For craft brewers or those who are dedicated to home brewing, temperature control is one of the crucial steps in obtaining a good beer. There are several steps in the brewing process, including malting, mashing, filtering, boiling, fermenting, conditioning, filtering, and packaging.
In particular, there are two phases in which the temperature level must be controlled: mashing (mixing the ground malt with hot water) and fermentation (the higher the temperature, the faster and more turbulent the fermentation is).
Depending on the different needs, it is possible to choose between two paths: home device-based methods or professional device-based methods.
For example, with the open source electronic platform “Arduino”, it is possible to create a homemade temperature controller simply with a temperature sensor and a relay module (and of course some programming skills).
The integration with Raspberry PI with respect to the “BrewPi” project allows more advanced algorithms and interactive graphics in real time. In the near future, the device may support mash control (BIAB, HERMS or RIMS).
On the other hand, for more professional uses, it is recommended to purchase a specific temperature controller, in order to facilitate all the automation of the process. For example, we consider the need to control two electric boilers with different time / temperature steps.
If you want to use electrical resistances controlled by contactors or static on-off relays and you need to independently manage two boilers (with different time / temperature steps and start times), we suggest a preparation temperature controller enabled to program at least 15 cycles. Therefore, the device must be designed to program cycles / curves with control of the process variable in relation to time. A useful feature may be to recover the controller state after a power outage, to avoid the reboot process.
Instead, if you want to manage two boilers with one master controller (where a second slave controller is related to the set point value of the first controller, managing the output regardless of the detected temperature), we suggest two programmable controllers, connected with serial interfaces . In industry there are two serial interfaces: RS422 and RS485; Please check that the two controllers have the same interface before purchasing. The best thing to do is, of course, to buy two temperature controllers from the same manufacturer.
Keep in mind that programming an industrial thermoregulator may be easier than you think – just check to see if the manufacturer has provided some inherent video tutorials, or ask the many PID / PLC communities that can help you on microcontroller temperature controller .