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Linux is an Obvious Choice for Automating the Beer-Brewing Process (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the beer-beer-beer-for-my-loyal-men-and-women! dept.

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.

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I brewed beer for a couple of years by nblender · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  2. Re:I brewed beer for a couple of years by nblender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...