Next week I will be traveling to meet with Sam Calagione and his head brewmaster, Floris. I'll be traveling with the president and production engineer from a longtime customer, Sabco, to work on a new nano-brewery. We’ve built the control panels for Sabco’s Brew-Magic for many years but there is a need for a similar, but larger, brewing system to serve the booming craft brewing industry. This is what we’ll be working on next week. The really cool part is getting to work on it with Sam and Floris of The Discovery Channel’s Brewmasters program.

I work with machinery manufacturers on control system design and electrical control panel fabrication all the time but it's unusual to get to spend my day working with beer! Sabco is one of our very best customers and we’re grateful for the opportunity to work on another project.

We’re just beginning the design process but we anticipate using the new V1040 from Unitronics. This PLC with built-in 10.4″ touch-screen will be an economical way to get thermocouple inputs along with both analog and digital outputs. The high-resolution graphics will provide a great interface with the brewer, too.

The target customer is nano-breweries, craft breweries who need a pilot system and brewpubs who want to serve their own craft beer. The system will be capable of brewing 25-50 gallons at a time using RIMS methodology. It will have steam jacketed kettles and an electric boiler.

This should be fun. I'll keep up up-to-date as things progress…

Read more: http://www.ampsic.com/blog/?p=175#ixzz17iiiWCck