University honours year project on home brewing.

[duncangordon]

Hi there folks,

Back in November I posted a survey looking into the home brew equipment and the social side of home brewing. I was overwhelmed with the response and support from you all and could not be more grateful for your input. Now a few months on I thought I would post my progress.

Following my research before Christmas and the insights gathered from my survey, my focus took a turn towards getting a broader audience more involved in home brewing, specifically 21-35 year old men and women. It seems common knowledge in the brewing world as well as being confirmed by the AHA and my own research that the average home brewer is 41yr old man. My project aims to re-design the home brew experience to cater towards the widespread lifestyle and requirements.

I found that the key issues preventing a broader audience of men and women from getting involved in home brewing are:
- A perceived high cost of equipment and ingredients;
- Very difficult process;
- Complicated and time consuming process;
- Unappealing equipment and general lack of towards the aesthetics and ergonomics of home brew equipment;
- Lack of space to brew and then store equipment/beer;
- Lack of social aspect and loss of interest over brew period.

I have found that large part of the solution lies in simply educating people about the home brew process and in reality how easy, fun and sociable it can be. This, in turn helps steer the stereotype of home brewers away from a group of dads in their shed to what it really is; a very diverse, social and passionate world wide community.

‘Your Brew’ (the working title for my project) represents beautiful, streamlined and social brewing experience. I have designed an all-in-one home brew kit comprised or 2 components: the physical kit and a mobile app. They work in conjunction to make the entire experience more appealing and streamlined toward the wide ranging lifestyle but designed to appeal regardless of brewing experience.

The physical component comes in the form of a wooden housing for a 1gallon demi-john, heating plate (optional), all utensils (spoon, measuring cylinder, hydrometer etc) and 8x500ml bottles. A CAD render of said housing can be seen in images provided – note that the colours/materials represented are not final. The concept being that the bottles, utensils and heating plate are stored in the base whilst the demi-john sits on top. The layers surrounding the demi-john whilst all centred provide open access but when twisted close off and secure the demi-john. The physical kit has been designed to be a beautiful object in it’s own right that can be on display anywhere in the home but in particular the living area.

The reasons for brewing in a small batch of 1 gallon are:
- Less time spent cleaning and sterilising;
- Less space required to make brews, store equipment whether in use or not and fewer beers to store once bottled;
- Smaller batch encourages experimentation and should the brew not turn out as desired, less beer is wasted.

The integration of an app throughout the entire process takes the social side of home brewing and makes it a prominent part of the process from the outset. The main features of the app include:
- Instruction manual;
- Online community in the style of current beer forums but using the information and content hierarchies used by current social media such as Instagram and Yik Yak . The ability to share photos, videos and recipes will be part of this;
- Recipe book in which to store and share your own recipes as well as a place to import other people’s recipes;
- Online marketplace through which to buy ingredient packs and equipment;
- Calendar to help organise your brews and keep track of the progress for each;
- Map showing nearby home brew clubs, shops, craft bars/pubs.



If you would like to see a more into the process and my thinking throughout please have a look at my blog: duncanstuartgordon.com

All feedback welcome, I hope you all like it!

Duncan

 

[bobeer]

Interesting concept. I'm all about getting more people into homebrewing.
Is this for all grain brewing or partial mash/extract brewing? I don't think you'd be able to fit everything in your piece of furniture for all grain brewing. Even with extract you'd need a place to store your brew kettle, auto siphon, and stuff like that. How does the heater/temp controller work and where does it fit into the setup?

Also, from my experience, with using sanitizer, it doesn't really matter what size under 5 gallons you're brewing. You still have to make sanitizer and sanitize the same amount of stuff. Carboy, beer thief to measure gravity, lids/airlocks, hoses, auto siphon if needed, etc, etc. If you're using Starsan you can eye ball a half batch of sanitizer which is still 2.5 gallons worth.

Just my 2 cents on this thing. I like the idea and I'm looking forward to the final product!

 

[duncangordon]

Hey Bobeer, thanks for your reply, really great to hear!

It's intended to be all grain but if they want to use it for extract then each to their own as it's totally down to preference.

Definitely a valid point in terms of equipment. My thinking and research behind is it that for brewers starting out and in 1gallon quantities the boil will simply take place on the kitchen hob and the likes of boiling pots, the majority of people already own one big enough so making it part of the kit becomes unnecessary. The likes of siphons and airlocks will be contained in the base and sanitiser (among other products) can be ordered separately by the individual or will come as part of ingredient packs that they can order through the mobile app.

In regards to the heater/temp control, as there is a lot of scope for this the best way was to limit the options to the users. They will be given the choice of purchasing the kit with heating capabilities or without - should they prefer to depend on their home's central heating and keep an eye on it. The heating element supplied is a simple low current, long use tray (such as this one: http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/TE1_Heater_Tray.html#.VvGkXse2RSU) which can be bought from any home brew store/website and connect to the mains.

I hope this answers your questions there, most likely raised many more! Thanks again.

 

[petey_c]

Here's something interesting...
http://www.coroflot.com/Freddiepaul/Beer-Tree1

 

[aprichman]

A few thoughts:

*Although 1 gallon batch sizes may be easier to clean up it takes the same amount of time as a larger batch to make and ferment. Spending 3 hours brewing, 2-3 weeks for fermentation to finish, and 2 weeks for bottle conditioning for 8 beers is a lot of work IMO.

*Needs an autosiphon or racking cane. No bottling bucket? Are people supposed to use those awful "fizz drops" or something?

*Temperature control is extremely important to making good beer. Fermentation generates heat. I would be more worried about my beer getting hot (and thus needing a way to remove heat) then my beer getting cold and using a heatpad to warm things up. Also how are you planning on controlling the heating process?

In my opinion, this is a classic example of trying to over engineer a non-problem. I fail to see how this would be any better than buying a 1 gallon equipment kit from an existing homebrew store and sticking everything in a kitchen cabinet.

 

[duncangordon]

A few thoughts:

*Although 1 gallon batch sizes may be easier to clean up it takes the same amount of time as a larger batch to make and ferment. Spending 3 hours brewing, 2-3 weeks for fermentation to finish, and 2 weeks for bottle conditioning for 8 beers is a lot of work IMO.

*Needs an autosiphon or racking cane. No bottling bucket? Are people supposed to use those awful "fizz drops" or something?

*Temperature control is extremely important to making good beer. Fermentation generates heat. I would be more worried about my beer getting hot (and thus needing a way to remove heat) then my beer getting cold and using a heatpad to warm things up. Also how are you planning on controlling the heating process?

In my opinion, this is a classic example of trying to over engineer a non-problem. I fail to see how this would be any better than buying a 1 gallon equipment kit from an existing homebrew store and sticking everything in a kitchen cabinet.

Hey Aprichman,

Valid concerns for sure. I'll address them in order:
*For someone like yourself who is what we would call an extreme user it may seem like a lot of effort for not much output but for someone that is totally new to brewing or has been brewing but is unsure of themselves then it is ideal. Extreme users are typically beer purists and don’t see the point of brewing less as they have the skills, equipment and foundation love of beer that they are 1)willing to spend the time/money 2)will drink that large quantity of beer and 3)tend not to care about aesthetics or economics of they're kits so long as it produces good beer. Whereas for more amateur users who are not as devoted it is merely a hobby that allows them to make great beer, experiment and be social with it. All of this hopefully leading to a development of skills and over time upgrading systems and processes. The 1gallon is also down to space required for brewing and storing which is big issue. Especially if the equipment is ugly and industrial like the majority of it is, it requires storage out of sight. If the equipment, however, is as beautiful as the beer, it can be stored in plain sight as an ornament in it's own right.

*Autosiphon will be supplied and kept as part of the utensil drawer. For this kit they would simply add priming sugar direct to the bottles before siphoning in the beer - as it is only 8 bottles this isn’t a huge task.

*Absolutely right but incorporating more advanced heating controls instantly increases cost, technical ability and (maybe disagree here) is overkill for small batches such as this and can quite easily de done without through monitoring. Especially when the beer is kept inside the home rather than outside or in a garage etc.

*Fair point and I respect your opinion but the fact is that home brewing should be a lot more popular than it is. In an economy where craft beer is increasingly becoming more and more popular yet people have less money, home brewing your own great beer is the logical option. It is social, rewarding and cheap (given it is done correctly). Key issues in home brewing culture and industry have created an environment where only those very passionate about beer will get involved whereas it should be much more open and inclusive. This project aims to appeal directly to those who are apprehensive about home brewing or simply need that push. The physical combined with digital will address these issues head on.

Good for me to get this sort of feedback Aprichman and I’ve definitely taken it on board. I appreciate you taking the time out!

Cheers,
Duncan