Hops and Fermentation Controllers
I spent most of the week in Atlantic City. The running injury ruined the potential run on the boardwalk (when you’re a runner, you do these things and look forward to them). The beer is nothing particularly special (although I may have under-rated Tun Tavern’s Irish Red), but I paid for very little of what I drank. And the conference I was part of organizing went very well.
Dry Hopped Bud Light Update
Shitty beer on the left, shitty beer with hops on the right.
I’ve made it through seven of these. Cascade, Zythos, Green Bullet, Amarillo, Columbus, Mosaic, and Galaxy. I’m sticking to 3-4 per day, and I’m using the unhopped Bud Light to reset my palate. I’ve noticed that Amarillo, Columbus, Mosaic, and Galaxy were all much more flavorful. It may be just mis-measurement in hopping, though.
I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for malt. The flavor of hops is pretty important in some styles (like IPAs), but will traditionally take a back seat to malt in other styles (like damn near every other style, to widely varying degrees).
Homegrown Hops Update
I got a text from my wife on the day I was to leave Atlantic City noting that one of our kids noticed that the hops seemed taller. They indeed grew over the week.
Columbus
Cascade
Tettanang
Centennial
Fermentation Controller Update
I worked a lot on the fermentation controller. The Brewery IoT page now shows real temperatures (it’s my basement’s temperature, but it’s real). I’ll post more about this sometime, but the short version is that it is 100% Raspberry Pi based. There are three scripts that run in cron (scheduled tasks in Linux) – a script that sends the data to my offsite webserver (the one that is serving this page), a script that checks the temperature and turns the solid-state relay on and off, and a third ’emergency stop’ script that ensures that the freezer doesn’t fall to 32 or below (which would be disabled if I ever decided to brew an eisbock).
I’m itching to brew another beer. I’m considering another IPA (shocker there!), and then almost immediately brewing a Marzen style to prepare for September. Late in the year, I have been thinking about a maple bock to brew. I still haven’t made any improvements to the setup except some hose clamps.
Cheers!