New member

[gdeshors]

Hi everyone, I'm a french home brewer, 42 years old.

I've just registered here. I found the website when looking for forks or alternatives to Open Ardbir, and I stumbled upon this great thread about BrewManiaxEsp8266.
I've been a home brewer for a few years now. My first two batches were with 20L kits for beginners, with malt extract. And then by a good fortune, 4 years ago, I happened to lay hands on a much more advanced all-grain microbewery, made by a french small compagny called 'la chaumontoise', a 3x 100L tank gravity pico brewery system. :

I got used to the machine and used it to make 25 brews on it, 60L each. I brewed almost everytime recipes from the book "Secrets de brasseur" which became my night-stand book. I was very pleased with the results. I'm brewing for the account of the association in my participatory housing, so I have a captive public, but they have good opinions of my beer.
I liked this machine quite well, though it had a few drawbacks : no automation to reach and maintain a given temperature, too much power at the boil, and it was a lot of work to handle and clean. Anyway this machine did not belong to us and its owner just took it back, so I have to get a new gear.
I want to save a bit on time and be able to have alerts when steps end, so I'm leaning towards an automated all-in-one tank. I'm hesitating between a high-end connected EBIAB like braumeister or grainfather, or a cheaper alternative like a brewmonk or clone, and in that case a project like BrewManiac seems to me exactly what I'm seeking. I'm quite the tinkerer so it doesn't frighten me to build it.

What can I add ? I like to drink good beer (surprise).

 

[MaxStout]

Looks like a decent brew system. Welcome to HBT!

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Welcome to the group!

You should be able to find loads of inspiration from the posts here. Many levels of brewers and everyone is willing to help.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Bienvenue.

I bought a used Braumeister. Recent model. Works great, but it had to have a firmware update, and I needed an expensive cable to do that. Without the update, it had problems brewing in Fahrenheit. Not an issue in France, I guess. The Braumeister supports wifi, but the company charges $400 for the gadget to connect you, and it forces you to upload everything to their cloud, so it's pretty useless as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to rely on a website belonging to a company that could go out of business.

There is a homebrew dude on Youtube who put up a video comparing systems at different price points. He seems to know a lot. I have learned from him. He says there is no point in buying anything more expensive than a Clawhammer Supply system.

 

[gdeshors]

Thank you for your input. I've watched the video and I learned about Clawhammer Supply, which seems nice equipment but the $1000 version needs 120V so it won't work in the EU, and the 240V version is sold for $1600 (!) and even this version is advertised to not work outside the USA.

Anyway I've juste settled on a quite cheap Klarstein Mundschenk XXL, second hand but almost new. And I'm very keen to try and build a BrewManiac controller to make it better. Like you, I'm really reluctant to rely on a company that could stop the support of my device anytime, or make it not free, and I'd rather have full control of it I want to add options to it. If I do it I'll try to post updates here or in another post.

 

[ncbrewer]

Welcome to HBT.