Fully Automated Brew Rig

This popped up on Hackaday.com. It's a fully automated BIAB system.

1. Grain is milled
2. Hops are portioned
3. Set it (via Brewtarget) and forget it

Automated Brew Rig

The first 7 minutes of this video are devoted to explaining the system. At 7:41 he starts a brew and shows all of the action.

How do you embed a youtube video? I know I've done it before and I've seen it a hundred times.

Got it. Just needed the right link.

itsme6582 said:

This popped up on Hackaday.com. It's a fully automated BIAB system.

1. Grain is milled
2. Hops are portioned
3. Set it (via Brewtarget) and forget it

Automated Brew Rig

Click to expand...

Very interesting concept.
It is nice to see other brewers ideas and implementation.
Take a look at Kladu's design and his interpretation of fully automated.

Cheers,
ClaudiusB

That is a creative interpretation of the term fully automated brewing, but I give the fellow a salute for his effort at marrying the unique hardware with a controller to make a brew system.

Incorporate this with an internet web page and people could order any beer with their own specifications, that would be awesome!

Pretty neat!

This is the ultimate in automated homebrew, imho.

ClaudiusB said:

Very interesting concept.
It is nice to see other brewers ideas and implementation.
Take a look at Kladu's design and his interpretation of fully automated.

Cheers,
ClaudiusB

Click to expand...

You got a link for Kladu? Or a good keyword to search with?

Iijakii: That is a pretty sweet setup but it's definitely more hands on than this one from Hackaday. Clearly, adjusting ball valves for pump flow control is too much work. Don't even get me started on button pressing. My finger is sore from just thinking about it. No automated hop additions? Amateur. Alright, so I'm jealous. I really like that all of the hardware is hidden in this rig. It looks so simple but there's a lot going on behind it all.

My favorite part of the Hackaday brewbot is the hops dumpers. I think he used a much better name for them in the video.

Here is a link to a picture of the One touch system https://picasaweb.google.com/kevin.ladue/Panels#5339967138764297570, and here is the planned final configuration https://picasaweb.google.com/kevin.ladue/AutomaticMaltSystem#5526188834702655394. At this point all you have to do is put the malt in the hopper, hang the hop bags, and connect the fermenter, the rest is handled by the recipe and control application.

Man.. I dunno. I mean, I'm all maker at heart, and I'm all for maximizing time efficiency... and I salute the engineering that goes into an automated system. But to me, full automation kinda defeats the purpose. The enjoyment of brewing to me comes from DOING the brewing. Automation is for things you don't want to do yourself... Sorry, don't want to be a downer or anything. Just had to say it.

Uncle Fat said:

Man.. I dunno. I mean, I'm all maker at heart, and I'm all for maximizing time efficiency... and I salute the engineering that goes into an automated system. But to me, full automation kinda defeats the purpose. The enjoyment of brewing to me comes from DOING the brewing. Automation is for things you don't want to do yourself... Sorry, don't want to be a downer or anything. Just had to say it.

Click to expand...

We all get different things out of brewing. I enjoy the actual brewing aspect as well, but most of my enjoyment comes from tinkering (building) and playing with recipes. Building a system like this would be so much fun. I'll soon be doing a semi-automated electric brutus 20, can't wait.

I still have the manual steam injection wort heating system, this is just an experiment in how much can be automated safely, and how many features can be built and programmed in. It is more or less the result of too much time on my hands, a fair degree of technical know how with control systems and programing, and 16 years of brewing experience.