Designing a temperature control system for a craft beer fermenter unit using Arduino UNO and Simulink- A budding entrepreneurs perspective

Abstract

Craft beer brewing is an up and coming entrepreneurship venture in South Africa. The emphasis on craft beer brewing is such that, financial institutions in South Africa predict a 35% growth in this sector in 2016 and a contribution of 18 million litres by 2017. This can be seen as an opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to enter the market. There are two major challenges for a budding craft beer brewer, firstly, ensuring precision temperature control of the wort during the fermentation process. Secondly, getting the right balance between cost of the brewing process and the quality of the product. This paper explores how to design a precision and flexible temperature control for the fermenter unit utilizing Arduino hardware and MATLAB/Simulink model. Results show that the using the technique described in this paper, the first of the challenges facing the budding brewer, that is controlling the temperature of the fermenter, was precision controlled. The model described in this paper was used in brewing a Speciality Monk Ale and came in 3rd place for best ale in the 2016 SAB Intervarsity-Brewing challenge. This paper, unfortunately does not do a cost analysis, but rather proposes a solution which can be deployed by any budding entrepreneur without the high initial investments usually needed for purchasing brewing equipment.