Whether coffee, tea, or beer is your jam, brewing is a delicate pas de deux of time and temperature. Proper brewing of any of these beverages can elevate the experience from average to amazing. With this in mind, [Marcelo] created a time and temperature tool to dial in his beer-brewing process.

BrewBuddy is a complex application-specific timer with an integrated thermometer. It lets him program time and temperature profiles for both the mashing process and the boiling process and store up to 10 steps for each. BrewBuddy doesn’t control the brewing temperature, but it does unify temperature-taking and time-marking into one convenient device that can last about 20 hours on a single CR2032.

The system is based on an STM32 and an LMT86 analog temperature sensor which has been modified to sit inside a stainless steel tube. There are four directional buttons to navigate through intuitive menus to set the desired times and temperatures. As each step completes, the status LED lights up and BrewBuddy waits for confirmation via button push before moving on to the next step. If there’s a problem, the timer can be paused and resumed using the up/down buttons. [Marcelo] is working to perfect the case design, but he already has the board files and firmware up on GitHub. Open up a cold one and check out the demo videos after the break.

After boiling and cooling comes fermentation, and that requires careful monitoring of the sugar content. Here’s a tool for that.