A Cool Sip of Solar-Powered Home Brew

Solar power is poised to become the Renaissance man of the energy industry, taking over for petroleum and dirty coal. Solar talents already include heating homes, heating water, creating electricity, cooling homes, cooking food, charging cell phones and lighting landscapes, to name a few. And now, at last, solar power has developed a talent sure to send it soaring into the annals of history: brewing beer.

And speaking of Renaissance men, how about former Princeton University molecular biologist-turned-solar brew master, Joseph Blair. His penchant for mad science combined with the dual American loves of craft beers and DIY has led Joe Blair to create the world’s first solar-powered home brew.

Blair is the owner of Princeton Homebrew in Trenton, New Jersey. He and his almost net-zero energy solar home brews were recently profiled in Philly Beer Scene Magazine. In that piece, Joe revealed to the world his revolutionary brewing technique: all homemade, all pure genius. It should be noted that Mr. Blair’s DIY solar endeavors begin with a radiant floor heating system powered by a slew of hoses zigzagging across the flat, black tar roof of his shop.

Brewing Solar-Powered Beer

Home brewing is nothing to shrug at. Even “grid-tied” brewing is relatively simple but difficult to get just right. Successful solar brewing using nothing but the sun is a whole other level of accomplishment. That process begins with some creative tool-making.

Tools of the Trade

Brewing beer is like cooking. That’s why brewers concoct “batches” of beer. To cook, you need heat, and to solar-cook, you need to concentrate sunlight to get that heat. Joe’s Macgyver-like solution to that challenge involves wood framing, casters and big-screen televisions. Those of you knowledgeable about concentrated solar power (CSP) will understand the concept behind Fresnel lenses. These lenses have thousands of tiny circular indentations in them. All indentations are strategically cut to concentrate light passing through the lens to either a single focal point (spot lens) or a single line of focal points (linear lens). It turns out those old, rear-projection televisions utilized Fresnel lenses.

With wood, lenses and casters, Joe Blair built rolling vertical stands with rotating frames containing a large Fresnel lens mounted on them. He can move and rotate these lenses around to properly capture and concentrate sunlight.

As you’ll see, mobility is vital to solar home brewing. Blair’s second invention is a wheelchair manipulated to act as a cooking surface on wheels. The seat has been ripped out and replaced with a solid slab, upon which sits a metal pot. In this pot, the grains and hops are “toasted” by Fresnel-focused sunlight, which can heat up to a whopping 800 degrees!

The third piece of the puzzle is a glass-front refrigerator; the kind you’ll see full of Rockstar energy drinks in your local mini-mart. This refrigerator has been painted black on all sides not including the glass front. The glass acts as a glazing, allowing sunlight to pass through it but not allowing heat to escape. The refrigerator is ideal because of the built-in insulation normally designed to keep cold in but in this case traps heat. Inside the refrigerator, which is on a hand cart so that it can be tilted at an angle, are two mirrors strategically placed to reflect light hitting the back of the unit to the center, where sits a black tank containing water to be solar-boiled for steeping the grains and boiling the hops.

Arithmetic

You can’t make solar home brew without a little math work. It is essential that the Fresnel lenses be accurately aligned with the sun to generate enough heat to toast the grains and hop, as well as boil the water that will eventually become beer. In Blair’s case, he uses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Solar Calculator, which enables anyone to locate exactly the sun’s position in the sky, including azimuth and elevation, for any point on the map.

Using these numbers, solar brewers like Joe Blair can figure exactly which direction and at what angle to position their Fresnel lenses.

To Heat, to Boil, to Brew

With all the preliminary work done, the brewing process is ready to begin. The job requires two Fresnel-mounted carts. The first is positioned to collect the sunlight and the wheelchair with metal pot on its slab is wheeled under the light. In the pot is a strainer that contains barley grains. Once under the magnified sunlight, the barley begins to smoke; in essence, it’s being solar-roasted. After the toasting is complete, the barley is quickly ground up and transferred to a cheese cloth.

Next, the hops are put in the strainer and toasted for a while. While all this toasting has been going on, the black kettle inside the black refrigerator has been bringing roughly six gallons of water to a boil. The barley grains, which have been ground and cheese-clothed, are set in the tank to steep. Once the hops are toasted and the water is boiling, the hops are added to the water and the mixture is allowed to boil for about an hour.

Finally, the tank is removed from the fridge and carried over to a nearby truck. Here is the final stretch of home-brewed innovation. The tank is set high on the truck and attached to a syphon. The recently boiled brew inside must be cooled rather quickly. So Blair designed a heat exchanger out of some copper tubing and a garden hose. The tubing was fed carefully through the hose. In this way, the “wort” is syphoned down from the tank through the tubing and into a fermentation tank, while cool water passes over it through the hose. The water absorbs the heat and the beer is quickly cooled as it drains.

The result is a very sweet home brew that has yet to ferment. And that is where the solar portion of the process ends. All that is left is for the wort to sit for about a week as yeast added to the tank will eat into that sugar and ignite the wonderful fermentation process that every day puts smiles on faces in brewpubs across the world.

Some craft breweries, like green-standout Sierra Nevada, use some solar power to brew their beer, but none are so inventive, innovative and solar-powerful as Joseph Blair of Princeton Homebrew. Thankfully, he was kind enough to share his methods with Philly Beer Scene and the world. Clean-energy junkies and home brewers alike should be inspired. I know I am.

Read about the original day of solar-powered brewing and watch a video of the festivities at BeerSceneMag.com.

Photo Credit: Philly Beer Scene

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Posted on November 11th in Solar Products by Dan.