LINUX Unplugged - 400: The See Ya Next Tuesday

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

Old friends and new join us on a quest to celebrate four hundred episodes. Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar, Corry Clinton, Drew DeVore, and Graham Morrison.

Look at this. We got 37 people in the virtual lug. Imagine all of us in an actual room together doing a lug event. 37, 40 people? That's a little scary. Don't worry. Wes has homemade hand sanitizer. You can use it as a lotion. It's great stuff. We have just buckets of it. Almond scented.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 400. Hello, friends, and welcome into your weekly Linux Talk Show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. This special 400th episode of your Unplugged program is brought to you by a cloud guru. Learn by doing. They are the leader in hands-on learning. The only way to learn a new skill is by doing. That's why ACG provides hands-on labs, cloud Linux servers, and much more.

Get your hands cloudy at acloudguru.com. Welcome in, Mr. Payne. Congratulations. 400. We're finally here. It feels nice because not only do we have a lot planned for this episode, a very special episode, we have a fantastic showing in the virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello, hello. Hello.

Howdy. Whoa. Man, it is great to see a lot of you. We have some old friends in there that have spent a little time away, but made time special, carved out of their busy schedules to be here for the 400th episode. And I don't know about you, Wes, but I think I smell a little bacon. What? A little cheese bacon.

It can't be. Hey, Cheesy. Hello. Hello. Hey, guys. How's it going? Welcome back to the show, man. It's been a little lonely without you. Well, I miss you guys, too. It's been a little know, a little lonely without you. Well, I miss you guys, too. It's been a little bit of a hiatus, but yeah, I'm back now.

Well, you know, you have some news to share with the class. Some exciting news at that. Yeah, so recently, I guess this will make the third week. So far, I've recently moved over from ACG to work with System76 directly as a content producer for them. So I'll be doing product photography, videography, of course, content. Still working through exactly everything I'll be doing there, but I'm really excited about it. A great group of people. Excited to be working with them. Man, you know they're in Denver, not Texas, right? Yes, which means I have to relocate, which means I have to figure out how to consolidate 15 years' worth of crap

and move what I want to Denver and store what I can't move. Well, congratulations. Thanks, man. I think she's just out Linux jobbed you. I know, right? It's great. I'm super. System76 is such, if I were going to work for a company again, you know, it would probably, like, System76 would be one of the few the few on like a list of three companies that I'd consider. They're just a great, a great team over there.

So congratulations. Also, it's been a little bit since Ironic Badger, a.k.a. my co-host from the self-hosted podcast, Alex, has returned. Alex, welcome back to the show, man. Hello. Congratulations to Cheese on his fantastic new job, by the way. Good job, mate. Thanks, man. Well, also, a congratulations is due for you as well. You have some news to share.

Yeah, somebody should have stopped me, but I've had a kid. Congratulations. Alex is a daddy. That's really cool. He needed another project and boy, do you have one.

You thought podcasting wasn't enough, huh? Yeah, I'll tell you what, Wes. Project velocity has definitely decreased since you arrived. Well, it's just been reallocated to something well worth it. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a lot more long-term project. Yeah, it's a whole thing.

So thank you for the little nod. We have a huge turnout. Of course, Brent's there, too. Hello, Brent. Good to see you again. Well, hello. I have some little news, too. I'm moving near Denver as well. What? Congratulations!

I happen to get engaged, actually, and my fiancée is down there. So I might become half American. Look out. The JB family has grown a lot in the last year and change. has grown a lot in the last year and change. And it's interesting. It seems like there's some convergence happening on the Denver area because Drew, who couldn't be here today because of the day job, will also eventually be relocating to that area. GB Central Formation. Yeah. And Wes and I don't mind us a road trip to Denver.

No. No, we do not. When are we going to relocate, Chris? That's the question. I mean, I'm pretty much good to go. I think the kids are down too, so we just got to pick up the jacks and hit the road. But maybe we'll wait for the passes to clear a little bit.

I think where I'm going to be located is roughly 45 minutes north of where Brent will be. So I expect we'll be hanging out a lot more often. Also, there's like a really sweet flight from Paine Field here in Washington to Denver that is ridiculously cheap when you think about air travel. I just like the idea of thinking and conceiving of travel again. And you know, that was a huge limitation

for our 400th episode. If we could have done anything, no doubt about it, my preference would have been some big meetup where we have this experience in person. But that just, we're not there yet. That's just not an option. But we wanted to celebrate our 400th episode somehow. You know, this show started as the Linux Action Show Unplugged, launched in August 12, 2013. And episode one was too much choice,

classic topic about are there too many distros. Apparently the age-old question that's never been answered. Fast forward to episode 100, July 7th, 2015. Mr. Wes Payne joins me after a barbecue, which was a meetup. Yeah. Yeah. So celebrating the show's hundred milestones with meetups is kind of a tradition. Who would have thought I would still be here barbecuing at the studio?

We are barbecuing today. We are absolutely barbecuing today. We're making a whole day out of it. But since we didn't have that option, we still wanted to do something pretty different. You know, just really kind of have a different experience altogether. If you can imagine doing something for nearly eight years that is entirely digital. So we work our butts off every week and the end product is intangible. It's like a 30-meg MP3.

Yeah. And so it's years of collaborating together on creating something that we've never really had the tangible result for. And we thought, wouldn't it be awesome for us in our 400th episode to do kind of some sort of show prep that was hands-on, that was physical, that resulted in a physical object when we were done. And we've always wanted to do a episode dedicated to the topic, since really the early

days of the show, of using Linux to brew beer and make your beer even better. Yeah, I mean, we're, you know, beer is often a component that helps make this show better. So the reverse situation just makes sense, right? That's very true, right? I mean, we'll find out. And so we kind of stated this intention about over a month ago or something on the air. And several of you reached out, including a listener named Corey. And Corey seemed to really love an app called Beersmith.

Hey, I'm Corey. I love Beersmith. I've been using it for years. And his email kind of made us feel like maybe Beersmith was the route we should take. I mean, I even got so into it, I contacted the developer of it and started having a little chat with him. take. I mean, I even got so into it, I contacted the developer of it and started having a little chat with him. And so we thought, well, let's, if Corey's been using this for like a decade, let's call Corey up and talk to him about how we could use Beersmith on Linux to plan our special

beer. It's, you know, it's a fantastic tool. There's a lot of calculation that goes into producing a beer recipe. And there's a lot of online webpages and calculators that you can use, but Beersmith does a very nice job of integrating all of that and helping you plan your recipe to hit target alcohol volume, to hit target bitterness, to even hit target color of your beer. And it has a number of calculators that you can use as you're brewing the beer and as you're carbonating it. So it's incredibly useful. Sounds like, too, that you could use it to recreate a good beer. So if we really like this unplugged beer, we could reproduce it.

Absolutely. It has, you know, you can store your recipes. You can, you know, save as and fork your recipes, if you will. I have some recipes that I've been making iterations of for years. I do a barley wine, or at least had been after taking a hiatus, barley wine every year. And it seems to get stronger every year somehow. But I started from a basic recipe and just kind of modified it to make it work for me. And you can just keep different

versions or, you know, however you want. You suggested I contact Brad Smith, the author of Beersmith. So I emailed him and told him, you know, hey, we're doing a Linux podcast and we're brewing a beer for our show. And he wrote back and he told me that he'd started using Unix back in 85. He worked alongside people that were working on ARPANET back in the day, deploying SQL at the Air Force. He mentioned that he used Minix, that he has been

developing the next version of Beersmith and the web version all on Linux. And he uses Beersmith on Linux himself. Yeah. Isn't that great? No, it's really awesome. And he used Minix. That's, you know, wow. So, you know, Brad Smith is this really cool guy who's been doing this software for a long time. And he has he's really big in the homebrewing community. He has his podcast, which is sponsored

by his product, but he's not pushing his product in it. He's just talking about general brewing information, very active at conferences. I've never met him or spoke with him, but he seems like a really great guy. And for your use case, also on Linux, Beersmith been working just fine on Linux? It works great. I started using it probably 2012. I was on Linux Mint at the time. I googled what should my first distro be, and about the same as it is now, Linux Mint came up, and I used that for a while. It worked great. I think it was Beersmith 2 I was on.

And now I'm using it on Ubuntu Mate and it works great. The only thing that's not awesome is the dark mode is a little jinky. He doesn't have that fully implemented yet, but I could just change the theme from dark to light and boom, works great. Well, the theme from dark to light and boom, works great. Well, I got Beersmith installed and have been sort of poking around and you are not kidding. There is a lot in here, tons of tools, tons of options. Do you have any tips for actually getting started? Because I mean, we're kind of relearning how to brew beer and then also maybe

learning Beersmith. Sometimes it's almost like taking a dump truck to go grocery shopping. It has a lot on it. So what I would recommend for anybody starting out is start with a kit where they do all the planning for you and you can kind of see what goes into it. And you make the kit. You kind of get your rhythm down, your process down. And then you start looking at different recipes. You can get them from books. There's a ton of them online. Homebrew Talk is a very good online form that's been around forever.

And there's tons of recipes. And so you can start trying out some of those recipes. And then you can branch off to make the recipes taste the way you want. And part of this, when you start making beers, you tend to learn a lot about beer. You know, when I started out brewing beer, I knew, you know, there was like Bud Light, there was Guinness, and there were things that were different than those. And that was about all I knew. And you start learning about different beer flavors, how the malts interact, how the hops play into it, other than some beers have no hops and some beers have all the hops. And you get a bit of foundation of that when you're using other people's recipes and when you're using kits.

And then you start kind of figuring out on your own and making your own recipes. The beer I have now, I'm calling it Field Ward. It's a dodgy part of town outside of Waterdeep in D&D. It's an oatmeal stout, and I've formulated the recipe, and I'm quite happy with. I like that tip. We basically could learn from others by following others' recipes and getting these kits. It's sort of like training wheels for beer brewing because there's just so much to it. Yeah.

Well, the thing with brewing is this is one reason why a lot of engineering types are drawn to it because there's the creativity part where you're designing the recipe, but there's also a process. And the process is very important because you can have an amazing recipe, but if your process allows for contamination or if it allows for oxygenation when you don't want it, if it, you know, there's all these things that could happen or, you know, a bad fermentation temperature that could give you bad flavors. So even with the best recipe with the best ingredients with the highest quality water, if you don't have your process down, you could end up with a beer that tastes weird. So it's great to use, you know, some kits or other people's recipes to start out with and just kind of figure out your process and how to make that work for you.

Well, Corey, thank you. Thank you guys very much. The other great thing about Beersmith, of course, is that it's a desktop Linux application that makes a profit. And it's nice to see some of those as well. Mr. Bacon, you had a chance to play around with Beersmith, I know, in your beer past. Yeah. So previously, I would say maybe this was four and a half, five years ago. Another friend of mine, Chris, him and I would brew together and he turned me on to BrewSmith. And actually actually one of the ways we met is because we were talking about Linux and then brewing and then brew Smith kind of came up. One thing that I really love about it is that you can plan out your brew day

easily. So you basically can have a log of everything that you need to do, all of the gravity measurements that you need to take, where they need to be, what to do all of the gravity measurements that you need to take where they need to be what to do to offset that but i absolutely agree with the guest and in that you should start with a kit or start with some recipes that are already available out there there's a great one it's a left-hand brewing milk stout clone that's really easy to make. And I would also recommend maybe making like an ale

and maybe not a lager because generally you have to ferment those a little bit cooler. And so you have to watch out with your fermentation there. That's what I took away from our conversation is we needed a little bit of guidance

because Wes and I had both done this at different points, but we were part of a team and some others had done some key components. So we knew we needed some guidance. I'd never done this at different points, but we were part of a team and some others had done some key components. So we knew we needed some guidance. I'd never done it like entirely all myself. And then I opened up Beersmith, which is impressive.

But I mean, there's just so many options, so many different recipes. It was like, okay, I need a few fewer variables. Yeah, and we were thinking about building a pretty sophisticated brewing setup with a few different like components that would be running Linux, which we will get to in a bit. But, you know, there was, you were right. You're right, Jesus. Like we had, and it was a point that Corey made too,

we had to start somewhere that was defined because otherwise it just felt like just so many options. And we didn't want, we wanted to walk away with a beer that was better than what you could get in the store on average. because I think that's something that you can really appreciate is that homebrewing can often taste a lot better than what you buy. Well, even if it doesn't, it still tastes better because you made it. You made it, it's fresh. It tastes like pride. What's really cool about Beersmith is you can take it all the way to the level you want. So you can start with a kit where you basically just have extract, right? Which is all your grains that have been boiled down into this syrup that you do not want to get on anything because it is super sticky.

And then you add that to water. You bring it to a boil. But then you have all grain brewing, which is basically where you have all of the grains and you boil the grains together to make that same extract or that same base for your beer. That delicious, delicious base. So we put our heads together, you know, thanks to some help from Corey and a lot of good email that came in. And some chats that we had with people in Mumble,

like we kind of just brought all this information together. We were leeching off anyone who could give us tips, basically. And I think we came to a game plan, you know, because if you think about it, we also, we had only a couple of, only a few weeks to pull this off. We needed like minimum time to beer here, both for, you know, because if you think about it, we also, we had only a couple of, only a few weeks to pull this off. We needed, like, minimum time to be here, both for, you know, for episode planning reasons and for our

own tastes. Linode.com slash unplugged. Go there to get a $100 60-day credit towards your new account and, of course, support the show. I think one of the things I really appreciate about Linode and I appreciate about our audience when we get to some milestone like 400 is everybody gets it.

You guys understand that this is a small business, that we're working hard to pick good sponsors that we think are going to be really a hit for you. And you keep those sponsors happy by visiting our promo URLs like linode.com slash unplug because it's a signal that our audience responds and that we're a worthwhile investment for Linode. And that cycle has just sort of continued as we're now, you think about Jupyter Broadcasting, we're nearing like 13 years or something like that. I think that's like 50 years on the internet, right? I'm pretty sure it works like that. Yeah, I mean, remember when you started and there was Ogg files around? And that's why I'm not sitting here giving you a read about underwear.

I'm telling you about Linode, which is our cloud hosting provider. They're an independent cloud provider, and that matters more than ever these days. They started in 2003, and they have refined what they do down to excellence. And they make it easy to give your creations their own personal space on the Internet, no matter what skill level you're at. If you're an old server salt, or if you're brand new to it, they have a dashboard that's super easy to use and a technology stack that works with what you're comfortable with. Linode will help your ideas come to life on the web, if it's a personal website or the entire backend infrastructure for your point-of-sale application.

And they have hundreds of guides and tutorials, one-click application deployments that make all this stuff really easy to get up and go. Just go. Just go. Wes Payne's spinning up machines all the time for testing here on the show. Yeah, I just like to make you nervous. I get these email notifications. I love the email stuff they have set up too. Like, one of the ways I can tell that the peer tube has gotten a lot of traffic is I have some thresholds set up. So when it reaches a certain amount of transfer, I get an email. And it's like,

oh, we hit our milestone. And that's nice for the lazy admin when, like, you can mostly ignore it. But if something's happening, you know, and then you know, maybe you can go troubleshoot. It's a great first sign that something could be up to. They also have S3-compatible object storage, cloud firewalls, super fast networking, 11 data centers

worldwide, and much, much more. So go get started at Support the Show and get a $100 60-day credit. $100! I mean, you could really try all this stuff out, the different range of machines, all of it. You go to linode.com slash unplugged. That's the URL to go to to get that $100 60-day credit and to support the show. linode.com slash unplugged. I don't know if anyone else has heard of this application or framework called Cloud Run, but just digging around the nodes one clicks, I came across Cloud Run.

Cloud Run? Like C-L-O-D-R-O-N, Cloud Run. Okay, Cloud Run. It'll allow you to stand up basically one click installs for all your favorite things. So WordPress, Rocket Chat, NextCloud, GitHub, OpenVPN, basically anything you could want. And it's basically containers, right? They're wrapping these containers in there, but you manage it all from this one central hub. Really cool. Something I probably would have never found had I not just been digging around on the nodes one clicks.

Sweet. We'll put a link to that in the show notes, cloudron.io. So with our brew planned, Link to that in the show notes, cloudron.io. So with our brew planned, we were ready to start, but we realized we probably needed some help, and we realized we were going to have to move quick to get this ready for LUP 400, because what's the point of doing this if we don't have the physical thing by the 400th episode? That was the thing we wanted.

And we thought about it for a little bit. You know what would be kind of a cheat code is if we could learn off some experts. And so our first idea was to go to a local brewery and just sort of spend some time there. Then I realized that with COVID and all of that, they probably weren't going to be cool about a couple of jerks doing a podcast, calling up and asking to hang out in their brewery all day. It was dicey to start with, and now we have an extra hard sell. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. So we found a local brew your own beer shop, and that was, turns out, an ace's move, because they had smart people who could help us when we needed it, but were otherwise very hands

off. And of course, they had top of the line gear, which would have been quite the initial investment for us. So Wes and I are out here outside of Gallagher's Where You Brew in Edmonds, Washington. Are you ready to learn how to make beer, Wes? Oh, yeah. We figured we'd learn from the pros directly. And also drink beer while we make beer, because they serve beer here, too. Let's be honest. This sounds like a recipe for success.

And the nice thing was, is they were totally chill. They let us get in, kind of get acquainted with the space. And they also were really great about just giving us the crash course on some beer basics. But the yeast, the yeast will get up all the sugar, turn it on to CO2 and alcohol. After about a week, there'll be no sugar. So the yeast will fall out of suspension, right? After that happens, we'll take it back here to the cold room. This is a beer nursery. Go ahead. The afternoon cold room. Yeah, really. They had this perfect setup that we were going to

be totally taking advantage of. So we were pretty set, but we knew since we were drinking beer as we went, we'd probably need some brain backup, not to mention a designated driver. Sloppy idiots that we are. I think it's best that Adia do all the precise measuring out. What do you think, Chris? Definitely. Got to bring the wife in. Well, it did take precision, but at yeast it was fun. Yeah. She's always bringing in the puns, too. She insisted. Then we get to work, and we have a recipe that we've planned out. We've kind of run it past these guys. It's essentially a Belgium triple, but we wanted to make some modifications.

And like all professional brewers, we made those modifications at the absolute last minute. In what may prove to be our undoing, we've made a last minute recipe adjustment. After all of our planning, all of our considering, literally here at the last minute, we decided, well, let's change it up. So what do we do? It's a last minute malt swap. Turns out we had a lot of lager going into this already. Nine liters. We decided eight was probably enough. And instead we're sticking with, originally we had, we were called for one liter of wheat. That's up in to two.

That's right. Two fancy liters. After all that special planning, it was just sort of a whim. And I think it paid off. I think so. But the moment really came to Wes, like if you, if I were to think back of that day, there was one moment where you saved the day. Touch and go, Wes Payne just saved this thing from boiling over. He jumped up like an agile lion out of his seat and pulled the, what do you call this massive wizard staff that he's stirring with? It's the beer wand. He saved it with the beer wand. So now it's time to add the, what do you call this, massive wizard staff that he's stirring with? It's the beer wand.

He saved it with the beer wand. So now it's time to add the bittering agents. I mean, you got the boil just right. You added the bittering agents just right. I was getting a little too beer happy by that point. Well, it's hard when they sell delicious beer at the spot that you're making beer. But I mean, they had such incredible equipment and like steam power in this. So it really got up to a boil pretty quick, and it did almost boil over.

So, really, once I think you had the confidence of saving the brew like the gazelle that you are, I kind of, I felt like it empowered you, and you sort of went into full artisan mode. We've officially entered late-stage brewing, and the craftsman in West Payne is really emerging. Tell us about the special care you're taking. Well, it's really important that we infuse as much cracked coriander and orange peel in here as we can. That's what makes it so tasty. I mean, you really, you know, you took charge, you really made it special. And so I think you earned the final honor of releasing it and storing it. Our time has arrived. It is time to transfer it to the primary fermenter. Wes Payne will be in charge of the transfer valve. It is a responsibility like no other.

Wes has flipped the warp valve and now our beer is going down a series of tubes and into what can only be described as a vessel, a sacred vessel that will hold our beer is going down a series of tubes and into what can only be described as a vessel, a sacred vessel that will hold our beer. Here it goes, Wes. Here goes our beer. Cool. Look at it flow. That is pretty great.

You can watch it drain right out of the kettle. From the kettle into the storage. And then we come back in two weeks and we bottle. From the kettle into the storage. And then we come back in two weeks and we bottle. It felt kind of like somewhat anticlimactic to walk away because then you don't know what's going to happen. Like, did we mess something up? That last minute tweaking?

Did we drink too many beers? Only time would tell. We had to wait. Yeah. And so it was indeed a bit of a wait. But we will get back to that. We had lessons to learn in the meantime, but before I get to those, I want to say hello to Drew, who's making a last-minute appearance. Hey, Drew.

Hey, guys. I leave for, what, like six months, and you're out here brewing beer? Good Lord. Hello, hello, sir. How are you? It's good to hear from you. Doing well, doing well. I didn't want to miss episode 400.

Well, we appreciate you being here. You know, I was just telling everybody earlier that we felt like for 400, we wanted something tangible. You know, you work on something for like almost eight years and it's always a virtual product.

It was nice to do something that, you know, we could sit here and actually hold in our hands. It's all empowering. I think you know what I mean. I sure do. I sure do. And I hope you save me a bottle

for the next time I'm out there. Oh, you know it. You know it. Yeah, that's absolutely happening. Yeah. So don't you worry about that. In fact, I have more on that in a little bit. But we figured we'd spend the time while we waited for our beer, anticipating what would happen next, learning how to take this to the next level. Because I think even before we were done, you and I agreed we were enjoying this. Yeah, we were having a good time. And sure, even before we were done, you and I agreed we were enjoying this. Yeah, we were having a good time. And sure, yeah, we kind of pressed the easy button to start out with, but we liked learning about this.

There was more to learn and we were interested. And the entire time when we were like using their equipment, we were like, okay, if we were doing this at the studio or something, how would we do this? And we would like look up gear on YouTube or online and kind of like look at equivalents that we could use. And the guys at Gallagher's were really cool about saying, okay, if you're doing this at home, you would do it this way. And so that was really handy to kind of help us picture what it might be like if we wanted to keep doing this and maybe brew some beer on a more

regular cadence. So we put our heads together and thought, if we're going to do this long term, we need some tips from a pro. And so we caught up with Late Night Linux's Graham Morrison, who has a full Linux-powered, full-timers brewing setup. So Graham, before we go too far, could you describe to us your current brew setup? So my current brew setup is that I use a closed fermentation system to basically turn the wort into alcohol beer. And then I transfer that under pressure to a corny keg when it's ready to basically drink. It's almost ready to drink after that. So it can take 10 days, two weeks, which is a lot quicker than bottling. I was surprised by that. I didn't, I guess I thought part of the

brewing process involved putting it in the bottle and then having it sit in the bottle for a couple of weeks. That actually improves the beer. Certain beers, kind of Belgian beers are very, very strong beers or beers that take some time to mature or their flavors to mellow can really benefit from being in a bottle. That's interesting, Wes. We should take note of that. But it's a lot more hassle. You have to clean the bottles. You have to individually prime them for carbonation. And you have to then transfer the beer to each bottle, which almost, so you may even have to transfer from the fermentation bin to a secondary fermentation bin to clear,

to let all the trube leave at the bottom of the first bin. Whereas transferring under pressure from the fermentation vessel to a corny keg is a single step process and you only have to clean the corny keg and it carbonates and you can adjust how much carbonation you want, which for me is important. That is a good tip. So what I like about your setup is it feels to me kind of getting into this again for the first time. I feel like I'm totally starting over. And your setup feels to me like it's, I don't know about a long-term or setup, but it's sort of like lessons learned have gone into creating something that lets you just brew beer whenever the fancy strikes you.

How does Linux play a role in that? I used to brew beer with just a fermentation bin under the stairs, you know, at house temperature, basically. Yeah, that's what I'm familiar with. Yeah, and the quality is like, I don't know, can I say it's like a 1970s porn film of beer? I mean, some people have a, you know, a thing for that. Yeah, and it's fine, but it just makes me think of rainy caravan holidays right whereas what really made the difference what like the quality increased like a thousand

percent was when i controlled the temperature of the fermentation process exactly which is where the yeast is doing all its work and the yeast has to work at this optimum temperature and to control the temperature i basically used in the temperature, I basically used, in the beginning, it was this open source project called BrewPi, which actually ran on a little bit of firmware running on an Arduino Uno that actually did, if you're familiar with PID, like PID controlling, I think it's like proportional integral derivatives. And they basically, one sensor measures the temperature, and then a couple of relays either turn on heating or they turn on cooling. And the PID part is the fact that because this big volume of liquid,

it can anticipate temperature changes according to environmental conditions. So you get within a tenth of a degree accuracy of temperature controlling. So you can basically, with the BrewPi, with the Raspberry Pi and an Arduino, control exactly the temperature of the fermentation process and monitor it. So it's pulling in like a weather API feed to monitor that? The original BrewPi did it all on its own. It was this self-contained unit. It's since been, BrewPi actually was so successful as this individual project, they spun it into a business and they sell their kind of bespoke hardware and closed source firmware now but the platform was popular enough to be integrated into something called firman track

which is uh an open source project that integrates a lot of that old open source uh brew pie software and to work with the same hardware. And more importantly, actually work with like what the ESP8266 devices, tiny micro low cost microcontrollers and expands it. It dumps PHP and makes it all modern REST framework. So that all operates over a REST API, which you can integrate with Home Assistant or you can push to the cloud, do whatever you want. But it's basically the same PID algorithm that's controlling the temperature of the fermentation. Wow. I got to just sit with that for a moment. A REST API for brewing beer.

Yeah. So it really sounds like what I'm getting from what you've kind of described is that controlling that temperature is the secret to unlocking delicious, great home beer versus beer that's okay. Yeah, it really is. There are some yeasts that a yeast will have an ideal temperature. In centigrade, it could be like 21 degrees. And you might even start low. With a good pilsner, you might start at 18 degrees C.

And then after a couple of days, ramp it up to 22 and then drop it. You might cold crash when there's no sign of any further fermentation. And you can check the amount of fermentation that's going on with something called like an ice spindle, which is it's not quite open source, but it's a DIY project where the firmware can be downloaded and installed. The code is accessible, but it has one of those weird licenses attached to it so they can try and make money off it. Sure, you gotta. Have you experimented or done any kind of visualization or graphing of the temperatures over time just so you have something to look at data-wise? Yeah, so Furman Track does exactly this. So there's usually two or three sensors involved, and these are really simple 50-cent sensors.

They use the one-wire protocol. They do nothing extraordinary other than report the temperature. There's one for inside the beer. So you normally use a fermentation bin with what's called a thermowell, which is like a cylinder you put straight into the beer, and then the sensor goes right into the middle of the beer, so you get the exact temperature inside the beer. But you can also use the temperature on the eye spindle, which can sit inside the beer. That into the middle of the beer so you get the exact temperature inside the beer but you can also use the temperature on the eye spindle which can sit inside the beer

that's the temperature of the beer then there's a temperature inside usually use an old refrigerator so you put the fermentation bin inside the refrigerator and so you get the temperature inside that and then a temperature of the room the the environment outside that. Those three temperatures together are mulched in the algorithm to control the temperature of the brew. That is fancy. Mulched. That is so great. Yeah. And it turns that I put a little heater in the fridge. This is all that I've done, is there's two relays. So a relay with a simple five volt signal from the Arduino will turn on something or turn off something two relays so

one turns on the refrigeration the other one turns on the heating element which is just well in the uk you get them for like summer houses or greenhouses it's a small low cost thing you can bolt to the bottom of the fridge and so all of that sorry to answer your question in in firman track and in brusilla before it you can see all of that in a chart to monitor exactly all the temperatures, how things are going, and also put on top of that the gravity of the beer. So how well it's actually fermenting, how strong it's fermenting and the alcohol content of the beer as you go through it. And then when that starts to flatline, you know, then you can dry hops the beer if you're going to do that, or you can transfer it to bottles or a keg. All right. So then I have really kind of one really ultimate question. So looking back at

the last decade or so of homebrewing, all of these different things that you can do, features you could do, what has helped the most? And like, what would you tell past Graham if you could, you know, like what advice can you pass along to us? The thing that's really made a difference, I think, with lots of things is the quality of the ingredients. So the wort kits that you can get, you can buy them separate with the malt extract and with the kind of boiled down wort. Don't kind of skimp money on those kits if you're going to do it. And of course, if you're going to mash, brew and mash your own beer even better that's like the first step get that right follow the instructions for the yeast because that's really important and then really bottle the stuff that's really important that's going to keep

that you want to kind of come back to but otherwise the keg was the big innovation for me because it speeds up you can set carbonation exactly as you want it. You can speed up the fermentation under pressure. So I brew everything under pressure. I like that tip. That does seem like a good one. I wrote, I actually wrote that one down on an actual piece of paper. I'm like, I got to make a note and talk to Wes about that. So looking back at it, do you have a favorite go to beer that you brew? Well, i actually got into this um after going to portland in the us and really getting yeah really getting hooked you know there's got an amazing beer scene yeah i've really got to taste that hoppy kind of west coast portland ipa um and in

the uk you just couldn't get it but i could buy the the work kits uh i could ferment them here and i could bottle them here. And it was as close as I could get to getting a pint of those Westcote IPAs on tap here in the UK. And that's what really got me into it. And so I still really love going back to them. But right at the moment, I've got a New Zealand Pilsner, which is perfect as well. I'm really enjoying it. And the nice thing is you can change and it's a bit like being at the pub while the pubs are closed. Indeed, you're exploring the world while you can't travel through beer. Yeah, I love it. Graham, thank you. No problem.

I want to tell you about a special course from our friends at A Cloud Guru. We will have a link in the show notes. It is the SUSE Linux Enterprise Admin Review and Exam Prep. Is it time to become a SUSE Certified Administrator? Well, they have the prep course for you. It'll get you ready for the exam and final exam courses, and they have all the information you need to become prepared to get certified. Exam prep courses are designed to be a review of the content from each of the courses preceding it to get you really kind of just set on the important points, tips, and areas that will be an issue for an exam in particular.

That's what these are kind of tooled for, including even how to register and go get the final exam and all of that. It's all covered. We'll have a link in the show notes to the course for our cloud gurus, Seuss Linux Enterprise Admin Review and Exam Prep. Graham has such an awesome setup. After listening to that, I was like, yeah, we're definitely

going to be following some of this advice. It was really nice to get his decades perspective on how to do this right. Yes, and I think he's hit a nice kind of sweet spot where it's, you know, you can, much like with audio, you can kind of invest as much as you want in beer brewing equipment, it seems. But we don't really need to do that or have the space at the studio. So finding the like dialed in setup that just works, gets good quality beer,

but doesn't have to go crazy all out with like six different containers and systems and setups and transfers. That's what we were looking for. Yeah. So, you know, time passed. We let about three weeks go because we, you know, we were planning ahead for LUP 400, but we didn't have a lot of time. And so we really didn't know how things were going to be. So Saturday came rolling along, and we showed back up at Gallagher's in Edmonds, Washington. Hello, Wes. It's been three weeks.

Been three weeks. Here you go. We got you a beverage, I guess. Look at that. Yeah. A beverage. That's colorful three weeks. Been three weeks. Here you go. We got you a beverage, I guess. Look at that. Yeah. A beverage. That's colorful.

Looks tasty. Clementine. Probably should have something besides beer today. I suppose that's true. And once we got in there, we knew, like, some things we were just so grateful were already set up. Like their whole bottle washing system. Wow. Very nice.

Made it way simpler to get up and get going. I'm going to get these started washing. If you guys get those going over here, I'll bring you some more bottles out as well. Alright, thank you. I was doing the math last night. It seemed like we were close, but I wasn't sure how many bottles we had. All I can think about is we got kegs. I'm so glad we got kegs. Me too.

Why? Because it'll make this so much easier? Well, yeah, and then, like, we have, like, kegs. Boy, did it make it easier. I mean, we didn't even have to fill the kegs ourselves. They just did it for us. I don't know if we would have thought of that if Graham hadn't said something. But one of the advantages of using Gallagher's really rad setup is we could dial in the carbonation in a way that we wouldn't have been able to do with a newbie setup. We're trying it out for the first time before we bottle and keg it, and I want to get Wes's first impressions.

Smooth. There's definitely booze in there. And it's tasty. I think we decided it needs a little more carbonation, maybe. But other than that... I like it. I like it a lot. I think once we get a little more carbonation, it'll be perfect. But the flavor, the color... It's a beautiful beer. Look at that. Golden. It takes the light well, lights up the glass. I got to snap a picture of the first look at this beer. And with the help of their brewmaster, who kind of encouraged us to dial it up just a little bit more, happened to be a Belgian fan

himself. Yeah, we did it. We took the plunge. It doesn't look any more bubbly. So we're not going by appearance. We're going for that bite on the tongue right this thing minimizes the amount of like turbulence that it gets so yeah you won't be able to see the bunch of the foam there all right there you go let's give the updated version a try cheers wes cheers and they had such a they had such a nice system because they what was like a carbonation stone they use yeah they had a way to just force carbonate it so you could dial it up as you want, right? Like, oh, you need a little more carbonation? Add a little bit more, they'd just run it right back through the system, and in, I don't know, five minutes we could test it again.

Yeah, and we did. Once we had it dialed in, first thing was to get the kegs filled up, and then we got to play with their super cool, like, beer wand to fill our bottles. So we're about to bottle, and we're benefiting from this cool, like, beer gun that they have. Yeah, it's hooked up to the CO2. It's carbonated. You can purge the oxygen from the bottle before you put any beer there to protect our precious brew. But surely one of us is going to make a mistake.

Yep. Now it's just a matter of putting beer in bottles. So let's get to work. And we did. Nice. We kind of came up with a system so let's get to work. And we did. Nice. We kind of came up with a system, like we traded off, on and off. You know, you filled it for a little while, then I filled it for a little while, we would trade off from the box. It worked really well because they have everything plumbed.

And so they had a sink there and towels there. That, I think, was the biggest experience difference for me. It's like it's no longer me having to make a siphon and spilling beer all over the kitchen. It was just beer into bottles. I don't think we spilled at all. A drop. No, I was really proud of us. It saved all of that beer for us to drink later.

And after slowly filling our bottles, which we got these swing top style bottles, we heard the most rewarding sound. style bottles, we heard the most rewarding sound. That right there is the end of our batch. We nailed it perfectly. Two kegs, we got 27 bottles, and we ended up filling 26 because we drank a little bit of it. Like, more than a little. Can you believe, though, we nailed it just right? And we did not plan this at all. That's pretty great. I mean, you did the math, but let's be honest, you're more like Python hacking. So this is perfect. We brought exactly what we can carry out, and it's just the right amount.

Two kegs, 27 bottles later, or I guess 25 bottles. So we, you know, we had a margin for safety. Now what we thought is we need to come up with a label and stuff for it. But now we've had a couple of days to try it out or let it sit. It's been sitting in the bottles. And I think a Belgium does kind of, you know, it benefits from sitting in the bottles a little bit. So you want to do your first on airs? Oh, yeah.

Let's try this. So here, Wes. Here's cheers to 400 more episodes. And let's give it a try. here's cheers to 400 more episodes and uh let's give it a try that tastes like delicious pride i mean it's legitimately a very delicious beer it's something like 8.5 alcohol by volume but because of i think dialing up the carbonation that you don't taste it that much no but it's not too too carbonated it's just easy to drink not too carbonated at all which was so to drink. Not too carbonated at all, which was so great about it,

because I was a little worried we might have overdone it, but absolutely not. I've done that in past beers, so yeah, I was a little worried too. And it's not too strong. It's not crazy malty. It's just a nice, tasty, balanced beer. I really, really like it. Now, we each have a keg, so that's great, because we had two kegs, and we have some bottles that we're going to be sending out to friends of the show and whatnot.

But I want to name this thing. You know, for our 400th beer, because I think we're going to do this again. So we thought we'd like to each batch have its own unique name and edition. So this is the 400th edition, and the 400th edition needs a name. So I've just opened up a straw poll. If you're watching live, it's poll dot me slash four two eight nine five seven six one straw poll dot me slash 42 89 57 61 go there and vote on what we should name the lup 400 beer we have a couple of contenders already we've selected for you so you just you only have to pick from what we've already put there. Number one, and these

are kind of randomized, I think, but on this list, the unplugged lugger. Now it is not a lugger. That's why it's a lugger. Yep. The chug-a-lug, the 400. Oh, classy. Yeah, sophisticated. Or maybe it's a Cadillac. I don't know. And then the see you next Tuesday because of the 8.5% alcohol by volume. So if you would, go over there and vote. And whatever the results are at the end of the recording, we will officially name our beer and then try to get some labels printed up. We need your help. So right now, the votes are open, and we will come back and see where things lie. Wes, this right here, what we're holding in our hand, you know what this is?

This is a real physical product that we created. We did it, buddy. There's a lot of it, too. Yeah, cheers again. Yeah, we wanted to get – nice, they're thick bottles. You can hear it. We wanted to get enough that we could send some to friends and stuff and do fancy bottles. And then the kegs, of course, which we can refill.

And I could totally see us do this for next Linux Fest. Oh, absolutely. Just a good supply of beer on hand. So we'd have a Linux Fest Northwest batch, you know, that would be kind of more of a Pacific Northwest early spring beer. Oh. Yeah. So I thought, you know, what would be great is if you want to have a virtual beer with us, we should have something special to celebrate LUP 400. It's a special occasion.

It's a beer-themed episode. So, go grab a special 400th edition beer, Stein, at luplug.beer. Luplug.beer. Go have a virtual beer with our lug and Wes and I, and, you know, enjoy. It's just something to celebrate 400. It's not a challenge coin, not yet, but it is a nice-looking beer, Stein. Yeah, something that can join us all together as we share a glass. Also, how great is that?

Lplug.beer? I mean,.beer. Can you believe that's a thing? It's like the one good thing to come out of all these nonsense top-level domains. It is definitely a great one. Look at that. Isn't that great? So when is Beer is Tasty coming back, huh?

This was it. This was it in spirit right here. This was Beer is Tasty in spirit for sure. So yeah, we did it. And it turned out fantastic. We're very happy with the results. And I think we're going to keep doing it. So we've been kind of collecting various used pieces of equipment to help us do this. Right.

Piecing together what we need, and then we're going to have to try to mix in as much Linux as possible. Yeah, I mean, Graham gave us some great tips for that. And then I think, too, like the sensors and some of the automating of the heat on and off, and all of that can probably be tied into Home Assistant. Right. So there'll be some fun Home Assistant action there, too. Absolutely. There's all kinds of things we can do, and we probably will continue to play around with it. I also want to thank our members.

You know, those of you who are part of our Unplugged Corps, you make this possible as well. Thank you very much to our members at Episode 400. I'm going to have something special for you in the near-term future, so if you're not a member yet, you could always go to unpluggedcorps.com and become one because there's going to be some special benefits for our members in the near term future. So if you're not a member yet, you could always go to unpluggedcore.com and become one because there's going to be some special benefits for our members in the near future. And we appreciate all of you out there for joining us. Wow, look at that. 41 people in the LUP Lug. Incredible. LUP Lug, you guys, thank you so much for showing up and being part of this.

You know, when we started this 400 episodes ago, it seemed a little crazy to just open up our virtual lug and let anybody chat. And then over time, a community developed to help moderate it, do mic checks, and then now, even we have the weekly LUB Lug meeting that happens every Sunday. I mean, it's taken over. It's the show that isn't

the show, and it happens every Sunday at noon Pacific in our Mumble Room. You can find it on our calendar, though, to get it converted in your local time at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar, and the info for our Mumble Room is at linuxunplugged.com slash mumble. Mr. Payne, I think that's 400 right there.

We did it. Can you believe it? Dang it. I think that means we have to start planning episode 500. Well, here we go. Here's to episode 500, and here's maybe even 400 more. Thank you, everyone, who's been listening for even more than a couple of episodes. I don't know how you put up with us, but, man, are we more grateful than ever for it. Thank you for listening.

It really is humbling, but the community is the best part of the show. For reals. All right, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Unplugged program, and we will see you next Tuesday. Al Rucker, see you next Tuesday! Alrakur, see you next Tuesday! See you next Tuesday! I'm Bennett Mears

and I'll see you next Tuesday. I'm Brent, see you next Tuesday. I'm Mike Bitton, see you next Tuesday. This is Carl, see you all next Tuesday. Hey, it's Casey, see you next Tuesday. Computer Kids, see you next Tuesday. This is Neil, see you next Tuesday! This is Ben Johans, see you next Tuesday. Hey, it's Casey. See you next Tuesday. Computer kids, see you next Tuesday. This is Neil. See you next Tuesday. This is Stan Johansson. See you next Tuesday.

My name is Gala, and I will see you next Tuesday. This is Ironic Badger. See you next Tuesday. I'm Kira, and see you next Tuesday. I'm Limbo, and I'll see you next Tuesday. Hey, Minimac here. See you next Tuesday. I'm Cheese Bacon, and I will see you next Tuesday. I'm Parker G. See you next Tuesday. I'm Cheese Bacon, and I will see you next Tuesday. I'm Parker G. See you next Tuesday. I'm Phoenix Lampire. See you next Tuesday.

I'm Pycrash, and I will see you next Tuesday. I'm Eric Nance, and I will see you next Tuesday. I'm Simon, and I'll see you next Tuesday. I'm not Orange, but I will be here on Tuesday. I'm Thor, and I will see you next Tuesday. I'm 3Boot, and I'll see you next Tuesday. And I'm Virgin orange, but I will be here on Tuesday. I'm Thor, and I will see you next Tuesday. I'm Threepoot, and I'll see you next Tuesday. And I'm Bertanuda, and I'll see you next Tuesday. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Let's go to JB Titles and let's name our 400th episode. I thought before we wrapped up officially, though, at the end of the show, I wanted to kind of capture what we'd love to see by episode 500. We'll create a LUP 400 time capsule right here. So, Mumble Room, go ahead and tag me in the chat room if you have anything to add to our time capsule, starting with category number one, our aspirations for Linux. Now, it's off the top of your head, but our aspirations for Linux by episode 500.

but our aspirations for Linux by episode 500. While you think, because I know I'm just throwing this at you, I'll say a richer, thicker, more vital third-party desktop app ecosystem. That's a nice thing to hope for. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. What do you got? You got anything? Maybe hardware or something? I would hope that Linux has continued to develop on mobile devices independent of Android.

That whatever happens with Fuchsia, there's still Linux on phones. And that whatever we've got sort of nascent now, it's just a lot better by episode 500. Maybe, maybe I've got one in my pocket. Casey, you have one? Yeah, I think that we should be striving to completely deprecate X11.

Ooh, yeah. Yeah, that is definitely one. I was going to mention it, but I'm thinking 500 weeks from now, we better. We really better. Ooh, yeah. That is definitely one. I was going to mention it, but I'm thinking 500 weeks from now, we better. We really better. One would hope. Barker says better gaming. I agree. Number two. Number two

for the time capsule. Wes Payne, I'm going to go with you first on this one. Where is Flutter? It's everywhere. It's everything. I mean, we're going to be doing the show in an entirely Flutter-based environment. Okay. I'll go we're going to be doing the show in an entirely Flutter-based environment. Okay. I'll go the other way and say that it really hasn't gone anywhere, I guess, because that's the only other angle I can play on that.

Okay, but is Canonical still using it? Hmm. I mean, how long is five? Give me an idea. 500 weeks. That feels like a whole another 50 years of internet time, to be honest with you. So I got to say, no. I mean, that's 10 years. Yeah, I'm going to say, if they are, it's they're winding it down. That's what I'm going to say. That's what I think. We'll see, though. We will see. What do you think our podcast, what would you put in the time capsule? So I'm hoping that by the time we get further along that we have great tools for media production already. We have obviously OBS and all the podcasting tools

and Pipewire coming on, but just making it easier for new users to get on board more quickly and making Linux a first-class citizen for streaming and media production. Here, here. What can we develop on Pipewire now that like if Pipewire really does unify things, right?

I want easier audio routing. Yeah, I mean, you're starting to see it right carla is annoying well you you don't need carla you don't need pactl you don't need q jack cuddle or any of those things because you now have this unified interface in the form of pipe wire the standard stuff that desktops have now have the opportunity to integrate those workflows. Neil, what say you, by episode 500, will Proton be merged with Wine or will they still be kind of these two separate projects? There will not be a Proton project in 10 years because everything will be integrated into Wine. It may even, like if I'm being super hopeful, we will need it a lot less. Yeah. Pycrash, you want machines loaded with Linux.

Yes, I want to buy my next machine and to be loaded with Linux from the factory. Yeah, no place. I know a few. Smooth cheese. Smooth as Velveeta. Okay, what do you guys think, Mumble Room? You can kind of just jump in on this one. Will JB have switched to Matrix as their primary chat platform by episode 500?

Yeah. Yes. I hope so. I just need JBot and done. We're in IRC Bridge, of course. Everyone just says yes at the same time. Yeah, IRC Bridge. We need a JBot rewrite. These are the things that I think are holding us up.

I mean, we could probably bridge JBot to Matrix using IRC and just keep the IRC around. The IRC bridge is fine. It's just the thing is you'll have to get GeekShed to agree to it. Or move to Freenode or something. So what do you think the desktop pain points are going to be by episode 500? So this is a while out. What's still going to be something that is a pain points are going to be by episode 500? So this is a while out. What's still going to be something that is a pain in the butt to get working on Linux?

Okay, so there's some confusion going on here, at least in the chat room. Are we talking about in 500 episodes? No. Or are we talking about at episode 500? Okay, so that's only two years away. Okay. Oh, yeah, right, right. You're right.

Yeah, that's only two years. You've been saying 500 weeks, and I'm like, that's 10 years from now. You gave me that. I was so confused. You said 500 weeks, and I'm like, that's 10 years from now. You gave me that. I was so confused. You said 500 weeks, and I'm like, that's 10 years. Yeah, you're right. Well, yeah, in total, it'll be 10-year run for the show at our 10-year run. So two years from now.

Desktop Linux, main pain points. Adobe products on Linux. Yeah, Adobe products on Linux is going to be the big pain point. I think it's going to be more likely that Office comes to Linux rather than Adobe coming to Linux. By episode 500, I think there's going to be Outlook for Linux. That's what I think. I think in two years we'll have Outlook for Linux.

They're just going to rebase everything on like an Electron type thing. Yeah, it's going to be Electron. It's already going to move to Electron irrespective of anything else. So then they'll bring it to Linux too. That's exactly the fear I have. There'll be more and more Electron apps that will be really CPU hungry and resource hungry.

So if you, it's Flutter now. In two years, I think Flutter will only be on Android. I just want Python GTK for documentation because I can already see how much better it is. There's just no docs for it. Look at that.

I'm figuring it out on my own and I can't really get anywhere. I think it's fun to think about these things in a two-year time span and then a ten-year time span. That's also like, what if you doubled the run of the show? We can do a whole episode on this but we have our aspirations,

a guess where Flutter is, Proton gets merged into Wine, JB is switched to Matrix, which I think we could do in two years, desktop pain points still include Adobe products and multi-monitor. Last but not least, is the LUP lug still self-organizing in two years? Oh, it will. And we've been still using Mumble. The Mumble developer should somehow, some way be capitalizing all this Clubhouse nonsense because it totally validates Mumble.

And Mumble's a better way of doing it too. We just need like a web interface to drop into a Mumble room. There is a Mumble web interface. It's beta, but it is a thing. You need a nice trendy iPhone app too, right? And that Mumble doesn't have. They have apps.

Ideally some VC money, I think, right? Yeah, and some of that VC cash. All right, thank And that Mumble doesn't have. They have apps. Ideally some VC money, I think, right? Yeah. And some of that VC cash. All right. Thank you, Mumble Room. You're the best virtual lug. Thanks for joining us for episode 400. Wouldn't be 400 without you.