Brewing

Here is my favorite recipe to brew at the moment. I’ve brewed about 75 batches of beer at home since I started. I’ve also brewed many batches with my time at Brewbot.

I’ve finished building version 1 of my new brewery, and I’ve brewed about 10 batches on it so far. I’m really happy with it. I used an old Brewbot frame, some kegs for vessels, and built the electronics around a Particle Photon controller. I can run the brewery from my phone. Right now, it has 3 electronic ball valves, 2 pumps, an electric HLT, and a propane boil kettle. Here are a few photos:

And here’s a look inside the electronics.

I built this kegerator when Flossie was born, but it kicked the bucket two years later. It was filled with refrigerant R-12, and I didn’t want to deal with trying to repair/recharge that, so I have since built a new, less cool one. I haven’t been brewing much lately because I’m waiting until I’ve fully upgrated my home brewery. I’ve decided to wait on brewing until I’ve upgraded a lot of the safety features of my electric HLT.

At home, my current system is a keggle and ice chest mash tuns. Here’s a photo of Matt fly-sparging some of that Double Nut Brown (link above.)

I picked up a setup for distilling. I use it for distilling water, when I want to finely control what minerals go into the beer I’m making. I’ve been reading up on water chemistry a bit, and while SF has great water for brewing, it’s interesting to me to try and replicate famous waters like Dublin, London, Pilsen, etc. I hope to make a true pilsner one of these days!

Sometimes I’ll pick up a white spirit like everclear or high proof vodka and infuse it. I’m making a few different concoctions with it. I’ve made limoncello, kahlua, and a few random aged white whiskeys flavored with elderberry, oak, orange, and hibiscus as seen below:

After we all got laid off from Brewbot, my coworkers and I went into the office and built a 100 L fully automated brewing system. In only 3 days!

I used to brew on a Brewbot a lot. That’s because I worked for Brewbot, and I got paid to do it. Brewbot was an automated 3-vessel, all-grain brewing system that made about 6.5 gallon batches. In the photo below, Marie was helping me out in this photo by texting selfies to all of her friends!

I had six carboys fermenting at once in my fermentation room. I’ve recently upgraded to a few 14-gal SS conical fermenters. I’ve designed a heat transfer plate that’ll fit on these new conicals, and I hope to implement peltier cooling for fine temperature control in the near future.

I dispense everything through my two-tap kegerator, but I also built a four-tap jockey box for any off-site dispensing:

Here’s a photo of my old fermentation chamber. I had to make it taller to fit the air lock, so I added the 2x10” collar around the top. The compressor died while I was out of the country, so I gave it away on Craigslist.

I had destroyed an old kegerator on accident, so I decided to turn that into a new and improved fermentation chamber. This one uses labview to regulate temperature of the wort. Cooling is done by the refrigerator compressor, I have a carboy heating band for heating, and there’s a thermowell with a thermocouple inside for my temperature reading.

I’m working on the design for my all-electric homebrew setup, and will post photos when the design is a little more complete.