DOCUMENTATION

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Stone Beard Automated Brewery Funding Proposal

Matt Hutchison, Nathaneal Magardie, Grant Young Department of Engineering Science, Electrical Engineering

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Home brewing has become one of the largest hobbies in the United States with an estimated 1.2 million brewers nationwide since 2005 [1]. This large following of brewers has given way to a massive market of equipment, and accessories to the home brew process. Stone Beard Automated Brewery, will work towards creating a modular system that can provide accurate temperature control and regulation as well as the ability to measure beer color. The temperature control will take place in the mash process and the color matching will take place after the beer has been completed. Our system will allow for seamless web integration that includes wireless tracking. As of right now there is not a system on the market that can match these capabilities for fewer than one thousand dollars. Due to the amateur home brewers limited access to instruments that track and control the temperature during the mash and boil phase we will provide a highly desirable service. By logging the data and storing it in a database, Stone Beard Automated Brewery will allow the user to pinpoint batch-to-batch inconsistencies that have a large effect on taste, color, and the overall quality of the beer.
Method:

As mentioned above, we will work to solve this problem by developing a completely wireless modular system that combines sensors and heating element to track and control the beer throughout the mash and boiling process. Our temperature module will push data to our base station during the mash and boil process. The base station will in turn push commands to the temperature control relay, varying the

temperature to keep in line with the user’s specifications. Our color sensor module will be able to identify the color of the beer and log that data to a database. All of this information and feedback will be available to view and control from the base station. The base station would also act as a server and an online platform.

Timetable:

As we are presently engrossed in designing the system, we anticipate familiarizing ourselves with the wireless modules by the end of October. This will also coincide with the creation of the data server that will push all of the analyzed information to our website. Over winter break and into the spring semester we will begin developing the circuitry and software for each sensor node. Next, we will extensively test the accuracy of every sensor as well as the control mechanisms. Finally, we plan to allocate three weeks before the final presentation to resolve any issues that may arise over the course of the semester.
Anticipated Results:

We envisage that the system will automatically control the brewing process, while adhering to the user’s recipe. The system will follow a pre-determined recipe that controls the temperature between 32°F - 212°F (0°C - 100°C) and shall have a measurement and repeatability accuracy of ±0.5 °F (±0.25 °C). This happens during the mash and boil stage, eventually providing feedback on the color between 1.0 SRM (Pale-Yellow Color) and 20 SRM (Black) per the Standard Reference Method (SRM) per the final product [2]. The real-time data will be accessible via a website and available to reference in the future. Motivation:

Funding should be provided for Stone Beard Automated Brewery because there is large demographic of home brewers that are searching for our solution. Sonoma County contains numerous homebrewers that are looking to upgrade their existing systems with our product. The Stone Beard project

will also lay the groundwork for future electrical engineering majors to advance our project. The uniqueness of this idea will reap benefits greater than the necessary funds.
Future Career Goals:

This project will help to develop and build attributes like; creative problem solving, circuit designing, budgeting and time management skills. Which are all crucial in the professional world for an engineer.

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[1] Association, A. (2017). American Homebrewers Association - American Homebrewers Association . [online] American Homebrewers Association. Available at: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/membership/american-homebrewers-association/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].

[2] Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine. (2017). The Oxford Companion to Beer Definition: standard reference method (SRM) . [online] Available at: https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/xizZHSE4me/standard-reference-method-srm/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].