After having watched the excellent David Heath’s video about adding a false bottom to the Grainfather 30L, I considered it a no-brainer to do the same and bought one from Kegland on Amazon for £26.
It’s decent enough quality, but I guess due to the way it’s manufactured, it doesn’t sit quite flat and I could not get it to reliably sit still when whirlpooling. Even having practiced with water (again – thanks David for the video), I had to be very tentative and I think the different dynamics of hot, sweet wort caused it to pop up and spin when a decent swirl starts.
So I have modified the false bottom to hopefully hold it stably in place even under the most aggressive of whirlpooling!
What’s the mod?
Taking inspiration from the way the GF seals the grain plates, I figured I could attach some pieces of split silicone pipe to the perimeter of the false bottom plate, which would grip the sides of the vessel:
I added a fourth piece after this shot, avoiding the area in red which is where the temperature probe and pump filter are.
With this layout, it’s easy to insert and remove the plate by rotating it so the silicone pieces don’t touch the sides.
How?
Ingredients:
- Silicone tube: 8mm OD/6mm ID worked well, ~20cm long
- Originally bought for pumping wort, but the wall thinness renders it annoyingly flimsy for that.
- Wire: reasonably strong, bendable wire that fits through the holes in the plate to be used as a “staple”
- Stainless steel would be ideal, but I used some copper earth wire I had lying about.
- Pliers: for cutting the wire and bending it.
- Scissors or craft knife: for cutting the tube.
Method:
- Using the knife, slit the tube down one side of it’s length
- Cut into 4 equal lengths – you now have 4 C-sections of silicone
- Slip one of these pieces over the edge of the plate where you want to attach it
- Determine which holes in the plate you wish to staple through – you want the staple wire to pass through silicone, plate, silicone.
- Cut a wire staple that fits through your chosen holes cleanly with long enough legs for a secure bend on the underside.
- Stretching the pipe a bit over the edge between thumb and finger and push the first leg of the staple through silicone, plate, silicone.
- Same with second leg
- Turn plate over and fold legs over on the underside to secure
Ingredients 
Make and size staple 
Staple fit 
Push staple through silicone-plate-silicone 
Fold staple legs on underside
Staple the other three as you see fit. I recommend keeping them well away from the filter assembly – you don’t want the staple ends possibly snagging anything.
Wash it!
Put the plate in and do your standard hot cleaning and rinse cycle with the Grainfather Cleaner or similar – get those staples all cleaned up.
Test it, tweak it..
Over to you!