Beer Church
Beer Church is a group brewing beer at Pumping Station: One. Originally just a beer tasting and science discussion group, lately Beer Church has been focusing more and more on brewing, although we still do a beer tasting at every event! Brewing Station: One is now consolidated on the south western wall of the kitchen area.
Contact/Participation
Events will be posted to the PS:One blog and calendar and the beer church twitter: @ps1beerchurch. Anyone is welcome, even non-members of PS:One. Want to brew something? Tell us about it via our twitter or the Beer Church mailing list. You must be 21 to participate in Beer Church.
You can also join our Meetup group; http://www.meetup.com/Beer-Church-Chicago/ if you like.
Events
Semi-biweekly Beer Church gatherings take place some Monday nights. Ask for an invite to our Slack Channel for more info. They generally follow a format of meet & greet, pot luck beer tasting, brewing, and discussion of beer, life, and everything.
FAQ
- Can I come?: Yes, you can come if you are 21 years of age or older.
- I Have a brewing idea! Will you make it?: Maybe, if you can convince one of the brewmasters that it's a good idea.
- How do I become a Beer Church Brewmaster: Convince the other brewmasters that you know what you're doing and you're responsible.
- Who Decides When Beer Church Happens?: Currently the Beer Pope (Lydia Miller) decides this most of the time, but any brewmaster can make an event. It's best to plan with the other Brewmasters though. We try to have events when the Pumping Station: One members are getting interested in the idea again, so this is every couple weeks most of the time. This also goes along well with the cadence of fermentations.
- How do I contact Beer Church?: There's a whole section about that at the top of the page, read it.
- I Want Beer Church to happen again, but you don't have anything planned!: Contact us! If nothing's coming up, letting us know that you want to see something happen is the best way to get us to plan it!
- Oh no, I broke something, what do I do?: If you can figure out from this wiki page whose it was, talk to them. If not, just go to Brew & Grow around the corner and buy the closest replacement you can. Either way, please tell us somehow. Thanks for being cool and adult about this!
Brewmasters
- Lydia Miller
- Scott Yoder
- "v"
Brewing Station: One
Brewing Station: One is a steel shelving unit converted into a storage unit above for keeping clean brewing gear (pots, carboys, bottles, bottling equipment, corks, wort chillers, kegs, etc) and a temperature controlled fermenting chamber. We brew in the loading dock.
Equipment
Brewing
- 5 gal boiling kettle
- 10 gal boiling kettle (Ryan Pierce)
- 5 gal Gott mash tun (Ryan Pierce)
- Hydrometer
- 2 5 gal glass carboys (Ryan Pierce)
- 2 Keggles (Pumping Station: One equipment)
- Wort Chiller Coil (Ryan Pierce)
- Box of Stuff, inc. metal bottle filler, hydrometer, conditioning chemicals, thermometers (Ryan Pierce)
- pH meter, calibration and storage solutions (Ryan Pierce)
- Mini Fridge for temperature control (Anthony Barker)
Dispensing
- 2 Cornelius kegs, 5 gal, ball lock
- Bar
- Beer Church Treasure Fridge for storing our bottled beer where people won't mess with it.
This list is incomplete. Please update this page!
Equipment Needed
- Electronically sample-able continuous hydrometry system (Steve has an idea, dun dun dun)
- http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-4-Electric-Solenoid-Valve-12-volt-DC-VITON-SEAL-B21V-/300600605047?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fd313977#ht_2101wt_728 propane burner control for mash tun control
- Honeywell Glowfly: http://www.forwardthinking.honeywell.com/related_links/combustion/glowfly/install/69_2334_glowfly_installation.pdf
Hardware and Software Projects
Brewing Station: One
- Electrical insulation of contactor terminals
- Experiment: In the winter, will the shop drop below our fermentation temperatures, and will we need a heater?
- Real time monitoring of temperature, specific gravity
Brewing
- Dispose of or modify Keggles for brewing:
- Boil kettle
- Mash tun
- Hot liquor tun (inaccurately named; this is for sparge water)
- Build RIMS or HERMS
- Propane solenoid, thermocouple, and igniter under PID control (Arduino)
- Pump, flow meter run by microcontroller (Arduino)
- Multiple temperature probes (Arduino)
- Safety gear:
- Alarm system (stuck flow, propane flame blew out) (Arduino)
- Emergency shut off switch
- Raspberry Pi controlling the above via EPICS
Dispensing
We have a donated refrigerator; converted to kegerator. It's connected to the bar & draft tower, and working. We currently have 2 taps. We want to upgrade to 4 taps. Ryan Pierce currently is holding the cash for that project, it's $90.59 of the way into the needed $176 for the upgrades.
TODOS:
- the aforementioned tap upgrade
- temperature monitoring inside the fridge & in the draft tower.
- upgrade drain system for drip tray
- make custom tap handles
Resources
- http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Complete_Handbook_of_Home_Brewing.html?id=rbQ4NAAACAAJ - An excellent technical handbook on the subject. Contains quite a bit of detail on mash and fermenting biochemistry, as well as a computational model for sugar extraction. When "Don't worry, relax...." isn't enough.
- http://byo.com/stories/projects-and-equipment/article/indices/29-equipment/84-abcs-of-recirculated-brewing-systems - Excellent article on RIMS and HERMS mashing
- http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/metalworking/4323694 - Some more elaborate brewing setups.
- http://www.winning-homebrew.com/diy.html - Detailed plans on constructing a single tier RIMS system, including burner control, pumps, and automatic sparging.
- http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/ - EPICS, an Experimental Physics Industrial Control System used by the APS at Argonne, as well as numerous other labs. If it can control a particle accelerator, it can control beer!
- Formula for ABV from specific gravity: ( ( 1.05 x ( OG – FG ) ) / FG ) / 0.79 x 100 = % ABV
- or, use this calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/