Process Adjustments for Uniform Beer Making
A beer making system may adjust the beer making process based on the age and provenance of hops to achieve a designed flavor profile. Hops may be analyzed and packaged, with the analysis stored for recall by a beer making system. When the hops are used during beer making, compensations may be made to the recipe parameters to compensate for estimated changes in the hops performance. In one use case, hops may be analyzed and sealed into single-use packages, which may be subsequently used with an automated or semi-automated beer making machine. A database lookup may be performed at beer making to adjust a recipe to increase or decrease time, temperature, or other parameters of a beer making process.
1 . A wort making system comprising:
a wort manufacturing hardware system comprising a mechanism to boil liquid and a controllable system to cause a boil cycle to end;
a computer processor configured to:
receive a recipe, said recipe defining a boil time;
determine a default hops boil duration;
determine an adjusted hops boil duration, said adjusted hops boil duration being determined at least in part from a hops packaging date and a current date; and
cause said boil cycle to end after said adjusted hops boil duration, said adjusted hops boil duration starting when said hops charge is added to said liquid.
2 . The wort making system of claim 1 , said computer processor further configured to:
receive an identifier for said hops charge; and
determine said hops packaging date from said identifier.
3 . The wort making system of claim 2 , said computer processor further configured to:
calculate a time difference between said hops packaging date and said current date;
estimate a hops degradation based on said time difference; and
calculate said adjusted hops addition time based on said hops degradation.
4 . The wort making system of claim 1 , said computer processor further configured to:
receive an identifier for said hops charge;
transmit said identifier across a network; and
receive a message across said network.
5 . The wort making system of claim 4 , said message comprising said adjusted hops boil duration.
6 . The wort making system of claim 4 , said message comprising said hops packaging date.
7 . A wort recipe management system executable on a computer processor, said wort recipe management system configured to:
receive a recipe objective, said recipe objective comprising a bitterness objective and a first hops variety;
determine a starting hops performance characteristic based on a starting level of alpha acids for said first hops variety;
determine a maximum variance for said hops performance characteristic;
determine a boil cycle comprising a hops boil duration, said hops boil duration being determined from said bitterness objective, said starting hops performance characteristic, and said maximum variance; and
publish a recipe, said recipe comprising said boil cycle.
8 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 , said publish comprising transmitting said recipe to a wort making system.
9 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 , said publish comprising generating a human-readable version of said recipe.
10 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 further configured to:
determine said maximum variance by determining a maximum degradation of said hops performance characteristic over a maximum shelf life.
11 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 further configured to:
receive a starting recipe, said starting recipe comprising said recipe objective.
12 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 further configured to:
receive a starting recipe;
from said starting recipe, determine said recipe objective.
13 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 further configured to:
receive a taste variance, said taste variance being a change to said recipe objective;
determining a proposed change to said recipe based on said taste variance, said proposed change being a process parameter change;
determining that said proposed change is within said maximum variance; and
updating said recipe to include said process parameter change.
14 . The wort recipe management system of claim 7 further configured to:
receive a taste variance, said taste variance being a change to said recipe objective;
determining a proposed change to said recipe based on said taste variance, said proposed change being a process parameter change;
determining that said proposed change is outside said maximum variance; and
rejecting said proposed change.
15 . A wort making system comprising:
a wort manufacturing hardware comprising a system for boiling wort under processor control;
a user interface;
a processor configured to:
receive a recipe for an intended beer, said recipe comprising process parameters;
receive an analysis date for a hops charge;
determining an adjustment to said intended beer, said adjustment being a change to said process parameters compensating for degradation of said hops charge;
causing said recipe to be executed using said adjustment.
16 . The wort making system of claim 15 , said analysis date for said hops charge being received by reading a tag on a hops package.
17 . The wort making system of claim 16 , said tag being one of a group composed of:
a barcode;
a radio frequency identification tag; and
a nearfield communication tag.
18 . The wort making system of claim 15 , said process parameters comprising a boiling time for said hops charge.