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For my Keezer build I looked into a Johnson controller, but decided to go with one of the cheaper and better Chinese eBay temp controllers for 25$.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/ebay-aquarium-temp-controller-build-163849/

Dirt cheap and reliable. I was looking all over for an arduino build like this though, because I would love to log the temps.

Made my first lager with the cheap Keezer, a little GE that can hold 4 Corny Kegs, and am in homebrew heaven. Make a Homer Love/Drool noise if you know what I mean, my homebrew brothers and sisters!

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/ge-7-cf-fcm7suww-keezer-conversion-192208/

I bottled exactly once and ran straight to kegging. Washing bottles is purist, sure, but egads does it suck. And having an 80lb CO2 tank connected to what will be a standing desk that dispenses 4 different beers? Goddamn I love the art and science of homebrew.

And by the way, InBev? Fuck you. Same thing to all the prohibition era, rice beer holdovers from when it wasn't legal to brew at home. Damn old ladies and their axes...

For my Keezer build I looked into a Johnson controller, but decided to go with one of the cheaper and better Chinese eBay temp controllers for 25$.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/ebay-aquarium-temp-controller-build-163849/

Dirt cheap and reliable. I was looking all over for an arduino build like this though, because I would love to log the temps.

Made my first lager with the cheap Keezer, a little GE that can hold 4 Corny Kegs, and am in homebrew heaven. Make a Homer Love/Drool noise if you know what I mean, my homebrew brothers and sisters!

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/ge-7-cf-fcm7suww-keezer-conversion-192208/

I bottled exactly once and ran straight to kegging. Washing bottles is purist, sure, but egads does it suck. And having an 80lb CO2 tank connected to what will be a standing desk that dispenses 4 different beers? Goddamn I love the art and science of homebrew.

And by the way, InBev? Fuck you. Same thing to all the prohibition era, rice beer holdovers from when it wasn't legal to brew at home. Damn old ladies and their axes...

Who needs shitty open source zealot recipes when there's homebrewtalk.com?

"Despite all the fancy electronics and the UI, it still seems to be difficult to get a glass of beer rather than a glass of mostly foam. Surely there is some solution to this problem in a combination of hardware and software?"

It doesnt even work!
What they added:
- a touch interface which downloads your facebook photo
- solenoids to control the beer taps (useless)
- thats it

And to answer the authors question, the reason they are probably getting too much head is any one of the following:
1) incorrect temperature
2) wrong diameter / length of beer hose
3) wrong PSI on c02 injection
4) its overcarbinated because of point #3 and needs to bleed
5) contamination
6) air leaks in tap / fittings
7) unlcean equipment

Im all for novelty, but this is crap. If you want to see a better project, here are 358 pages of them: "Show us your keggerator" thread.

Yeah, that's pretty much true! Breweries uses CIP (Cleaning In Place), and that means pumping large amounts of cleaning agents (usually sodium hydroxide and some acid, phosphoric, nitric or other) for about two hours depending on what tank, tun, pipe, hose. And large amounts of water. I have only worked at breweries. I'm a computer geek too, but I've never had the same passion for computers as I do brewing. Unless you're working in an office at a brewery, you're going to do alot of cleaning. At my previous job, I probably spent tree days a week swabbing floors, cleaning tanks, pipes and hoses. A brewery is the only place I've found that has everything I'm interested in: chemistry, physics, automation and control systems, biochemistry, microbiology, biotechnology and brewing. The brewing process is generally regarded as the oldest practice of biotechnology. You convert the starch, proteins, amino acids and alot more when you make malt out of grain. In the mash tun, you convert the remaining starches, proteins, beta-glucans etc to sugar and nutrition for the yeast. When you boil the wort, you coagulate proteins, isomerise (sorry, bad english. Not native language) the alpha acids in hops so they become soluable and more bitter. Mailard reactions gives the wort color and more flavour. Well, no need to ramble on. If someone would like some basic insight in the science behind the malting and brewing process, I recommend Beer: Tap Into The Art and Science of Brewing, buy Charles Bamforth. http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Tap-into-Science-Brewing/dp/0195305426/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330353116&sr=8-1 Or this video with Charles Bamforth called Advanced Chemistry of Beer and Brewing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Hk_FV8c-w Oh, and I recommend anyone who are interested in beer and brewing to check out some homebrewing clubs that may be avalible in your area. Or check out http://www.homebrewtalk.com/ Homebrewing clubs is a good forum where you can learn and discuss brewing, hacking together improvements to the brew rig and brew beer with other people with the same interests.

• 2 x 5 - 6 gallon containers & little airlocks (either plastic buckets with lids and/or glass carboys with stoppers; stoppers/lids need to be drilled for airlocks)
• rigid tube and flexible tubing for siphoning from one container to another, and into bottles.
• a hydrometer is helpful, but not strictly necessary

You will also need:

• about 50 clean & sanitized 12 oz beer bottles (pop-off, not twist-off, brown glass is best since light harms beer)
• ~2 gallon cooking pot (preferably stainless steel, aluminum is okay, enamel over steel is okay as long as there are no chips in the enamel - you do not want to expose your beer to regular steel; it will cause flavor problems)
• bottle capper (you'll probably need to buy this, a wine bottle corker generally won't do the job)

You can get prepackaged ingredient kits or order a la carte. For $30 - $45US, you should be able to get a kit that contains the following, which should be all you need to brew 5 gallons of beer:

• malt extract syrup and/or dried malt extract
• hops
• dried yeast
• muslin bag
• priming sugar
• bottle caps
• perhaps additional misc stuff
• instructions

There are homebrew books that are helpful in figuring out what to do and how to do it. In my experience, This is one of the best out there, and I highly recommend it for brewers of all levels. Fortunately, there is a huge amount of excellent info freely available on the internet. (Google, as always, is your friend)

The outdated look of hbd.org is misleading - you'd never know that it holds an excellent beer recipe development tool (click on "Spreadsheet") and recipe database.

Forums worth checking out:
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/

Good luck to you, and enjoy!

I think the only western country that allows distilling scotch whisky or, indeed, any distilled drink, without paying an expensive licence is New Zealand.

Early this year a Home Distilling Bill was introduced in the US House of Reps to allow distilling in the home.

Agreed, the beer he is brewing will be absolutely disgusting. Probably far too malty, with no smoothness.

I doubt it will be awesome, but there's a reasonable chance it won't be disgusting. It's clear that he is using hopped (pre-bittered) LME. He's not adding any finishing hops for taste/aroma, but I bet the malt/bitter balance is going to be about right -- I've used hopped LME a couple times, and it contributed an even balance. I wouldn't use it in some kind of hop-showcase APA or IPA, but for a generic newbie beer? No problem!

What I didn't like about this guy's process, is that he's bumping it up with dextrose instead of more malt extract. But if he used malt, then I guess that would mean he'd have to deal with boiling some hops. So really, I bet his balance will be about right, and it won't be too malty. If anything, it's going to be really dry, as his 1.006 F.G. suggests.

I do have to agree on the plastic-bottles-sound-gross thing. I would never do that. But I know some people who use "better bottles" instead of glass carboys (which is what I use) for their primary fermenters, and their beer is fine. So if this plastic is similar (doesn't flavor the beer or allow oxygen in), then it will probably be ok assuming he's drinking it fairly soon.

I just don't see any serous show-stoppers here, which are going to ruin his beer. It'll have a fair chance.

I get the impression the guy is a newbie. And you know what? That's ok. It's fine to do a really simple process as your first one as you're learning the ropes. He won't be able to get as much diversity as a [arrogant]real[/arrogant] brewer, but he'll make better beer than 80% of the stuff for sale at the super-market. If he enjoys this, he's just going get more sophisticated as the mental infection sets in. It happened to me, I've seen it happen to others, and it'll happen to him. Building the Bender, shows he's got some kind of obsession thing going on.

Your hardware store sells kits that let you put a layer of clear plastic over your windows. Very helpful for the coldest winter months.