About

Welcome to Rooster’s Brewery.  I’ve dedicated this site to documenting each step of the build process for my all-electric HERMS Brewery.  My name is Jon, or Rooster by my friends, and I’m a structural engineer by trade.   As you can imagine, as part of being an engineer, I’m fascinated in how things go together and work.  As a kid, I would have been more likely to take a toy apart to see what’s on the inside, instead of playing with it.  Designing and building things is what I do; hell, sometimes figuring out how to build something and building it can be more interesting than the object itself.

One evening I started surfing the web to come up with a new idea for a project.   Somehow, ironically while drinking a beer, I started researching home brewing beer.  I was fascinated.  I’ve never researched the subject and I knew nothing about brewing beer.  I ended up on a site that described common brewing methods and the HERMS (heat exchange recirculating mash system) method caught my interest.  I wanted to build it.

I started researching how to set this up; control panels, brew kettles, chillers, pumps, heating elements and the list goes on and on.  Without even thinking of how much this project may add up financially, I started buying books and parts.   I eventually came across a site called www.theelectricbrewery.com.  It’s by a guy named Kal who’s an electrical engineer that spent the better of two years designing his HERMS system.  Lucky for me, and many home brewers across the world, he meticulously documented each and every step of the process so that others could build their own system.

This site is my journey through the build process.  I’m starting with the control panel and hopefully, in time, I’ll complete the setup and brew my first batch.  I think it’ll be an IPA.  Cheers!