Thread by @HundredthIdiot

I’m going to write about my friend who built this brewery in his barn. He’s my sort of person. Has his own little value system he lives by. He also built something really amazing. Not just the system, but the network of people who run it.

First off a Warning: I don’t know that much about beer stuff, so I apologize to people who rly know what they’re doing.

Anyway, the goal of this operation is to brew as much beer as possible as easily as possible so that we can hangout and have fun and not have to work.

What I know about beer:

You take hot water, add to grains, cook for a while, move it all to a different pot, boil it, add hops. Move to another big container and ferment it. Then you keg it, add CO2 and there you go. You got some beer.

ALL OF THIS IS SUPER HARD AND ANNOYING

There’s all these steps where you can screw the whole thing up by forgetting to sanitize things. So you are constantly cleaning stuff and washing stuff and lugging it around all of this nonsense.

So you wanna make more at once. But that just means you have to clean more stuff.

Now you also have to do all of this math on timing and grain mixes. You cant just kinda half-ass it, you have to know what’s going on and pay attention to things.

This is a big problem if you just wanna have a chill time with your friends.

So you wanna A U T O M A T E

First problem we have is getting hot water out to the barn. Used to use propane tanks to heat everything, but that gets HOT in the summer and even in the winter. Also means you can’t automate, cuz it’s $ to automate things like gas valves.

So welcome our friend electricity.

We can use a hot water heater element to heat a big tank. To do that efficiently you need a PID controller to vary the voltage to an outlet. So you just go on the ol youtube and watch Goerge’s videos. This guy is the best, his style of teaching is great.

So you do a bunch of wiring work and then you get a cool looking box like this when your’e done that you can use to automatically mess with electric stuff based on temperatures.

I’m not going to explain HERMS cuz i’m not that nerdy. But I do want to say how cool the chiller is. Without the chiller you’d have to wait like 2 hours to go from boiling to a temp to ferment for yeast (50-60F?). This takes it down to 10 min.

Basic system now:

HLT (Hot liquor tank): this is hot water, heated by PID controller. We set temp on controller to 170. It feathers the voltage to keep it dialed in. Top of pic.

Leads to Mash tun: You put grains in here + water to get sugar. Far left in pic.

Pump from MT to Boil kettle. Boil kettle is propane still, but you can get hot water from HLT above it with some valves. Then boil kettle has a pump that goes 2 ways: Through a chiller heat sync type thing or just out to fermenter or drain. Also the mash tun has a HERMS system.

So if you had some smaller pots you could just dump then into each other. But we don’t want small pots, we want big pots so we make more beer.

Enter first discipline: Moving water around. Pumps, valves, tubes. real satisfying stuff.

I’ll talk more about automation. But some stuff about my friend. He started this doing it as a hobby with another guy, just doing it on the stove top. But his training for this started long ago. My friend J grew up on a farm with a spirit of self reliance and tradition.

I’ll talk more about automation. But some stuff about my friend. He started this doing it as a hobby with another guy, just doing it on the stove top. But his training for this started long ago. My friend J grew up on a farm with a spirit of self reliance and tradition

He has an interesting value system that’s wrapped up in building things.

He doesn’t want to buy anything if he can help it. Not because he’s cheap, but because he’s not building just a normal structure. He’s building from life. He wants stories to be incorporated into this.

stories attached.

“Check this out, my buddy had a pine tree fall in his yard and he hired a mill to come out and saw boards. Look how beautiful this is!”

Stuff like that.

I think he also does it to add some interest to his life. Life’s more fun with a project and happenings.

Part of the fun of building this brewery is having your friends help.

Many nights were organized around “Build nights”. You come out and all tackle a chore for the night. Drink, smoke, talk. Create more stories.

And things get done at the end of it.

Build with things obtained through a relationship with someone. He wants them to know he’s building something. See something cool and bring it to him, or trade it from him.

The thick chunky boards were scrapped with a friend from an old barn, etc.

A brew night can run from 8PM - 2 AM. This is a great time slot, there’s times of action and down time.

The idea here, like I said is to automate. So you can crank some tunes, throw back mountains of cheap beer.

So we’re constantly scheming. How do we tweak the layout?

It helps to have a bunch of guys around when you’re doing this.

You want to validate what you’re doing.

“I’m goin to turn on Pump 1!’

“Pump 1? Valve Off, wait! I got it, Valve 1 on!”

“Pump 1 on!”

You want a bunch of double checking you. Spread the cognitive load.

So we hang around all night working, scrubbing pots, telling good stories, listening to other guys’ stories. Whatever.

You also get to learn a lot. It’s fascinating watching my friend work. He has an incredible eye for beauty. He wants things to look good, finished.

He’s also a great teacher. He’ll expect you to work, but not be upset if you screw up.

“It’s not worth doing if you’re not willing to do it twice.”

“I screw up all the time.”

You should value people like this.

So each brew night we write down in the ledger:

“Improvements since last brew:...”

“Improvements to make:...”

Then you get together another weekend and help out, build a little thing. Drop by a part, and it gets better and better. All through the power of male friendship.

We’re not really sure what the brewery is about. Is it about the beer? Sure, people can buy a keg if they know us. But really we want you to stop by and pick up a keg for a party and you pay with scrap wood or a new pump. Or a tool.

Each year things have gotten better.

“Do you remember last year when we couldn’t even grind grains? Look at us now, my brother gave me this motor and look how fas it is now!’

We spent a Saturday blowing in insulation together now we can brew in winter!

2020 was a big year. You see my friend started working from home like the rest of rural america. But he’s in his barn, looking at the brew system.

Thinking, coming up with ideas.

Then the stimmy check comes. Boom those shiny steel brew pots. We’re big time now.

It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane this year. Still being able to spend some time with other real life people. Solving problems in physical space.

There’s a dance when you do physical labor together. Everyone at maximum efficiency. You feel alive and good.

Late at night, under the barn light. We’ll admit what it’s really about before we drive home, J will say, “Aw, jeeze guys, I’m just thrilled anyone wants to come and hang out with me like this.”

And we’re all just as stunned that he shares it with us. /end

This thread got goofed at one point, I tried to fix it all up but it’s a bit incoherant now. Guess I need a substack for proper writing.