There are many different approaches to the iSpindle and Joey Joe Joe Jr. has designed a version that is a little easier to get up and running. He also has a bunch of other open source projects he is working on over at his website Open Source Distilling. Today we dive in to all of his projects!
Links:
The Jeffery PCB iSpindle Board: https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/iSpindel_The_Jeffrey_2_0___Open_Source_Distilling.html
His Website: https://www.opensourcedistilling.com/
OSD Distilling’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFEumpLe7uO8K5Uq_pIbb2A
The website is now live! Check out more detailed show notes and images at https://homebrewingdiy.beer
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The Brew Bag: http://www.brewinabag.com/?aff=26
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Music:
Intro Music: SUNBIRDS by BOCrew (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/BOCrew/38854 Ft: THEDEEPR / THECORNER / feat : FORENSIC
Not enough Horsefeathers by Fireproof_Babies (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Fireproof_Babies/13115 Ft: duckett, kulimu
Paper Planes – Durden ft. Airtone by DURDEN (c) copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/DURDEN/55041 Ft: Airtone
Brewfather ad Music:
Kalte Ohren by Alex (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/59612 Ft: starfrosch & Jerry Spoon
Scrubber Duckys Ad Music:
Music:
Jeff II – Liquid Demons
Link to the song: https://youtu.be/UkRIKiBJ5Oc
Show Transcript
AI createdthere will be errors:
Colter Wilson: On today’s show, we’re talking to Joey, Joe, Joe jr of open source distilling. It’s a persona of sorts, considering he does distilling on the internet, doesn’t really want his name out there. That being said, he does do some pretty amazing open source projects, such as redesigning the board on the ice bundle and many others.
So we’re going to talk to him about all of them today on a homebrewing DIY.
And welcome back to homebrewing DIY, the podcast that takes on the do it yourself aspect of homebrewing gadgets, contraptions and parts. This show covers it all on today’s show. We’re talking with Joey, Joe, Joe jr of open source distilling. About his redesigned board for the ice spindle and many other projects that he has trying to build his new distillery from all open source tools.
A very, very cool project. But first, I’d like to thank our patrons over at Patrion. If you’d like to support the show monthly, just head over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing DIY. Any support that you give is going to help keep this show coming to you week after week. And I’d like to thank. Our two newest patrons, captain future, and I may be saying that wrong all the way from Germany.
And we also have Marcus as a new $1 patron level. I want to thank everyone who is giving us support, including our newest patrons. And remember, we have a special going on over@patrion.com and if you give it the $1 level today, until we only have five spots left, you’re going to get a special. Where you get a sticker and access to the ad free RSS feed.
Once we hit 20 patrons, that deal’s going away and we only have five people left, so hop on it now. Head over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing DIY. For those of you that have recently just given it the $5 level, I want to thank you as well. Just note that. Right now. I am waiting in transit for a thank you gift coming from our sponsors scrubber duckies.
They are currently on their way and a very, very excited to see what they send, but you’re going to get a pretty cool gift as well. So once again, head over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing DIY. Another way you can support the show is to head over to coffee.com that’s Kao dash FYI. Dot com forward slash homebrewing DIY, and if you want to just give a one time contribution, you could buy me a cup of coffee.
It’s a new service out there and we’re going to give it a try. So let me know what you think and hopefully we’ll see some contributions there come through as well. Another way to support the show is by writing us a review on Apple podcasts. If you’re listening to us right now from the Apple app, just open the app.
Swipe down to the bottom there and you can write us a review. Those reviews help others find the show elsewhere. You can head over to pod chaser.com if you’re not using Apple and you can write us a review there as well. Either way your reviews are heard and they help us improve the show. The last way that you can support the show is to head over to our website and use the sponsor links on our show.
For example, we have a brand new sponsor starting this week. We have the brew bag that’s brew in a bag.com they are an amazing product. I’ve been using this bag for my brew and a bag set up since 2016 and I can’t be more excited to have them as a sponsor. Seriously. I’ve had this bag since 2016 I’ve been using it for every batch of beer that I’ve brewed and it’s still going strong.
You can get hundreds of bat batches out of a single bag, and not only that, the quality is there. It has these really great handles for lifting the bag out of the wart, and it’s, it’s a really fine mesh, so you’re not getting a bunch of like. Particulate into your final boil. All I have to say is that when it comes to using this bag, I can’t advocate for it enough.
It’s a really, really great quality product and something that if you brew in a bag and you’re using a. 10 or $12 bag that you bought from Amazon or something like that. You want to really switch to the brew bag. This thing is definitely something you have to check out. They have sizes all the way from a Kegel.
To the coolers. If you mash in a cooler down to if you need one for like a mash and boil, they can do custom sizes. They can do hundreds of pounds of grain in a brew bag. They even have breweries that are using these bags. They are really great quality, so that’s brewing it back.com. Or even better, just head over to our website, homebrewing DIY dot ear and use the sponsor batter and let them know that we sent you one last announcement.
I’d like to talk about our may brewers round table. This isn’t a monthly event that we do. It’s really free for any of our listeners to join, and the idea is that we’re going to get one of our former guests or somebody who’s big in the home brewing world to join. Our listeners to really sit down and do a short discussion and a Q and a with all of our listeners.
It’s really meant to be a great learning experience and something to help you learn from some of the best people that we can find out in the world. This month, we’re going to have Rob desal. He is the author of a natural history of beer. He’s a PhD from Yale, and he’s also the curator of the American.
History museum in New York city. He traveled the world to write this book about beer, and it was a great experience. And if you go back and listen to episode 21 of the podcasts, you can have a chance to really dive into what we discussed. He’s going to give us an hour of his time to sit down and talk to all of our listeners.
That’s going to be on May 28th at 7:30 PM Eastern time. I’m in mountain time, so that’d be 5:30 PM that’s on a Thursday. Yeah. And you can just sign up on the website. If you head over to home brewing DIY dot ear and go under the events in the menu, you’ll see a link and a sign up form and we’ll get you invited to the round table.
I’m super excited about it. I hope that you want to join us. So once again, homebrewing diy.beer and click on the events page. Now to talk a bit about my brewing adventures. I last week had a pretty cool day. I knocked out a midweek batch. I used my neighbors mash and Boyle system. It was pretty cool to just hop out there, go electric, get rid of the propane burner.
I swear I’m going to go electric here soon. But it was, it was fun. And. Funny. I used my new fermentation chamber. I just threw an ink bird on it, got the tilt hydrometer in there. I actually set up a tilt PI to get the information into brew father, and it was really easy. Just get wet and imaged the the SD card.
For my raspberry PI. It immediately connected to the tilt and started getting data. And then I copied the link from brew. Father pasted it in there and it was up and running and I was logging data from my tilt hydrometer right. And brew father really easy. Aye. I’m surprised at actually how easy that was.
But that being said, I was testing out a small space heater for the heater in my new fermentation chamber. And funny, I use a plastic fermentor and it got a little too hot and kind of disfigured my fermentor a bit. Nothing too crazy. Like with my last fermenter where I melted a huge hole through my refrigerator and.
Basically started using caustic chemicals and had to toss a batch of beer. But once again, this is me talking about the mistakes that I make when I’m brewing. I feel like it’s just kind of a role I’ve been going on lately. That being said, the beer actually is turning out to be fine. I also on Sunday, knocked out a quick batch of Mead.
Pretty excited about this. Really simple recipe. I’m going with a straight meat, but I’m also going really a low ABV meat. I just, I got myself a 10 40 wart using three pounds of honey with two and a half gallons of water, and then I just got a mixed up, added a little yeast nutrient and got to go in it.
It’s actually just starting to really get takeoff on the fermentation today, but. Because it’s using honey, it’s going to dry out. It doesn’t stop at that like a 1.1 when you’re looking at 1.01 when you’re looking at a standard gravity measurement for beer, it gets all the way down there like wine. So you’ll get like 0.99 or 0.98 and so ends up at around being eight to eight and a half percent alcohol when all is said and done.
But the cool thing about doing a low ADV Mead is it’s got a really light body. And of. To kind of add more body to it. What I do is I throw it in a keg and I actually carbonate it and have it like champagne. It’s a really good time. I really like these light sparkling meats that I’ve made before.
Hopefully this one turns out as well. Well, let’s jump into today’s show. We’re going to talk today to Joey. Joe. Joe. Junior.
I’d like to welcome Joey, Joe, Joe jr from the YouTube channel. Open source distilling. Welcome to the show.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. I’m here to talk about some of my open source projects like the ice spindle, the automated reflux still, and some of the other ideas I kind of have in the pipeline.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I am also a huge fan of open source projects out there. I will say that I am right now recording this on a Mac, but the first about 10 episodes of this podcast were actually recorded on a hundred percent open source software software down to the operating system. And so I’m a big advocate for open source projects.
I’ve used them in my brewing for a long time, and. I’m actually super excited to have you on the show just because some of the projects that you’re working on are so cool and so out of the box, and so. Let, let’s just start, how did you get into open source software and open source projects in general?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, it kind of started with my, uh, YouTube channel and, uh, uh, you know, my channel is really kind of like a fresh perspective on, on distilling. So distilling kind of has its roots really based in, in these age old traditions. I think it’s Mount gay rum. Um. That distilleries like over 300 years old and they still carry on some of those traditions.
To this day,
Colter Wilson: I’ve actually been to that distillery, so really no way. Randomly.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it’s, um, it’s kind of cool that those traditions are carried on and you can have like. Of rum, for example, from 300 years ago, and kind of be transported back in time and you know, enjoy it. How, how it was all that.
But long time ago. But, um, it really started when I was doing these, uh, these sugar wash test with, uh, pH buffers and stuff. So when, when I make beer, I never really had to think about pH very much, but sugar washes. I mean, if you don’t put something in there to control the pH, it crashes and you’ll get a stuck fermentation.
So it’s doing these, uh, experiments. And I created a, it was like a sodium citrate pH buffer, which I’ve never seen anyone do before. And then I was using oyster shells and baking soda and like a control batch as well. But taking those, you know. Hydrometer readings every couple of days. It wastes a lot of product and it’s a big hassle.
And someone in the comments on YouTube actually brought the tilt and the ice spindle to my attention. And that kind of peaked my interest and, uh, led me down that road to actually go in and buy the stuff to, to make an ice spindle. And. Yeah.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I was going to say, well, I want to interrupt you there because, uh, there, there’s a lot to unpack.
And the first place I want to unpack is when, when speaking about your. PH buffer with a sugar wash. I don’t distill. So you got to kind of educate me. What, what? What is it that you’re trying to manage for in the pH? What’s the range? Why would it crash.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. So when I brewed beer, this, this was, I’m an old green beer brewer.
So pH was really never much of a concern. You know, I’d hop on like beer Smith and do up my recipe. You give me the pitch rates, lots of, you know, pitch rate calculators online and uh, you know, brewing beer. It just kind of always worked and I thought it would just kind of work the same way. With, with sugar wash wash, so you know, making like eight or 9% sugar wine.
But because it’s just, you know, granulated sugar, a bunch of empty calories, you add yeast to that and you know, you have to add use nutrient. There’s no nutrient in sugar. And if you just add that with no pH buffer. The, the pH, like immediately crashes after a few days. And once you hit a pH of around three, uh, you get to stop fermentation.
So, so it was kind of a surprise and it took a little bit to kind of figure out that it was the pH that that was doing it. And that led me down the road of, you know. It brought me kind of back to a college chemistry class and how would we control the pH in that situation? And it was really, the pH buffers is what you would make.
So I went to my beer closet and I just happened to have a whole bunch of, like a bag of citric acid from months ago. I forgot I even had it. And then, um. Hopped on lung line found, found out that it’s pretty common for people to make a sodium citrate buffer out of citric acid and sodium hydroxide. So I ended up doing that and, um.
It actually outperformed the other methods of oyster shells and baking soda actually turned out to be a bad choice that it somewhat inhibited a yeast performance initially, actually. So, you know, doing these experiments. So I was looking for. An easier way to collect the data because it is quite labor intensive.
And you know, over the course of a matter of weeks, taking these, these readings, every couple of days, 150 mils, you know, each time you check the, the gravity, it’s, it’s cumbersome and waste product and you know, it has to kind of be a better way.
Colter Wilson: And that’s where. The tilt hydrometer or the ice spindle step in because you can basically get a reading in real time.
Right?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: That’s right. And before I move on, um, pH four for sugar washes, it also has an effect on the flavor. So if you want a more flavorable flavorful spirit, they say you should, uh, try and ferment around a pH of four or five. And if you want a more neutral spirit, a shoot around five or six. So it is, you know.
I think the Steelers, uh, sometimes have this concept of, Oh, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to distill it anyways and kind of fix it up later. Um, so I’m trying to take that kind of beer, beer brewer approach to it, where we really started at best practices from the very beginning steps and kind of follow that all the way through.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I think that’s always a good approach, and you see that a lot where, especially in craft distilling, when when you see in the craft distiller market, they’re not just taking anything. They’re using actually malted barley to make whiskeys out of. Right. And they’re using higher quality ingredients, even though, yes, you’re distilling it at the end.
The idea is that if you have good practices all the way through, you’re gonna end up with a better product in the end. Right.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, yeah, so from there, uh, someone kind of, uh, brought that to my attention, the ice spindle, and I ordered my first circuit boards and threw them together. And for, I, I’m sure.
Yourself and many of your, your audience, they already know it when I spindle is, it’s an electronic hydrometer, right? That uploads fermentations, statistics, and um, there’s all sorts of. Yes, well, the whole scripture and, um, there’s a, a certain, um, kind of path you have to take to, to calibrate it. So there’s, one of the calibrations is, uh, 25 degrees and pure water.
And when I. Built my first, uh, ice spindle. Uh, it was 16 degrees and it wasn’t, they say you can do anywhere between 20 and 30 in pure water, and that’s, that’s probably okay. But when I built mine, it was 16, and there wasn’t a good way for me to. To adjust that to get to where it needed to be, you know, in that 20 to 30 degree range.
And I tried to add some weights to it and the amount of weight I had to add actually sank the ice Mendel, and I was just kind of thinking to myself, there must be a better way. So going back to the open source software and everything, uh, never designed a circuit board or anything like that my entire life.
But, uh, hopped on YouTube and there were these videos by Digi-Key on how to use key CAD, which is. Uh, open source CAD software for building circuit boards. And I just watched like those eight videos and I think I ordered my first I spindle circuit boards in, in August, and that’s the ones that I got that didn’t quite float right.
And then between that time, um, and learning how to use key cat and making my first circuit board, I had my first prototypes of my own board in my hand by like December. And I thought that just kind of blew my mind that all this software and all these resources. We’re just at our fingertips for free and you know, I’m not a super smart guy or whatever, right?
If I can figure it out. Uh, any, anybody can figure it out, but, uh, it’s just amazing that all this technology exists and it’s all just available to us. Uh, you know, free, free, free to use.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. Well, the big thing around open source is really the open source community, right? We’re, we’re coming together to solve a problem.
We’re all doing it for Domani. Right. Things like adding to software projects. It’s almost like. There’s a certain part of computing and as, and a certain part of these projects that have become. Almost kind of hippie-ish, right. It’s, it’s almost like we’re, we’re kind of in a place, at least in the computer world, where there’s a higher community built like that.
And don’t get me wrong, I work in tech. It is all about money for the side that I’m on, but when it comes to the non-proprietary side, they’re very anti-money and it’s kind of a, it’s kind of a cool community built around that.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. It’s a, you know, a breath of fresh air, right? That, that. This exists that, you know, Linux exists and all these fantastic open source softwares.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. And so when you got your, your new boards back that you had designed, what, what did you change?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, so there is, um, a number of things that, that I wanted to improve. And, and the first one was, was that, uh. Calibration and pure water, right? So, um, how I went about, uh, handling that, um, was, was really two mechanisms.
So the lithium ion battery is the heaviest part of the ice spindle. And, um. The, the, the first bill when, when I built it using someone else’s circuit board, uh, they used this, uh, the kind of like the industry standard Keystone battery holder and those things. Um. They’re kind of expensive for what they are.
I mean, there’s a chunk of plastic with a couple of metal contacts. So I wanted to build something with a movable, uh, battery that, you know, you could use that essentially as a counterweight to balance it and water. And then I also wanted to make it so you could buy cheap Chinese knockoff battery holders and, and use those as well.
So, um, that’s exactly what I did. I went with a surface mounted battery holder and the usually soldered to a pad. So, uh, what I did was I long gated that pad so you can install that battery, uh, anywhere along that path. And I put a little ruler there. So there’s basically battery positions that you can kind of use to, to dial in.
Uh, aside from that, through his, um. There was no place to add weights on the original circuit board that somebody else built. So I put a dedicated spot at the bottom. Uh, it’s perforated. Um, it’s a design, so you can fix the weights however you want, so you can take some, you know, poxy and glue it in. I use double sided tape, like really tape, um, you grab a needle and thread and sew them in.
If, uh, if you were so inclined,
Colter Wilson: what, what, what kind of weights? Or you’re talking about like small led weights? What are you w what are you. What are they?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, so the, the weights I use, um, they’re up on my, uh, releasing a video soon about the calibration of already filmed it and just editing it up. But they’re, um, just small nuts, uh, from, from home Depot.
So they’re really kind of thin and the waves somewhere just around three grams. And that’s enough to, um, decrease the, the tilt in water by about some, somewhere around 15 degrees. And then the ability to add weights along with the, the movable battery, uh, that. Should be enough to accommodate a battery of, of any weight.
And the problem I think people have sometimes is. They’re ordering all these materials from all these different vendors from all around the world. And, um, when you buy an electric component, you never know how much it’s gonna weigh, right? So when you order a battery online, they don’t really list the weight, or if you buy, uh, a gyroscope online, uh, often the weight’s just not going to be listed.
So the original circuit board. Um, that somebody else designed that, that works for a whole lot of people, but it didn’t work for me. And I found posts of other people online where they had the exact same issue. And I actually reached out to the circuit board designer and we had like back and forth and sent pictures back and forth.
And, you know, we weighed our batteries and stuff, but we couldn’t figure out what, what the difference was. So, um. No, I thought that that needed to be improved. And so that’s, that’s the initial thing that really made me, you know, got me motivated to create that circuit board.
Colter Wilson: Is that circuit board something I could buy on PCBs IO or something like that?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, it’s available. Um, so if you head over to my website, uh, opensource distilling.com. Forward slash ice spindle. There is a main landing page and, uh, it’s got a, you know, about the board design. It’s got schematics on the ice spindle. Um, it’s got a shopping list of all the components on Amazon and eBay, uh, and it’s got a link to a buy that circuit board off PCB way.
So some, some of the other things I’ve done, just to kind of tell you a little bit more about the circuit board was, um, I wanted it to really fit snugly inside the, the tube, the peddling, and, um, my circuit boards unique in a way that, uh, in the way that. It’s designed not to fit in the pet, uh, out of the box.
And it has three little tabs that you filed down to get like an absolute, a snug fit because, um, the ice spindle, it has a gyroscope, and after you calibrate everything, you don’t want anything moving on the inside. So that’s another thing I wanted to. To do, or another potential issue that, that I saw. And then, um, there is a 2.1 version coming out.
I actually, I’m looking at the, the prototypes. I, I have them and I’m just going to do a video release on the 2.1 version of the Jeffrey. It’s called a printed circuit board. And, um, the change in that, uh. Was for the lithium ion battery charger component. There was a couple of solder points and they were just really awkward to, to solder.
And, um, what I ended up doing was putting the, the holes in the circuit board. I just space them out and line them up with the component in such a way that, uh, the circuit board actually just holds those pins in place for you now with, with friction. So, you know, I’m really. I’ve assembled about 10 of these things and um, you know, each time I do it, I learn a little bit more and, uh, really wanted to make the ice spindle as cheap as possible and also just as easy to assemble as, as possible as well.
Colter Wilson: Yeah, I’ll admit, and I, I’m sure you haven’t listened to every episode of my podcast, and. I hope you have, but I doubt you have. Uh, and, and there’s an entire set of episodes where I’ve talked about my struggles with getting my ice spindle up and running, which has still not happened yet, cause I only had one circuit board and I’m currently still waiting for more to arrive.
Right. And so, and, and. Some of the struggles you’re talking about are exact things I had problems with. Uh, and it’s not just the standard things, like some people struggled to get it to flash. Some people struggle to, uh, get it to, uh, like you said, calibrate correctly. And so the ideas that I think I’ve had every single one of those problems through my, my process.
And so, you know, I’ve attempted, still haven’t got one running. That is going to change this year. I will get one running, but the idea is that, you know, yes, it is something where if we could get it to be a solution where out of the box you can buy whatever components are going to work for it and it just works.
It’s going to be a lot. It’s going to be a lot more approachable for the average person that wants to just make one. Right.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. And, um, another thing I’ve, I’ve been working with, um, two, two guys out in Montreal independently reached out to me and they just happened to be close to one. Another. One guy is from the electronics industry and, uh, he’s been part of like a ham radio kit for, for people that like ham radios.
And, um. Yeah, he wanted to put a kit together and uh, and distribute it. So I’m trying to, uh, to do that with him. And one of the things we, we ran into is the tubings, the pet lanes, uh, their European, uh, blanks for like soda bottles. And, um, there’s, as far as I know, there’s this one person on eBay selling this stuff and you know, if he gets hit by a bus or whatever.
The world’s supply will will end, but, um, we’re, we’re trying to essentially create like a North American version, uh, that would fit in a North American peddling and, and make it more accessible or lower that barrier of entry, uh, to, to North America as well.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. Uh, for example, I have tubes on their way and they take, they’re going to take months to get here.
That, you know, for example, the pandemic isn’t helping, but even then, it still takes a while to get those parts right.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. Yeah, they’re expensive. You gotta buy five of them. Um, and again, um, with, with a kit, um, you know, cause you’ve ordered parts online. When you buy switches, you buy like a pack of 20, and when you buy resistors it, you come in a pack of 10 and you have to buy a pack of five of the pet lings.
And you know, the story goes on and on. So being able to order just. Just enough product to build one or two of these things I think will help with that as well.
Colter Wilson: I agree. It’s not, I, in my brewery, I would need two tops. I have two fermenters. Why? Why would I need five? Right.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. And I don’t know. You don’t want to have to pool money together with your buddies and you know, all that kind of stuff.
So,
Colter Wilson: exactly. What other kind of open source projects are you working on right now?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. So the, the entire channel, uh, kind of went on a little bit of a tangent with the , but the channel was created, uh. With an open source project in mind about building a fully robotic reflux still, which is a vodka still.
So just like a pure making, pure ethanol, pure alcohol, um, on running, on open source technology, which would be, you know, typically, or do we notice and, and raspberry pies. So that is the ultimate goal of, of the YouTube channel and the website really. And, um. I’ve, I’ve think I’ve just about pooled enough resources together to, to, to start putting all that together, uh, shortly.
So, um, you know, this is, it’s going to be about, uh, putting temperature probes and, uh, having, um. Computer controlled, uh, heating elements. Uh, it’s going to be about, um, having, uh, stepper mortars, motors, uh, controlled needle valves. Um, if, if, uh, you’re. If you’re familiar with the I still, or the G still online, those are commercial stills, um, that are fully automated as well.
So that’s really the, the ultimate direction of, of the website and the YouTube channels. Well. So
Colter Wilson: what kind of software are you thinking you’re gonna use for that? Like for example, I know craft beer pie would be software people use for automating breweries for very similar things. Obviously distilling so much different process.
Is there a piece of software out there that’s made to do a reflux still.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Uh, not that I know of. I mean, there’s, um, I’ve written some software already. Um, I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but my, a little fermentor project, but, um. But know, fundamentally, running a still is a pretty, um, you’re basically babysitting it a lot.
Um, it’s sort of a slow process and it’s, it’s looking at temperatures and, and twisting knobs based on that and, you know, tasting and stuff along the way as well. But, uh, fundamentally it’s not a very. Difficult process. I suppose it’s, um, uh, you know, patience and waiting, I suppose is what I’d say. So we’re going to develop our own software, uh, proprietary software to, to run that open source software.
Colter Wilson: Okay. And then as far as the it, so you’re gonna develop a piece of software that will actually interface using these open source. Materials such as like Arduinos and raspberry pies to actually operate this still. And, and you’re going to use things like relay switches and those stepper motors to actually do the automation, right?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, that’s right. And, and I mean, talking about open source, uh, technology, just, um, you know, the idea is to have, or do we know, is really doing some of the grunt work around taking temperatures. And I’m having the raspberry PI. I really write that information into a, my SQL database type thing. And then, um, the, the, the software, uh, to like take the temperatures.
For example, you know, you go on get hub and there’s all these people that have written these, these libraries and whatnot, and done all the hard work already for, for everyone. So it’s almost like, um. You know, a lot of these pieces are already there and just need to kind of be put together and, and unified into a single project.
So that’s, um, that’s what all slowly and hopefully with, with the help of the community after I get the project rolling and people get excited about it, um. Hopefully people will want to come and help me with that and write little bits of the software, uh, you know, take ownership of little bits of it and, and, uh, and help out.
And, and there have been people that have already reached out and asked to, uh, to be part of it. So, um, once I get the still together a little bit more, um. Well, we’ll be hopefully collaborating with the community on that. That
Colter Wilson: sounds like a really cool project. And as that comes together, we’ll, we’ll definitely make sure we have you back onto the show.
Cause I think that as that comes together, it’s going to be a pretty Epic project in my mind.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. And, um. I guess I just feel like with the craft beer revolution, uh, years ago and, and the popularity of, of home brewing craft beer, um, I feel like that sort of thing is, is going to happen with, with home stealing.
I’ve, I think it’s just a little bit, you know, kind of behind, right. And there degree these. There’s the stuff we’re talking about that, that I’m talking about with my S my steel. I’m going to, I’m building that stuff already exists in the Homebrew world, right? There’s these open source solutions to beer brewing automation and fermentation and all that stuff.
So I’m really, I want to kind of, uh, take that leadership role in, in the home distilling space. You know, I come from a tech background, my in my day job, and really kind of. Guide home distilling in that same direction.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I, and, and you said that you wrote some software around a fermentor. What, why don’t we talk about what that project looked like.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. I haven’t really released the code. I did a quick video about it, but, um, I live, uh, in an apartment in a major city. So, um, I don’t have a ton of room. I don’t have a garage. I have a closet and I don’t have room for a secondary fermentation fridge. Like, um, before we moved, I had a. A really old ratty, a chest freezer that sat out on the patio and my girlfriend hated it.
And, um,
Colter Wilson: I have one of those. My wife hates it.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: I would, I wish I still had something like that. But, um, so what I came up with is I have this giant chest freezer in, in a closet, and, um, it’s got, it’s like a 10 tap Kuser. So there’s lots of room for kegs, but there’s just not room for another fridge. So what I came up with was I’m using raspberry pine to take the temperature of a fermentation, like a five or six gallon bucket, and then, um.
I came across a stainless steel coil at a local home brew shop. It was like on the top shelf in the back and I think they won like 20 bucks for it. It was all dusty and stuff and forgotten about. So I took that home and ransom some beer lines into a keg. I bought a USB powered pump. It was like an $8 very crappy pump off Amazon.
And, um. Hook that directly into the USB ports of the raspberry PI. And then I found some software online and it’s, um, what the software does is it tricks the raspberry PI into thinking that the voltage is too high on the USB ports and as a safety mechanism, uh, it, it shuts down power go into the USB ports.
So that running that bit of code, you can actually. Control the power of going to the USB ports, and because the pump is plugged into it, I can control the power to the pump. So the idea is taking cold water, kind of like a glycol system, cold water from my, my Keizer. You know, it’s sitting around like three and a half degrees Celsius, and then taking the temperature and the fermenter, and when it gets too warm, uh, circulating some of that cold water through a stainless steel coil that that sits inside the fermenter.
So, you know, all that code was, uh, taken from online, you know, open source, uh, shared code, taking that. And then, uh, I wrote my own code to create a log file. That log file feeds a CSV, and then, um, I have like a dashboard in Excel that just pulls data and graphs it onto an Excel, uh, cell graph. And then, uh, recently, I think it was a few weeks ago, I had kind of worked through some problems with, um, uh, electric spikes and my, my, uh, uh, home, you know, power grid or whatever you want to call it.
So, um, I started getting a couple airs and stuff, and, uh, I wrote some functionality, so I found a way to. You know, you can send an email right with, with a raspberry pie obviously, and, uh, found out you can send an email to your cell phone provider, uh, in such a way you can email your phone and it will turn that, uh, email message into a text message.
And, um, so I wrote some air handling to essentially give me a text message if. The fermentor turns off and stops working for whatever reason. So that was all kind of just, it was really a way for me to get my fingers into some Python coding and kind of get myself ready for, uh, for writing the actual code for, for the reflux still.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. And, and, you know, it’s funny is a lot of this is all done in Python, right. And it’s kind of funny that, uh, that, well, really what it is, is that when you go out and you look on things like get hub, they’re pretty much libraries already written for a lot of this stuff. And it’s kind of just bringing all those together, like to just work on one function and you can kind of get that right.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, um, yeah, I have the DSS, um. Uh, the temperature probe and I went on get hub, grabbed the library, and it makes it just so simple. You just feed the serial number in and you can grab the temperature very easily, right with without having to know anything of the inner working. So it really, really does make it make it super easy.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I, one of my first projects I ever did was, back in the day, back in 2014 was an Arduino project where I went and made temperature, humidity sensors for my house and put them all into a spreadsheet that ended up feeding into a dashboard. And it was all using open source libraries. And it was a project I did in a couple of days and was really fun.
And my wife thought I was crazy. But the idea is that it wasn’t hard to do. It just takes a little bit of understanding how to navigate right.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, yeah. And you can kind of piece it together, and there’s so many online forums and, um, people have this, uh. Just built in this, want to help you sometimes, right?
If you ask them a question on, you know, um, on any of the online forums, people just donate their time to kind of get you through and get you over those hurdles. Um, and another project, uh, that I’ll be working on eventually, I just ordered some, some lasers for it. But it’s, um, a triple beam balance kinda that you’d see in a high school science class from the nineties.
And it’s got like a plate on it. But, um, it’s going to be a scale that weighs a jar that’s filling up with. Alcohol from the still and whenever it gets full, it will tip the scale and that will cut a laser beam to a, um, a light sensor. And there’s going to be a little Arduino that will, um, send you a text message letting you know that the jar is full.
And that you got to go get up and change it over as well. So that’s something I’ll be working on. You know, little things like that.
Colter Wilson: You’re gonna be distilling from your couch
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: and you know, babysit still. I’m not saying you can have it fully automated. You’ve got to keep an eye on this stuff. I mean, it’s full of, yeah.
Solvent and explosive gas, but, you know, it’s nice having an electronic buddy that’s, that’s a second set of eyes on things. Right,
Colter Wilson: exactly. Yeah. And, and what are there, uh, I know that you’ve got a website, you’ve got a YouTube channel. What other kind of forums do you hang out on? Yeah,
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: I hit up the, the Firewater subreddit.
Um. People are very knowledgeable, a lot of old school distillers there that, that share all their experience and knowledge. Um, aside from that, you know, I post a little bit on, on Instagram here and there, but I’m not much of a social media guy. I mean, my personal Facebook, I probably log in once a month or something, but, uh, on Facebook, I’ll log in and share my videos there as well.
Colter Wilson: I, I’m glad you logged in. That’s how you got on the podcast. But I will admit that I sent you a message and it did take awhile.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. I’m still trying to keep trying to, uh, figure out why I’m not getting these email notifications so. Um, yeah, I’m a, I’m a tech guy and I can’t figure it out. It’s kind of funny.
Colter Wilson: You know what? I’m a tech guy and I can’t figure out Facebook’s notifications either. I think they make them complex on purpose so that they can just serve them up to you how they want to, but that’s, uh, that’s my own theory. I just don’t trust Facebook with anything.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Now. I don’t trust Facebook. That’s a mistake.
Colter Wilson: That is a mistake. Yeah. So, uh, you know, w w what’s, uh, so what are the, what’s the project you’re probably the most focused on right now? Right
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: now. So right now, uh, it’s all Ash spindle. Um, I really want to finish off all those instructional videos from, from beginning to end. Um, like, like I said, um, there’s a.
A couple of assembly videos with different circuit boards, including my, my circuit board, the Jeffrey, there’s, um, a video on how to load the firmware. There’s a video about, uh, offset calibration, uh, coming up. There’s going to be that video on balancing and 25 degrees water. And pure water. Um, there’s going to be a video on calibrating the battery voltage to the readout on the ice spindle.
And then there’s going to be the full on, uh, fermentation, uh, video where we, uh, do the calibration in a, uh, a real fermenting, uh, situation, right? So I’m going to take my sugar wash big readings, and we’ll go through and get the calibration for him yet formula, uh. Another video, we’ll be hooking it up to UV dots, which is a service that collects and graphs the data.
Uh, we’ll be looking at the TCP IP, uh, ice mingle server that runs on raspberry PI, and that’s like an inhouse, um, server that use a product called Grafana to graph from that, uh, my SQL database. So, um, and then, you know, some. Comparisons, like I just want to take after I get everything calibrated up, I just want to throw.
You know, five ice spindles in the same bucket and just see how well they tie into together. And so, you know, that, uh, that’s kind of my focus right now. Uh, as I kind of get every, all my ducks in a line for the reflux spill.
Colter Wilson: What would you say is your goal to have the reflux still out? If you said, Hey, on this date I want to be done with this project.
How, how, how long do you think you have.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Oh, man. Well, it depends how many of your viewers come in, come give me a hand. So it’s, it’s going to be, um, I have a lot of the hardware already. I mean, I have the, the solid state relays and the hardware to control the, the electric elements. Um, I’ve, I’ve got, you know, a big pile of a bunch of Arduinos and raspberry pies, and I mean, a, it’s really.
Going out and I got to build the, the, uh, the column and, and figure out a few of the metrics as well. Um, so let’s take a step back. Like I, I have a two inch, uh, reflux column right now, and the, the. Next still I’m building is going to be a three inch column and um, it doesn’t sound like a big difference going from a two inch to a three inch column, but how the math works out, the cross sectional area is actually twice as big, so it’s twice the still, but, um, I’m going to kind of chop up and, and do the first round of testing on my.
Well, my two inches still make all the mistakes on that still. And then once we figure everything out, make all the mistakes, we’re going to build the massive, uh, three inch column that is, is, it’s a still design I’ve never seen before. It’s meant for low ceilings, like distilling in an apartment setting and, uh, and, and build out that fully automated still at that time.
So what we’re going to start by. Using some Arduinos, putting a bunch of temperature probes everywhere and testing out some different packings inside the. The, the, the reflux column. So, um, when you’re, when you have a reflex column, there’s, there’s, uh, a surface, uh, there’s a packing that you put on the inside, and some people use like lava rocks.
I use this stuff from Russia. It’s called SPP spiral, charismatic packing. And it’s like a bunch of little. Uh, almost like Springs, but there’s a big debates in the, uh, home distilling space about what packing’s the best, and seeing like a video on YouTube of a guy that put like pastor in there. Uh, people use like scrubby pads and stuff.
So, uh, you know, I kind of want to figure some of that stuff out. Um. Using all the metrics from all those temperature probes and, and data logging before making that final jump to the big, the bigger three inch column.
Colter Wilson: That’s awesome. And let’s, let’s, uh, jump into, if I wanted to engage with you on your projects, maybe do some helping out or some learning.
Where would I find you.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. So you’d just come over to open source distilling.com and just hit me up on that, that contact page. Send me an email. All my social media stuff is on there, but emails is always the best way to to make direct contact with me.
Colter Wilson: Excellent. And as far as, uh, what we’ll do as well for those listening, if you had to the show notes, you will find a link to, uh, Joey, Joe, Joe Jr’s website, open source distilling.com and you can go over there and learn some more.
What’s the name of your YouTube channel as well?
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah, it’s open source. A distilling on, on YouTube as well.
Colter Wilson: Excellent. Well, Joe, I want to thank you for taking some time out of your day and your busy night to come and talk to me and be on the podcast. I really appreciate it and I’m excited to see what your new still’s going to look like.
It’s going to be quite the project.
Joey Joe Joe Jr.: Yeah. Thanks for having me on and look forward to coming back.
Colter Wilson: I’d like to thank Joey, Joe, Joe jr for taking the time to come on this week’s show. He’s a wealth of information and he’s working on some pretty cool projects. Just head over to opensource, distilling.com if you want to find out more information about his ice spindle projects and his open source still.
Also, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Just look for the handle at home brewing, DIY, and that’s it for this week. And we’ll see you next week on homebrewing DIY . .
