located and how it worked. I definitely recommend this before you try to do any multi-step mash program, or live monitoring of things from the App. Way less stressful when it’s just water! After I got the hang of it, I was able to monitor my mash well and know what was going on as it chugged away in the basement and I worked at my day job one floor above. One key thing I learned was the in-flight plotting of mash temperature isn’t a continuously updating graph, you have to hit refresh in the App to get the updated data that it is recording and holding. I assume this is for computing efficiency and Wi-Fi bandwidth load management. It was perfectly fine once I figured out how it worked.

Screenshot of RAPT Controller Interface

The RAPT Controller allows you to program in multi-step mashes. But it’s a bit clunky as you figure it out. When you build the profile up using the App or Web interface, that profile sits on the RAPT server. My brain kept wanting to think I was programming the controller directly on the unit, but that’s not how it works. So after you program in the profile, you have to download it to the controller on your unit for it to work. You do all of this through the RAPT portal, and it only requires your BrewZilla to be powered on to let you download to it. This would be cool if you could just export something from Brewfather and then import it in RAPT, but you can’t. However, when you think about it, you probably don’t have that many different mash profiles, so it’s not really a big deal.

Malt Pipe

Draining Malt Pipe

One super cool feature of the mash profile programming is Kegland finally did what many have wanted these controllers to do for a long time. Rather than open loop programming a temperature and a time and guesstimating how long it will take for your mash to reach that temperature, you can tell it to not start counting down your mash step timer until it reaches the temperature. So if you want a 45-minute rest at 150F, you don’t have to think about how long it will take to get to 150F, it just heats up, and then starts the 45-minute timer when you hit 150F. I really liked this. You are also able to set up notifications at either the beginning or end of a particular mash step. I had it send an alert to my phone once it had reached mashout temperature and thus had 10 minutes left in my mash. That was cool, too. This isn’t quite as simple as it sounds, though. What I found was if the PID controller didn’t overshoot my target temp, I spent several minutes closing in on the target, but didn’t hit the temperature to start your countdown timer. So I’d end up with long mash times. I did some experiments with PID gains and the Bluetooth probe that got this working as I wanted, but I’ll detail that in a later write-up.

Rolling Boil at 75-percent Power

There wasn’t a boil timer interface, the controller was really just geared to controlling & monitoring mash temperatures. Not a big deal, as my Brewfather boil timer works great for this, so it isn’t a feature RAPT needs to spend time making. I could easily maintain a robust boil if I wanted to, but I like to keep it at just a good rolling circulation, so I dialed down the heating element power to 75% and maintained a constant churn of the wort and allowed boil-off of 0.4 – 0.5 gallons per hour. And the filter dish at the bottom of the kettle worked great to keep hop debris out of the pump, but not restrict flow. I had a thick cake of hop mush at the end when it was time to clean. Cleaning was fast and easy with parts light and easy to pull out, come apart, and rinse. And with the built-in pump, it was also easy to fill the unit up with cleaning solution at the end, circulate it through the unit & my Counter Flow Chiller to get everything clean.

Chilling Wort Using CFC and Built-in Pump

For wort cooling at the end of the boil, I used the built-in pump and circulated wort through my CFC. With the camlock fitting on the BrewZilla, I could easily hook up my typical ½” silicone tubing hoses. I was unsure if the pump would be up to the job, but it handled it easily. I could get a good volume flow rate with the recirc valve wide open on the BrewZilla and could easily restrict it when I wanted a slower flow.

A couple of pro tips to wrap things up. First, is to make sure you add your grains to the malt pipe BEFORE you lower it into the vessel. This ensures the weight of the grain keeps the bottom plate in place, so that as you lower it down, the water doesn’t push the bottom plate out of position and create a sneak path for whole grains to get through. Second is to make sure you have the plug fully seated in your brew unit. This might sound stupidly logical, but with a 6-foot power cord, you might end up pushing the limits of where you want the unit to sit vs. where the outlet is you’re plugged into. I had the cable become partially unseated and I wasn’t aware- until I went to remove the cord at the end of a long session of PID controller experiments. If the cord isn’t fully seated, you get less electrical contact on the pins and less contact means higher heat as electricity flows through it. I ended up damaging the cord and the receptacle from overheating.

Conclusions

The BrewZilla Gen4 delivered. The controller worked great, and I absolutely loved the step mash ability to start the mash step timer using actual mash temperatures. The RAPT interface wasn’t quite as slick as I would’ve liked but overall worked flawlessly, with no glitches. And I was definitely surprised how well a mere 120V/1500W system could handle mash steps and boil intensity. The well-thought-out little pieces of the malt pipe and various recirculation designs showed to me a system that was engineered with actual brewing hours spent on the unit, which is great. I feel with all of this, I won’t have compromises on my brew day using an all-in-one system versus my bigger 2-vessel system. And that says a lot.

Special thanks to Kegland for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review.

Compare Prices, Review Continues Below:


This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Data Plots

Related: Hands on Review: Robobrew (BrewZilla v1) All Grain Brewing System

More Photos

Included Immersion Chiller (Fittings Sold Separately)

Collecting Wort for Gravity Check

Control Panel and Cord

Easy Access Pump and Hose Routing Underneath

Glass Lid with Handles

Hanger Plate for Control Panel

Heat Exchanger Dish

Holes in Malt Pipe to Help Flow

Malt Pipe Fits Perfectly in 8 Gallon Bucket

Malt Pipe Sitting at Halfway Point to Drain

Malt Pipe Screen Bottom (Left) and Top (Right)

Hop Debris on Filter Screen At End

Neoprene Jacket

Power Connection for 110V Cord and Multi-pin Connector for Control Panel

Recirc Pipe with Valve and Camlock Fitting

Recirc Pipe, Drain Spigot, and Malt Pipe Lift Handle

Robust Hard Rubber Feet

Convert RoboBrew to BrewZilla

If you’re looking to convert your Robobrew to a BrewZilla an upgrade board is available

robobrew upgrade board

Robobrew Gen 3.1.1 Upgrade Board Set 110 volt via William’s Brewing

More Kegland Gear Reviews!

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By Brad Probert.  Check out Brad’s website – beersnobby.com

Special Thanks to Keg King with the help of MoreBeer for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review

Price, promotions and availability can change quickly. Check the product page for current price, description and availability.

Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application.  Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application.  Always read and follow manufacturer directions. tag:lnksfxd review:bprobobrew rs:7 #tag:tpru tag:watch

 

Hands on Review: Wort Hog Turnkey Electric e-BIAB System

highgravitybrew.com wort hog review

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Wort Hog 120V eBIAB System

When it comes to electric Brew In A Bag (eBIAB) systems, there are several choices out there. I’ve tried both 240 Volt and 120 Volt systems. While I love the speed of heating water/wort on the 240V systems, I don’t love the constraints/expense of wiring a 240V plug in a convenient place. The 1500 Watt and 1600 Watt eBIAB units out there are good, but they do lack when it comes to speed of heating strike water or getting a really vigorous boil. The Wort Hog 120V system slides into this niche with the convenience of a 120V system, but using a 2250W Blichmann heating element to give a notable boost.



Also Consider… BrewZilla!

BrewZilla and DigiBoil at MoreBeer

Hands on Review: BrewZilla Gen 4 All Grain Brewing System

System Overview

The Wort Hog Turn Key System via High Gravity Fermentations Supplies uses a Bayou Classic 11-gallon kettle. I’d never seen a Bayou Classic kettle in person before, and I’ll admit I had a pre-conceived opinion of them. I thought of them as “cheap turkey fryers” based on their low price and marketing, but I found my baseless opinion was completely off. This 11-gallon kettle has a super shiny, polished exterior, but most importantly it was made of a very robust thick gauge stainless steel. With high quality, clean welds, this baby is certainly going to live up to wear and tear for a long time, and cleaned up very easily.


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Hands on Review: BrewZilla Gen 4 + Limited Time DEAL

 

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.


Limited Time Deal, Save on Ultimate Combo Pack

BrewZilla Ultimate Combo Pack | Gen 4 BrewZilla All Grain Brewing System | WiFi/Bluetooth/RAPT Enabled | Neoprene Jacket, Hop Spider & Wort Chiller Connection Kit Included | 9.25G | 35L | 110V

From MoreBeer:

  • The Ultimate BrewZilla Combo Pack! Get the Gen 4 BrewZilla & our most highly recommended accessories at an unbeatable price!
  • Includes all of our favorite accessories for the BrewZilla including the Neoprene Jacket to speed up heating times, Hop Spider to keep vegetal matter out of your wort, and Chilling Connection Kit so you’re ready to use the Immersion Chiller out of the box
  • We think all BrewZilla brewers will eventually upgrade their systems with these accessories, so buy them together and reap the savings!

As of this posting this combo is on sale for $649.99. Shipping is also free to many US addresses. No coupon code is required, check product page for avaiablility.

BrewZilla Ultimate Combo Pack | Gen 4 BrewZilla All Grain Brewing System | WiFi/Bluetooth/RAPT Enabled | Neoprene Jacket, Hop Spider & Wort Chiller Connection Kit Included | 9.25G | 35L | 110V AG581


Hands on Review BrewZilla Gen4

I’ve brewed on several different all-in-one units. Like any brew system, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I did a hands-on review of the Robobrew when it first came out in late 2016. It has since changed its name to BrewZilla and is on the 4th generation of the brew unit. As you’d expect with repeated generations, they’ve been able to focus on fixing deficiencies in their previous models and also introduce new features.

The basic premise of an all-in-one brewing system is that your mash and boil kettle are in the

same vessel. So just like Brew In A Bag, after mashing, you pull the grains out and the wort stays behind to be boiled. They use electricity for heat, so they can be used outdoors where you can reach power or indoors where you have a venting system that can take care of all the steam you make during your boil.

BrewZilla Without Jacket

Stamped Volume Markings

Here are some basic stats on the Gen4 BrewZilla. It’s available in a 35-Liter form (for 5-6 gallon batches) with either a 110V setup, or 220V. There is also a larger 65-Liter that is only 220V (targeted to 10-12 gallon batches). The 35L unit holds 9.25 gallons, the mash basket can hold up to 23.5 lbs. of grain, and its electric heating elements can output up to 1500W of power (110V system) or 2400W of power (220V system). The 65L unit holds 17.1 gallons, the mash basket holds 41.5 lbs. of grain, and 3500W of heating power. All the Gen4 units have a pump bolted into the base. The pump can be used not only for wort recirculation during the mash, but also to pump beer through your wort chiller apparatus (should you choose to not use the immersion chiller coil included with the BrewZilla). The pump is more modular and accessible than previous Gen models. To protect the pump from clogging with hop debris during the boil or whirlpool, there is a filter screen (a perforated stainless disc that sits at the bottom of the unit) that sits at the bottom of the kettle. The small magnetic drive pump has a pump head rating of 1.5 – 2.1 m (4.9 – 6.9 ft) and a max flow rate of 11-12 L/min (2.9 – 3.2 gal/min).

Control Panel Notification During Mash Profile

One of the key upgraded features of the Gen4 BrewZilla is the controller. RAPT Is Kegland’s line of wireless connected brewing devices. The BrewZilla now has a RAPT controller so it adds a lot of features that can be monitored and controlled over Wi-Fi. This includes basic things like monitoring temperature from your laptop/cell phone, but also allows you to program complex mash programs online and then download to your BrewZilla. You can also adjust control parameters on the fly such as pump output duty cycle and heater output level. If you get the optional Bluetooth thermometer, you can stick the temperature probe into the middle of your grain bed, and then have the controller use that as its control signal in combination with the built-in temperature sensor that sits on the floor of the unit.

Bluetooth Temp Probe in Middle of Mash

Although All-in-One units are essentially BIAB, they use a stainless steel basket with holes in the bottom of it instead of a bag, and call it a “malt pipe”. These provide functional improvements over a nylon bag. The obvious one is they are way easier to clean. But they also allow you to ensure you get full flow through your grain bed by having holes only on the bottom. This means recirculating wort has no sneak paths out the side. The other benefit is malt pipes have simple brackets/feet welded onto the outside that allow you to lift your wet grains up and prop the malt pipe on the brew rig to drain or sparge. The BrewZilla has 2 sets of feet for this. One set is halfway up, allowing you to do the deadlift of grain & wort halfway and then let the liquid level drain down. Then when you lift it the full height, it’s not as heavy. It’s simple, but makes the process much better.

Welded-on Carry Handle (top) and Tip Handle (bottom)

There is a cool feature in the BrewZilla which normally only comes on much higher end systems, and that’s the central drain. With a concave bottom with a drain at the lowest point in the center, you don’t have to leave wort behind or goof around with tilting it to get the last drops of wort out at the end. This also enables the malt pipe to extend down lower and thus you can hold more grain (30% more than their Gen3). If you compared to other All-in-one units in the “5 gallon batch” size range, the 23.5 lbs. grain capacity is 30 – 50% more. This of course only matters if you’re trying to make high gravity brews. The drain in the floor is plumbed to the inlet of the pump below, and then you can direct pump output either to an external spigot for fast/easy transfer of wort out after brewing, or up the recirculation pipe for wort to get directed down on top of the mash.

Polished Bottom with Center Drain and Built-in Temp Sensor to Side

Bottom Side of Pump Filter Plate

To help with mash efficiency and mash temperature uniformity, they offer a Heat Exchanger Dish, which is just a stainless dish/plate that sits below your malt pipe and above the central drain. Without this dish in place, the flow of recirculating wort tends to go through the center of your grain bed, and straight out the drain. With the dish there, it directs the flow around the full circumference before it gets to the drain, which helps ensure a broader portion of the grist sees the flow.


Compare Prices, Review Continues Below:


This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Another helpful option is the neoprene insulation jacket. This helps keep mash temperatures more consistent by cutting down heat loss through the walls of the unit. The jacket on BrewZilla also smartly covers the recirculation pipe to minimize heat loss during wort recirculation. The overall mash temperature response with a multi-step mash was impressive, with more detail provided in the Hands On section, below.

Hands on Trials

First off, all of the different parts were well made with good quality manufacturing. As I’ve found with all Kegland gear, it’s of good quality- but nothing flashy. The one exception was probably the smooth and highly polished dished bottom. That was flashy. And being a previous owner of a 1st Gen Robobrew, I was very happy to see the camlock fitting on the recirculation pipe and see that Kegland was obviously tuned in to customer feedback on their products.

Mashing-in Sequence

Sparging

I brewed three different batches before writing this review. Two of them followed a simple single temperature mash, and the third one I exercised the RAPT Controller more with a multi-step mash profile, with lots of monitoring via my smartphone. I was impressed with the mash efficiency I achieved. There can be a misconception that BIAB = lower mash efficiency, but really, it’s “full volume mash = lower efficiency”. I had previously done experiments with an Anvil Foundry that showed a sparge step can get you mash efficiencies > 80%. Therefore, my batches in the BrewZilla were all done with a sparge step. I rested the malt pipe at the top while pouring heated sparge water through it with a 1-gallon pitcher. The perforated plate sitting on top of the grain bed made it super simple to sparge like this and get a good water distribution pattern. The perforated plate also allowed me to push down very easily and squeeze out remaining liquid in the grains. If you’re in the school of thought that squeezing the grains is bad for your beer, this isn’t relevant for you. For the rest of us, being able to easily squeeze that out without making a mess was awesome. And it meant when I picked up the basket of spent grain, I didn’t have a trail of sugary malt drippings to clean up after. My first batch achieved 77% mash efficiency, the second one 80%, and the third 81%.

Recirc Flow Rate After CFC

I experimented a bit with the Bluetooth RAPT wireless thermometer, but I didn’t properly understand it at first. I thought the concept was I could choose whether to use the built-in sensor at the bottom of the unit or the Bluetooth thermometer, but that wasn’t the case. When you add the Bluetooth thermometer, it will then control to that temperature, but it still uses the built-in sensor as part of your heating in a way that lets you fine tune how the system as a whole responds to temperature steps in your mash. After tinkering with it a bit, I realized it has some really powerful potential, but requires a deeper dive and some experimentation to back it up. So I’ll save that for a future write-up.

Bluetooth RAPT Thermometer

My typical brew system uses a 10-gallon kettle with a pump recirculating wort through a 240V RIMS with a 3500W heating element. With that set-up, I get about 3.1 degrees/minute temperature rise when doing multi-step mash profiles. I was therefore expecting this 120V/1500W system to be slow but was shocked to find similar performance that averaged around 2.5 degrees/minute. I attributed this capability to the neoprene jacket. On the plus side, that means you can do multi-step mashes even on only a 120V outlet and not take all day. But leaving the lid on as you heat to a boil is still a must. With the large opening in its domed top, it still can allow any volatized compounds to flow out.

BrewZilla Mashing by Itself in Basement

I found the RAPT software a bit non-intuitive and as such, had a learning curve to it. Luckily, I did a trial run just with water in it so I could get a feel for where various controls were located and how it worked. I definitely recommend this before you try to do any multi-step mash program, or live monitoring of things from the App. Way less stressful when it’s just water! After I got the hang of it, I was able to monitor my mash well and know what was going on as it chugged away in the basement and I worked at my day job one floor above. One key thing I learned was the in-flight plotting of mash temperature isn’t a continuously updating graph, you have to hit refresh in the App to get the updated data that it is recording and holding. I assume this is for computing efficiency and Wi-Fi bandwidth load management. It was perfectly fine once I figured out how it worked.

Screenshot of RAPT Controller Interface

The RAPT Controller allows you to program in multi-step mashes. But it’s a bit clunky as you figure it out. When you build the profile up using the App or Web interface, that profile sits on the RAPT server. My brain kept wanting to think I was programming the controller directly on the unit, but that’s not how it works. So after you program in the profile, you have to download it to the controller on your unit for it to work. You do all of this through the RAPT portal, and it only requires your BrewZilla to be powered on to let you download to it. This would be cool if you could just export something from Brewfather and then import it in RAPT, but you can’t. However, when you think about it, you probably don’t have that many different mash profiles, so it’s not really a big deal.

Malt Pipe

Draining Malt Pipe

One super cool feature of the mash profile programming is Kegland finally did what many have wanted these controllers to do for a long time. Rather than open loop programming a temperature and a time and guesstimating how long it will take for your mash to reach that temperature, you can tell it to not start counting down your mash step timer until it reaches the temperature. So if you want a 45-minute rest at 150F, you don’t have to think about how long it will take to get to 150F, it just heats up, and then starts the 45-minute timer when you hit 150F. I really liked this. You are also able to set up notifications at either the beginning or end of a particular mash step. I had it send an alert to my phone once it had reached mashout temperature and thus had 10 minutes left in my mash. That was cool, too. This isn’t quite as simple as it sounds, though. What I found was if the PID controller didn’t overshoot my target temp, I spent several minutes closing in on the target, but didn’t hit the temperature to start your countdown timer. So I’d end up with long mash times. I did some experiments with PID gains and the Bluetooth probe that got this working as I wanted, but I’ll detail that in a later write-up.

Rolling Boil at 75-percent Power

There wasn’t a boil timer interface, the controller was really just geared to controlling & monitoring mash temperatures. Not a big deal, as my Brewfather boil timer works great for this, so it isn’t a feature RAPT needs to spend time making. I could easily maintain a robust boil if I wanted to, but I like to keep it at just a good rolling circulation, so I dialed down the heating element power to 75% and maintained a constant churn of the wort and allowed boil-off of 0.4 – 0.5 gallons per hour. And the filter dish at the bottom of the kettle worked great to keep hop debris out of the pump, but not restrict flow. I had a thick cake of hop mush at the end when it was time to clean. Cleaning was fast and easy with parts light and easy to pull out, come apart, and rinse. And with the built-in pump, it was also easy to fill the unit up with cleaning solution at the end, circulate it through the unit & my Counter Flow Chiller to get everything clean.

Chilling Wort Using CFC and Built-in Pump

For wort cooling at the end of the boil, I used the built-in pump and circulated wort through my CFC. With the camlock fitting on the BrewZilla, I could easily hook up my typical ½” silicone tubing hoses. I was unsure if the pump would be up to the job, but it handled it easily. I could get a good volume flow rate with the recirc valve wide open on the BrewZilla and could easily restrict it when I wanted a slower flow.

A couple of pro tips to wrap things up. First, is to make sure you add your grains to the malt pipe BEFORE you lower it into the vessel. This ensures the weight of the grain keeps the bottom plate in place, so that as you lower it down, the water doesn’t push the bottom plate out of position and create a sneak path for whole grains to get through. Second is to make sure you have the plug fully seated in your brew unit. This might sound stupidly logical, but with a 6-foot power cord, you might end up pushing the limits of where you want the unit to sit vs. where the outlet is you’re plugged into. I had the cable become partially unseated and I wasn’t aware- until I went to remove the cord at the end of a long session of PID controller experiments. If the cord isn’t fully seated, you get less electrical contact on the pins and less contact means higher heat as electricity flows through it. I ended up damaging the cord and the receptacle from overheating.

Conclusions

The BrewZilla Gen4 delivered. The controller worked great, and I absolutely loved the step mash ability to start the mash step timer using actual mash temperatures. The RAPT interface wasn’t quite as slick as I would’ve liked but overall worked flawlessly, with no glitches. And I was definitely surprised how well a mere 120V/1500W system could handle mash steps and boil intensity. The well-thought-out little pieces of the malt pipe and various recirculation designs showed to me a system that was engineered with actual brewing hours spent on the unit, which is great. I feel with all of this, I won’t have compromises on my brew day using an all-in-one system versus my bigger 2-vessel system. And that says a lot.

Special thanks to Kegland for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review.

Compare Prices, Review Continues Below:


This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Data Plots

Related: Hands on Review: Robobrew (BrewZilla v1) All Grain Brewing System

More Photos

Included Immersion Chiller (Fittings Sold Separately)

Collecting Wort for Gravity Check

Control Panel and Cord

Easy Access Pump and Hose Routing Underneath

Glass Lid with Handles

Hanger Plate for Control Panel

Heat Exchanger Dish

Holes in Malt Pipe to Help Flow

Malt Pipe Fits Perfectly in 8 Gallon Bucket

Malt Pipe Sitting at Halfway Point to Drain

Malt Pipe Screen Bottom (Left) and Top (Right)

Hop Debris on Filter Screen At End

Neoprene Jacket

Power Connection for 110V Cord and Multi-pin Connector for Control Panel

Recirc Pipe with Valve and Camlock Fitting

Recirc Pipe, Drain Spigot, and Malt Pipe Lift Handle

Robust Hard Rubber Feet

Convert RoboBrew to BrewZilla

If you’re looking to convert your Robobrew to a BrewZilla an upgrade board is available

robobrew upgrade board

Robobrew Gen 3.1.1 Upgrade Board Set 110 volt via William’s Brewing

More Kegland Gear Reviews!

More Homebrew Finds!

Recent Deals!

We are Homebrew Review HQ!  See Our 10 Most Recent Reviews

This post may contain affiliate links. We may make a commission when you use our links. This will never cost you extra. Thank you for supporting Homebrew Finds!

By Brad Probert.  Check out Brad’s website – beersnobby.com

Special Thanks to Keg King with the help of MoreBeer for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review

Price, promotions and availability can change quickly. Check the product page for current price, description and availability.

Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application.  Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application.  Always read and follow manufacturer directions. tag:lnksfxd review:bprobobrew rs:7 #tag:tpru tag:watch

 

Hands on Review: BrewZilla Gen 4

 

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Hands on Review BrewZilla Gen4

I’ve brewed on several different all-in-one units. Like any brew system, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I did a hands-on review of the Robobrew when it first came out in late 2016. It has since changed its name to BrewZilla and is on the 4th generation of the brew unit. As you’d expect with repeated generations, they’ve been able to focus on fixing deficiencies in their previous models and also introduce new features.

The basic premise of an all-in-one brewing system is that your mash and boil kettle are in the

same vessel. So just like Brew In A Bag, after mashing, you pull the grains out and the wort stays behind to be boiled. They use electricity for heat, so they can be used outdoors where you can reach power or indoors where you have a venting system that can take care of all the steam you make during your boil.

BrewZilla Without Jacket

Stamped Volume Markings

Here are some basic stats on the Gen4 BrewZilla. It’s available in a 35-Liter form (for 5-6 gallon batches) with either a 110V setup, or 220V. There is also a larger 65-Liter that is only 220V (targeted to 10-12 gallon batches). The 35L unit holds 9.25 gallons, the mash basket can hold up to 23.5 lbs. of grain, and its electric heating elements can output up to 1500W of power (110V system) or 2400W of power (220V system). The 65L unit holds 17.1 gallons, the mash basket holds 41.5 lbs. of grain, and 3500W of heating power. All the Gen4 units have a pump bolted into the base. The pump can be used not only for wort recirculation during the mash, but also to pump beer through your wort chiller apparatus (should you choose to not use the immersion chiller coil included with the BrewZilla). The pump is more modular and accessible than previous Gen models. To protect the pump from clogging with hop debris during the boil or whirlpool, there is a filter screen (a perforated stainless disc that sits at the bottom of the unit) that sits at the bottom of the kettle. The small magnetic drive pump has a pump head rating of 1.5 – 2.1 m (4.9 – 6.9 ft) and a max flow rate of 11-12 L/min (2.9 – 3.2 gal/min).

Control Panel Notification During Mash Profile

One of the key upgraded features of the Gen4 BrewZilla is the controller. RAPT Is Kegland’s line of wireless connected brewing devices. The BrewZilla now has a RAPT controller so it adds a lot of features that can be monitored and controlled over Wi-Fi. This includes basic things like monitoring temperature from your laptop/cell phone, but also allows you to program complex mash programs online and then download to your BrewZilla. You can also adjust control parameters on the fly such as pump output duty cycle and heater output level. If you get the optional Bluetooth thermometer, you can stick the temperature probe into the middle of your grain bed, and then have the controller use that as its control signal in combination with the built-in temperature sensor that sits on the floor of the unit.

Bluetooth Temp Probe in Middle of Mash

Although All-in-One units are essentially BIAB, they use a stainless steel basket with holes in the bottom of it instead of a bag, and call it a “malt pipe”. These provide functional improvements over a nylon bag. The obvious one is they are way easier to clean. But they also allow you to ensure you get full flow through your grain bed by having holes only on the bottom. This means recirculating wort has no sneak paths out the side. The other benefit is malt pipes have simple brackets/feet welded onto the outside that allow you to lift your wet grains up and prop the malt pipe on the brew rig to drain or sparge. The BrewZilla has 2 sets of feet for this. One set is halfway up, allowing you to do the deadlift of grain & wort halfway and then let the liquid level drain down. Then when you lift it the full height, it’s not as heavy. It’s simple, but makes the process much better.

Welded-on Carry Handle (top) and Tip Handle (bottom)

There is a cool feature in the BrewZilla which normally only comes on much higher end systems, and that’s the central drain. With a concave bottom with a drain at the lowest point in the center, you don’t have to leave wort behind or goof around with tilting it to get the last drops of wort out at the end. This also enables the malt pipe to extend down lower and thus you can hold more grain (30% more than their Gen3). If you compared to other All-in-one units in the “5 gallon batch” size range, the 23.5 lbs. grain capacity is 30 – 50% more. This of course only matters if you’re trying to make high gravity brews. The drain in the floor is plumbed to the inlet of the pump below, and then you can direct pump output either to an external spigot for fast/easy transfer of wort out after brewing, or up the recirculation pipe for wort to get directed down on top of the mash.

Polished Bottom with Center Drain and Built-in Temp Sensor to Side

Bottom Side of Pump Filter Plate

To help with mash efficiency and mash temperature uniformity, they offer a Heat Exchanger Dish, which is just a stainless dish/plate that sits below your malt pipe and above the central drain. Without this dish in place, the flow of recirculating wort tends to go through the center of your grain bed, and straight out the drain. With the dish there, it directs the flow around the full circumference before it gets to the drain, which helps ensure a broader portion of the grist sees the flow.


Compare Prices, Review Continues Below:


This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Another helpful option is the neoprene insulation jacket. This helps keep mash temperatures more consistent by cutting down heat loss through the walls of the unit. The jacket on BrewZilla also smartly covers the recirculation pipe to minimize heat loss during wort recirculation. The overall mash temperature response with a multi-step mash was impressive, with more detail provided in the Hands On section, below.

Hands on Trials

First off, all of the different parts were well made with good quality manufacturing. As I’ve found with all Kegland gear, it’s of good quality- but nothing flashy. The one exception was probably the smooth and highly polished dished bottom. That was flashy. And being a previous owner of a 1st Gen Robobrew, I was very happy to see the camlock fitting on the recirculation pipe and see that Kegland was obviously tuned in to customer feedback on their products.

Mashing-in Sequence

Sparging

I brewed three different batches before writing this review. Two of them followed a simple single temperature mash, and the third one I exercised the RAPT Controller more with a multi-step mash profile, with lots of monitoring via my smartphone. I was impressed with the mash efficiency I achieved. There can be a misconception that BIAB = lower mash efficiency, but really, it’s “full volume mash = lower efficiency”. I had previously done experiments with an Anvil Foundry that showed a sparge step can get you mash efficiencies > 80%. Therefore, my batches in the BrewZilla were all done with a sparge step. I rested the malt pipe at the top while pouring heated sparge water through it with a 1-gallon pitcher. The perforated plate sitting on top of the grain bed made it super simple to sparge like this and get a good water distribution pattern. The perforated plate also allowed me to push down very easily and squeeze out remaining liquid in the grains. If you’re in the school of thought that squeezing the grains is bad for your beer, this isn’t relevant for you. For the rest of us, being able to easily squeeze that out without making a mess was awesome. And it meant when I picked up the basket of spent grain, I didn’t have a trail of sugary malt drippings to clean up after. My first batch achieved 77% mash efficiency, the second one 80%, and the third 81%.

Recirc Flow Rate After CFC

I experimented a bit with the Bluetooth RAPT wireless thermometer, but I didn’t properly understand it at first. I thought the concept was I could choose whether to use the built-in sensor at the bottom of the unit or the Bluetooth thermometer, but that wasn’t the case. When you add the Bluetooth thermometer, it will then control to that temperature, but it still uses the built-in sensor as part of your heating in a way that lets you fine tune how the system as a whole responds to temperature steps in your mash. After tinkering with it a bit, I realized it has some really powerful potential, but requires a deeper dive and some experimentation to back it up. So I’ll save that for a future write-up.

Bluetooth RAPT Thermometer

My typical brew system uses a 10-gallon kettle with a pump recirculating wort through a 240V RIMS with a 3500W heating element. With that set-up, I get about 3.1 degrees/minute temperature rise when doing multi-step mash profiles. I was therefore expecting this 120V/1500W system to be slow but was shocked to find similar performance that averaged around 2.5 degrees/minute. I attributed this capability to the neoprene jacket. On the plus side, that means you can do multi-step mashes even on only a 120V outlet and not take all day. But leaving the lid on as you heat to a boil is still a must. With the large opening in its domed top, it still can allow any volatized compounds to flow out.

BrewZilla Mashing by Itself in Basement

I found the RAPT software a bit non-intuitive and as such, had a learning curve to it. Luckily, I did a trial run just with water in it so I could get a feel for where various controls were located and how it worked. I definitely recommend this before you try to do any multi-step mash program, or live monitoring of things from the App. Way less stressful when it’s just water! After I got the hang of it, I was able to monitor my mash well and know what was going on as it chugged away in the basement and I worked at my day job one floor above. One key thing I learned was the in-flight plotting of mash temperature isn’t a continuously updating graph, you have to hit refresh in the App to get the updated data that it is recording and holding. I assume this is for computing efficiency and Wi-Fi bandwidth load management. It was perfectly fine once I figured out how it worked.

Screenshot of RAPT Controller Interface

The RAPT Controller allows you to program in multi-step mashes. But it’s a bit clunky as you figure it out. When you build the profile up using the App or Web interface, that profile sits on the RAPT server. My brain kept wanting to think I was programming the controller directly on the unit, but that’s not how it works. So after you program in the profile, you have to download it to the controller on your unit for it to work. You do all of this through the RAPT portal, and it only requires your BrewZilla to be powered on to let you download to it. This would be cool if you could just export something from Brewfather and then import it in RAPT, but you can’t. However, when you think about it, you probably don’t have that many different mash profiles, so it’s not really a big deal.

Malt Pipe

Draining Malt Pipe

One super cool feature of the mash profile programming is Kegland finally did what many have wanted these controllers to do for a long time. Rather than open loop programming a temperature and a time and guesstimating how long it will take for your mash to reach that temperature, you can tell it to not start counting down your mash step timer until it reaches the temperature. So if you want a 45-minute rest at 150F, you don’t have to think about how long it will take to get to 150F, it just heats up, and then starts the 45-minute timer when you hit 150F. I really liked this. You are also able to set up notifications at either the beginning or end of a particular mash step. I had it send an alert to my phone once it had reached mashout temperature and thus had 10 minutes left in my mash. That was cool, too. This isn’t quite as simple as it sounds, though. What I found was if the PID controller didn’t overshoot my target temp, I spent several minutes closing in on the target, but didn’t hit the temperature to start your countdown timer. So I’d end up with long mash times. I did some experiments with PID gains and the Bluetooth probe that got this working as I wanted, but I’ll detail that in a later write-up.

Rolling Boil at 75-percent Power

There wasn’t a boil timer interface, the controller was really just geared to controlling & monitoring mash temperatures. Not a big deal, as my Brewfather boil timer works great for this, so it isn’t a feature RAPT needs to spend time making. I could easily maintain a robust boil if I wanted to, but I like to keep it at just a good rolling circulation, so I dialed down the heating element power to 75% and maintained a constant churn of the wort and allowed boil-off of 0.4 – 0.5 gallons per hour. And the filter dish at the bottom of the kettle worked great to keep hop debris out of the pump, but not restrict flow. I had a thick cake of hop mush at the end when it was time to clean. Cleaning was fast and easy with parts light and easy to pull out, come apart, and rinse. And with the built-in pump, it was also easy to fill the unit up with cleaning solution at the end, circulate it through the unit & my Counter Flow Chiller to get everything clean.

Chilling Wort Using CFC and Built-in Pump

For wort cooling at the end of the boil, I used the built-in pump and circulated wort through my CFC. With the camlock fitting on the BrewZilla, I could easily hook up my typical ½” silicone tubing hoses. I was unsure if the pump would be up to the job, but it handled it easily. I could get a good volume flow rate with the recirc valve wide open on the BrewZilla and could easily restrict it when I wanted a slower flow.

A couple of pro tips to wrap things up. First, is to make sure you add your grains to the malt pipe BEFORE you lower it into the vessel. This ensures the weight of the grain keeps the bottom plate in place, so that as you lower it down, the water doesn’t push the bottom plate out of position and create a sneak path for whole grains to get through. Second is to make sure you have the plug fully seated in your brew unit. This might sound stupidly logical, but with a 6-foot power cord, you might end up pushing the limits of where you want the unit to sit vs. where the outlet is you’re plugged into. I had the cable become partially unseated and I wasn’t aware- until I went to remove the cord at the end of a long session of PID controller experiments. If the cord isn’t fully seated, you get less electrical contact on the pins and less contact means higher heat as electricity flows through it. I ended up damaging the cord and the receptacle from overheating.

Conclusions

The BrewZilla Gen4 delivered. The controller worked great, and I absolutely loved the step mash ability to start the mash step timer using actual mash temperatures. The RAPT interface wasn’t quite as slick as I would’ve liked but overall worked flawlessly, with no glitches. And I was definitely surprised how well a mere 120V/1500W system could handle mash steps and boil intensity. The well-thought-out little pieces of the malt pipe and various recirculation designs showed to me a system that was engineered with actual brewing hours spent on the unit, which is great. I feel with all of this, I won’t have compromises on my brew day using an all-in-one system versus my bigger 2-vessel system. And that says a lot.

Special thanks to Kegland for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review.

Compare Prices, Review Continues Below:


This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Data Plots

Related: Hands on Review: Robobrew (BrewZilla v1) All Grain Brewing System

More Photos

Included Immersion Chiller (Fittings Sold Separately)

Collecting Wort for Gravity Check

Control Panel and Cord

Easy Access Pump and Hose Routing Underneath

Glass Lid with Handles

Hanger Plate for Control Panel

Heat Exchanger Dish

Holes in Malt Pipe to Help Flow

Malt Pipe Fits Perfectly in 8 Gallon Bucket

Malt Pipe Sitting at Halfway Point to Drain

Malt Pipe Screen Bottom (Left) and Top (Right)

Hop Debris on Filter Screen At End

Neoprene Jacket

Power Connection for 110V Cord and Multi-pin Connector for Control Panel

Recirc Pipe with Valve and Camlock Fitting

Recirc Pipe, Drain Spigot, and Malt Pipe Lift Handle

Robust Hard Rubber Feet

Convert RoboBrew to BrewZilla

If you’re looking to convert your Robobrew to a BrewZilla an upgrade board is available

robobrew upgrade board

Robobrew Gen 3.1.1 Upgrade Board Set 110 volt via William’s Brewing

More Kegland Gear Reviews!

More Homebrew Finds!

Recent Deals!

We are Homebrew Review HQ!  See Our 10 Most Recent Reviews

This post may contain affiliate links. We may make a commission when you use our links. This will never cost you extra. Thank you for supporting Homebrew Finds!

By Brad Probert.  Check out Brad’s website – beersnobby.com

Special Thanks to Keg King with the help of MoreBeer for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review

Price, promotions and availability can change quickly. Check the product page for current price, description and availability.

Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application.  Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application.  Always read and follow manufacturer directions. tag:lnksfxd review:bprobobrew rs:7 #tag:tpru

 

Hands on Review: Anvil Foundry Brewing System

anvil brewing foundry review

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Anvil Brewing Equipment Foundry

There are a lot of all-in-one electric brew rigs on the market. The entry to all-grain for most was through a converted cooler 3-vessel system. It was the cheapest way to get into all-grain, and why so many of us came that way. Precision control and/or electric heating convenience came at a premium that you would upgrade to later. Well, those are now relegated to “old timer stories”. At the all-grain entry level price point, you can now get an all-in-one electric unit from Anvil for the price you’d pay for an Igloo cooler kit with a burner and pot. So now those getting into all-grain can start with the precision of digital temperature control, and the weather-proof convenience of an electric heat source.


Compare Models, Prices and Availability, Review Continues Below:


Comparing Anvil Foundry Versions

anvil brewing equipment foundry review

The Anvil Foundry comes in two sizes, a 10.5 gallon and a 6.5 gallon. They share most all of the same features, but the 10.5 is targeted at 4-5 gallon batches, and the 6.5 for 2.5 gallon batches. There’s also an accessory you can order for the 10.5 to insert in the mash basket and then go as low as 2 gallon batches. Both of these units come with the option to add on a recirculation kit, which provides a pump and some other hardware bits to allow you to recirculate wort during the mash. Every unit also has a simple switch you can change to run on 120V or 240V. However, the unit comes with a 3-prong 120V plug, so if you do opt for the 240V setting, you have to cut the plug off and attach the appropriate 240V plug type.

Continue reading

Bruman Boil Chill Electric Homebrew Kettle w/Wort Chiller

Bruman_Boil-Chill Pot 9 gallon Electric Stainless Steel Home Brew Kettle Pot With Wort Chiller

Bruman_Boil-Chill Pot 9 gallon Electric Stainless Steel Home Brew Kettle Pot With Wort Chiller

More Info

From the product description, check product page for current description, price and availability:

  • 120V, 2000W electric heating element, do not need stove and fire to boil. Heat 20L water from 30℃ to 100℃ in about 70 minutes in kitchen. While it’s composite bottom with aluminum layer, make heat evenly when in case use fire.
  • Integrated chiller and stirring paddle, chill the boiling wort to tap water temperature quickly and easily , without bother of sanitizing. Chill 20L boiling wort from 100℃ to 30℃ with 20℃ tap water in less than 20 minutes.
  • Bimetallic thermometer with 304 stainless steel probe .
  • Hygienic grade stainless steel ball valve and 6 inch mesh screen for filtering wort.
  • Including power cord & barbs & silicon tube, ready to use immediately .

 

Bruman_Boil-Chill Pot 9 gallon Electric Stainless Steel Home Brew Kettle Pot With Wort Chiller – affiliate link, note that multiple variations of this product may be available, as such a different version may appear at this link

This post contains affiliate links. We may make a commission when you use our Amazon links. This will never cost you extra. Thank you for supporting Homebrew Finds!

Hands on Review: Anvil Foundry Brewing System!

anvil brewing foundry review

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Anvil Brewing Equipment Foundry

There are a lot of all-in-one electric brew rigs on the market. The entry to all-grain for most was through a converted cooler 3-vessel system. It was the cheapest way to get into all-grain, and why so many of us came that way. Precision control and/or electric heating convenience came at a premium that you would upgrade to later. Well, those are now relegated to “old timer stories”. At the all-grain entry level price point, you can now get an all-in-one electric unit from Anvil for the price you’d pay for an Igloo cooler kit with a burner and pot. So now those getting into all-grain can start with the precision of digital temperature control, and the weather-proof convenience of an electric heat source.


Compare Models, Prices and Availability, Review Continues Below:


Comparing Anvil Foundry Versions

anvil brewing equipment foundry review

The Anvil Foundry comes in two sizes, a 10.5 gallon and a 6.5 gallon. They share most all of the same features, but the 10.5 is targeted at 4-5 gallon batches, and the 6.5 for 2.5 gallon batches. There’s also an accessory you can order for the 10.5 to insert in the mash basket and then go as low as 2 gallon batches. Both of these units come with the option to add on a recirculation kit, which provides a pump and some other hardware bits to allow you to recirculate wort during the mash. Every unit also has a simple switch you can change to run on 120V or 240V. However, the unit comes with a 3-prong 120V plug, so if you do opt for the 240V setting, you have to cut the plug off and attach the appropriate 240V plug type.

Continue reading

DigiBoil Electric Kettles – 9.25 to 17.1 Gallons – Save Up to $45!

We have seen the recently announced Digiboil elsewhere.  The news here is that MoreBeer has announced the availability three models of Digiboil both 35L/9.25 Gallon models and a 65L/17.1 Gallon version.  The 35L is available in both 110v and 220v variations, while the 65L is available in 220 v.  Prices start at just $159.99 and shipping is free to many US addresses.  Check MoreBeer for current price, specs and availability.

Digiboil Electric Kettles at MoreBeer

Save Up to $45!  As of this posting, MoreBeer is discounting most things, sitewide by up to $45 based on your order size.  Some exclusions apply.  Most items bundle with MoreBeer’s Free Shipping.  Under that promo most orders over $59 ship for free.   Check MoreBeer for availability and details.

Grab the complete details and grab the coupon code  – Brew More Save More at MoreBeer!

Check sale or product page for current availability & pricing

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Hands on Review: Wort Hog Turnkey Electric e-BIAB System

highgravitybrew.com wort hog review

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Wort Hog 120V eBIAB System

When it comes to electric Brew In A Bag (eBIAB) systems, there are several choices out there. I’ve tried both 240 Volt and 120 Volt systems. While I love the speed of heating water/wort on the 240V systems, I don’t love the constraints/expense of wiring a 240V plug in a convenient place. The 1500 Watt and 1600 Watt eBIAB units out there are good, but they do lack when it comes to speed of heating strike water or getting a really vigorous boil. The Wort Hog 120V system slides into this niche with the convenience of a 120V system, but using a 2250W Blichmann heating element to give a notable boost.



Also Consider… BrewZilla!

BrewZilla and DigiBoil at MoreBeer

Hands on Review: BrewZilla Gen 4 All Grain Brewing System

System Overview

The Wort Hog Turn Key System via High Gravity Fermentations Supplies uses a Bayou Classic 11-gallon kettle. I’d never seen a Bayou Classic kettle in person before, and I’ll admit I had a pre-conceived opinion of them. I thought of them as “cheap turkey fryers” based on their low price and marketing, but I found my baseless opinion was completely off. This 11-gallon kettle has a super shiny, polished exterior, but most importantly it was made of a very robust thick gauge stainless steel. With high quality, clean welds, this baby is certainly going to live up to wear and tear for a long time, and cleaned up very easily.


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Hands on Review: Robobrew (BrewZilla v1) All Grain Brewing System

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.


Robobrew vs BrewZilla + Our BrewZilla Gen 4 Review

Since this review was released the Robobrew has been rebranded to the BrewZilla. This review is of of the original Robobrew (BrewZilla v1). Beyond the re-branding this system has had multiple version upgrades.

Check out our review of the much newer BrewZilla Gen 4!


Upgrading RoboBrew/BrewZilla to BrewZilla 3:

If you’re looking to convert your Robobrew to a BrewZilla an upgrade board is available

robobrew upgrade board

Robobrew Gen 3.1.1 Upgrade Board Set 110 volt via William’s Brewing


The Robobrew is an electric all-in-one eBIAB system. It allows you to brew the complexity of all-grain batches with the simplicity of electric heat/control in a single vessel system. There is a wide variety of these systems out on the market to choose from. Robobrew aims to be in the midst of these as far as features and function, but at a much lower price to attempt to get this tool in the hands of as many homebrewers as possible.


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This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!


Robobrew System Overview

The Robobrew comes in 2 models- one with a built-in pump, and one without. The model without the pump retails for about $350, and the one with a pump for $480. Although a significant price jump, the $480 price tag is several hundred cheaper than its competition. Getting a unit with a pump allows you to take advantage of a lot of the process efficiencies from the eBIAB systems, with convenience of recirculation during mash and pressure-fed wort transfer into your fermenter.

The pump is built into the bottom of the unit, tucked away out of sight and out of the way. There is a stainless steel transfer pipe that takes output flow from the pump and sends it up top where it can be directed to where you want it to go. The pump inlet is through an opening in the bottom of the brew chamber. Also in the bottom is the wort temperature sensor and the two independently switched heating elements (1000W + 500W). Although the heating elements have their own manual on/off switch, the unit’s electric controller also has the ability to shut off and turn on power depending on measured mash temperature compared to your set temperature. Importantly, the controller is smart enough to know when it should be using one or both elements when it’s getting close to your set temperature. It also is smart enough to only switch on the 500W element while trying to hold a steady temperature and things start to drift a bit.

For mashing, you put your crushed grains into the stainless steel malt pipe, which has a false bottom mesh on the bottom of it to keep grains from getting circulated into the pump or scorched to the bottom. There’s also a second false ‘bottom’ screen, which slides down inside the malt pipe after you’ve filled it with your crushed grains. And if two false bottoms aren’t enough for you, Robobrew has you covered with a third false bottom that sits below the malt pipe, giving you another layer of defense against stray grain particles during the mash, but also importantly keeps hop residue from clogging up your pump or wort chiller.

The controller provides basic control function by allowing you to set a target temperature with simple + / – buttons and then letting the controller turn on the elements automatically to heat up and then switch off when the target temperature is reached. There is also a delay feature that allows you to program in a delayed start for when you want the target set temperature to kick in. Set it to something short like a few minutes and make a pseudo mash temperature step profile you program one step at a time. Or for longer times (up to 24 hours) if you want to fill it with water and have the unit turn on to be ready for you after work.

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Hands on Review: BrewZilla Gen 4 All Grain Brewing System

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.


TWO BrewZilla Deals…

#1 On Sale at William’s Brewing

Brewzilla 35 Liter Gen 4 110 volt

  • For a short time William’s Brewing has this on for $549.99
  • Shipping is free or reasonably priced flat rate to addresses in the contiguous US depending on your order size for most items.

Brewzilla 35 Liter Gen 4 110 volt

#2 Save on Ultimate Combo Pack at MoreBeer

BrewZilla Ultimate Combo Pack | Gen 4 BrewZilla All Grain Brewing System | WiFi/Bluetooth/RAPT Enabled | Neoprene Jacket, Hop Spider & Wort Chiller Connection Kit Included | 9.25G | 35L | 110V

From MoreBeer:

  • The Ultimate BrewZilla Combo Pack! Get the Gen 4 BrewZilla & our most highly recommended accessories at an unbeatable price!
  • Includes all of our favorite accessories for the BrewZilla including the Neoprene Jacket to speed up heating times, Hop Spider to keep vegetal matter out of your wort, and Chilling Connection Kit so you’re ready to use the Immersion Chiller out of the box
  • We think all BrewZilla brewers will eventually upgrade their systems with these accessories, so buy them together and reap the savings!

As of this posting this combo is on sale for $649.99. Shipping is also free to many US addresses. No coupon code is required, check product page for avaiablility.

BrewZilla Ultimate Combo Pack | Gen 4 BrewZilla All Grain Brewing System | WiFi/Bluetooth/RAPT Enabled | Neoprene Jacket, Hop Spider & Wort Chiller Connection Kit Included | 9.25G | 35L | 110V AG581


Hands on Review BrewZilla Gen4

I’ve brewed on several different all-in-one units. Like any brew system, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I did a hands-on review of the Robobrew when it first came out in late 2016. It has since changed its name to BrewZilla and is on the 4th generation of the brew unit. As you’d expect with repeated generations, they’ve been able to focus on fixing deficiencies in their previous models and also introduce new features.

The basic premise of an all-in-one brewing system is that your mash and boil kettle are in the

same vessel. So just like Brew In A Bag, after mashing, you pull the grains out and the wort stays behind to be boiled. They use electricity for heat, so they can be used outdoors where you can reach power or indoors where you have a venting system that can take care of all the steam you make during your boil.

BrewZilla Without Jacket

Stamped Volume Markings

Here are some basic stats on the Gen4 BrewZilla. It’s available in a 35-Liter form (for 5-6 gallon batches) with either a 110V setup, or 220V. There is also a larger 65-Liter that is only 220V (targeted to 10-12 gallon batches). The 35L unit holds 9.25 gallons, the mash basket can hold up to 23.5 lbs. of grain, and its electric heating elements can output up to 1500W of power (110V system) or 2400W of power (220V system). The 65L unit holds 17.1 gallons, the mash basket holds 41.5 lbs. of grain, and 3500W of heating power. All the Gen4 units have a pump bolted into the base. The pump can be used not only for wort recirculation during the mash, but also to pump beer through your wort chiller apparatus (should you choose to not use the immersion chiller coil included with the BrewZilla). The pump is more modular and accessible than previous Gen models. To protect the pump from clogging with hop debris during the boil or whirlpool, there is a filter screen (a perforated stainless disc that sits at the bottom of the unit) that sits at the bottom of the kettle. The small magnetic drive pump has a pump head rating of 1.5 – 2.1 m (4.9 – 6.9 ft) and a max flow rate of 11-12 L/min (2.9 – 3.2 gal/min).

Control Panel Notification During Mash Profile

One of the key upgraded features of the Gen4 BrewZilla is the controller. RAPT Is Kegland’s line of wireless connected brewing devices. The BrewZilla now has a RAPT controller so it adds a lot of features that can be monitored and controlled over Wi-Fi. This includes basic things like monitoring temperature from your laptop/cell phone, but also allows you to program complex mash programs online and then download to your BrewZilla. You can also adjust control parameters on the fly such as pump output duty cycle and heater output level. If you get the optional Bluetooth thermometer, you can stick the temperature probe into the middle of your grain bed, and then have the controller use that as its control signal in combination with the built-in temperature sensor that sits on the floor of the unit.

Bluetooth Temp Probe in Middle of Mash

Although All-in-One units are essentially BIAB, they use a stainless steel basket with holes in the bottom of it instead of a bag, and call it a “malt pipe”. These provide functional improvements over a nylon bag. The obvious one is they are way easier to clean. But they also allow you to ensure you get full flow through your grain bed by having holes only on the bottom. This means recirculating wort has no sneak paths out the side. The other benefit is malt pipes have simple brackets/feet welded onto the outside that allow you to lift your wet grains up and prop the malt pipe on the brew rig to drain or sparge. The BrewZilla has 2 sets of feet for this. One set is halfway up, allowing you to do the deadlift of grain & wort halfway and then let the liquid level drain down. Then when you lift it the full height, it’s not as heavy. It’s simple, but makes the process much better.

Welded-on Carry Handle (top) and Tip Handle (bottom)

There is a cool feature in the BrewZilla which normally only comes on much higher end systems, and that’s the central drain. With a concave bottom with a drain at the lowest point in the center, you don’t have to leave wort behind or goof around with tilting it to get the last drops of wort out at the end. This also enables the malt pipe to extend down lower and thus you can hold more grain (30% more than their Gen3). If you compared to other All-in-one units in the “5 gallon batch” size range, the 23.5 lbs. grain capacity is 30 – 50% more. This of course only matters if you’re trying to make high gravity brews. The drain in the floor is plumbed to the inlet of the pump below, and then you can direct pump output either to an external spigot for fast/easy transfer of wort out after brewing, or up the recirculation pipe for wort to get directed down on top of the mash.

Polished Bottom with Center Drain and Built-in Temp Sensor to Side

Bottom Side of Pump Filter Plate

To help with mash efficiency and mash temperature uniformity, they offer a Heat Exchanger Dish, which is just a stainless dish/plate that sits below your malt pipe and above the central drain. Without this dish in place, the flow of recirculating wort tends to go through the center of your grain bed, and straight out the drain. With the dish there, it directs the flow around the full circumference before it gets to the drain, which helps ensure a broader portion of the grist sees the flow.


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Another helpful option is the neoprene insulation jacket. This helps keep mash temperatures more consistent by cutting down heat loss through the walls of the unit. The jacket on BrewZilla also smartly covers the recirculation pipe to minimize heat loss during wort recirculation. The overall mash temperature response with a multi-step mash was impressive, with more detail provided in the Hands On section, below.

Hands on Trials

First off, all of the different parts were well made with good quality manufacturing. As I’ve found with all Kegland gear, it’s of good quality- but nothing flashy. The one exception was probably the smooth and highly polished dished bottom. That was flashy. And being a previous owner of a 1st Gen Robobrew, I was very happy to see the camlock fitting on the recirculation pipe and see that Kegland was obviously tuned in to customer feedback on their products.

Mashing-in Sequence

Sparging

I brewed three different batches before writing this review. Two of them followed a simple single temperature mash, and the third one I exercised the RAPT Controller more with a multi-step mash profile, with lots of monitoring via my smartphone. I was impressed with the mash efficiency I achieved. There can be a misconception that BIAB = lower mash efficiency, but really, it’s “full volume mash = lower efficiency”. I had previously done experiments with an Anvil Foundry that showed a sparge step can get you mash efficiencies > 80%. Therefore, my batches in the BrewZilla were all done with a sparge step. I rested the malt pipe at the top while pouring heated sparge water through it with a 1-gallon pitcher. The perforated plate sitting on top of the grain bed made it super simple to sparge like this and get a good water distribution pattern. The perforated plate also allowed me to push down very easily and squeeze out remaining liquid in the grains. If you’re in the school of thought that squeezing the grains is bad for your beer, this isn’t relevant for you. For the rest of us, being able to easily squeeze that out without making a mess was awesome. And it meant when I picked up the basket of spent grain, I didn’t have a trail of sugary malt drippings to clean up after. My first batch achieved 77% mash efficiency, the second one 80%, and the third 81%.

Recirc Flow Rate After CFC

I experimented a bit with the Bluetooth RAPT wireless thermometer, but I didn’t properly understand it at first. I thought the concept was I could choose whether to use the built-in sensor at the bottom of the unit or the Bluetooth thermometer, but that wasn’t the case. When you add the Bluetooth thermometer, it will then control to that temperature, but it still uses the built-in sensor as part of your heating in a way that lets you fine tune how the system as a whole responds to temperature steps in your mash. After tinkering with it a bit, I realized it has some really powerful potential, but requires a deeper dive and some experimentation to back it up. So I’ll save that for a future write-up.

Bluetooth RAPT Thermometer

My typical brew system uses a 10-gallon kettle with a pump recirculating wort through a 240V RIMS with a 3500W heating element. With that set-up, I get about 3.1 degrees/minute temperature rise when doing multi-step mash profiles. I was therefore expecting this 120V/1500W system to be slow but was shocked to find similar performance that averaged around 2.5 degrees/minute. I attributed this capability to the neoprene jacket. On the plus side, that means you can do multi-step mashes even on only a 120V outlet and not take all day. But leaving the lid on as you heat to a boil is still a must. With the large opening in its domed top, it still can allow any volatized compounds to flow out.

BrewZilla Mashing by Itself in Basement

I found the RAPT software a bit non-intuitive and as such, had a learning curve to it. Luckily, I did a trial run just with water in it so I could get a feel for where various controls were located and how it worked. I definitely recommend this before you try to do any multi-step mash program, or live monitoring of things from the App. Way less stressful when it’s just water! After I got the hang of it, I was able to monitor my mash well and know what was going on as it chugged away in the basement and I worked at my day job one floor above. One key thing I learned was the in-flight plotting of mash temperature isn’t a continuously updating graph, you have to hit refresh in the App to get the updated data that it is recording and holding. I assume this is for computing efficiency and Wi-Fi bandwidth load management. It was perfectly fine once I figured out how it worked.

Screenshot of RAPT Controller Interface

The RAPT Controller allows you to program in multi-step mashes. But it’s a bit clunky as you figure it out. When you build the profile up using the App or Web interface, that profile sits on the RAPT server. My brain kept wanting to think I was programming the controller directly on the unit, but that’s not how it works. So after you program in the profile, you have to download it to the controller on your unit for it to work. You do all of this through the RAPT portal, and it only requires your BrewZilla to be powered on to let you download to it. This would be cool if you could just export something from Brewfather and then import it in RAPT, but you can’t. However, when you think about it, you probably don’t have that many different mash profiles, so it’s not really a big deal.

Malt Pipe

Draining Malt Pipe

One super cool feature of the mash profile programming is Kegland finally did what many have wanted these controllers to do for a long time. Rather than open loop programming a temperature and a time and guesstimating how long it will take for your mash to reach that temperature, you can tell it to not start counting down your mash step timer until it reaches the temperature. So if you want a 45-minute rest at 150F, you don’t have to think about how long it will take to get to 150F, it just heats up, and then starts the 45-minute timer when you hit 150F. I really liked this. You are also able to set up notifications at either the beginning or end of a particular mash step. I had it send an alert to my phone once it had reached mashout temperature and thus had 10 minutes left in my mash. That was cool, too. This isn’t quite as simple as it sounds, though. What I found was if the PID controller didn’t overshoot my target temp, I spent several minutes closing in on the target, but didn’t hit the temperature to start your countdown timer. So I’d end up with long mash times. I did some experiments with PID gains and the Bluetooth probe that got this working as I wanted, but I’ll detail that in a later write-up.

Rolling Boil at 75-percent Power

There wasn’t a boil timer interface, the controller was really just geared to controlling & monitoring mash temperatures. Not a big deal, as my Brewfather boil timer works great for this, so it isn’t a feature RAPT needs to spend time making. I could easily maintain a robust boil if I wanted to, but I like to keep it at just a good rolling circulation, so I dialed down the heating element power to 75% and maintained a constant churn of the wort and allowed boil-off of 0.4 – 0.5 gallons per hour. And the filter dish at the bottom of the kettle worked great to keep hop debris out of the pump, but not restrict flow. I had a thick cake of hop mush at the end when it was time to clean. Cleaning was fast and easy with parts light and easy to pull out, come apart, and rinse. And with the built-in pump, it was also easy to fill the unit up with cleaning solution at the end, circulate it through the unit & my Counter Flow Chiller to get everything clean.

Chilling Wort Using CFC and Built-in Pump

For wort cooling at the end of the boil, I used the built-in pump and circulated wort through my CFC. With the camlock fitting on the BrewZilla, I could easily hook up my typical ½” silicone tubing hoses. I was unsure if the pump would be up to the job, but it handled it easily. I could get a good volume flow rate with the recirc valve wide open on the BrewZilla and could easily restrict it when I wanted a slower flow.

A couple of pro tips to wrap things up. First, is to make sure you add your grains to the malt pipe BEFORE you lower it into the vessel. This ensures the weight of the grain keeps the bottom plate in place, so that as you lower it down, the water doesn’t push the bottom plate out of position and create a sneak path for whole grains to get through. Second is to make sure you have the plug fully seated in your brew unit. This might sound stupidly logical, but with a 6-foot power cord, you might end up pushing the limits of where you want the unit to sit vs. where the outlet is you’re plugged into. I had the cable become partially unseated and I wasn’t aware- until I went to remove the cord at the end of a long session of PID controller experiments. If the cord isn’t fully seated, you get less electrical contact on the pins and less contact means higher heat as electricity flows through it. I ended up damaging the cord and the receptacle from overheating.

Conclusions

The BrewZilla Gen4 delivered. The controller worked great, and I absolutely loved the step mash ability to start the mash step timer using actual mash temperatures. The RAPT interface wasn’t quite as slick as I would’ve liked but overall worked flawlessly, with no glitches. And I was definitely surprised how well a mere 120V/1500W system could handle mash steps and boil intensity. The well-thought-out little pieces of the malt pipe and various recirculation designs showed to me a system that was engineered with actual brewing hours spent on the unit, which is great. I feel with all of this, I won’t have compromises on my brew day using an all-in-one system versus my bigger 2-vessel system. And that says a lot.

Special thanks to Kegland for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review.

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Data Plots

Related: Hands on Review: Robobrew (BrewZilla v1) All Grain Brewing System

More Photos

Included Immersion Chiller (Fittings Sold Separately)

Collecting Wort for Gravity Check

Control Panel and Cord

Easy Access Pump and Hose Routing Underneath

Glass Lid with Handles

Hanger Plate for Control Panel

Heat Exchanger Dish

Holes in Malt Pipe to Help Flow

Malt Pipe Fits Perfectly in 8 Gallon Bucket

Malt Pipe Sitting at Halfway Point to Drain

Malt Pipe Screen Bottom (Left) and Top (Right)

Hop Debris on Filter Screen At End

Neoprene Jacket

Power Connection for 110V Cord and Multi-pin Connector for Control Panel

Recirc Pipe with Valve and Camlock Fitting

Recirc Pipe, Drain Spigot, and Malt Pipe Lift Handle

Robust Hard Rubber Feet

Convert RoboBrew to BrewZilla

If you’re looking to convert your Robobrew to a BrewZilla an upgrade board is available

robobrew upgrade board

Robobrew Gen 3.1.1 Upgrade Board Set 110 volt via William’s Brewing

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By Brad Probert.  Check out Brad’s website – beersnobby.com

Special Thanks to Keg King with the help of MoreBeer for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review

Price, promotions and availability can change quickly. Check the product page for current price, description and availability.

Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application.  Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application.  Always read and follow manufacturer directions. tag:lnksfxd review:bprobobrew rs:7 #tag:tpr

Hands on Review: Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil Electric Brewery

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil

I reviewed a number of electric all-in-one brewing systems a little over a year ago. As a collective group, these systems offer a lot to the homebrewer. They provide the flexibility and control of brewing process of all-grain, and the equipment simplicity of brew-in-a-bag. The fact that they’re electric gives you the ability to brew inside and convenience of not having to chase propane tank fill-ups. The electric systems also have the ability to set a target temperature and control to it, giving you better control of your brew day. All of these combine to create a more streamlined and less stressful brew day.

Each system has its own strengths and they all span a wide price range. The units I tried last year ranged from $470 at the low end to $2,500 at the high end. When I saw the Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil coming in at $300, I was intrigued to see how this unit would work and if you really could go all-grain with an electric system at such an affordable price point.

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