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$71.5k short of reproduction, if I give up coffee in the morning and eat Spam for lunch....... I'm only 18 years away! Great Fu$%@ing job!
 
I stopped by a local brew pub last night, and I discussed this system with one of my friends who has worked there since they launched. he found the concept exciting to say the least, and he brought up a couple of things I had not thought of. When they experiment with new recipes, or designs, they are using 2.5 and 5 gallon set ups only marginally different than what most of us do at home (And in fact there are guys here who are maybe even a tad more advanced in some ways!) When they develop a new beer there is ALWAYS a hold your breath moment, when they move from the experimental equipment to production equipment. The worry is whether or not the beer will taste the same as the "Model" - As he said, there are a million little things that could go hinky in the experimental brew, that might cause an off flavor here, or a different profile there - subtle sure, but often enough to make a beer that was off the chart as a developmental project just so-so when they brew a full batch under the most controlled conditions. As he said, "Off flavors" is a blanket term that does not always translate to "bad" Sometimes a little mistake that causes a slight off flavor can also create a delicious albeit unintended flavor to a beer. If they make an experimental brew, and then translate the recipe to their full brew system, and they LOSE that little subtle "mistake flavor" that was soooooo good - They have no way to scientifically go back and "find it". His though was a system like this that could be used to develop recipes with exacting detail, and complete repeatability would be fantastic. If it works as proposed it would allow for total control and total repeatability over variables. When i told him the prices that were listed on this thread he was not phased - If they could eliminate mistakes, duds, lackluster batches that don't sell, the poor feedback that can come from that, and so on it would be worth it to them. Point being, there is at least ONE small brewer out there that is a potential buyer - I bet there will be more!
 
I agree... From a commercial perspective it's a phenomenal device.
You had said completely customizable? Can you daisy chain systems so you have 1 master control unit and multiple other runs attached? IE can the main setup be a 10 barrel system with the ability to do a 5 gallon batch by rerouting to smaller fermentation tanks?
 
Metalchef1 said:
Do the silos have the ability to mill the grain or will that be done before?
Click to expand...
The silos have an auger that transport the grain to the mill and the mill has an auger that transports the grain to the mash tun
 
Vandulus said:
Pardon me while I wipe the drool off my mouth. That is one impressive system! As an option for those that may not use RO water, you may look at adding a pH/TDS meter as part of the water influent system. Also where/how would one add water additions such as gypsum, calcium chloride and phosphoric/lactic acid?
Click to expand...
Oh that is a very good idea at an inline TDS meter would be not that hard to obtain.

For water correction,
Instead of dry powder I would have liquid solutions and use peristaltic pumps for meeting.
 
madscientist451 said:
The original post mentioned a cost to this point of $72,000? Is that parts alone?
If the prototype is 4-5 times the cost of the production model, does that mean that parts alone are going to run $14,000 to $18,000? If you add $15,000 to $20,000 to the parts to cover things like labor, insurance, other general overhead costs, customer support and shipping, the final cost will be somewhere between $29,000 and $48,000?
If you want to make a reasonable return on investment, you have to add that on top of the above price range.
It looks like a huge amount of time and energy went into the project and the results may be interesting, but the projected price is just too high.
I'd say your chance of selling a 20 gallon, $50,000+ system to anyone is about zero.
Click to expand...
I'm sure you're correct, but the system isn't for everyone.

I've spent $20,000 more than 50k and I'm still happy about it so I mean there's at least one person.

I've talked to two different schools and they both offer master's degrees in Brewing.
Both of the schools would like to acquire this product. One of them would like two of them.

Upon full completion, I have three of the systems already sold.

No honestly I'm not too worried about trying to make money on this.

I built the system to answer questions, and I will get those answers one way or another.

I will figure out the final price when everything is truly done and working properly.

As for profit; of course it needs to be worth my time but then again it's not really about the money.

I Appreciate your concern.
 
JayDog said:
Looks incredible, my only problem is that there is way too much to take apart and clean. Well that and the price.
Click to expand...
You really should only have to take the system apart once a year.

Everything inside the system cleans itself.
It even gets rid of your grain for you.

And yes the price is a little much.
 
MaxStout said:
As a former EE, I have to say your wiring inside that panel is very well-done. Not a mass of spaghetti, like a few I've seen. Everything running in and out of those terminal blocks is neatly organized and bundled. If you ever need to troubleshoot, it's much easier to trace circuits.

You've put a lot of thought and effort (not to mention $$) into your system. You might find yourself drinking a homebrew and just sitting there admiring the rig.
Click to expand...
I may have done that a few times already LOL. The cabinet wiring alone took around 25 to 30 hours. And yes because there is so much I/O everything had to be as neat and clean and color-coded as possible.
With home runs whenever possible.

Thank you for the compliment.
 
Metalchef1 said:
I agree... From a commercial perspective it's a phenomenal device.
You had said completely customizable? Can you daisy chain systems so you have 1 master control unit and multiple other runs attached? IE can the main setup be a 10 barrel system with the ability to do a 5 gallon batch by rerouting to smaller fermentation tanks?
Click to expand...
In all honesty yeah anything is possible.
It's just time and money. Budweiser here in California has a fully automated system, almost. And they brew on a massive scale.
There's lots of spent grain removal which is a manual process for them. There is a lot of automation to remove the bulk of it but it still requires Gorillas with shovels to get everything.

The point of the small system is that it is fully automated including full grain management and because of this you do waist around 40 gallons of water for the washing cycle.

If you did this on a larger scale amount of waste water would go up and hence it's not very ideal for large-scale Brewing.

I'm sure there is a way to manage grain without wasting so much water but I have not figured it out yet.

Thank you for your input.
 
gunhaus said:
I stopped by a local brew pub last night, and I discussed this system with one of my friends who has worked there since they launched. he found the concept exciting to say the least, and he brought up a couple of things I had not thought of. When they experiment with new recipes, or designs, they are using 2.5 and 5 gallon set ups only marginally different than what most of us do at home (And in fact there are guys here who are maybe even a tad more advanced in some ways!) When they develop a new beer there is ALWAYS a hold your breath moment, when they move from the experimental equipment to production equipment. The worry is whether or not the beer will taste the same as the "Model" - As he said, there are a million little things that could go hinky in the experimental brew, that might cause an off flavor here, or a different profile there - subtle sure, but often enough to make a beer that was off the chart as a developmental project just so-so when they brew a full batch under the most controlled conditions. As he said, "Off flavors" is a blanket term that does not always translate to "bad" Sometimes a little mistake that causes a slight off flavor can also create a delicious albeit unintended flavor to a beer. If they make an experimental brew, and then translate the recipe to their full brew system, and they LOSE that little subtle "mistake flavor" that was soooooo good - They have no way to scientifically go back and "find it". His though was a system like this that could be used to develop recipes with exacting detail, and complete repeatability would be fantastic. If it works as proposed it would allow for total control and total repeatability over variables. When i told him the prices that were listed on this thread he was not phased - If they could eliminate mistakes, duds, lackluster batches that don't sell, the poor feedback that can come from that, and so on it would be worth it to them. Point being, there is at least ONE small brewer out there that is a potential buyer - I bet there will be more!
Click to expand...
I'm so happy to hear that!

This is exactly why I'm building this system.

I have brewed a few thousands of gallons of beer since I've started almost 10 years ago and I can say without a doubt, every time I brew the same recipe time and time again, it is never the same.

And the only thing that really changes is the time and the temperature.

Hops will vary slightly and Grains will vary slightly and I'm aware that but even with the same grain and the same hops I get a different profile every time. Now these profiles are slight and small but they're still different.

One of my favorite things to look forward to is the ability for 100% repeatability.

If that can be achieved, it will be worth it.

Thank you!
 
troutman said:
Finding an O2 sensor that can take 100C is very difficult. Contact Anton-Parr and ask them, they are great to deal with if there is one available they will know.
Click to expand...
I will definitely be doing this.
Thank you!
 
Wow - very impressive. The price is high, but the thing that frightens me is that it looks like you would need to be an engineer and a computer programmer and an electrician and a mechanic just to own it. If I ever had something like that, and something went wrong with it - I would have to throw the entire thing out because there would be zero chance I would even begin to know what to do about a problem with it.

I am more of a fan of "gravity" than electricity, pumps, software, etc. Gravity never breaks.
 
Braufessor said:
Wow - very impressive. The price is high, but the thing that frightens me is that it looks like you would need to be an engineer and a computer programmer and an electrician and a mechanic just to own it. If I ever had something like that, and something went wrong with it - I would have to throw the entire thing out because there would be zero chance I would even begin to know what to do about a problem with it.

I am more of a fan of "gravity" than electricity, pumps, software, etc. Gravity never breaks.
Click to expand...
LOL the day gravity brakes will be an interesting one nevertheless.

And yes there is a lot to know and understand with a system like this.

Having a background in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering really helps when building such a system.

I'm sure that if this product takes off and becomes a viable consumer product A-Team will you put together for support and setup of the equipment.

When something goes wrong currently it lets you know what exactly went wrong on the screen. If something didn't open or close fast enough there's timers that also let you know that there is a problem waiting to happen.
All in all there are nine 1.5 in valves, two 3 in valves, 4 solenoid type valves, two Motors, one pulse flow meter, 1 magnetic flow meter, 3 RTD temperature probes and one heating element.

In the big picture of things this is not a lot of equipment, there are 15 valves but even on my manual Brewing System I had 11 manual ball valves. Not to mention the two on the sink that should be used substantially less now.


The whole point is it's not going to be the end of the world if the system breaks.

Once you understand even a little bit on how the system works it's very very easy to troubleshoot and diagnosed a potential problem as indicator lights on the PLC really help figure out what's going on.
 
All waste water can be made potable again if I'm not mistaken. Someone.... Can't remember who... Was big about pointing out that their waste water was recycled to irrigate crops.. Sierra Nevada maybe..
Can you find a way to decrease the water during the cleaning process? Maybe recirculation of solutions?
 
Metalchef1 said:
All waste water can be made potable again if I'm not mistaken. Someone.... Can't remember who... Was big about pointing out that their waste water was recycled to irrigate crops.. Sierra Nevada maybe..
Can you find a way to decrease the water during the cleaning process? Maybe recirculation of solutions?
Click to expand...
Definitely more testing will have to be done to figure this out. Currently the water that is used for cleaning is also used to transport the grain and also used as a media in the biodigester.
 
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MintonHVAC said:
I have brewed a few thousands of gallons of beer since I've started almost 10 years ago and I can say without a doubt, every time I brew the same recipe time and time again, it is never the same.

And the only thing that really changes is the time and the temperature.

Hops will vary slightly and Grains will vary slightly and I'm aware that but even with the same grain and the same hops I get a different profile every time. Now these profiles are slight and small but they're still different.
Click to expand...

When designing the new system, were you able to track down exactly what causing the "different profile every time" in your old system?
I guess I'm asking is what will be different on the $72,000 system to avoid the same problems.
And when you say the only thing that really changes is time and temperature, are you talking about the mash? The fermentation? Both?
 
madscientist451 said:
When designing the new system, were you able to track down exactly what causing the "different profile every time" in your old system?
I guess I'm asking is what will be different on the $72,000 system to avoid the same problems.
And when you say the only thing that really changes is time and temperature, are you talking about the mash? The fermentation? Both?
Click to expand...
So most of the problems with my previous beers was the person brewing the beer.
And traditionally I really like to drink beer while brewing beer. A side effect of this is a lousy track of time and temperature.
I brew beer for fun, if I was doing this on a professional scale of course I could probably do it better sober. But the time it takes to brew beer is long and I get bored easily. I can set up a beer in 5 minutes on the system push the button and then leave the brewhouse. I can make adjustments on my cell phone or a tablet if needed.

But when brewing beer from start to finish,
It's temperature, time and exposure in all stages is very important.

The new system uses timers instead of my watch and RTD probes instead of my handheld thermometer.

It's constantly watching and listening.


The new system should also have really crazy efficiencies.

With the implementation of an inline refractometer when mashing out you can keep filling water in your mash tun to rinse the grain of all Sugar's when transferring to the boil kettle. When you are transferring to the boil kettle you need to stop the flow of wort when the level of sugar declines in solution. It's kind of hard to do with a handheld refractometer.

As soon as the target sugar level has dropped below the minimum threshold a valve change will initiate and the boil will begin.

The system should be one of the most efficient on the conversion factor.
 
I think my main concern with something like this is that a recipe is going to be somewhat dependent on the system it is brewed on. You can't just assume your recipe will "scale up" if you're brewing it on a smaller system and then moving up to a bigger system.

Ultimately you're going to have to do a trial run on the full scale system to determine if the recipe is feasible to bring to market.

As far as being more consistent - I would say this is only true if you have bad processes in place. Simple steps like temperature verification before mash in and using timers should reduce human error greatly and as you said not getting drunk while you brew beer is a good idea if you're trying to be consistent.

I don't see much benefit from this compared to a manual system with a brewer who checks times and temperatures before additions.

It's a nice system but it seems like you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.
 
aprichman said:
I think my main concern with something like this is that a recipe is going to be somewhat dependent on the system it is brewed on. You can't just assume your recipe will "scale up" if you're brewing it on a smaller system and then moving up to a bigger system.

Ultimately you're going to have to do a trial run on the full scale system to determine if the recipe is feasible to bring to market.

As far as being more consistent - I would say this is only true if you have bad processes in place. Simple steps like temperature verification before mash in and using timers should reduce human error greatly and as you said not getting drunk while you brew beer is a good idea if you're trying to be consistent.

I don't see much benefit from this compared to a manual system with a brewer who checks times and temperatures before additions.

It's a nice system but it seems like you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.
Click to expand...
For normal people hit that may be true.
But like my friends always told me I'm quite special.

The system isn't really designed to solve problems.

The system was designed to give me answers for questions that I have.

As a side effect my problems go away.

From my point of view it was a win-win situation.

Nevertheless you are correct.

Thank you for your input. It is greatly appreciated I like to hear what people have to say good and bad.
 
MintonHVAC said:
For normal people hit that may be true.
But like my friends always told me I'm quite special.

The system isn't really designed to solve problems.

The system was designed to give me answers for questions that I have.

As a side effect my problems go away.

From my point of view it was a win-win situation.

Nevertheless you are correct.

Thank you for your input. It is greatly appreciated I like to hear what people have to say good and bad.
Click to expand...

:mug:
 
zoned_post_meridiem said:
And just like that, my qualms about shelling out a decent chunk of money for a 7gallon SS unitank have evaporated.
Click to expand...
Unitanks are definitely the cockford-ollie for fermentation vessels. I would love to have those instead of my conical fermenters.
 
How is the recipe input? is there a download from BeerSmith? What do you do for a day job? Serious process engineering on display.
 
rlmiller10 said:
How is the recipe input? is there a download from BeerSmith? What do you do for a day job? Serious process engineering on display.
Click to expand...
I do heating, air conditioning and Refrigeration for my job.
A lot of the recipe input stuff that is all to come in the future.
 
Wow, is all I gotta say. I’m an engineer and brew stand builder and I can appreciate all that you’ done. Awesome stuff. However, since you posted I assume you’re looking for all types of feedback, positive or negative, and hopefully mostly constructive! I would certainly need to see it proven that the consistency of this system over a dialed in 'basic' setup was worth the premium that this demands. My setup is <$600 and I can brew the same recipe over and over with awesome consistency. I have found that the mash process is somewhat forgiving, at least to the extent that we can control it with a basic direct fired RIMS or HERMS. I don't think any of us would be able to tell the difference between a mash that was held at +/- 0.5 deg (this system possibly) or +/- 1 deg (my basic direct fired HERMS). In my 20 yrs of homebrewing I've found much more of an impact from variation in raw materials from lot to lot. Just take yeast for example, so many variables that this system would not provide a benefit over a basic one: age, viability, temperature control, generation, oxygenation, etc. I guess what I'm getting at is there is no doubt this is cool, and if you have the money and wanted to go for it that's friggin awesome...but you would need to prove that it can make better beer if you plan to market it. If you cannot prove that, I think the market shrinks to one so small that it would be very hard to sell. Maybe a few institutions, breweries with that much $$ to blow on a pilot/test setup (which I haven't heard of), etc. What is the plan to acquire data to show that this system is worth that much of a price premium?
 
gifty74 said:
Wow, is all I gotta say. I’m an engineer and brew stand builder and I can appreciate all that you’ done. Awesome stuff. However, since you posted I assume you’re looking for all types of feedback, positive or negative, and hopefully mostly constructive! I would certainly need to see it proven that the consistency of this system over a dialed in 'basic' setup was worth the premium that this demands. My setup is <$600 and I can brew the same recipe over and over with awesome consistency. I have found that the mash process is somewhat forgiving, at least to the extent that we can control it with a basic direct fired RIMS or HERMS. I don't think any of us would be able to tell the difference between a mash that was held at +/- 0.5 deg (this system possibly) or +/- 1 deg (my basic direct fired HERMS). In my 20 yrs of homebrewing I've found much more of an impact from variation in raw materials from lot to lot. Just take yeast for example, so many variables that this system would not provide a benefit over a basic one: age, viability, temperature control, generation, oxygenation, etc. I guess what I'm getting at is there is no doubt this is cool, and if you have the money and wanted to go for it that's friggin awesome...but you would need to prove that it can make better beer if you plan to market it. If you cannot prove that, I think the market shrinks to one so small that it would be very hard to sell. Maybe a few institutions, breweries with that much $$ to blow on a pilot/test setup (which I haven't heard of), etc. What is the plan to acquire data to show that this system is worth that much of a price premium?
Click to expand...
Very good information and questions here. Thanks you for taking the time to write it.

So to be honest at this point in time there's no way for me to answer your questions.

This is still in the prototyping stage in figuring out how things are all supposed to be hooked up. There's also a ton of programming...

I have no idea if this is a viable product, I don't know if there will be a market for it, and I don't even know if it'll make good beer yet.

I needed to figure out a way to make an automated system to remove human error factor from the Brewing process.

I wanted to take the data collected from that and create recipes that it can be used on the system.
I want to take those recipes and Brew them time and time again and see the variances between them.

After I have a baseline on going to start changing factors like temperatures and times speeds and flow rates.

I want to see what factors do what to the flavor.

I hope to be able to answer your question sometime in May, June or July. Unfortunately I just can't right now.

I got a TIG welder and some stainless and I'm just trying to get something together that makes beer without human intervention.

This is step one.
 
MintonHVAC said:
When something goes wrong currently it lets you know what exactly went wrong on the screen.
Click to expand...
Text only or do you display the component giving problems?
I display the components giving problems with some troubleshooting help for my family helpers.

The whole point is it's not going to be the end of the world if the system breaks.
Click to expand...
Any redundancy if if your PLC screws up?

The pictures shown are not up to date.

Hop_Dispenser.jpg
Hop-Dispenser.jpg
 
ClaudiusB said:
Text only or do you display the component giving problems?
I display the components giving problems with some troubleshooting help for my family helpers.


Any redundancy if if your PLC screws up?

The pictures shown are not up to date.

View attachment 556551 View attachment 556552
Click to expand...
No currently it's just text.

I need to make it work first before figuring out better ways to display alarms.

But yes everything has feedback including the valves.
 
I have no idea about the business side, but in terms of pure beer geekery, I love this project. Don't let anyone tell you it removes the "art" from the process. Repeatable mechanical elegance is an art of its own, and I think there is plenty of art left in recipe design anyway. I recently switched to an electric system in part to help me nail temperatures and make it easy to do step mashes. As far as I can tell, I have eliminated hassle, not "art."

I had a couple bits of feedback on the features.

For one, I think supporting water modification is really important. I expect most people brewing at this level will be concerned with mineral levels and mash pH. Even if the automated system isn't finished yet (or ever) hopefully you can do the calculations manually and dump the chemicals in yourself.

I would also suggest that the whirlpool temperature be configurable if it isn't already. It does seem like more people are using lower whirlpool temperatures these days, and we're paying more attention to whirlpool hop utilization and how that varies with temperature. (Maybe that is my own bias since this recently became an interest of mine!)

I'm looking forward to seeing more, nice work!
 
It's over the top for homebrewing, but I could see a small brewpub using one for making specialty brews or a bigger craft brewer for test batches.

not bad for a brewing system that costs more than my house....
 
That is a lot of very impressive effort. Couple thoughts:

Have you thought about integrating an RO system, automatic water salt additions, or in situ mash pH monitoring? It seems that the brewer interface if far removed from "doing things" manually why not go all out?

Have you thought about thermistors instead of RTDs? They're cheap, small, and may give you all the precision you need for temperature control after the PLC accuracy is taken into account.

Overall, I think its pretty cool. It would make determining what really does affect the final product of a beer easier to determine. It would allow someone to actually use the phrase "all other things constant" reliably in a bigger than lab size scale brew.
 
Horseflesh said:
I have no idea about the business side, but in terms of pure beer geekery, I love this project. Don't let anyone tell you it removes the "art" from the process. Repeatable mechanical elegance is an art of its own, and I think there is plenty of art left in recipe design anyway. I recently switched to an electric system in part to help me nail temperatures and make it easy to do step mashes. As far as I can tell, I have eliminated hassle, not "art."

I had a couple bits of feedback on the features.

For one, I think supporting water modification is really important. I expect most people brewing at this level will be concerned with mineral levels and mash pH. Even if the automated system isn't finished yet (or ever) hopefully you can do the calculations manually and dump the chemicals in yourself.

I would also suggest that the whirlpool temperature be configurable if it isn't already. It does seem like more people are using lower whirlpool temperatures these days, and we're paying more attention to whirlpool hop utilization and how that varies with temperature. (Maybe that is my own bias since this recently became an interest of mine!)

I'm looking forward to seeing more, nice work!
Click to expand...
Thank you for your input and yes what are profile adjustments and something I'm going to have to figure out in the future. A handful of people mentioned this and it is on the list to be implemented.

Negative thermal coefficient thermistors and positive thermal coefficient thermistors don't have the accuracy I was looking for

A resistance temperature detector it's just like a thermistor but with more repeatability and accuracy.

In the RTD is slower then the NTC or PTC.

If you change the length of an NTC or PTC probe you change it's Baseline value.

This does not happen with an RTD as much with an RTD.

It was RTD or k-type thermocouples.
There were more RTD equipment available.


Thank you for your feedback!
 
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