Home Brew Forum

It's been a loonnngggggg time since I posted a brewday post!

Not having time to join in on the brewalong a couple of weeks ago here's a few pics of my go at Jim's ESB. I tweaked the hops to what I had in stock, home-grown Challenger with Fuggles in place of progress and Bobek in place of EKG and went with S0-4. Oh, and I only had normal crystal so used that in place of light.



An early start for me! I had planned to get the brew done on Saturday but I was having problems with the still work in progress Arduino controlled brew controller and the rain put me off too!



Obligatory grain shot



Very Heath Robinson setup- I hope to get stuck into a 33l 3V thermopot build over Christmas.



Mashing. I used the PID parameters from the code a chap on the Facebook group sent me- much better with minimal overshoot. Cheers Mark!





Nice rolling boil. After a big rolling boil for a few mins I turn down the boiler using the Arduino controller to PWM the element via an SSR.



Time for the 80°C steep hops.





Just about 1.050



19½ litres put to bed for 10 days or so.



Looking forward to this one!

Cheers,
Jamie

Nice one. Better late than never!

Is that the temp probe through the airlock?

Yep! There's a stainless steel tube (kindly donated by another member a few years back) with the end pinched closed pushed through the airlock grommet. The STC temp probe is pushed inside with the tube filled with water / sanitiser to aide thermal conductivity.

Cheers,
Jamie

Good Arduino use I need to get a board and play around with it.

Looks like it's ready to keg, sitting at 1.014/5, I upped the fermenting fridge temperature by a couple of degrees and gave it a rouse yesterday but no movement. Strange as I always get to target gravity with SO-4. Tasting really good thou, a nice malty backbone with hint of good hopping- looking forward to a cracking quaffing beer over Christmas

Cheers,
Jamie

Okay, I'm totally bugging-out over your Arduino control board! The purple case is so cool too, is that 3D printed? I'm really interested in how you pulled this off. Have you shared a how-to, or your controller code or anything?

Awesome work, mate.

Hey Seymor,

Yep, that case is 3D printed, we've got a couple of printers at work The purple case is a prototype, the final version will be printed in a filament to match my new stainless build at close a possible I did have a quote to get the case folded from stainless sheet

Here's a couple of posts from my first build:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49623
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49714

The new version is based around the ATmega chip of the Arduino on varioboard. I've just about finished the new brewery build, I finished the HERMs pot last night. Once the higher resolution 3D printer has come back from servicing I'll print a new case and put up a detailed post.

The Arduino is really easy to get started with, most of my code is copied and pasted! There's a big on-line community with loads of examples and forums.

Cheers,
Jamie

[quote="JabbA"]Hey Seymor,
Yep, that case is 3D printed, we've got a couple of printers at work The purple case is a prototype, the final version will be printed in a filament to match my new stainless build at close a possible I did have a quote to get the case folded from stainless sheet
[/quote]

I thought it looked 3d printed, that's awesome, I've been thinking of doing something like that myself for my own setup. What printer are you using?

Hi Arbit, we've got a Makerbot and a Robox at work. The Makerbot has a bigger print envelope but not as good a finish whereas the Robox's build area is 210 x 150 x 100 mm but has a greater resolution, hence print finish. The case in the picture was printed on the Makerbot.

Cheers,
Jamie