Fermentation Overflow (7/26/16)

Yesterday, I started the fermentation of my grapefruit IPA. I previously edited my heat control code to turn the heater off during the boiling stage until the temperature dropped too far, which I think caused less water to boil off during the process. This meant I had more wort to fill my 1 gallon carboy compared to with previous batches. Yay, more beer - but today I noticed that the fermenter had overflowed into the airlock:

I cleaned out the airlock, refilled it with water, and put it back on the bottle, but a couple hours later it had overflowed again. So, I rigged up a blow off tube:

This functions the same way as the airlock, but leaves more room in the tubing for foam to escape without clogging.

You can see the bubbles coming out as the beer continues to ferment.

Bottling Hard Cider - Priming with Juice (7/26/16)

Today I am bottling my hard cider, which has been fermenting for two weeks.

Normally, I prime my beer with sugar right before bottling so that the yeast eat the extra sugar and carbonate the beer over the next two weeks. For the cider, I will be priming with apple juice instead to give the final cider a more apple-y, sweet flavor.

For a 1-gallon batch of beer I use 1 oz of priming sugar, which is ~28 g. The apple juice I purchased has 28 g sugar per 8 fl oz (1 cup) so I will be adding that much juice to my cider before bottling it and letting it carbonate for two more weeks.

The cider's FG was 1.011 (and the OG was 1.063), so the cider is around 6.8% alcohol and 211 calories per 12 oz bottle.

However, the calorie count isn't exact because this was before I added the cup of apple juice - adding it changed the FG to 1.013, making a 12 oz bottle 212 calories according to the calculator from my last post. This is odd because the apple juice has 110 calories per cup, which should have added 10 calories to each of my 11 bottles. I'm not sure how that works since some of the sugars will be consumed in carbonation, so maybe I can take a final specific gravity reading on a finished bottle and find out. Still, we know it is somewhere around this level of calories.

Also, this is what happens when your bottle capper goes on crooked - don't keep pushing! To save some of the cider, I filtered it twice to make sure there was no glass in it and used a new bottle.

Calories in my Beer (7/25/16)

I heard that craft and homebrewed beers tend to be higher in calories than mass produced beers and I was curious and decided to look up how to calculate the calories in my beer.

I found this calculator which uses OG and FG - original and final specific gravity - to calculate the calories in beer. This calculation combines the calories from alcohol and unfermented sugars in the final product.

There are about 7 calories per gram of ethanol, and 4 cal/g of carbohydrates, and the OG and FG can be used to determine the ethanol and sugar content of the beer.

For more information on the formulas, check out these two sources - the first is very detailed and the second is easier to follow and calculate but it is less clear where the values in the formulas come from.

For my two batches of beer, here are the results for a 12 oz bottle:

American Red Ale = 207 cal

Mandarina Pale Ale = 179 cal

This graph from this article shows the calories in 12 oz of some popular beer brands:

Compared to these beers, it looks like mine are on the high end calorie-wise, but that may not be true for all homebrewed beer. Anyway, the first batch was delicious so I can't complain!

Also, today I brewed my next batch, a grapefruit IPA, which is now fermenting.The new setup with grounding worked with no issues. My mandarina pale ale should be done next week, and the cider the week after, so there is lots of good beer to come!

Full Setup with Added Safety Elements (7/21/16)

Today I finished setting up my new safety measures (adding junction boxes and grounding). Here is the whole setup:

Grounding Procedure: 

The supplies:

• 14/3 cable (I purchased 10 ft)
• I chose this gauge because my required current for the heater is power/voltage = 1000 W/120 V = 8.333 A and according to this chart (http://www.amplepower.com/primer/gauge/) 14 gauge seemed reasonable
• Grounding plug with clamp
• Metal 4x4 outlet box
• Soldering iron and electric solder
• Optional: aluminum foil tape to cover solder points on metal objects

1. Attach the plug to the cable: 

I stripped the cable and screwed each wire into its respective spot on the plug.

The finished plug, with a clamp to hold the cable in place.

I also tested it with a digital multimeter to make sure that none of the wires inside were touching and each wire on the other end of the cable led to the correct prong.

2. Attach the other end of the cable to the heater and junction box:

• Neutral wire soldered to neutral wire coming from heater and electric taped
• Hot wire connected to heater through relay (heater end on 1 and plug end on 2)
• Ground wire screwed into junction box

*I checked the connection between the ground prong on the plug and the metal box with a DMM.

3. Connect kettle and heater via ground wire to outlet box:

• Solder wire to top metal section of heater and cover with foil tape
• Solder another wire to the pot and cover with foil tape
• This tape is supposed to hold at up to 200 F, so we will see how it fares on the pot during the boil stage
• Solder the two wires (green coming from heater and white coming from pot) together and screw into junction box 

*I also checked the connection between the ground prong and both the heater and pot

Last, here is a picture of the new junction box for the arduino and breadboard:

I am really excited to test this out on my next batch!

SAFETY (7/15/16)

After completing my temperature automation setup, I discovered (thanks Reddit) that it is not as safe as it should be. Here is a schematic of what I plan on implementing safety-wise:

• Use GFCI outlet (I have been all along, just never mentioned it) - these measure difference in current running in the hot and neutral wires, which should always be zero, and shuts off the power if there is any difference, which would be caused by the current flowing through an alternate path such as a person or water
• Junction boxes around wired elements to protect people from shock and the wires from water or other damage (probably plastic for the arduino/breadboard and metal around the relay because it can get hot)
• Ground the metal box and brew pot/kettle so that if they become electrified the electricity has somewhere to go - I also may ground the heater by soldering a wire to the upper exposed metal

I based the grounding technique on this setup from The Electric Brewery (Step 6): 

http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/node/9?page=show

After I finish researching and actually set this up I will make another post with the results.

Full Detailed Explanation of Temperature Automation Setup (7/14/16)

IMPORTANT: See my upcoming post on safety before actually running this setup! 

I wanted to make a post with an overview of my whole setup at this point, in case anyone out there is looking to do something similar and has as little experience with electronics as I did. 

Here is my brew automation setup:

1. Arduino Uno: 
• USB connection to laptop for uploading code
• Power and ground connected to breadboard
• Pins connected to temperature probe, heater (via relay), and piezo buzzer
2. Temperature Probe:
• Red wire connected to power on breadboard
• Black to ground on breadboard
• 4.7k ohm resistor between power on breadboard and row containing white wire (data) and another wire to pin on arduino
3. Relay/Heater:
• Cord cut, hot and neutral wires separated 
• Neutral wire reconnected with wire nut
• End of hot wire connected to heater attached to 1 on relay
• End of hot wire connected to plug attached to 2 on relay
• 4- on relay attached to ground
• 3+ on relay attached to pin on arduino
4. Piezo Buzzer:
• Red wire connected to pin
• Black wire to ground

Using this setup, I can write code (in the free Arduino software) that is specific to my brew process. It automatically controls the temperature for any period of time and alerts me with the buzzer when it is time to add the next ingredient.

You can see an example of the code for a mandarina pale ale in one of my previous posts ("Heating Automation Code...").

Note: Adding ingredients must still be done by hand, as must the ice bath to cool the wort and the pumping to the fermentation vessels and bottling. I may partially automate these in the future by adding a wort chiller or a pump.

Making Cider and Tasting First Batch (7/12/16)

Today I decided I wanted to try making some hard cider since I had extra ale yeast and an open fermentation bucket (I have a bucket and a carboy, for primary and secondary fermentation, and the mandarina pale ale is in the carboy now). There are better yeasts out there for cider but since I already had this kind from my other beer kits I figured I'd use it on some cheap apple juice.

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon apple juice (NO preservatives - they inhibit yeast activity)
• ~1 cup light brown sugar (can use dark or light, different recipes call for either)
• 1 tsp ale yeast

I also put vodka in the airlock because I read a tip online: bacteria can't grow in it and if you get some vodka in your cider who cares? Who knows how this will turn out - I will let you know!

(Note to self: starting specific gravity was 1.063)

Also, my first batch, the american red ale, is finished carbonating. Here are a couple pictures of how it turned out:

 

I'm happy to say it was really good! It carbonated well and tasted slightly sweet. I'm not too good with beer descriptions but it was pretty smooth and somewhat light, but still had body. It was somewhere between a lager and a pale ale I would say. Overall a success.