My Brewing Rig (Current)

My old faithful "hot water tank" system served me well over the years, but as the kids started coming along I needed something more hands-off and electrically safer too. I considered the beautifully crafted Braumeister system from Germany, but it was way too expensive for me and lacked some flexibility in terms of grain bill. I was glad to finally settle on the GrainFather system instead, and it's been an absolute delight to brew on.

Grain Mill
The first step to all-grain brewing is crushing the grains, and I like to crush them fresh. John and I both bought a Monster Mill each (2 roller) but he was definitely better at woodwork, and built a fugly but functional hopper for me which I still use till this day!

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Hot Side
The Grainfather. Love the mafia-esque name, the Bluetooth capability and ability to automate much of the process including step mashing. It is a single vessel brewing system. The milled grains are loaded into the inner basket (with a sieve at the bottom), PID-controlled hot water is recirculated from the bottom of the Grainfather throughout the mash duration, and the inner basket is then pulled out and propped above the unit to drain. The boil is then done in the same vessel.

Inner basket (with grains) sitting on top of main unit to allow the wort to drain out

Chilling
I don't chill my beers anymore. The Grainfather comes with an eye-candy piece of counter-current wort chiller which I stashed away. After the boil, the wort is immediately pumped into kegs. The kegs are then pressurized with CO2 to offset the negative pressure/vacuum as the wort cools, and left overnight to cool slowly to room temperature. I do no-chill for several reasons:

1) It saves me time on brewday. Chilling is a pain in the arse.
2) It saves me a scolding on brewday. Chilling is messy business.
3) It provides a 2nd (or 3rd, in my case) layer of protection against unwanted organisms, since the hot wort effectively pasteurizes the keg.
4) I'm a lazy brewer

After cooling to ambient temperatures, the entire keg is then placed in my fermentation chamber to further chill to fermenting temperatures as required.

Fermentation
Currently I ferment in kegs themselves. Again, it saves a lot of trouble and I really appreciate the fact that the kegs are stainless steel, which allows me to thoroughly clean and disinfect the system. I attach either a one-way valve or a blowoff tube to the Gas-In post of the keg to allow CO2 to escape. More recently, I have also begun pressure fermentation using a spunding valve.