Home brewing beer can be an enjoyable hobby, however, it can also be very time consuming. The typical brewing time can range from 6–10 hours depending on the recipe and brewing equipment used during the process. Most of the time is spent setting up the equipment and transferring liquids. There are 5 basic steps in this process:
1. Mash: During this step grain is soaked in hot water with the goal of leaching the starches out of the grain.
2. Sparge: During this step the grain is rinsed of the starchy liquid (now called wort).
3. Boil: During this step the wort is heated to break down the starches into simple sugars.
4. Cooling: During this step the wort is cooled as quickly as possible to facilitate coagulation of proteins contributed from the grain in the mash step.
5. Fermentation: During this process yeast is added to the wort, and now the solution is called beer.
The expectations of the senior design team were to research, and design a system that would drastically reduce the time needed to produce home brewed beer. The senior design team required that the system must meet the following requirements: (1) Complete the brewing process without intervention from the user; (2) Provide real time data to the user; (3) Operate within defined safety limitations; (4) Keep the user updated with the process status; (5) Provide remote monitoring of the system.