As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been struggling with details for my sculpture design. One such detail is the mounting and orientation for the grant and pumps. After a few failed iterations of mounting things on the main frame, I had an epiphany - I didn’t really want that stuff attached to the frame!

Instead, I came up with a small 1′ x 1.5′ step-like skid that the grant and pumps can live on. This also can act as a perfect step for a little extra height when mashing in grains!! This small pump skid fits perfectly in one of the open areas under either the HLT or kettle, where it can be out of the way for storage. The bulk of the pump-controlling electronics (float switches, etc.) will be mounted on the underside of the step somehow to keep it mostly protected from water splashes, etc. I’ll have to work out the details on where it draws its power from and how it sends data back to the main sculpture / user interface later. I definitely want to capture the pump on/off states and level/float switch states as part of the historized dataset. The grant level switches will also allow me to calculate an approximate flow rate (volume required to fill between the two switches divided by the time to do so).

For days now I’ve been working on getting Donna’s welding area ready for her. This means hanging the dry wall, taping, mudding, spackling… It’s a never-ending and extremely dusty process. Things are turning out pretty good, and I hope that we’ll have things ready and painted for her by this Sunday. The receptacles (both the 20A and 50A) work perfectly - we switched on the welder and it didn’t kill the house main, so that’s a good thing. We’ll just have to be careful about running major appliances like the dryer while Donna’s busy. Her welding bench was just ordered tonight, so it should be here by next weekend. Happy mother’s day to her!!!

Since Donna’s welding area is nearly a reality, I’ve started trying to work out what I will want my brewing sculpture stand to look like. It’s alot harder than I thought it would be. I had roughly worked out the major requirements in my head, and those are not a problem - its all the nitpicky details that are making me nuts.

I do want it to be all at a single level so I can look down into the tuns and kettles without a stepladder. That definitely necessitates the need for a pair of pumps, which I fortunately already have. I also wanted to be able to brew 5, 10 or 20 gallon batches without significant problems or compromises - which I think will be totally possible with this setup. I also wanted to make use of a grant to prevent direct suction against the bottom of the grain bed in the mash tun - again, no problem - I even prototyped the grant setup using a PICAXE controller nearly a year ago.

The problem has really been working out placement for the pumps, grant, electronics, etc - Which I am slowly working through. The screenshot above is the bare-bones, no frills stand prototype that may still be changed. One feature that I definitely think will stay is the interchangeable burner grill design - thought here was that I wanted to be able to pull them out and replace them if it were ever necessary (notice the little 1.5″ metal strips tacked into the corners). It also lets me do things like put a “non burner” insert if I use the Igloo cooler setup I currently employ for 5 and 10 gallon batches, and I could put a smaller grill pattern in to accomodate the smaller kettles, yet still properly support them and distribute the weight. Turndown on the burners (I’m thinking 200K btu jet burners at this point) may be a problem, but I’ll work it out… I’m thinking of somehow making the height between the kettle / HLT bottom and burner adjustable to allow me to move the burners down for the smaller batches. That could just mean taller inserts. I also figure I only need gas on the HLT and kettle - the mash tun doesn’t really need it because when you are heating mash water, you can just as easily do that in the kettle (which is not being used at that stage).

I’ve still got a while before Donna’s ready to take on the structure, and I am confident that I’ll have a very precise design ready at the point she is ready to execute it. I may even have my user interface / control software (BrewzNET) ready as well.

… as in worn out, not visited the kegerator too many times this evening (which may be true too).

Last few days have been really busy - Saturday I hung drywall in the garage, so all that remains is taping, priming and painting. It was exhausting work, and I certainly learned some good “Dos” and “Do Nots” as far as putting up drywall goes… but fortunately the weather wasn’t too hot and I had my friend Chris to help. Today I got the guts up to wire in the 20A circuit to the breaker panel, and amazingly enough - everything went really smooth! I will tackle the 50A circuit later in the week once we have some things resolved, like getting Donna a welding workbench and some practice metal to play with…. I figured I could use those 20A outlets to plug in my handheld orbital sander once they were taped - although that is pretty much an excuse because I could have just as easily used an extension cord. This whole process has been a great learning experience, and if I ever need to run new circuits, I feel confident I know how to do it as well as keep things compliant with electrical codes.

Sunday (yesterday) was the homebrew demonstration at How Do You Brew? which went very well. We had around 20 people show up, and they all seemed to enjoy the food, brews, and all-grain instruction in equal measure. Lots of good questions were thrown out, and I think we helped encourage a few folks to make the leap from extract to all-grain. It was an incredibly long day - 11am to 6pm… but I came home with 5 gallons of beer in a fermenter, as well as various other sundries (free yeast and hops, worth a small fortune these days) from Joe and Marlana… They are incredibly generous people, and I really like being able to help them out with these demonstrations. Hopefully it helps drum up a little business for them too. Pictures should be available on HDYB’s website in the next week or so.

I have another big brew date in the works, this time with my friends Heidi and Dave. Not sure what we’re going to brew, but it will be sometime in mid June. I’m looking forward to knocking out another 20 gallon batch - and who knows, maybe I’ll have an automated grant skid worked up by then - probably not, but I can dream.

Today I racked the Oktoberfest and the California Commonfest over to secondaries. They’ve been on the yeast for about 2 1/2 weeks, have fallen crystal clear, and had very little yeast activity, so I figured it was time. The process was very uneventful, and I didn’t get any yeast in the secondaries at all. I did manage to capture a huge, clean slurry of WLP833 if anyone out there is interested in brewing a bock, doppelbock, octoberfest, or german lager… Since I don’t have a lagering fridge, I’m already trying to figure out what to do with the Oktoberfest - it will most likely spend the summer down in Dover in my friend’s garage fridge.

I also stopped by Home Depot and tore into getting the wire run for Donna’s TIG welder this evening. The circuits are run down to the box, I have them terminated in the outlet plugs, and all that remains is tying them into the breaker panel in the basement. I may do a trial run with the new 20A circuit, and if it works and I don’t electricute myself, I might try the 50A circuit. That one scares the crap out of me, if you want to know the truth…. I may also just wait until my friend from work can come over and help me tie them in. Educated as a ChemE, electricity falls just short of “black magic” in my book.

Once the wiring is proven “good” and functional, I’ll go and pick up the sheetrock, mud, tape, and other stuff to protect that back wall from donna’s occasional sparks. I also need to pick up a 10 lb fire extinguisher - a 5 lb cylinder might not be big enough for a welder the size of Donna’s.

I can’t wait for her to get to take her new toy out for a test drive.

This Sunday marked my 4th 20 gallon all-grain batch, the inaugural run of my new 26 gallon kettle, and several other brewing moment firsts for me. Brian and I worked up a recipe and managed to get through the brew day with a minimal amount of drama… he took a full 10 gallons home, and I rolled a full 10 gallons into my basement at the end of the day. The mash tun, insulated with my custom-made jacket (Donna rocked this) did a very good job of holding the temperature - as best as I could tell, the thermometer did not budget the entire 70 minutes it took to get our mash-out water up to temperature. The new burner seemed to do well, I just did not crank it up far enough to begin with, so it took 70 minutes to heat the mash out water instead of 60 - big deal.

We did end up sticking the mash pretty hard core after about 3-4 gallons were collected. We were both a little worried even before the day began, but kept hoping for the best… unfortunately it did stick, but it was very quickly remedied. I think remixing the mash and the second vorlauf only lost us about 15 minutes, and we didn’t have any further problems. This picture shows the 1 - 1.5 inch layer of protein that caked ontop of the grain bed - it was totally insane. I didn’t cut through it fast enough the first vorlauf, and all that stuff just formed a layer of cement ontop of the barley, and compacted everything down to the point where water couldn’t flow through. Lesson learned - and admittedly not unexpected for a grain bill that was 50% wheat malt.

The wort itself was pretty free of chunkiness - very little grain matter, but lots of hazey proteins left over. The 75 minute boil did a good job of producting a good quantity of break material, but since this was a wheat beer we weren’t expecting to get crystal clear wort. It is a gorgeous color, and I expect will be a pretty light color once poured into a pilsner or pint glass…

The yeast we repitched from a previous batch of pale ale Brian had brewed. He managed to capture an exceptionally clear, thick and healthy slurry of WLP001 California Ale yeast, and we split it between his 2 carboys and my large demijohn. While we had positive pressure in the airlocks this morning around 7am and a very minor amount of visible fermentation, things seemed to be rocking by the time I got home from work - thick krauesen and plenty of airlock activity. I will admit to being an airlock sniffer - and it smells great. I think our choice of Bravo and Centennial hops is going to work great in this beer.

I still haven’t decided how to defile 5 gallons of my wheat - raspberries, blackberries, or black raspberries? I guess I can’t really go wrong with any of them.

So all in all, I’d say that this batch was a success - and its funny putting my 14 gallon kettle away after doing a 20 gallon batch with its bigger, meaner brothers - a 10 gallon batch seems … small.

It’s spring and that universally means time to clean. In our case, that meant major work over the past two days has gone into getting our garage back into shape. One obvious reason is creating a safe, clean and adequate space for Donna’s welding…. We intend on taking this wall of the garage, putting up sheet metal over the studs, maybe putting down some concrete coating or something, and getting the electrical service run. I’ve already drilled a hole into our basement so we can run the 6/2 wire needed to carry her 220V 50A service, so hopefully I can get my collegue to come out this weeks sometime and put together a shopping list. A fire extinguisher is definitely going to be one of the items on that list.

Part of that cleaning was also clearing my workbench. When all is said and done, I have 9+ cases of 12oz bottles and 3+ cases of belgian-style 750mL bottles that need to be delabeled and defunked… I HATE THIS PART OF HOMEBREWING. I am not sure when I’ll commit the time necessary to do that, but it needs to be soon. A flurry of brewing activity is just around the corner, with Brian and I knocking out a 20 gallon batch of american wheat tomorrow, an all-grain demonstration at How Do You Brew next Sunday (May 5), and a number of other folks looking to do split batches. I’ve got 2 fabulous belgian strains down in the fridge just screaming to be used too - WLP540 Abbey IV yeast (the Rochefort strain) and Wyeast 3864 Canadian Belgian (the Unibroue strain).

So tonight I finally managed to kick my American Brown keg. Its not that the AB was bad - in fact, its one of my favorite beers. I just knew it was coming close to kicking, and with my upcoming all-grain brewing demonstration at How Do You Brew? on May 4th, I really wanted to get my belgian dubbel, “Travelers and Tourists” (TnT) on tap. This particular batch was brewed back in August of 07, and has been lovingly aged in my cellar for the past 10 months, and is the beer that we will be brewing 10 gallons of at the demonstration.

Most of the batch (20 gallons) was bottled & corked in 750mL belgian-style bottles or 12oz cases, however 5 gallons I held out and kegged to see if it could work as a tap offering - and holy $#!t yes, it works. I’ve had dreadful luck getting my belgians to show the character and depth of flavor that they get after bottle conditioning for a while, but this particular recipe does REALLY well in a keg.

My plan is to bring the keg (along with a few bottles) along to the demonstration so folks can sample while we actually brew the recipe - Having a solid example for people to try and relate to the work in progress is an incredibly powerful teaching tool. I intend on letting them smell the hops, coriander, and malt… taste the sweet wort… and smell the yeast starter all in an attempt to relate it to the finished product and how those things can impact it.

I am so very pleased with this beer. If you find yourself in the neighborhood, please swing by and sample!

Man, that’s hot. Well it finally happened… My wife pulled the trigger, and now she’s just a total bad@$$. She is the proud owner of a Lincoln Electric 225 Precision TIG welder.

This weekend we’ll figure out where her work area is going to be and get the area cleaned out & set up. Once that’s in place, I’m gonna have a guy from work come out and help me figure out what we need to run the 220V 50A electrical service. I believe I just became DelMarva Power’s biotch… I imagine that kWH meter wheel will be turning at ludicrous speed, if it doesn’t just make a loud “sproing!!!” noise and fall clean off.

Making dreams a reality just got one huge step closer….

Ok. Get your mind out of the gutter.

So I took the work I did before with multiselection and alignment clues and took it a step further - when the multiselect designer detects that all the selected components are part of the PipeComponent hierarchy, a new context menu is added - “Form Pipe”. When the user hovers over the menu item, it shows the resulting pipe outline - all reference points are auto-aligned, the unions have their orientations automatically adjusted to reflect the pipe routing, and the pipe section width & colors are derived from the selected reference component. These two screenshots show the same routing, but with different reference objects - notice how the pipe is fatter in the second example.

This does not replace the previous Ctrl-click functionality that adds new points to a pipe when the pipe designer is active - so a user could put down a bunch of loosely positioned components, like in this example, create a pipe based on that routing, then add additional pieces by Ctrl-clicking if desired. You can also multiselect a single piece, “form pipe”, then route the entire thing by Ctrl-clicking.

Here is a screenshot of the formed pipe where the smaller component width was used (first screenshot above). I have one additional aspect of forming pipes that I will implement as part of dragging new components into the screen (once I’ve got that working). If a pipe designer is active, and the new component is some sort of pipe part, it can will be added to the selected pipe as a new section.

Once again, I am really happy with how this whole UI designer is working out. I’ve still got lots to do (like toolbars, Undo/Redo functionality, etc) but the basic architecture is turning out to be alot more flexible and powerful than I was expecting.

Hopefully I’ll have some new brewing-related posts soon… sorry to lay on so much geekdom and BrewzNET in a row. I’m brewing a 20-gallon batch of wheat with Brian next weekend… and I’ll be counter-pressure bottling the Gnarleywine today and doing some transferring of the Oktoberfest later in the week… I just haven’t been doing much brewing activity recently.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was unhappy with some aspects of the multiselection and the alignment - but I did a little playing around and now have something I like.

I looked to the Visual Studio IDE for inspiration on multiple selection - the selected components now have little boxes in the upper left corner, the black ones being “selected” and the white box being the reference component. By clicking (or right clicking) after things are multi-selected, the reference object can be shifted from one component to the next.

Moving over the alignment menu items now have greatly improved visual clues as well - it draws the reference line as well as the resulting bound for the impacted components. As the user moves over the menu items, the clues update themselves.

I must say - the more I use this platform I’ve written, the more I am liking it and the more I think can be done with it.