

Open Source Craft Brewery - innoying
http://twbrewing.com/who

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jbondeson
As homebrewer I love the idea, but unfortunately other than the Schottky
Pumpkin Ale, it's not very "open source" as they do not list percentages or
quantities on any of the grains they use. Even the Schottky doesn't mention
the batch size -- though you can reverse engineer it given the gravity but you
have to assume the efficiency.

Hopefully they go ahead and release more details on the other brews and make
it fully open source.

~~~
ohfunkyeah
One the of co-founders here (George). I totally agree with you here. One of
the challenges we have is just the pure amount of information a real business
has and the realities of getting that information shared. We piloted most of
the beers on a custom built 15 gallon system and in the future many new beers
maybe be "designed" on the bigger 15bbl system. The 15 gallon system is bigger
than most homebrewers use and going bidirectional from 5 gallon to 15 bbl is a
bit more complicated than just linearly scaling the recipes. I would like to
add a feature to the website that lets you choose the batch size but just need
to find the time to do it! Long story short we are still committed to being
open source and feel free to keep us honest on that front. If there are
particular things you interested in please don't hesitate to contact us
directly.

~~~
debaserab2
I'd be very interested in hearing about how you secured funding for the
brewhouse and the logistics that go into running a brewery startup much more
so than hearing about recipe design.

It seems like the overhead to get a brewery started is incredibly high and I'd
love to hear blog posts of how they were overcome much like many of the
internet startups do here on HN.

~~~
ryanhuff
The Brew Strong podcast had a series of episodes on the process of opening a
brewery, including regulatory, financing, etc.

[http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/Brew-
Strong/Page-4](http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/Brew-Strong/Page-4)

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ohfunkyeah
Co-Founder George Kellerman here. I lurk on hackernews a fair amount
(technically through hackurls.com) and just saw this post so that was pretty
cool. At the moment the majority of our "open sourceness" is provided in the
deep dive blog posts that we do
[http://twbrewing.com/blog](http://twbrewing.com/blog). We have a lot of work
ahead of us to be truly open but we do have a couple special projects in the
works to help that happen.

~~~
craigching
Excellent, you're open for business and I'm in the area :) I am a hacker and
an ex-homebrewer (but will be a homebrewer again when my kids are a bit older
and assuming I have the time ;) )

I'll definitely check you guys out! We're definitely getting some good craft
breweries in the Twin Cities!

~~~
ohfunkyeah
So many great craft breweries, it's really incredible. I live walking distance
to Dangerous Man, Indeed, and 612, have the day job near Fulton, make it a
point to get to Steel Toe, Harriet, and Flat Earth. I wish I could get out as
far as Excelsior and Lift Bridge more often. So many choices!

Make sure to introduce yourself sometime.

~~~
craigching
Steel Toe size 7 currently ranks as my favorite local brew :). I will be
there!

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deutronium
I always find with the clone beers I've made they're not really that similar
to the actual beer.

I think there's possibly a number of reasons for this. The yeast strain used
is highly important along with the fermentation temperature. The mash
temperature used is also very important (and whether it's a step mash).

I'd be interested to know other people's experiences with trying to clone
beers.

( As a little aside I'm working on a little opensource device for homebrewers
to measure specific gravity during fermentation
[http://hackaday.io/project/1231-Zymeter](http://hackaday.io/project/1231-Zymeter)
)

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imperialWicket
This is great, particularly based on some of the feedback in the comments. The
diagrams seem differ from the recipes in a few places, I assume these are
hardcoded at this stage?

Once you get things in order for batch size conversions and clean up
consistency, it would be neat to support efforts within the resulting
community. I'm sure these are on your radar, but things like batch challenges
(where others try their hands at brewing your recipe and blind taste test) and
community provided/selected batch modifications for limited runs could be a
lot of fun.

I'm looking forward to more posts as you move forward.

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beerdude
Check out this brewery in San Diego. They list all their homebrew recipes as
well. [http://moderntimesbeer.com/blog/open-source-
brewing](http://moderntimesbeer.com/blog/open-source-brewing)

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dfrey
Cool, but is it free as in beer?

