Brewery Planning - Beer, Brewing, Controllers, and More

I've been planning on opening a brewery for the better part of five years now. It's  hard to determine which is more cool - a perfectly crafted double IPA or pressing the compile button after working for days to create digital poetry and reading 'compiling complete' as opposed to 'error no. 312'. Let me take you back...back to a time when I was hunched over a desk breaking my back for someone else. I don't mean to imply I didn't enjoy my job, I just enjoyed crafting beer a lot more. About 5 years ago, I developed plans to start a brewery and learned how to build a brewery business plan.

I always thought that once I dove into the age old art of crafting some rather delicious frost adult beverages, I'd be exchanging mental labors for physical labors. Just creating a brewery business plan was exhaustive. I poured hours into developing a business plan. One of the things that was cost prohibitive was the control systems. Temperature control systems that were little more than thermostats costing in the tens of thousands of dollars seemed vastly overpriced. Granted if those systems run afoul, it would end up costing thousands of dollars in wasted product. A fascination with all things electronic caused me to question how the industries of technology could be combined with the artistry and sciences of brewing. Enter the electric brewery.

Back then, I couldn't tell you the difference between a resistor and a voltmeter - between a relay and a switch. Hands down, the electric brewery was the biggest shot in the arm. The in-depth guide takes you all the way purchasing the items you needed to turning the switch. Short of sending a few jolts of 120v through my body (due to my own mistakes), my own electric brewery was one of the most impressive things I've ever built:

Building the electric brewery turned out to be a fun and educational experience, but it only served to wet my appetite. The one shortfall of the electric brewery was that it's analog systems had yet to bridge the gap between the analog and digital worlds. While it is sexy as hell (if I do say so myself..which I do), I couldn't connect it to my home server, my wifi, my phone, etc. Enter the Arduino.

The Arduino is a micro controller that communicates with your computer via a serial usb connection, and then relays information to the computer or makes decisions based on pre-configured scripts. The Arduino was the device that made the world my oyster. The Arduino allowed my two skill sets to merge into one. Now, I could play on the strengths provided by my coding background and my new found knowledge of electrical systems to develop and design virtually anything. Over the past few years, I've worked with the Arduino to develop everything from an LED light that blinks to laser tracking systems. An old cliche' is finding happiness at work is doing what you love. Ok, I'll give it a shot.

Building Nanobrewery, Microbrewery, Brewery, and Distillery Control Systems

The last few years have seen a boom within the craft brewing industry with new microbreweries, brewpubs, nano's, breweries, and distilleries popping up all over the place like hops in the spring. With thousands of breweries joining the fold, what better way to participate than by not only helping breweries get started with my brewery business plan, but also designing, building, and teaching them to use the most advanced brewery control systems on the market? Enter Stratus Brewworks.