The Brewzilla formerly known as the Robobrew has become a hugely popular product with great features at a great price. This page is to serve as a practical guide to using it. The manufacturer's manual can be found at this link and mainly is centered around the V3.1.1 , 35l 110v unit being used in the United States. If you looking to buy one go here, if you have questions that are not addressed on the product page or here please email us at info@morebeer.com.
(What we did)
Assemble and clean
Assembly is pretty easy per the instructions
Rinse with water then do a PBW soak/wipe off and rinse again
Pro tip put on the return arm to clean pump and arm (see below)
Change Temperature from C to F
When Plugged in Hit Power button to turn on
Hold down Temp till it beeps (about 3 full seconds)
With some water in it we practiced
Manual mode (default mode) SEE CONTROL PANEL IMAGE BELOW
Running the pump (with the return arm on)
Ramping up temp
Press Temp - should have blinking number
Press + to go up
Press - to go down
Pro tip, press and hold to go fast
Press Temp and then Play/Pause button to start it
To turn on heating there are 2 rockers 500w and 1000w
With the recirc arm (with included silicon tubing on it) we turned on the pump and tested that as well as got familiar with the ball valve for flow control to see what rates we would be recirculating the mash at.
Practiced programmed modes
For a Delayed Start (heating for next day)
Press Auto (it should be on S1 on top let of screen)
Press temp (set +/-) to ambient or less (this is what it trys to go for when waiting so make sure its low)
Press Time (set holding + past 30 seconds to get to hours for x (lets use 10) hours to delay not heating)
Press Auto, put it on S2, Press Temp set for your Strike temp (typically 10f over mash), Press Time set for a few hours (we do 2hrs)
Turn on both heating elements
Press Play (this case it will hold temp for 10 hours and then heat for 2 hours to our strike temp)
For Step mashes 3.1.1 version
Set you S1 / S2, etc... Time and Temp and steps you don’t want just set a time of 0:00 and it will skip
Press play, it will heat to S1 temp and then hold that time, then heat to S2 temp and hold that time set, etc....
It will beep at the end
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(How we prepaired for our Batch)
We brewed a Soulless Hop Pale Ale
First things first get Water setup and heating
When cleaning it we figured out there is approximately just under 2 gallons of dead space below the bottom screen of the mash screen in malt pipe. On our batch we wanted to do a sparging technique we were used to and have a digiboil to heat extra water in so we did that and did our water calculations as follows. However if you want you can do either a BIAB method or Batch sparging.
We wanted a 1.3 quarts of water per lb of grain ratio
13.5lb grains x 1.3= 17.55 quarts divided by 4 to get 4.4 gallons of water
4.4g plus 2g dead space = 6.4g
We put in the malt pipe and put the black plug over the pipe and we filled the cleaned unit with 6.4 gallons of filtered and treated water
If you want to learn more about water checkout our articles on water
We set it to heat in manual mode, set temp for 10f over desired mash temp (148F + 10 = 158F) and turned on both heaters (500w+1500w) and hit Play button. The heater switches both lite up and we could see it start to rise in temp pretty quickly. From 68F to 158F took about an hour or so (will use delayed start in future to make it that much easier)
Things to note - MFG suggests to only run 500w burner when grain is in
This recipe is simple and we could either run it in Manual or Auto as we just did a single infusion mash with a mash out. For this guide lets just say it's programmed, it would look like this.
S1 - 148F for 45 min
S2 - 168F for 15 min
S3 - S6 doesn't matter as long as time is 0:00 so it skips
With water at 158F and the system in Pause (play / pause button which stops heaters and pump) we got ready to dough in the grain. We double checked that the black silicon plug was over the pipe before pouring in a portion of the grain and started stirring it up.
Suggestion, a skinny mash paddle or a large ss spoon works well as you have a pipe in the center of the mash pipe to stir around
Mashing in took about 5 min and our temp dropped to 149F. We then took off the black plug and put the optional screen on top of the mash, and put on the stainless siphon cone with the cone side facing up. We setup the return line with silicon tubing going through the hole in the lid, switched off the 1000w element and hit Play on the control panel.
The Speed of liquid through the pump/grain was much too fast so we slowed it down with the ball valve on the return arm. We watched the stainless siphon cone and adjusted the flow to have it hold about midway up the outside of the fitting for this batch. Below is a picture of the siphon cone going too fast and spilling over and too slow and not turning over the grain fast enough.
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We only saw the element come on once in holding the 148F for 45 min, then it switched to going to mashout at 168F. This took a little over an hour which felt like a long time.
Only for the Daring: We think it took that long as that is pretty hot to get to so for the mashout only, we are going to experiment with switching from the 500w to 1000w element to speed this up next time.
After the last 15 min rest at 168F we heard the beeping and Hit Pause to stop burners and pump.
In our batch we did a basic fly sparge similar to how we would usually brew, so we had about 4 gallons of treated water heated to 170F ready to go. Confirming we are in Pause Mode and that the water had drained as far down so the stainless siphon cone was fully exposed, we then take off the recirculation arm and tubing as well as the lid as well as take off the Stainless Siphon cone (warning it was hot, wear gloves). Then place the Malt Pipe Handle in each hole and get ready to lift it up.
While the mash pipe isn’t ‘that heavy’ it can be awkward depending on the height you have the Brewzilla at. If it's on the floor it's super easy but if it's counter height it's going to be above most people's heads when lifted up. My suggestion is either use or move the Brewzilla on the floor or something low, or have a way to stand higher or purchase the pulley system if you have a good anchor spot above.
Lift the malt pipe up and out until the 4 feet are above the wire rim, twist 45deg so the legs are on the wire and let it rest and start draining.
Pro Tip: At this point we wished we had stopped and turned the unit onto manual mode and turned the temp to HH and turned on both burners as then you are starting to heat up to your boil. We didn't’ and lost that time while sparging.
The water will drain out at this point into the brewzilla. We let it drain pretty much all the way down so we could then lift up to see how much liquid was collected. We wanted to start with 6.5 gallons before boiling and were about 5 so we set the malt pipe back down and poured in about 1.5 gallons of water from our heated digiboil and let that go through, checked again and then had to pour a little more in to get the full 6.5. You could also of heated your extra sparge water in the BrewZilla with you initial strike water and stored it in a cooler so it stayed warm while you performed your mash. At this point we removed the malt pipe, emptied the grain out and rinsed off the grains from the maltpipe and screens. If you didn’t read the pro tip above you would now start heating for the boil.
-Tip -
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We left the setting on HH (high heat) which we left on for the entire boil. If you have a neoprene jacket and don’t have it on yet we suggest you do. We were at 152f as we forgot to turn on the heaters during sparge. It took a little over a half hour to get to a boil.
After we got to a boil and turned on and off the burners to handle the foam we started adding hops using a hop spider per the recipe.
While in the boil we set up the wort chiller for cooling. We added the coil with 20 min left in the boil to sanitize it.
At the end of the boil we stirred to get a whirlpool going and used the optional whirlpool arm to keep it going around 10 min. We turned off the pump and we covered with tinfoil trying to prevent anything from falling/flying into the cooling wort. We turned on the water too the wort chiller slowly (to control the super hot water coming out) until it was flowing well and then turned up the flow. Using our hand we felt the outside of the brewzilla (we took off the neoprene jacket at this point and could have after the boil to let out heat faster) until we felt the top of the brewzilla was ‘within reason’ and then used the spigot and sanitized silicone tubing to transfer to our fermentor.
Tip #1 - if you have optional whirlpool arm, keep it running for chilling, it will drastically reduce time and water used. My last batch cut chilling to under 15 min
Tip #2 - feel the temperature of your water coming out of the wort chiller and adjust flow, you want it to be carrying heat out, too fast and your just wasting water, too slow and your taking forever
Tip #3 - I collect my water coming out of the chiller as we live in CA and water is scarce, we use it to water lawn, plants, fill pool, etc...
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