BeerBorg

I cranked up the Zymatic for the 3rd time yesterday. I wanted to use my home grown Zeus hops to brew an APA.
#8 two row
.2 oz Chinook @ 60
1.5 oz fresh whole leaf Zeus @ 15, 10 and 5 minutes
I whirl pooled 3 ounces wet hops at 185 for 25 minutes.
I'll use US 05.

I mashed at 149. I should end up with and ABV of 6.7

The pico makes mashing very easy. I nailed my projected numbers.
If I had a dedicated brew area with water and a deep sink life would be much easier.

The hop utilization is lower than that obtained by traditional brewing methods. If an addition is used at less than 5 minutes it is added the keg and not to the Z. Each hop cage can hold about 1.5 ounces of hops. I added a little more than that.

At this time my old 2.5 gallon biab method is easier for me because I know it so well. Chilling is the one area that needs work.The simplest way is to let it cool overnight. Because the system is closed infection risk is small. There are some people who claim that the hop flavor is not as robust unless a quick chill is used.

The method I used is to put the keg in an ice bath while the Z circulates wort through the keg. It is a pretty low tech solution considering the high tech nature of the unit. Many of the " Pico Brewers" are hoping that a dedicated chiller is produced. It is possible to hook up a plate chiller or to modify a coiled chiller and pass wort through it.

Clean up took longer than I would have liked because I am spread all over the house. I am still learning to use it. It can be used like a bread machine if the brewer is a novice. The more interesting use for me is to use the more advanced methods. It has a lot of potential. The small footprint really works for me.

What's the biggest amount of grain you can mash in that system? I know I've watched videos and looked at this a few times but don't recall.
I do remember that there were very few gripes about the system other than it's not really set up to do big beers unless you do a smaller amount. But, it seems to me, the pluses outweigh the minuses once you get past the $$$$.

How do you whirlpool with that?

As far a chilling overnight in the keg, if I had one of those things I might do that. But I'd treat the hop additions like an Aussie no chill brew. As in I'd move all my flavor additions to aroma addition timing (IE subtract 10 or 15 minutes from all late additions, so a T-20 becomes a T-10 or T-5). Anything that ends up below T-0, I'd add to the keg as a dry hop for the aroma. Doing this should solve the perceived flavor problems folks are talking about.

That's in my experience the best way to adjust a recipe for no-chill. You would just need to play with the timing a bit until you found the sweet spot.

The most grain in the Z is 9 lbs. That gets you to 6.5 abv with US-05 and a 152 mash. When I dropped the beer yield to 2 gallons ( instead of the normal 2.5 gallons ) you end up with 9.7 ABV. The other option is to add DME or LME to the keg.

The suggestion to treat the brew like the Aussie's no chill is a good one. Moving the hop additions is pretty much what I did. I went with 15,10,5 minutes.

The whirlpool is done by programing a pause after the boil. Then you remove the grain/hop compartment (which is called the Step Filter ), put desired hops in any of the 4 hop compartments,Program a cool down to whatever temperature that you what to whirlpool at and set the length of the whirlpool.
After the whirlpool you can program a chill cycle or stop and overnight chill.