Master's Project Poll: How do you brew? How would you automate?

[tmbrewer]

Hello fellow homebrewers!

I’m in the final phase of a Master's Systems Engineering program at Johns Hopkins University. As a final step in the program, students are challenged to mature a complex "product" concept through application of the systems engineering method. Principally this means conceiving an idea that is "reasonably" feasible and running the concept through the process of gathering user needs & input, specifying more concrete requirements of a conceptual system that could achieve it, envisioning a physical system that could satisfy it, and, through a number of middle processes, eventually produce a specification that could be handed to design engineers. Keep in mind this is primarily conceptual.

The concept I’ve chosen to pursue is that of a personal (residential) automated homebrewing system. Why? I've been brewing on & off since around 1993. I still love the craft - for the science and the end product. Over that time I've primarily brewed from quality extract with specialty grains. I'm anxious to brew my next "graduation" batch around June!

I welcome the input of the community of home brewers! I've created a survey to assess what you do in your existing brew processes and what you, as a potential user, might want such a concept product to do. The survey does not ask for any personal information other than opinions. I expect participants would be interested in the summary data so, as a thank you, I will post the summary data to the forum. Aside from that posting, I will not share any information I collect outside my project - this data is only for my personal use to inform my JHU capstone project. I am using SurveyMonkey, which charges a per-month fee, so I will run this survey for ~2-3.5 weeks before I process the results.

Keep an open mind. The total system may pose feasibility challenges if all features were pursued but all engineering efforts (should) involve trading off user desire, feasibility, and cost. I have some luxury in that I’m not as concerned about cost as a “real business”.

The survey can be accessed here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AutomatedHomebrewConcept​

If you have any questions or problems please free to send me a PM!

The goals of such as system include at least:

• Relief from tending to time-critical steps such as racking
• Improving consistency from batch-to-batch
• Experimentation with & sharing recipes
• Refining recipes in small but measurable ways
• Producing high quality beers
• Reduction in total "workload" required to execute the entire process (while maintaining a sense of "involvement" in the process
​

This conceptual product could potentially perform the following functions:

• Offer recipes and support online ingredient ordering
• Prepare & maintain yeast starters – both dry & liquid
• Modify water chemistry for optimal brewing conditions (within feasible limits)
• Ingredient measurement and dispensing of malt extracts, grains, hops, adjuncts (coffee, honey, etc), flocculants, water conditioners, and the like
• Controlling the boil (including potential full mash)
• Chilling
• Oxygenation of cooled wort and pitching prepared yeast
• Maintaining fermentation conditions including temperature suitable for the specific yeast used (ale & lager)
• Monitoring fermentation process to trigger & conduct racking
• Supporting ferment-time additions; dry hopping, oak chips, etc
• Sanitation & cleaning functions
• Finishing the product via functions to transfer from secondary fermentation vessel to a kegging & carbonation function
• Maintenance of recording keeping- numerous measurable & qualitative output parameters such as final specific gravity, color, volume of output, computation of efficiency in process areas, and the like​

Additional considerations include safety, noise, physical size, etc.

Thanks in advance to any brewers willing to help!

Sincerely-
TMBrewer

 

[Kaiser1878]

Just took the survey. I would be interested to see the results and what you come up with to complete your project.

 

[ibbones]

Done.

 

[Phunhog]

Done.

 

[myerstyson]

Complete

 

[Grossy]

Took the survey, would be very interested in the results.

 

[tmbrewer]

Thanks for your participation, folks. I already have ~20 completed surveys and am already seeing trends. I am learning something that reflects on my own brew process as I see the results. I will certainly share at the end and comment about my own surprises.

A few of you noted some mistakes and/or limitations in the survey. I corrected the mistakes and loosened a few answer restrictions so hopefully people can express their opinions easily.

A few of you also left links to some of your own brew setups. I've never moved into AG yet (opting for simpler extract w/specialty grains) but maybe late this summer I can start down that path. Its something I've always wanted to try and there is a lot of practical experience archived here on HBT to guide the way.

Cheers-
Todd

 

[MaddBaggins]

Just took the survey and tried my best to answer honestly knowing that I brew because I enjoy the hands on experience of it. If it was all automated, I wouldn't do it.
The results should be interesting.

 

[tmbrewer]

MaddBaggins-
I've almost always brewed with family and/or friends participating, so I sort of agree with you on the automation. It's usually a social event here. At the same time, there are certain parts of it that I wish I could just "gloss over". For quality and consistency, I might like automation during the boil - and many people have done this with control automation systems (thinking about BlackHeart HERMS project). I try to be sensitive to this in my survey - one of my questions asks you to rank how important your sense of "involvement" in the operation is. This is all a bit of an interesting exercise. The survey is definitely helping me to understand what parts of automation are most interesting to homebrewers and why. So far its cleaning and sanitation :>

Over the years I've been completely faithful to John Palmer's suggestions on racking to a secondary fermentor. I was very surprised to see most people don't do it -- and most of you are experienced, so I may have just made my future brewing process a little easier ha

Thanks again-
Todd

 

[MaddBaggins]

I think mash control would be a real perk of automation.
I only secondary on long term beers like brett fermentations. Otherwise my beers are 3-6 weeks primary only.

 

[grathan]

I forgot to mention, but warranty and serviceable parts supply.

 

[tmbrewer]

Hey folks-
I just wanted to thank the 30+ people that participated in my survey.

I'm going to tally up the results this weekend and post the results.
If anyone is still interested in participating, I'll probably close the survey around Saturday afternoon.

Sincerely-
Todd

 

[BrewerBrad82]

Just took it, I hope you get some great data!

 

[tmbrewer]

All in all, I had a total of 41 respondents. Thanks for your support! I was hoping for at least 20. Of the 41, many of you completed the entire survey. Understandably, a few dropped out during the process, and that's ok. I'm aware I had a few errors in the survey early on and I thank the early folks for pointing those out. As a result, some of the answers refer to problems that should no longer exist. And I agree with one person's concern that often time structured questions can over-constrain responses. Thanks for your patience.

Overall I learned a lot about the brewing process people follow. In particular I was surprised at the lack of use of secondary fermentation. I always wondered if the process of racking was worth the risk of contamination & the extra cleaning.

Generally, as expected, the crowd here is quite experienced and has invested in their private setups. People overwhelmingly follow full mash (AG) processes. I'm still using extracts & specialty grains and was surprised to see myself in the 10% minority :> .

I was also somewhat surprised to see just how much folks adjust their water before brewing. I've not taken much care here myself. As far as a feature of an automated system, I believe this has been promoted for common treatments (at least gypsum & filtering).

By and large, as a community we predominantly produce ales (as opposed to lagers). This puts in question the need of such an automated system to support refrigeration controls around low-temp fermentation.

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people that create yeast starters and support for this is certainly an "ideal" feature of this system.

Overwhelmingly (and I cannot disagree), we'd all love automation around sanitation & cleaning aspects of the process.

As promised in my original post, I want to share the data collected back with the community as a humble Thank You. I'm attaching a PDF of the results. I reviewed the content of responses and see no external links outside the HBT forums.

Cheers!
-Todd

View attachment Summary All Data.pdf

 

[VT-NAV]

Thanks for posting the survey results.

All too often people conduct a survey or an experiment and then never get back to us with meaningful results.

 

[Teromous]

How do you brew?

I try my best to avoid this:

How would you automate?

Definitely a mechanoid. Not one that is too smart...but one that still has my back. The kind that will say "sir, that is not dextrose, that is PBW."

Master project complete.

 

[grathan]

Wow. $18 average cost per gallon for homebrew ingredients. I wonder if people were drinking or if certain IQ levels are more prone to take random polls.

 

[Qhrumphf]

In too late to take the survey, but a suggestion, I would go with a conical fermenter system in your design, hands down, as your "racking to secondary" is just dumping the yeast from the bottom. Also makes bottom harvesting for repitching easier, and avoids all the problems of racking the way most homebrewers do. If I had conicals, I would probably do it for repitching purposes (as that's how to get the best yeast when bottom cropping).

Also, thanks for posting the results. Interesting read if nothing else. How are people spending $50 per gallon for their beer? I probably spend $3 per gallon (then again, I buy malt and hops in bulk, repitch yeast, and brew a lot of session beers).

 

[Baja_Brewer]

Wow. $18 average cost per gallon for homebrew ingredients. I wonder if people were drinking or if certain IQ levels are more prone to take random polls.

IMO that question was confusing for a quick read+respond. If he had omitted the last sentence "consider cost for 5 gallon batch" there would have been lower numbers. I bet that anything >$10-12/gal is a 5 gallon batch cost.

Edit- FWIW I just ran those numbers dividing anything greater than 10 by 5 and calculated an average of $6.14/gallon....

 

[Qhrumphf]

IMO that question was confusing for a quick read+respond. If he had omitted the last sentence "consider cost for 5 gallon batch" there would have been lower numbers. I bet that anything >$10-12/gal is a 5 gallon batch cost.

Edit- FWIW I just ran those numbers dividing anything greater than 10 by 5 and calculated an average of $6.14/gallon....

I dunno, if you brew extract kits, full boil, using bottled water, propane, and an ice bath (which there are those who do) and factor those into your costs (which some do, some don't), as much as $60 per kit, plus a couple bucks in gas plus $5-10 in water plus $10-20 in ice, I could see $20 being a per gallon cost pretty easily. But as far as the higher numbers ($50 per gallon is listed a couple times) I'm sure you're right. I figured the same explanation.

 

[tmbrewer]

I should mention that another thing I learned is that its actually quite difficult to make a great survey. In retrospect, I agree that in places the survey questions could have been re-worded for that quick read & answer tempo.

That said, I get the gist of what people are saying and can filter the responses with common sense.

I love the comment about the conical fermentor, Qhrumphf. Somehow I can see this survey ending up costing me money in equipment ha.

Teromous, I love your robot image. I may have to use that in my final presentation. Where's that from? ha

-Todd

 

[Teromous]

Where's that from? ha

It's Kryten from the British TV show Red Dwarf.