Beer Brewing Bender Completed

An anonymous reader writes "The Beer Brewing Bender Project is finally completed. This is a fan built, full sized Bender from Futurama featuring a 6502 CPU powered brain to make him speak triggered by a prop remote control straight out of the show. Inside his body is a beer fermenter used to brew up a batch of real Benderbrau beer!"

Comments

Re:That's so cool!

[Telecommando]

Plastic bottles? Blasphemy!

Re:Way down under

[fotbr]

I don't think you give yourself enough credit.

Basic woodworking, fiberglassing, painting, and welding are all fairly simple skills -- they just take a bit of practice. Being an artisan capable of earning a living doing any of the above may be a different story, but hobby-level skills aren't all that hard to learn. That leave the electronics, and, well, this is slashdot, so you likely know that or know someone who would love to do a project like that.

If you really want to learn other stuff, check with your local community college, see if they have any intro-to-X type evening or weekend classes that'd fit your schedule. Most community colleges have some sort of intro-to-welding class, and I'd imagine a basic carpentry class isn't uncommon.

Re:Bender OS

[Minwee]

I'm not seeing much of a difference there.

Re:cool bot, poor beer

[Sloppy]

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.