BrewBuddy Is A Home Brewer’s Best Friend

Whether coffee, tea, or beer is your jam, brewing is a delicate pas de deux of time and temperature. Proper brewing of any of these beverages can elevate the experience from average to amazing. With this in mind, [Marcelo] created a time and temperature tool to dial in his beer-brewing process.

BrewBuddy is a complex application-specific timer with an integrated thermometer. It lets him program time and temperature profiles for both the mashing process and the boiling process and store up to 10 steps for each. BrewBuddy doesn’t control the brewing temperature, but it does unify temperature-taking and time-marking into one convenient device that can last about 20 hours on a single CR2032.

The system is based on an STM32 and an LMT86 analog temperature sensor which has been modified to sit inside a stainless steel tube. There are four directional buttons to navigate through intuitive menus to set the desired times and temperatures. As each step completes, the status LED lights up and BrewBuddy waits for confirmation via button push before moving on to the next step. If there’s a problem, the timer can be paused and resumed using the up/down buttons. [Marcelo] is working to perfect the case design, but he already has the board files and firmware up on GitHub. Open up a cold one and check out the demo videos after the break.

After boiling and cooling comes fermentation, and that requires careful monitoring of the sugar content. Here’s a tool for that.

7 thoughts on “BrewBuddy Is A Home Brewer’s Best Friend

  1. Ever notice that once in a while that coffepot gives you an ungoshly excellent brew, but next day using same supply of fresh coffee grounds and water gives you something terrible? This was often discussed in the shop.

    We tinkered a small amount and found it was brew temp AND flow, and then temp sitting in the pot waiting to be consumed could preserve it or ruin it. Use of a simple bi-metallic temp control does not cut it. There was never time to perfect it, but perhaps those bits of info can help someone hack it up and get rich. And hope you do.

      1. saeco superautomatic espresso makers.

        every cup is identical. takes all the variation out of it. easy to maintain, the brew group comes out and rinses under water. REALLY well thought out. grinds just-in-time and just the amount needed.

        $400 or less as a refurb from seattle coffee (connection? forget the name of the place that sells those as refurbs).

        I went from a fully manual arduino-based (diy) silvia unit to this saeco and never looked back.

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