My all new electric BCS-460 brewery

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I think you are on the right path.

Wishing you the best.

P-J

so i replaced the relay today and now we're off to the races. started my water test 10 min ago. will post results when complete.

A successful trial today. I found a few errors and things i need to clean up but all in all a good test run. VERY pumped right now. So now the next thing to do is brew! I think the first recipe on the new system will be a milk stout. I'll post my recipe tomorrow.

Did you get to make some Beer?

sorry for the lack of updates, since my laptop died i seem to be on the computer a lot less, lol. So we brewed a milk stout back in early december once the system was water tested and deemed OK. Below is the recipe i created:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: White Labs California Ale (2 vials)
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
IBU: 38
Colour: 39 SRM
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 days @ 55F (my basement is very cold)
Additional Fermentation: 14 days keg conditioned @ 55F

Mash at 158 for 60min. I had 75% eff
2 and 6 row Pale blend (50/50): 9 lbs
Crystal 80: 12 oz
Chocolate: 12 oz
Black Patent: 4 oz
Roasted Barley: 4 oz
Flaked Wheat: 6.4 oz
Lactose: 1 lb

East Kent Goldings @ 60 min

I primed and bottled it on sunday. 24 flip cap 500ml growlers, 5 belgian 750ml bottles (one with 2oz of rye added) and a 1L flip top growler. Not too shabby. It tasted pretty awesome uncarbed, though a little on the sweet side. But i think once its carbed up it will balance it out.

Hammis
Where did you get the touch screen from?

Great looking panel!

S

Thanks BeerguyNC61. The touchscreen I was lucky enough to pick up off ebay for a VERY reasonable price ($200, vs $2000 if new). To be honest I spent a LOT of time trolling ebay looking for one. Dont get me wrong, there are many listed on there but most of them were well out of my price range or were not windows based. I would recommend using the following keywords when looking : HMI, industrial computer, industrial PC, industrial touchscreen, touchscreen pc. I believe I found mine listed as an industrial computer, and luckily no one bid on it and i won the auction for the list price. Good luck with your search!

Any more updates on this? I would love to see some pics with the touchscreen on and how your GUI looks.

Thanks,
-G

Haven't done much in terms of customizing the GUI yet. I've brewed 4 beers on the system so far with varying levels of success. The reason i say varying is because I have been having some issues with the BCS controller itself. The first brew i did had no problems, during the second brew the BCS froze during the cooling phase, during the third brew i couldnt even get the BCS to work properly and had to brew in manual (old skool) and then the last brew i did (3 weeks ago) went fairly well. It seems like my refresh on the screen/cpu isnt keeping up, though when i check in firefox when the BCS is running it says that the refresh rate is 1-2 s. So basically what i've been having to do is refresh the browser manually every few min to make sure things dont go wonky. any ideas on a solution from other BCS user out there?