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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.

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. 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