Audrey’s Shaping Up

By fits and starts, in between all the demolition work, I’ve smoothed Audrey’s operation to a fairly functional state. I’m sure that once we’ve done a couple of brews together there will be some tweaks, but she should be helpful from the get-go. As with most of the gizmo-programming tasks I’ve done, one of the trickiest parts is getting the timing right between a lightning-fast computer and physical components (and operators) in the real world. For instance, the fairly slow flow rates for mash liquor, and slower still for sparge, versus highly variable dosing pump volumes and speeds. In the end I found I needed to look at the ratio between total treatment dosage and liquor volume, and adjust the dosing pump speed to get even dosing. I set up a series of test runs to help find the right timing, etc:

Low gravity beer, heavy water treatment

Low gravity beer, minimal water treatment

High gravity beer, heavy water treatment

High gravity beer, minimal water treatment

Each of these cases was run with a minimum and maximum flow rate, important to the whole timing dealio. Even though I tested with actual recipes from my brew logs, I’m sure there will be some cases that have me doing a bit of adjusting.

As I ran through these tests, simulating a normal brew day’s workflow, I saw an opportunity to have the li’l computer save a bit of effort by adding a sparge routine enabled after completing the mash-in. Just update the programmed liquor volume for sparging, and Audrey will calculate the rest. Pretty neat, if I do say so. I’ve “expertly” produced a video montage of Audrey in action. Seriously, I’m not too good at this video stuff….