I started brewing my own beer more than 10 years ago. Like most homebrewers, I started in my kitchen making extract-based brews. This required the least equipment and still resulted in really tasty beer. Eventually I stepped up to all-grain brewing using a big cooler for my mash tun. For several years I was brewing 5 gallons at a time, but brewing 10 gallons takes the same amount of time and effort (and only requires slightly larger equipment), so a few years ago I stepped it up. After moving up to 10 gallons, I stumbled across StrangeBrew Elsinore and realized what I really needed to do was convert my whole system to be all-electric, and run it with a Raspberry Pi.
There is a ton of great information available for building your own all-electric homebrew system, and most brewers start out at TheElectricBrewery.com. Just putting together the control panel can get pretty complicated, although the simplest approach is outlined well there. Of course you can also take a less expensive approach and still end up with the same result—a boil kettle and hot liquor tank powered by heating elements and managed by a PID controller. I think that’s a little too boring though (and it also means you don’t get neat graphs of your brew process).
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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