Team Name
Brewster’s Brewing Journal
Timeline
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021
Students
- James Richard
- Jared Kremer
- Allen Gomez
- Himanshu Rijal
- Bryan Huynh
- Kinjon Saha
Sponsor
Dr. Chris Conly
Abstract
The Brewing Journal is an application that helps with the documentation and automation of the craft brewing process. Specifically it keeps track of the differences in a particular recipe and the final product attributed to it, auto logs the temperature during crucial moments in the mashing and fermentation operations, and keeps track of and displays the specific gravity’s during the fermentation and mashing processes.
Background
It is hard to tell whether an alcoholic beverage has been brewed ideally. There are many steps in the process and consequently, many chances for something to go wrong. However, there aren’t many tools that provide these kinds of measurements which is why we have undertaken this project. By measuring and monitoring critical sections during the brewing process, we can increase the overall quality of brews. Temperature and specific gravity are important factors in brewing. We need a real time measurement of the temperature at specific intervals and the specific gravity to better assess the quality of a brew and determine where a fault exists if necessary that undermines the quality of that brew. These measurements are then logged in the brewing journal which brewers can use to compare it with an ideal recipe.
Project Requirements
Connect via Bluetooth to Raspberry Pi with Hydrometer/temperature sensor for brew
Record and Display Boiling Temperature in Web Application
Record and Display Mashing Specific Gravity in Web Application
Allow comparing stored Recipes to Current brew
Web GUI should include graph representation of Brewing Data
Web GUI should be responsive and have intuitive navigation
Create and Store Recipes as JSONs with attached notes from previous brews
Edit existing stored Recipes inside the Application
Application should be cross-platform compatible
Application should be open-source
System Overview
The Brewing Journal app consists of four layers as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: System architecture
HYDROMETER LAYER
This layer pertains to the hydrometer used to measure the temperature and the specific gravity of the brew during the fermentation process. To measure the specific gravity, the hydrometer will have an accelerometer sensor of some sort to measure the tilt of the hydrometer. The hydrometer will also have its own temperature sensor to measure the temperature. There will be a battery to power the device.
There will be a bluetooth module on the hydrometer, and the hydrometer will communicate with a Raspberry Pi to send data.
RASPBERRY PI LAYER
The Raspberry Pi will perform a variety of functions, and it will communicate with all the other layers.
The Pi itself will have a temperature sensor to measure the temperature of the brew during the mashing process, and it will take this value, the values from the hydrometer, and values inputted by the user from the application to the cloud where data will be stored. It will also upload all this data to the application for the user to view. The Pi will also be able to process commands from the application to get values from the hydrometer and its temperature sensor whenever the user wants to start a new log.
CLOUD LAYER
The cloud will store all the data of each brewing session. The Pi will store its data here. The user will be able to access information about their logs from here through the application.
APPLICATION LAYER
The application will be able to communicate with the Raspberry Pi and the cloud over wifi. The application will tell the Raspberry Pi to measure temperatures and the specific gravity and return those values to be used by the application. The application will also be able receive data from the cloud about previous brewing sessions.
Results
Demo Video File (link)
Source code Github (link)
Future Work
In the future the Application can be better improved by using a static IP address for the server so that the raspberry pi and Web application connection can persist between sessions. Integration for existing Craft Brewing Recipe JSON formats, such as BeerXML, can be added as well to further serve the customer’s needs.
Project Files
Project Charter (link)
System Requirements Specification (link)
Architectural Design Specification (link)
Detailed Design Specification (link)
Poster (link)
References
Any references go here, properly formatted
