Product Review: The Grainfather

When New Zealander Peter Eastwood started his homebrewing business in 1989, most homebrewers used extract kits for their ease of use and ubiquity. Despite swift growth in the local market and expansion to Australia in 1995, Eastwood wanted more. He felt that extract kits, while effective and easy, were missing a key cog in the quest for true craft beer. Thus, the idea for the Grainfather took root.

Eastwood believes The Grainfather is the answer to making true craft beer at home: “People can make good beer with extract kits or with partial grain kits, but if they want to make craft beer they should be loving it and they should be working over it and they should be keeping in touch with it right down to the brewing process.”

The Grainfather started off as an “embryonic idea” of converting the highly industrialized manufacturing process for all-grain brewing into a compact homebrewer’s kit.

According to Eastwood, “the original concept was really just a boiler with a way to mash inside it,” but the idea evolved and he refined the design into what the Grainfather is today: “an advanced kit that pretty much emulates what most commercial batch brewing is about and allows people to do it at home with the same control, or better control, than what a lot of brewers can get.”

The Grainfather is different from other homebrewing kits in that it is literally an all-in-one all-grain brewing machine. The entire apparatus is no bigger than a single boiler, but all the necessary elements are there for the creation of a full batch of all-grain beer. The same heating element that boils the mash also boils the water for sparging, which, although done in a separate container, is still housed in the main vessel of the Grainfather.