5

TECHNOLOGY SERVING SIMPLICITY

“We’re geeks, we’re gear heads, we like toys, and commercial breweries have all the best toys.”

When this whole brewing thing began it was a remarkably primitive process. A couple of clay pots, a basket, and some less splintery reeds. When brewing left the homes, bakeries, and temples to become an industry, the whole thing was still a flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants and rule-of-thumb type of operation. Even the famed German immigrant-led brewing practices in 1840s America relied on St. Louis’ natural cave systems, with tradition emphasized over technology. It took the rise of science and an increasing aversion to losing industrial capital to bring the tech into place.

So, naturally, when a semi-hippie nuclear engineer took a swing at brewing and started teaching brewing courses, the natural place to go was low-tech—namely, a couple of buckets, an airlock, and the ingredients. You could have stuck a Babylonian brewer next to Charlie Papazian’s brewing getup and they would have grokked the whole thing.

Charlie was an atom smasher, Denny’s an audio engineer, Drew’s a computer guy—let’s face it, we are always going to be jealous to some extent of the toys that commercial breweries have. We’re geeks, we’re gear heads, we like toys, and commercial breweries have all the best toys. Big, gleaming stainless steel monstrosities; computer screens that read like NORAD with constant updates of a brew’s vital statistics; motors and gears to crush a man’s skull; controls that minimize the need for human attention spans—all of these beckon to our brewing minds like gleaming chrome headers call to the motor head.

Even in the early days of homebrewing, we saw guys attempting to cheaply recreate their favorite gadgets and control systems. But it took some real skilled geekery to know how to wire a system and understand tuning a proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller. The average layman brewer, with a longing gleam in their eye, could only sigh.

But now, with the rise of the everyday cheap computer and microcontroller (like those from Arduino and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, for instance), it’s become even easier to get your gear on. There are new companies out there taking advantage of new tech and rolling out affordable, automated, “simplified” brewing experiences for us all. Plus, the internet has given everyone access to a worldwide bazaar of goods, meaning it’s easy to obtain the parts to put together your own toys.

So far, we’ve looked at brewing with equipment you already have around your house, like pots and stoves, or that can be easily and inexpensively assembled, like the “Cheap ’n’ Easy” mash tun. Now we’re going to take a look at items of equipment for brewing, fermenting, and serving your beer that are more complex and sophisticated. Some of these items are perfect examples of throwing money at something to make it easier! And if you have the money to buy some of these systems, or the time and energy to assemble others yourself, you’ll find that a brew day can be as simple as getting your ingredients together and then pushing a few buttons.

One caveat here before we dive in: the systems we mention here are the most well developed, easy to use, and easy to obtain systems at the time of this writing. This aspect of homebrewing is still in its infancy, and a few years down the road there will be new players with new innovations and some of the current crop may be gone. But the examples we’ll talk about here will give you a good idea of what’s available now and where things may be headed. We’ve even asked some of the industry leaders to break out their crystal balls and give us their ideas about the future of high-tech brewing systems.

AUTOMATED SYSTEMS

The example systems that we will look at below are representative of the modern, all-in-one, automated brewing systems currently available. Why are these fancy systems in a book about simple homebrewing? Because they allow you to simply add your ingredients and water, start the system, and come back later to find wort ready to chill and ferment. There are some advantages and disadvantages to these automated systems.

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

PicoBrew

PicoBrew (https://www.picobrew.com) in Seattle, Washington was started by former Microsoft execs and engineers in partnership with a food scientist. That heritage is apparent both in the concept and design of the equipment they make. PicoBrew’s lineup covers a range of high-tech brewing equipment.

PicoBrew entered the market with the Zymatic®, a stainless steel beauty slightly larger than a regular microwave. Weighing in at about 50 pounds, the Zymatic produces a small batch size of 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) in about four to five hours. An opening on the front of the unit houses the “step filter,” a heat resistant, food-safe polycarbonate box. The step filter is sectioned into a “mash compartment” (i.e., a grain bin) in the front and four “hop cages” in the rear, with a “pass through” in between for when you want water or wort going through the heat exchanger but not the grain or hops. The cages each hold up to an ounce of whole hops, or several ounces of pellet hops. A rotating robotic arm in the top of the unit moves to the proper position for each step and delivers water or wort through a lid on the top of the step filter, which has several holes to allow liquid to flow to either the mash compartment or any of the hop cages.

The Zymatic was in production for several years before being replaced with the Pico Z. While the internal design of the Z Series is different from the Zymatic, the basic operation remains the same. One big plus for the Z Series is expandability. You start with a 2.5-gallon unit that has the “brains” for the whole system. Then you can add on more 2.5-gallon brewing compartments, up to a total system capacity of 10 gallons (37.8 L).

One of the beauties of the PicoBrew systems is programmability. You can even program the unit to do first wort hopping, a favorite of Denny’s. The overall process for a brew day with a Zymatic works as follows. Using the online Recipe Crafter software, you can choose a community user recipe or enter grain and hop types and amounts, then a mash schedule. The software tells you how much water to add to a 5-gallon Cornelius (corny) keg that you connect. The keg serves as your hot liquor tank and doubles as the kettle for wort boiling. Because the Zymatic is connected to your PicoBrew account, you can use your computer or phone to monitor your brew throughout the brewing process. It shows you where you are in the process and a graph of the times and temperatures during your brew.

When brewing is done, you’re left with 2.5 gallons of wort in your 5-gallon keg. Chill that using any method that works for you, and either ferment in the keg or transfer the wort to another fermentor of your choice. When fermentation is complete, keg or bottle the beer as you normally would.

Besides the ease of use and hands-off nature of the Zymatic, one of the best things about it is the repeatability factor. You know your mash temperatures and times will be consistent from batch to batch, so a beer from a specific recipe will turn out the same every time. This makes experimenting with a specific ingredient a cinch because you can be sure that the ingredient you change will be the only change in the beer.

The other big change in the Pico Z from the Zymatic is that not only can you use your own ingredients, but you can also brew PicoPak™ recipe kits (they come in a 5 L batch size specifically made for PicoBrew’s Pico® device) or ZPaks, which have a 2.5-gallon batch size.

And to make sure you get your money’s worth, you can even do sous vide cooking with your Zymatic! The even temperature of the water in the Zymatic makes it a perfect sous vide machine.

The Pico® is more of a beer brewing appliance. As automated as the Z Series is, the Pico takes simplicity up a notch. The Pico is a bit larger than a coffee pot and produces about 1.3 gallons (~5 L) and takes two to three hours to brew. The big difference is that the Pico uses prepackaged ingredients called PicoPaks. Like the Z Series, the Pico connects to your PicoBrew account when you turn it on. You then fill your brewing keg with water, hook the keg up to the Pico, and slip a pack into the opening in the front. The Pico reads a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip in each pack to know what the recipe is and what brew schedule to run for that pack. When the brew is finished, the brewing keg has wort in it, which you cool and pitch yeast into.

Figure 5.1. PicoBrew Z1 control unit.

Figure 5.2. PicoBrew Z4 system for 10-gallon batches.

PicoBrew licenses recipes from breweries and homebrewers. Its devices are aimed more at the beer enthusiast who wants to easily and quickly make great craft beers, rather than the “average” homebrewer who wants full control. For those who want to brew their own recipes, PicoBrew allows you to design a recipe online and will assemble and ship the PicoPak to you.

Brewie+

The Brewie+ (https://brewie.org/) is a stainless steel box that measures 29 × 13.3 × 18.4 inches (73.7 × 33.8 × 46.7 cm). It makes 2.6–5.3 gal. (10–20 L) all-grain batches based on the BIAB principle. The touch screen is centered on the front of the unit and it has Wi-Fi capability. When you open the lid you see two compartments separated by a center divider, with four “hop tank” compartments that hold the hop cages. On the back of the Brewie+ are connectors for the water inlet and outlet, as well as a wort outlet.

Figure 5.3. Brewie+ system.

The overall process for a brew day with the Brewie+ goes as follows. A false bottom is put in the right-hand compartment and a bag of grain on top of it. You can use either premade Brewie Pads recipe kits or a proprietary Brewie Bag that comes with the machine for using your own grain. The recipe can be provided via a tag on the Brewie Pad, a downloadable recipe, or your own recipe entered via the front panel screen. After selecting or entering your recipe on the touch screen display, the left-hand compartment fills with water (you can also add water manually if you don’t connect the Brewie+ to a water supply) and begins heating to your mash temperature. When it gets to temperature, the water is pumped to the grain compartment, where it is recirculated while your mash is held for the specified amount of time. When the mash is done, the wort is pumped back to the left-hand compartment for boiling. Wort is circulated through the hop cages per your hop schedule.

Once the boil is complete, the Brewie+ cools the wort to “a temperature of your choosing” (it’s limited by the temperature of your water supply) by running water around the outside of the boil compartment by way of the water inlet on the back. When the wort is cool, you connect a sanitized hose to the wort outlet and run the wort into your fermentor. You pitch yeast and ferment as you would any other brew. You can also connect several Brewie+ units together for larger batches.

ALL-IN-ONE MANUAL SYSTEMS

All-in-one manual systems leave some of the work of brewing up to you. They’re integrated systems in terms of the hardware, but some of the brewing processes still require hands-on attention from you. In addition to the manufacturers we describe below, note that there are other options in the “all-in-one” space, like RoboBrew; also, some units are less feature-filled and more affordable, like the Brewer’s Edge® Mash And Boil. All-in-one manual systems have some advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

Grainfather

The Grainfather (https://www.grainfather.com), based in New Zealand, offers an all-in-one brewing system based on a traditional fly sparge setup. The Grainfather Connect is a vessel within a vessel. The outer stainless steel container has a heating plate in the bottom and a built-in pump on the outside that you use to recirculate wort. The inner container has screens to hold and filter the mash. During mashing, another tube runs from the pump to recirculate the wort. The attached smart controller can be programmed for multi-step or single infusion mashes, and includes a delayed start option. The smart controller has Bluetooth® connectivity so it can be controlled or monitored remotely. The Grainfather Connect also comes with a counterflow chiller to cool your wort quickly. Other add-ons for the Grainfather system include the Graincoat, a neoprene jacket that slips over the outer vessel to help maintain heat, and a pot still attachment.

Figure 5.4. The Grainfather Connect system.

When using the Grainfather Connect, you fill the inner container with water and program your mash schedule using the smart controller. Next, you insert the inner container with the bottom screen in place and put a cover on the inner tube to prevent grain from going down it. You stir the grain into your strike water and place another screen on top of the grain. After removing the stopper you put on the glass lid, which has a hole in the center to allow you to direct the outer tubing back over the grain for recirculation. When you start up the pump, wort is pumped from the bottom of the unit up and over the grain in the basket.

Once your mash is done, you lift the inner container and set it on supports built into the outer container. As the wort drains out you pour water over the top screen to sparge the grain. (Grainfather also sells a separate unit for heating your sparge water.)

When the sparge is finished you boil your wort in the same unit, adding hops as usual. Near the end of the boil you hook the counterflow chiller up to the pump and recirculate wort through it to sanitize it. When the boil is over you turn on the water to the chiller and run your wort into a fermentor. (Grainfather also makes 25 L stainless steel fermentors that have a tap on them to make it easy to bottle your beer.)

Cleanup is a cinch. Dump the grain from the inner container into your compost pile, then spray out and clean the container like every kettle you’ve ever known and loved.

Speidel Braumeister

Arguably the great granddaddy of the all-in-one electric brewing appliances is the Speidel Braumeister (https://www.speidels-braumeister.de). They are serious works of art and German engineering with a substantial price tag to match.

Figure 5.5. Speidel Braumeister systems.

Speidel is a mid-size company in Germany that has been in the container manufacturing business since 1912. They build brewing and fermenting systems, as well as grinders and presses for cider making. Although Speidel makes their Braumeister system in sizes up to 500 L (132 gal.) for commercial use (or REALLY enthusiastic homebrewers!), their smaller 10, 20, and 50-liter systems are what most homebrewers will be interested in. Like the Grainfather, the Braumeister uses an outer stainless steel jacket as the combination hot liquor tank and mash tun, with an inner perforated basket to hold grain.

The Braumeister can be purchased alone, or in various starter sets that come bundled with items such as fermentors, chillers, mills, and other pieces of brewing equipment. An optional internet-enabled Wi-Fi module allows you to download software updates, synchronize recipes to your Braumeister, and monitor the brewing process.

With a Braumeister, the brewing process begins by adding water to the hot liquor tank. You program your mash and boil schedule using the front panel controls or transfer your schedule to the Braumeister using the My Speidel software. Next, you pour in your mash water and heat it to the desired strike temperature. Once your water is at the right temperature, you insert the grain basket with the “sieve inserts” (perforated screens that go below and above the grain), inserting the lower screen first, stirring in your grain, and then placing the other insert on top. You screw down a “malt pipe” across the top of the container to hold the inserts in place and then switch the pump on to recirculate your wort through the grain container during the mash. Unlike the Grainfather, which has a tube running up the outside of the unit from the pump and recirculates over the top of the grain, the Braumeister recirculates from the bottom of the mash tun.

Once the mash is complete, you remove the grain container and allow it to drain into the outer container. You can sparge if you want by pouring water into the grain container. After lautering and sparging, you switch the unit to boil and manually add the hops per your hop schedule.

Here’s what we like about these manual all-in-ones: they straddle the line between the burly all-manual means we’re used to and the fully automated computerized brewing systems like those from PicoBrew and Brewie. They help make your brew day easier, but you’re still hands-on.

RECIPE INTERLUDE

Here’s one of the reasons to love these integrated all-in-one systems. They make doing more complicated mash schedules a matter of adding steps to an app instead of manually stirring and adding heat or decocting or infusing hot water. Sometimes you want to do a multi-step mash just because it’s tradition (the actual utilitarian value of more complicated brew schedules is somewhat debatable.) Here’s a perfect example of a stronger version of a German altbier that uses an old-school mash schedule. On our automated systems, the only extra work is having to wait a little while longer!

RECIPE

Double Secret Probation Sticke Altbier

Batch size: 6.0 gal. (22.7 L)

Original gravity: 1.082 (19.8°P)

Final gravity: 1.018 (4.6°P)

Color: 15 SRM

Bitterness: 55 IBU

ABV: 8%

Malt

Hops

Yeast

Mash

Brewing notes

SIMPLE FERMENTATION SYSTEMS

The real challenge for most homebrewers when trying to simplify their brewing process isn’t providing the heat, it’s providing the cool. The old standbys have been the classic water bath, which Drew still regularly uses, or the “brew fridge/freezer” with an override thermostat to set the temperature. On the high end, as we write this, more and more professional “consumer-sized” glycol chillers are appearing, but for those not made of money they’re not practical.

Simple fermentation systems maintain your fermentation temperature for you. They’re easier and more compact than the refrigerator or chest freezer typically used by homebrewers for temperature control. In addition, some provide you with a way to serve your beer directly from the fermentor.

BrewJacket Immersion Pro

BrewJacket, Inc. (https://www.brewjacket.com) takes a different approach to cooling or heating wort and it works brilliantly, particularly for those trapped in smaller brewing spaces. The BrewJacket Immersion Pro setup consists of a big insulated bag that goes around your fermentor to help control heat transfers, and a heavy anodized aluminum rod that you submerge into the beer. The rod connects to a lid and controller unit with a fan and a heat sink. Through the magic of the Peltier effect, the BrewJacket absorbs heat through the rod and expels it out the top.

Figure 5.6. A “cool” way to keep your beer at a constant temperature. The BrewJacket Immersion Pro is a fermentor inside of a jacket.

Figure 5.7. BrewJacket Immersion Pro system without jacket.

In a space no bigger than your fermentor, you can successfully hold your vessel at roughly 30°F (16.5°C) below or above room temperature using the BrewJacket system. That means if your wort is in a climate-controlled room you can still do a lager in your house year round!

Vessi Fermentor

The Vessi® Fermentor (https://wlabsinnovations.com/pages/vessi) is an integrated fermenting and serving tank from WLabs, a division of appliance giant Whirlpool. WLabs is Whirlpool’s approach to developing innovative consumer products, and the Vessi is definitely innovative.

Figure 5.8. Innovation in the form of fermentation and serving from the same vessel; meet Vessi.

The Vessi Fermentor consists of a temperature-controlled 8-gallon conical fermentor (designed for 5-gallon batches) mounted below a work surface that’s set on an outer shell about the size of an average kegerator. The work surface includes a beer tap that is connected to the fermentor. The idea is that you can ferment and serve from the same device. This saves time when compared with cleaning and sanitizing separate pieces of equipment. The Vessi also includes connections for CO2 so you can carbonate your beer, and a beer outlet connector so you can choose to keg or bottle your beer separately.

Bob Schneider, a Vessi Fermentor owner and Whirlpool Corporation employee, assesses the Vessi like this:

We see ourselves as the ultimate home-level uni-tank for fermenting, removing sediment, clarifying and conditioning with the added bonus of being able to dispense directly, keg, or bottle! This allows you to significantly cut down your cleaning, transferring, and various pain points of the traditional homebrewing process, all the while reducing risks of contamination and oxidization.

HOME CANNING

One of the biggest changes in the craft beer world has been the influx and rapid proliferation of the beer can. Long derided as the receptacle of bad beer, the can has taken on the sheen of respectability as consumers have realized its value in terms of protection from both light and oxygen. The beer can has been around since the 1930s but the technology has remained firmly in the hands of the big guys, until now.

Aside from the small machines being run out of mobile canning lines and the six pack-sized machines that both Oskar Blues and 21st Amendment used to publicly kick off the craft can revolution, there’s never been a reasonable way for a craft beer homebrewer to take advantage of everything the can has to offer. The place where most of us are probably interacting with small-batch canning is the Crowler™, a 32 oz. can substitute for the growler fill. The can seamers that seal crowlers are works of early industrial art, but at around $3500 each they are out of the price range for all but the most ambitious homebrewer.

Figure 5.9. A Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry can sealer.

Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry (WAF), probably best known for making the line of All-American® pressure cookers that your grandmother would have passed down to you if only you had asked, has been making canning rigs out of big hunks of metal since the 1920s. WAF has recently begun exploring the homebrew market with its hand-cranked (or drill-powered) seamers, which cost a much more reasonable 600–700 dollars. Still not cheap, but far better.

And then there’s the new kid on the block, Oktober Design’s MK16. It’s more expensive than the WAF seamer, but for $1500 you get a slick, modern-looking, fully motorized unit that makes short work of can seaming.

All of the options above still come with a few problems. First, the expense. Second, they work best with already carbonated beer and you’ll definitely need a way to purge the cans prior to filling. Professional systems usually use nitrogen, but we can use our trusty CO2 from, say, a BeerGun™. Lastly, there’s the small matter of the cans themselves—they’re recyclable, but still single use from our perspective and you get your best savings when you buy in bulk, such as a pallet of cans in a single go.

As we write this, we’re in the early infancy of canning at the homebrew level. Maybe these machines never move below the homebrew store or club level, but they could still provide an awesome service for your store regulars or club brewers. It will be exciting to see where this goes because cans rock and this is just another great option.

As for why we’re including canning seamers in a book about simple homebrewing? We strongly feel like this is a place people will want to go. Homebrewers love to emulate the pros and the can has a number of advantages as a packaging format. It’s only going to get simpler as we go!

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

We’re going to pull a Carnac the Magnificent here and predict that a fair number of you are saying one of the following things.

“drool”

OK, that’s not a saying, but suffice it to say, you’re excited by the things we’ve been showing you and are all ready to plunk down your hard earn ducats. If you’re willing to buy everything we just mentioned above, can we interest you in some investment properties that are only suitable to a well-heeled individual as yourself?

For the rest of you, we’re guessing you fall into one of two remaining camps:

“That’s great and all, but my orchard of money trees hasn’t blossomed yet.”

Or,

“Man, half the fun of this hobby is having an excuse to be out in the garage/shed/lean-to twiddling with wrenches, screwdrivers, and Teflon tape.”

We hear you both, and despite never meeting a piece of gear we didn’t at least temporarily fall into limerence with, we know that money can’t buy you brewing love.

Bucket Heaters: A Cheap Electrical Assist

Sometimes you really don’t need all the fancy PID controllers and automated thingamajigs to make your beer, but you do need an assist. About a decade ago, homebrewers (being the clever sort) began playing with electric immersion heaters, a.k.a. “bucket heaters.”

You’ll sometimes see the small version of a bucket heater sold as a desktop “coffee warmer.” These warmers consist of a few metal loops coiled tightly together to submerge in your cup. They heat by virtue of electrical resistance, causing the metal to heat, rather like friction causing a surface to warm. Plug in your coffee warmer and never have a cold sip again … Burnt and burny tasting, sure, but cold? Never!

But you’re not interested in potential office electrocution hazards and absurd desktop murder scenarios; you want the brew applications. Do a search online for bucket heaters. When homebrewers first began using them, they were almost strictly the domain of farms and were used to prevent buckets from icing over in the barn. The early models were fairly primitive and had limited insulation because farmers are used to dangerous implements. Homebrewers began by shielding the exposed wiring and electrical connections using various housings, including PVC pipes and plenty of heat-resistant silicone caulking to keep the wort at bay.

Modern bucket heaters in the 1000–1500 watt range have come a long way in terms of safety. The consumer models won’t bring things to a boil, but for a little less than $50 they will help you speed up a stubbornly slow stove top, induction cooktop, and even some of the previously mentioned fancy 110 volt systems. (Most of the plug-and-play bucket heaters have a temperature cutoff of ~180°F, or 82°C.)

A word to the wise: as we noted in chapter 3, on a typical US household with a 15 amp circuit (found in almost every room except the kitchen), you can only put a maximum load of roughly 1800 watts before tripping the circuit. If you have a 20 amp circuit, you can pile on about 2400 watts of load before “click-*wrrr*” and the power goes off. Bear in mind that 1800 or 2400-watt load total includes everything running on that circuit, which means your lights, fans, fridges, and other gadgets in addition to the load brought by your heating elements.

The other use for a bucket heater is preheating brewing water. Some people like to wake up in the morning, turn on the burners, and get their coffee on while waiting for their brewing water to come up to temperature. Others, like Drew, know that every little thing left to be done in the morning is just going to make it that much harder to get the brew going.

You can combine a bucket heater with a standard heating thermostat controller (like the newer models from Inkbird, found online and at your homebrew store) and fire up the heater overnight so you can wake up to water ready to go. If you add a timer switch to the whole assembly, you can even save energy by having the heater flip on at a suitable time before your brew session is scheduled to start. Also, we highly recommend that if you preheat water overnight this way, you use a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) wired outlet for this application to prevent disaster should your heater short out. Much better to have a delayed brew day than your house burn down!

If you’re doubly handy (and can trust yourself around electricity), you can buy individual heating elements and install them permanently in a pot or bucket. If you do an internet search you can quickly fall down the rabbit hole of building your own full-on electric brewery (http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/ is one good resource). But please, please, please, for the love of all things beery, you must make sure you know what you’re doing. Unlike flame-based systems where you can see the danger, electricity can be sneaky, and any small miswiring can cause serious damage.

Even if you don’t embrace the fully automated, fancy-control-panel version of brewing, you’ll see some pretty spiffy and simple brewing systems built out of little more than heaters and buckets.

Raspberry Pi and Arduino-Based Systems

Let’s say you’re not hyped to buy a thing that’s all “turn-key,” but, like a great many brewers, you’re somewhat obsessed with computers because, hey, it’s your day job (we bet that applies to at least a third of you reading this right now). One of the coolest developments in the past decade in the computer industry is the return of the microcontroller and microcomputer. The big players are the gadgets from the Raspberry Pi Foundation (https://raspberrypi.org/) and Arduino AG (https://arduino.cc/). Both groups are making it easier than ever for computer-savvy types to bridge the virtual world of computer code with the physical world of motors, switches, and sensors.

The Raspberry Pi series are credit card (and smaller) sized computers that run open-source Linux-based operating systems. Think how powerful your desktop machine was about 10 years ago and now shrink that power into a credit card and pay about $35 for it. Madness! The Arduino series focuses on the microcontroller segment. Basically, they are very simple computers designed for controlling systems as opposed to being a general purpose computer. The Arduino makes for cheap prototyping and is a natural interface for many simple sensors.

Because of their availability, low cost, and embrace of the open-source software (OSS) model, there are scads and scads of projects available to you online that use Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms. However, the nature of OSS also means that these projects exist in various states of upkeep. Be careful when adopting a pet project, and find out if there’s sufficient active support behind things to suit your level of willingness and ability to develop.

One great current example are the folks behind BrewPi (https://brewpi.com/). As of 2018, the BrewPi project is actively evolving around new circuit boards and new ideas moving well beyond the singular scope of just controlling a fermentation fridge.

LOOKING INTO THE CRYSTAL BALL

What do we think the future of homebrew tech will look like? Please remember, we’re likely to be as accurate as the folks who predicted people wouldn’t need individual home computers or the people who created the Jetsons that made so many of us believe that we’d have personal jet packs, robots, and flying cars.

PROFILES IN SIMPLICITY: RONALDO DUTRA FERREIRA

Using Technology: From Braumeister Homebrewer to Brewmaster

In 2015, we were invited to Brazil to speak at a homebrewing conference in Florianopolis in the state of Santa Catarina. Our host was Ronaldo Dutra Ferreira, an accomplished homebrewer. His home brewery included an extensive Speidel Braumeister setup, including an electric lift to hoist the grain basket out of the mash tun (this was Drew’s favorite part). Soon after we left, Ronaldo opened the brewery Bruxa (which means witch in Portuguese) in a sort of co-op brewing facility, sharing the space with other friends running similar breweries. We asked Ronaldo to tell us his story of going from a homebrewer with his Braumeister to a brewmaster with his own brewery.

During university some friends and I wanted to brew beer, but we all lived with our parents and so the project never took off. We had a deal; when the first of us had some sort of structure, we would brew beer. When I finished building my house, I received a large package full of pots and the works to make beer, an off-the-shelf combo of gear and ingredients, and a note: “It’s on your turf! Now learn!” At first, I did not know what was happening until my friend called and explained that he had bought everything. I ordered a whole box of books and began to study. This was February, 2010.

Our first brewing equipment was an all-grain 5-gallon set up. Slowly, we upgraded the equipment with some bells and whistles to make our brewing life easier. All the parts were sourced in hardware stores and imported from the US. At that time, few options were available. I brewed the beer at my house in Brazil along with a friend that had also wanted to brew for a long time.

Afterwards I went to a 250 L three-vessel structure, almost a full-size brewery. Then, I downsized to a 50 L BIAB one-vessel system so I could brew more beers, different styles, and do more experiments.

Brewing with a Speidel 50 L BIAB was very easy and fast. To get some feedback on how good the beers were that I brewed with it, I entered and won a few competitions both at the state level and nationally.

During my homebrew days, we had a club called Armada Cervejeira. We had meetings every two weeks to discuss all things homebrew and to taste each other’s and commercial beers. The focus was learning and to increase the learning curve through the sharing of information.

In 2016, that club transformed into a collaborative brewery with 21 taps. We can brew whatever we feel like and enjoy the results with our loyal customers. We have won a number of awards, including a gold medal for a grisette and bronze for a sour fruit beer at the Brazilian Competition for Breweries.

The advice I give for people that want to excel in this hobby is to participate in their local homebrewing clubs, subscribe to magazines, buy books, and study, study, study! Information is never enough, and better beer has a lot of knowledge behind it.

The Recipe

A little about the recipe I’m sharing: I developed this recipe with my friend, Rodrigo Tasca; we won a homebrewing competition sponsored by Cervejaria Bierland in Blumenau, Santa Catarina, and they ended up brewing it for release. It is possible that some changes were made by Bierland, but this recipe is the core starting recipe that won their competition. This is a moderate-strength blonde ale with high drinkability, a sweet, fruity aroma, and dry finish.

RECIPE

Bruxa Belgian Blonde Ale

Batch volume: 5 gal. (19 L)

Original gravity: 1.067 (16.4°P)

Final gravity: 1.012 (3.1°P)

Color: 5 SRM

Bitterness: 28 IBU

ABV: 7%

Malt

  • • 5.3 lb. (2.4 kg) Castle Malts Pils (1.8°L)
  • • 5.3 lb. (2.4 kg) Castle Malts Vienna (3°L)
  • • 0.25 lb. (110 g) Castle acid malt (3°L)
  • • 3.5 oz. (100 g) Castle Malts Abbey (17°L)

Hops

  • • 1.75 oz. (50 g) East Kent Goldings 5% AA @ 60 min.

Additions

  • • 1.1 lb. (500 g) demerara or cane sugar @ 15 min.
  • • 1/2 tsp. yeast nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast

  • • Wyeast 1214 Abbey Ale

Water profile

  • • Calcium (Ca2+): 90 ppm
  • • Chloride (Cl-): 60 ppm
  • • Sulfate (SO2+-4): 60 ppm

Brewing notes

  • • Multi-step mash with treated to profile water, 4 gal. (15 L) at 151°F (66°C) for 60 min., raise to 158°F (70°C) for 15 min. Sparge with treated-to-profile water, 4 gal. (15 L) at 172°F (78°C).
  • • Boil for 60 min., adding hops when boiling starts. Add the demerara/cane sugar for the last 15 min. of the boil. Whirlpool and wait 15–20 min.
  • • Cool wort to around 70°F (21°C) and pitch yeast.
  • • Ferment around 65°F (20°C) for three days, then turn off temperature control for 7–10 days. Don’t let the temperature go above 79°F (26°C). (I skip the secondary.) Crash cool at 32°F (0°C) for a week.
  • • Bottle or keg as usual.