G'day all,
now that i'm back home, I'll try and answer a few questions...
Jason, if I put it in the lounge room the missus would kill me. The reason she was willing to go along with me and uncle building this rig is that it got me brewing in the shed and out of her kitchen...
Jayse: water cooled brewing frame? yup, its called 'overkill'. I can connect it to the same hoses that the CFWC uses.
The Thames yeast... early days yet, only 9 days old, but very fruity so far. Of all things it reminds me of Chardonnay in the monster tanks at about 1 week old. VERY fruity, almost pineapple like. Primaried at 18.5 deg C and now secondarying at 15.5 deg C (optimum temp for the Kolsch yeast sharing the same freezer). Ultimately time will tell and will have to get back on that one. Prior to this my favourite was 1968 London special bitter, so that's a gauge on my leanings.
Now, about the computer stuff, lots of interest there. If interested, grab a beer and read on. If not interested, well, grab a beer anyway!
I run three old computers (a pentiumII 350, a Pentium 133, and an AMD k6 350). The AMD runs a laptimer program for a monster 26 metre long 4-lane 1/25 scale vintage slot car track from the 60's in my shed - but thats another story...beer and slots go together well, ask any bloke who lives within 500 metres of me...
One pentium runs the fermenter temp controller system, the other pentium runs the rig temps.
1. The rig. I bought from Oztronics a temperature logger kit
http://ozitronics.com/kitlist.html#k145 ($34.50+GST)and 3 extra temp sensors, (
http://ozitronics.com/kitlist.html#ds1820 $12 each+GST) making 4 in total, for HLT, mash, sparge water outlet temp, and herms outlet temp. The software to run this is on a windows '98 platform is free on the 'net from Oztronics.
You solder up a small bord that hold a chip and stick it in a small plastic box from Dicky Smiths, attach to the serial port on your old computer, and using security cable also from Dicky Smiths, solder and heatshrink the DS 18S20 temp probes and connect to the box. I hope to post a pic of this circuit soon as if you can't understand circuit board diagrams its a bugger to work out what bits to solder where.
I put the temp probes in 1/" brass or stainless tubing (available from model hobby shops) and crimp the end to stop liquid from getting in and shorting the circuit. And away you go. You can read and log data from your brew rig as you brew. A screen shot is in my pic gallery ( my mash temp over 90 minutes is varying by 0.12 of a degree, must look in to fixing that... makes you sick huh?). I hope to eventually take the .log data from these probes and read it fro VB code and make decent use of it.
2. The computerised fermenter controller.
This is a bit trickier. It uses the same temp controller package as explained above sending data to the serial port, but you also need kit 74 or 74A (assembled, best bet) (http://ozitronics.com/relay.html#k74) from Oztronics to take the temp data from the fermenter(s) and use it to turn relays to turn your fridge/freezer and heater on/off. I run a chest freezer for cooling with a brewpad (remember those) inside it for heating.
Here is the nasty bit. The software to run this is excellent and free, its from Greg Lemis. But its not in 'Windows'. It uses a platform called FreeBSD to operate from. Hence the separate computer to run it from. Greg loaded the thing up for me one afternoon over a few beers. Its beyond me really, but its brilliant, rock solid no crashes etc, and works a treat. For more details visit his site at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/brewing/temperature-control.html
I can completely control my ferment temps to within 0.15 of a degree. For example, I can auto set my sytem to ferment initially at, say, 23 degs for 12 hours, then gradually drop to 18.5 degs over say, 2 days, followed by 18.5 degs constant for the next week.
If anyone has a digital camera ( I dont) and can make there way down here at the right time I could do some more pics...
In the meantime I still have 1.2 metres of 300mm diameter 2mm thick 316L grade stainless steel tubing left over. The uncle wants to cut it in half, get some spun cones from WEMS welded to it and turn them into 2 mini- homebrew unitanks but I dunno...
Cheers!
