Team Name
Team Friendship
Project Logo
Timeline
Spring 2021 – Summer 2021
Students
- Sunghwa Cho
- Luke Brown
- Matthew Schultz
- Sujan Dumaru
- Marcos Juarez Casillas
- Ju Young Jung
Sponsor
Chris Conly
Abstract
Over the years, homebrewing beer has become a popular hobby that has been used to create a beer specific to the brewers taste and become a way to connect with other people with similar interests. However, the brewing process can be tedious at times and extremely time consuming. A typical homebrew session requires brewers to constantly maintain and check on the temperatures of different kettles during the brewing process. This requires the brewers to constantly turn on and off different heating elements and pumps to accomplish this task.
The goal of the Back Burner Brew is to automate the heating and transfer of liquids between kettles of the brewing process. The user will be able to enter on a web app what temperatures different kettles will be set at and control how long those kettles will be kept at that specific temperature. The Back Burner Brew will control heating elements and pumps to transfer liquids for heating and transfer to other kettles depending on the conditions the brewer has set.
Background
The “Back Burner Brew” is built with the sole purpose of brewing large batch of beer in the home environment. This product provides home brewers with a low-cost electric home brewing system that allow them to have precise control over the brewing process. The brewing process can be automated with the help of micro-controllers like the ESP32 which is then hosted to a local website or an app interface.
ESP32 is a micro-controller that can receive data such as current temperature of the water or mash from the heat sensors located inside the kettles which can be converted to either analog or digital input. The heating coil can be controlled using the input from the user as per their desired either to increase or to decrease the temperature. The electric pump can also be controlled by the user through micro-controllers to regulate the flow of the water in the kettles. The user will be able to communicate with the brewing system through a web interface or app interface.
The intended audiences for this product would be home brewers or person interested in brewing beer only. Provided that the user manual would be present in the product, any person who wants to brew beer in his local environment can easily use this product. This product is focused on simplifying the brewing process for the brewer.
Project Requirements
- A User Interface to Control Temperatures of the Kettles
- Hot Liquor Tank, Mash Tun, and Boiling Kettle Temperature Control
- Read in Temperatures and post Data to the Database
- Control of Pumps Through Relays and ESP32’s
System Overview
The Back Burner Brew will be separated into 5 layers. The User Interface layer will be used to ask for the user to set temperatures of different kettles and how long each step of the brewing process will take. The Web Server/Database layer will hold data taken from the UI layer and from the Digital Components layer. Digital Components layer will post and retrieve data from the database and control the Analog Components layer. The Analog Components layer will be controlled by the Digital Components and will be used to control temperature and the flow of liquids in the Brew System Vessels layer. The Brew System Vessels layer is where the brewing will occur.
Results
Demo Video (link)
Source Code (link)
notes:
– The boiling kettle ESP32 microcontroller does not use PWM to control the temperature of the boiling kettle.
Project Files
Project Charter (link)
System Requirements Specification (link)
Architectural Design Specification (link)
Detailed Design Specification (link)
Poster (link)
Manual (link)
Zipped Documents (link)
Future Goals
Our future goals for this project are as follows:
- Host the Brewing UI onto a Raspberry Pi.
- Use a relay that allows for PWM.
- Complete the wiring for the relays and the electrical box.
- Test on an actual brewing system.
