Beargrass Brewing Company

www.freescale.com – The Make It Challenge featuring Kinetis MCUs is Freescale’s latest design contest. This design utilizes Freescale’s Kinetis K60 Tower System and FreeRTOS operating system. The craft beer industry grew 12 percent in 2010 and new operators tend come from a home brewing background. Dogfish Head brewing company was famously founded with a five-gallon system. This project explores the idea of a beer brewing appliance with the target market being home brewers and small brewpubs and restaurants. The sweet wort production process can be labor-intensive, requiring precise control of temperatures and transition times. A five-gallon home brew batch can take four to five hours to do manually with much of that waiting for water to heat up. This time and labor can be expensive for the small brewpub not reaping the benefits of economy of scale. The Kinetis Beer Brewing System automates the process from the initial filling of water to the beer being ready to be cooled and yeast added. The user only needs to add the ingredients, malt and hops, and download the recipe via the network to the system. Automating the brewing process allows the user to focus on recipe creation and benefit from the repeatability provided via precise computer control. The time freed from the manual process could be the difference in financial viability for a small scale brewer. The prototype uses cheap rapid construction to successfully test ideas on how to automate the process.