On Thu, 7 Mar 2013, Gus Correa wrote: > On 03/07/2013 05:48 AM, Hearns, John wrote: >> >>> Why not beer as a coolant? I can see it now >> >>> "My cluster is cooled by Guinness" >> >>> "Oh yeah? Mine is cooled by London Pride!" >> >> >> Joe, you are a genius. >> But of course, the coolant of choice for Beowulfery should the craft ale >> from the Kernel Brewery >> >> http://thekernelbrewery.com/ >> >> Brewed in a railway arch in south London, not far from where I live. >> Very good, and when it opened the owner confirmed to me that yes, it is >> named in honour of the Linux kernel! >> >> > > Will the heat exchange spoil the liquid bread, > or produce a new, Brewed on Beowulf, taste? > > Waiting for RGB's answer.
Generally, beer and ale should be brewed cold, specifically at or below 20C. Beers, especially lagers are brewed colder than ales (ideally lower than 10C, which is basically "German cave temperature") and furthermore are cold aged (lagered), which will tolerate temperatures up above 20C at the expense of altering the "fruitiness" of the final product in not necessarily desirable ways, and personally I think of 22-23 C as being the upper bound of acceptable fermentation temperature even for ales. Using beer or ale as a coolant for a Beowulf is thus a spectacularly bad idea, although one pleasant side effect of having a nice, cold server room with a wee bit of extra room for a few fermentation vessels and a stack of aging cases on one wall is the possibility of using it as a coolant for Beowulf >>operators<<, who have heat loss and power provisioning problems of their own. This efficient re-use of a carefully temperature controlled environment that is otherwise too cold for normal humans to spend much time in is one that I can heartily approve of. At some point I may mount a full time wall unit that cools the in-garage "shed" of my house so that it can serve as a double duty brewery and server room. We can only hope that, properly stimulated, the art and science of beowulfery is lifted to new heights by this confluence of benign apparatus. rgb > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:r...@phy.duke.edu _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf