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Build Your Own BSD Beer Brewing Control System
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.
See, FreeBSD isn't dead! Just drunk!
beer matters anytime. coward.
There's something more useful or important than beer?
Shower temperature regulation is one of the things I've been thinking
of for decades. It requires much faster responses than beer brewing,
and to do it right you need to understand the differential pressures
of the hot and cold water. It's a lot simpler to buy a thermostatic
valve.
Greg
On the other hand, I use a simple thermostatic heater for my beer brewing. I made the thermostatic controller myself using bits and bobs in a biscuit tin; a lot cheaper and much lower power consumption than a 486, not to mention no risk of crashing or having trouble recovering from a powerout. It's better in some ways than this computer controlled malarky because *my* temperature sensor sits in the wort (so it needs cleaning between brews - so what?) and the heater heats the wort evenly all round the bottom of the brewing vessel. If you look at that 486-thermostat setup, you'll see he's got a sensor on the outside of his brewing vessel. Hmm...
Would a cunning temperature profile over the brew cycle improve the flavour? Gawd knows - just keeping things clean enough for a decent taste and making sure you're brewing a good recipe with good ingredients is hard enough if you ask me. I note that the graphs of the chap with the 486 thermostat indicate that he's not trying for a varying target temperature over the brewing cycle, but a static temperature target, just like me.
I tell you, those beer brewing ancient Egyptians would be amazed that anyone would want all that computery junk just to brew beer at home.
Insightful? What the hell?!