Written by: Alex

Created: 30 July 2014

Hits: 3018

A brewing day is a busy one. There are many different tasks that must be completed such as cleaning bottles and brewing equipment, weighing and measuring, applying labels to bottles and actually delivering the beer to pubs and stockists. All these jobs are in addition to actually making the beer itself. Sometimes you wish you had a second pair of hands! As I'm planning to run my small brewery by myself initially I decided a long time ago that I needed some sort of help in the form of automation equipment. Not only will this allow me to get on with some of the other important tasks that must be completed in the brewery but it also will allow me greater control over the brewing process as a whole. My electronics skills are not extensive and I didn't want to spent lots of money buying a pre-fabricated piece of equipment. There is only one way to grow and that's to gain knowledge by doing - that's why I decided to build the control panel myself from scratch. If it goes wrong at least I'll have an idea of how it works after all!

The control panel is a centralised point from which all the brewing equipment can be operated and monitored. It uses industry standard switches and components that are resistant to water and dust and keeps all of the electrics in a single place which is much safer than having a dozen cables dangling where they could cause an accident. I decided to follow the design presented on the Electric Brewery website. The control panel they construct there has been well proven, conforms to good safety guidelines and more importantly they show you pictures and step by step instructions on how to build it yourself. It also looks rather good, and the community that contributes on their internet forum are nothing short of amazing. Many people from the UK have successfully built one of these units and there are plenty of people to ask if you get stuck. I decided that I would build a slightly simplified version of the panel without the alarms and buzzers, after all the actual brewing process is going to be the focus of my day so I shall be keeping my eye very closely on temperatures and times. I also felt that a small countdown timer on the panel wouldn't be much use as it would be hard to see from across the room. 

The design itself makes use of a lot of American standards and components and these must of course be converted to the UK equivalents. Changes to make the system use 240V instead of 120V are of course the first thing that must be considered ( luckily the website includes these instructions ) and some of the components are also referred to by different names in the UK. Some of the parts were not readily available in the UK or were unreasonably expensive. A good example of this when was I had trouble finding NEMA twist lock receptacles but substituted them with Neutrik PowerCON connectors that I was able to order from Germany. There are still a few cables to tidy inside but overall I am very pleased with my first electronics and metal working project. I'm looking forward to see it hanging on the wall in the brewery!

A link to the Electric Brewery Website for those who wish to read more about the internals of the panel