The appeal of home brewing is often the artistry and inventiveness of designing your own beer. Sadly this is often met with poor results. I intend to design and build an automated home brew setup from surplus industrial controllers, valve actuators and readily available fittings.The purpose of which is to answer the following questions:
(1) Can it be done?
(2) Should it be done?
As an aside I too struggle with the notion of ‘automation’ and ‘micro-brewing’ being used in the same sentence. Followers of all things beer may be offended at the thought of microbrewery being anything other than hand-made. I wish to embody the ethos of micro-brewing to mean the active pursuit of creative new beers that is not stilted by solely commercial interests. The final success of the design will evaluated on the following KPI’s:
(1) Repeatable results
(2) Increased output of new beer and delicious beer recipes System Topology - Water Schematic.pdf (13.3 KB)
Included is attached draft water schematic of the initial design and will attempt to update on project progress fortnightly until system is complete.
Keep up the good work. I will be keen to see it when you are done.
Where is the wort chiller in the overall scheme of things? In the line to the fermenter?
Only comment is a repeated one from the other night. You should be able to do multiple rests no problem at all, but I cant think of an easy way to automate decoction mashing for if you are looking for very heavy malt characters.
One of the hard parts in a fully automated system is controlling the variation in external inputs, such as the moisture content and maturity of your grains, or the bitterness levels you get from natural variation in hopps, even the chlorine levels in the tapwater! I wish u good luck in your endeavour!
i know of the pleasure is in the crafting … but things like … filling the barrels with water, steralising are the things that are a pain … at least that is what my friends say
I make meads - - i would be very interested in seeing your project working - keep posting progress reports - I’ll swap you a bottle of mead for a bottle of beer
