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Build Your Own BSD Beer Brewing Control System

Posted by michael on from the worthy-endeavors dept.

gnuguru writes "Here's a great use for some of your old hardware, a BSD beer brewing kit! Components: one 486, FreeBSD, a temperature logger kit, a relay board, some odds and ends from the useful box, and some time. Summer's just around the corner, so get to work gang!" You'll have to use this recipe, naturally.

3 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Accessories? by Eziril · · Score: 4, Informative

    Now to put some in my Peltier Beer cooler http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~arnesen/peltierbeer/

    --
    Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14 percent of all people know that. --Homer Simpson
  2. A simple thermostat isn't good enough... by ZombieEngineer · · Score: 5, Informative
    The purpose from the article was to provide a temperature profile. Biological processes are a tad bit complicated with the desired product sometimes will only be produced under certain circumstances, from memory Penicilin is only formed by a certain fungus during the "death stage" of fermentation at a specific temperature. eg: all the culture is used up and the biomas starts to consume itself)

    By controlling the temperature profile during fermentation it is possible to radically change the "taste" of the product. That is why the Australian / South African wine growers can churn out a reasonably good product cheaply (as opposed to the French) as they use large temperature controlled stainless steel vats with scorched oak chips rather than small wooden casks.

    Zombie Engineer

    1. Re:A simple thermostat isn't good enough... by medoc · · Score: 3, Informative

      For your information, in France as elsewhere, the fermentation phase of wine brewing is done in large containers (inox or wood or cement vats).

      The wine is only transferred to casks when the fermentation is done.

      The period while the wine stays in casks is called elevage (can't remember the english term), and aims at refining the wine taste before bottling (this can last up to a few years). Not all wines go through a cask elevage.

      There are a few cases of fermentation in casks, but they are truely the exception.