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Linux is an Obvious Choice for Automating the Beer-Brewing Process (Video)
Linus Torvalds, Jon 'maddog' Hall, and many other names closely associated with Linux are also closely associated with beer. (Ed. note: I have personally watched them associate with beer, and may have even joined them.) It comes as no surprise, therefore, when Linux advocate and LinuxAutomation.org founder Kurt Forsberg talks about using Linux to control his beer brewing. Kurt is a strong believer in Linux Automation who talks about home thermostats, sprinklers, and many other application, "anything you can automate..." but, he adds, "we spend all our time brewing beer so we haven't explored many of those yet." He says this with a big smile, of course. And if you want to keep up with Linux Automation on Faceboook, go ahead; like everyone + dog they have a Facebook page.
because we love beer.
Arduino is a better choice. This guy is trying to put a 350 into a Vespa.
The traditional Unix approach to computing, having a lot of small programs that do simple thing, combined with "Everything as a file" makes these systems very good at automating stuff. While systems like VMS or Windows was designed to run larger programs, and access libraries.
This makes Linux/Unix very good at automation, as it makes it easy to combine a lot of simple steps and get them scheduled and run in order without having to do a lot of extra programming. To automate using other OS's it usually means you will need to write a program to do the work.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Using to produce it an operating system that have tatooed "Free as in beer" at the chest?
You just aren't creative enough: Why not take that really overheating machine that you're using to mine Bitcoins and have it act as an electric heater for your boiling?
But seriously, I'd think this would matter most for people who are trying to move from homebrewing for friends and family to opening up a small-scale commercial brewery or a small commercial brewery trying to scale up to a larger commercial brewery. In those kind of cases, the right computer-controlled equipment could reduce the workload.
I am officially gone from
Consistancy is really the hard part of brewing beer. It's pretty easy to brew a great beer. It's hard to brew the same great beer a second time and have it wind up the same as the first time.
over 10 years ago, I was doing full-grain brewing using NetBSD (because it's what I had, along with a re-purposed ISA gpio card)... Controlling temperature during the mash and sparge was critical... If you keep your temperatures constant, you can stay within the optimal range for whatever amylase you're going for... I've always been able to brew a good beer... It wasn't until I was able to brew the same good beer a second time that I felt I had achieved my goal...
When you go to a brew pub and order the bitter, you expect it to taste the same as the last time you ordered a bitter...
there's nothing special about Linux specifically about doing this. It's just process control. The process here is fairly simple you could do just as well with an AVR or a 6502...
You know what else is useless....your post.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I was in a beer club at the time. We did tours where you'd bring the club into your brewing setup and brew some beer... One guys' garage we went to, he used a tiger torch to boil the wort... He used styrofoam fish-packaging coolers for the sparge, draining into a bucket and pouring back over top ... Lots of window screen and garden hose... Plus it was february and there was snow on the ground outside... It reminded me of Blade Runner... "I just do eyes!" ... We were after a bitter, but we got to drinking a bit much and during the initial mash, he'd sort of burned the grain with the tiger torch so it was like a bitter with a charcoal after taste... He called it a "RauchBier"... It was damn good but we knew we'd never drink it anything exactly like it ever again...