The PLC expands to monitor and control fermentation

I started wiring the solid state relays to be able to control both a heat and cool cycle in my fermenting fridge.

Deciding and buying a cheap case has been a bigger issue than the wiring, the local box stores only have a few choices and want too much money, and my budget is blown , so I stuck with an outlet box instead and used an extension topper box to make it deeper.





Still busy with the wiring, but the plan is to have two outlets that are independently controlled by the BCS, that way I can control both heat and cold on the same system for Winter or later in the season can control two separate cooling fermentation systems




Each outlet will also have an OFF switch as well as a signal neon light so that I will know when it is triggered.

First brew day with the BCS-460 Temp controller

The first full brew day on November 15th went without a single hitch, the sw was updated Friday night and wiring completed around midnight.

Here is the unit with ethernet connected (red) , output to the SSR (orange) and the two thermistors (white)




Adam has done a great job with the new additions to the sw, the frames are gone, additions include color buttons showing what outputs are active and what state they are in RED is ON, Green is OFF



I mashed in, aiming 3 deg below my real strike to see how the system would cope. It fired immediately and within 4 minutes had stabilized at 150 deg, I monitored both the output from the mash as well as the output from the RIMS heating chamber so that I did not scorch the wort. I never saw more than 3 deg difference.

Front temp probe is Mash out, behind is RIMS out


I chose to monitor both the mash tun output and the RIMS heater output to make sure I am not scorching the wort and also how close the temps are.

I verified the actual mash temp with a lab thermometer to be 100% sure.




I also used the new feature of being able to change the actual temp in the middle of a cycle, so changed from 150-152 after 45 minutes, it worked really easily, again did not did not see too much differential between Mash temp and RIMS heat output

The system is running a 1500watt element at 120volt AC. My system also has a hardwired interlock so that heating cannot work if the pump is not on, I can also switch heating off at any time with a manual switch (by same token I can forget to switch it on too []). The heating element is fired by a solid state relay which needs a 3-30 volt trigger from a controller. The BCS-460 provides this control voltage..

The mash stayed 100% within 1 deg the whole hour and switched off exactly at 60 minutes as programmed. The only missing part for me is an alarm (which was added in production sw) , so I used the Brewery Timer (which I also helped Beta)

Derek Meyn spent the morning with me checking that I made no mistakes, we brewed the Rittmeyer Kellerbier , my copy of the beer from the brewery I visited in Germany, I used Weyerman Pils Malt and 2% Munich with Spalt Hops - exactly what Alois used. The yeast is the only unknown , so used generic German Lager WLP830. We aimed for 12 Plato or 1.048 and got 1.049 with 83% eff, sparged to 13 gallons exactly and had just on 11.25 into fermenter at the end.

Once the brew day was finished I decided to do a cleaning cycle , and programmed the BCS to do a step mash during that. I used 3 gallons of PBW strike at 120, programmed it to step at 122 and hold once at temp for 10 minutes, then step to 150 and mash for 60 minutes.

Here is the back pic showing the unit on top of my existing control box and the SSR mounted on a heatsink below.




The steps took about 25-35 sec per degree, not too bad at all. I wrote it down but stupidly threw it out when cleaning up late last night, so don't have the empirical data I should have, I guess I had too many home brews yesterday.

A very successful first run with the device which worked perfectly. I intend to build a new SSR housing to use for Fermenting next, and will also use a DIN input next time to start the process - ie wont need the ethernet connected.

PLC for the brewery

Well it is the off season for hops growing and the fields stand empty at present , even though planning has started for March.

I have been busy in the brewery at least and I was lucky enough to be a tester for a new PLC temp controller.

I firstly had to understand the concepts of State Machine programming and it did not take too long - surprisingly as I haven't done anything like this since Uni, almost 25 years ago.

OK, so the unit arrived early November from Embedded Control Concepts and I experimented with the system dry for a few days proving my programming ability.
http://www.embeddedcontrolconcepts.com/ for more info.

The unit is packaged into a Black 6x4x1" Alu container

The I/O is all on one side - very neat for a beta box.

First out - the Ethernet port is self sensing , and even if directly connected does not require a cross over cable (I spent 30 minutes looking for the one I know I have and never found)
The system will auto fail to DHCP and self assign it's own IP address after 20 secs if directly connected.

I tried networking it through my wireless router and had no luck finding the assigned IP address, (I later found out the WIFI router has a table of all assigned addresses and I could have looked it up - DUH).

I had to force my Local Connection ethernet port to a fixed IP in the end, as the WIFI kept setting its IP config to same as WIFI. This issue we overcame during the beta. I will also attempt to look at connecting this to more than one PC to see how easy / difficult the first connection is. I later used a WIFI Print router to connect it remotely.

The external items needed and sold on the site are the Immersion temperature probe, 10K ohm NTC thermistor input. 6" (15 cm) or 4" (10cm) 304 SS stem and 1/4" NPT brass adapter with compression sleeve for adjustable insertion length. Accuracy of 0.2°C,
You will also need Solid State Relay's - rated for switching 15-40 amps, these are the ones that are switched with a 3-8v input
The system allows for 4 inputs and drives up to 6 outputs.

For my first test , I programmed a simple RIMS mash, and did a dry run, to confirm the parameters and switching of everything. A hot water test followed to confirm heating.

The gas control valve arrived in December , just need the pilot burner to be able to test that. I will use it with a temp probe to heat and keep to temperature the HLT water , both strike and later sparge water. This is still part of my testing regime for January.

So I have started programming for the day I can get the system to start on its own, firstly a delay till on, then gas valve will fire and HLT water will start to heat and keep its temp within 2 deg for strike water.
This means I can go to bed the night before after lighting the pilot light on the gas system and wake up with Strike water ready for me.
Next will be mash in (could do this automatically with a water valve), mash stirrer ON for 5 minutes, and then into mashing for 60 minutes and RIMS will take care of hitting and maintaining the mash temp. This program is what I have used for the last 4 brew days, which have all been very successful. The only issue I have had was an intermittent display problem where the timers stopped showing updates, they did keep working in the background and I discovered why the display had stopped.