The worlds of Home Brewing and DIY have been joined at the hip since the beginnings of home brewing....
Born out of necessity, homebrewers have had specific needs that the commercial brewing market could not supply. This need fostered a huge DIY explosion in brewing equipment & gadgets from swamp chillers, immersion chillers, growler fillers and countless others.
For years avid home brewers have shared their ideas, creations & projects. This aspect of sharing ideas and collaboration is one of the great foundations of the home brewing hobby and in particular the HBT website. HBT has been an encyclopedic tome of home brewing fact (and yes some fiction) for many years.
I am an avid home brewer and DIY tinkerer. I have on many occasions said to myself, "I wish someone would make a widget/gadget to help brewers do this or that."
Recently I have had the fortune to get my hands on a 3D printer that is designed for the home office.These printers along with new, easier software is bringing the world of custom manufacturing to the common man.
The future of home brewing DIY is here....
Armed with a 3D printer, ruler, browser based software like TinkerCAD.com more and more brewers will be designing and printing their own gadgets. With the rich history of sharing and collaboration in the home brewing community I see a wonderfully rich and productive future ahead for all the yet to be invented gadgets for brewing beer.
With that spirit in mind I would like to share a few gadget I have created or improved.
Here are a few examples....
1. I always taped my fermentation chamber temperature probe to my carboy or shoved it under the brew hauler strap. The problem is it really gave me mostly the ambient temperature of the chamber rather than the temp of the wort. I designed a little probe holder that keeps the probe insulated from the outside air and allows for more accurate temp control.
2. I have built the well known DIY project for a kegerator 'tower cooler' in the past and always knew there must be a easier way to assemble the project, rather then getting a project box, hole saw and pipe fittings.... so I designed a simple funnel like part that essentially attaches the fan to the tube directly.
3. The new wide mouth glass carboys are a great item, although I prefer to use CO2 to transfer beer from my carboy to my cornie. The screw on lid on the wide mouth bubbler posed a problem on getting a CO2 line & racking cane both mounted.... I printed a specialized screw cap to solve the problem....
This year 3D printers will be less than $900 and design software like www.tinkercad.com is free. I predict that we are now going to see dozens and dozens of wonderful, creative new items popping up on forums throughout home brewing websites that will make our hobby easier and not to mention a lot cooler in the near future... because now, if you can imagine it you can probably print it at home!
Born out of necessity, homebrewers have had specific needs that the commercial brewing market could not supply. This need fostered a huge DIY explosion in brewing equipment & gadgets from swamp chillers, immersion chillers, growler fillers and countless others.
For years avid home brewers have shared their ideas, creations & projects. This aspect of sharing ideas and collaboration is one of the great foundations of the home brewing hobby and in particular the HBT website. HBT has been an encyclopedic tome of home brewing fact (and yes some fiction) for many years.
I am an avid home brewer and DIY tinkerer. I have on many occasions said to myself, "I wish someone would make a widget/gadget to help brewers do this or that."
Recently I have had the fortune to get my hands on a 3D printer that is designed for the home office.These printers along with new, easier software is bringing the world of custom manufacturing to the common man.
The future of home brewing DIY is here....
Armed with a 3D printer, ruler, browser based software like TinkerCAD.com more and more brewers will be designing and printing their own gadgets. With the rich history of sharing and collaboration in the home brewing community I see a wonderfully rich and productive future ahead for all the yet to be invented gadgets for brewing beer.
With that spirit in mind I would like to share a few gadget I have created or improved.
Here are a few examples....
1. I always taped my fermentation chamber temperature probe to my carboy or shoved it under the brew hauler strap. The problem is it really gave me mostly the ambient temperature of the chamber rather than the temp of the wort. I designed a little probe holder that keeps the probe insulated from the outside air and allows for more accurate temp control.
2. I have built the well known DIY project for a kegerator 'tower cooler' in the past and always knew there must be a easier way to assemble the project, rather then getting a project box, hole saw and pipe fittings.... so I designed a simple funnel like part that essentially attaches the fan to the tube directly.
3. The new wide mouth glass carboys are a great item, although I prefer to use CO2 to transfer beer from my carboy to my cornie. The screw on lid on the wide mouth bubbler posed a problem on getting a CO2 line & racking cane both mounted.... I printed a specialized screw cap to solve the problem....
This year 3D printers will be less than $900 and design software like www.tinkercad.com is free. I predict that we are now going to see dozens and dozens of wonderful, creative new items popping up on forums throughout home brewing websites that will make our hobby easier and not to mention a lot cooler in the near future... because now, if you can imagine it you can probably print it at home!
