Brewing with Electricity: The SOLIDWORKS Brewery: Starting our Mash

So we’re back it again and if you’ve been following along, we’ve managed to prepare our system and have progressed into the first real stage of making beer – the mashing process. This is where we slowly poured twelve pounds of grain into our mash kettle and patiently waited for the all the sugars to be extracted in order to create our wort. As this step is being carried out, the unforgettable aroma of steeped grains filled our nostrils. I for one enjoy this distinct smell. However, if you ask my wife, she doesn’t find it as pleasant as I do. More for me I guess…

This mashing phase can vary depending on the equipment and the recipe being used, but for our process, it took seventy-five minutes to be exact. During that time, you could imagine five grown men standing around the kitchen waiting impatiently to start the next step. As we watched the wort swirl around the kettle, it needed to be maintained at a precise temperature. If the kettle became too hot, the grains would release tannins, which produce off-flavors or bitterness into our wort. If the temperature dropped too low, we’d be making a beer flavored porridge instead.

So with the electric brewing system we used, we were able to simply set the required temperature on our panel, which in turn monitored the temperature and controlled the heating element inside our kettle. This makes life a heck of a lot easier during the brew process because you’re not fumbling around with handheld thermometers or stovetop heating elements.

But before we can simply set the temperature on our control panel, we needed to build a schematic so we could better understand how all the components were required to be wired up. And before we wired anything up, one of the first steps we needed to take as we built our schematics – was making sure we created the appropriate symbols. In Episode 3, we discuss the basic topic of creating a new symbol for our temperature modules that are inside the electrical panel.

So be sure to check out Episode 3 in our “Brewing with Electricity” mini-series where we start the mashing phase to create our wort and discuss the various methods of symbol creation within SOLIDWORKS Electrical.

If you are still looking for more great information on SOLIDWORKS Electrical including topics such as “How to create a template” or “Understanding Installations,” check out our videos on these more detailed topics at my.solidworks.com – simply search for Electric Brewery. You can also access past episodes by clicking on Episode 1 and Episode 2.

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