When Sam Adams launched Utopia this year I got excited about trying to make a 28% stout.  After a ton of research I decided to go for Rum Raisin Imperial Stout that I call Robot Overlords.  The plan was to get a good part of the fermentation done in the fermentor and then finish in the rum barrel by adding maple syrup and honey.  As luck would have it the fermentation has stalled.  A friend of mine connected me with the brewing team at Sam Adam so I got some insight into their process.  One of the things I learned is they developed some sort of oxygen dosing system to help the yeast when the alcohol level got high.

My plan is to build a raspberry pi controlled oxygenation system.  The system is pretty simple:

I will write a little program that will turn the O2 on and off at some schedule.  When I first installed it I had it turning on and off on a regular basis and things really foamed up.  I adjusted the timing to 4 times a day for 1 minute each time, dropped in some distillers yeast and set it off to run.  I will also order 2 more shots of WLP099 as I don’t want to use too much distillers yeast.