Fermenting Beer with a Netduino, Electric IMP and a Windows 8 App

After my new years resolution, I’ve brewed up a number of batches of beer (primarily IPA’s) for my kegerator. Most turned out relatively good but as summer arrived in Florida it was a little difficult to keep my wort at around 70 degrees during the fermentation process. 

So I ended up investing in a freezer from Lowes for about $200 and added custom controller built from an Electric IMP, Netudino that  uploads data to a cool service called Xively.

The freezer will maintain a consistent temperature of 70 +/-1 degree, perfect for fermenting most ales. 

Here’s a screen capture from my LagoVista home automation app that shows a live capture at 30 second intervals as to the temperature in my fermenter.

And here’s some pix on the actual controller and unit itself, note the “up-to-code” wiring Someday I might get around to putting some sort of enclosure around this.

 

This is inside the fermentation chamber.  Note the little gray wire, that has a thermistor on the end that provide variable resistor output where we can measure the voltage and determine the temperature.

If you’d like more info as to how to build one of these things yourself, drop me an email at kevinw@slsys.net.

As an added bonus my controller was a few feet away from my HVAC unit in the garage so I added a couple extra thermistors to to monitor the incoming and outgoing temperatures for the cooling unit. The full feed can be viewed here

https://xively.com/develop/XXKkf_vy-StrfD_YGml7

-twb

New Years Resolution

I think I heard somewhere that making your new years resolution public can help make you stick to it.

I only have on new years resolution and I hope I can stick to it.

Starting in 2013, when I’m at home, I will only drink beer I brew myself

Since I just received my brew kit for Christmas, my first back is going through the aging process right now, so until then, I’ll have to drink what’s currently in the fridge.

I’ve got a batch of Nut Brown Ale bottled up from the picture below, but need to wait until later in the month to see how well (or bad) I did.

Up next is a batch of American IPA, but might be putting it in kegs rather than bottle it, so brew day is on hold until I get that sorted out.

Salute!

-twb