Monday 2 November 2009

Future Plans

So I'm feeling in a speculative mood (looking to accumulate, y'see) so thought I'd put some of my ideas for developing the Boiler Room into more than a glorified bucket...

For Christmas, I have various relatives and significant others coordinated to hopefully furnish me with some lovely new kit so that I can move to the next level.(Extract brewing).

First up, SWMBO (the light of my life) will hopefully be getting me one of these bad boys which, while it calls itself a mash bin, is a boiler with an electric element and a thermostat thingy. This is what I will use to boil the malt extract and hops up together so that they can do their mgical stuff.  It's a 25 litre capacity, so should just about be able to manage a 23l boil (40 pints) without too much risk of boil over but I intend to start off with just very small batches of about 10 litres.  My thinking is that this will enable me to hone my skills more and try out more different things without ending up with huge amounts of beer to drink (I've heard that the stuff's not overly good for you in large amounts...)

And from my parents I'm hoping to receive one of these nifty starter sets.  This is because 10litres is nowhere near enough to put in a big pressure keg like the 2 I have atm, it would risk infection or something.  So the plan is to put half of each 10l batch into one of these, then bottle the other half, giving me a stock of bottles for comparisons and gifts, then a mini keg of each brew to crack open when desired, or take to parties.  The tap system on these is also simpler than the S30, meaning that the flatmate might feel better about drinking my brews.

As I said, my plan is to get a good few extract brews under my belt, then move on to all gain brewing, probably doing small batches to start off with again, but after I'm used to how to do it, who knows!

Plans for the more immediate future are to get the Woodforde's Wherry kit I have on my shelf going at some point this week to give it plenty of time to stop fermenting and start clearing before the budget barrel is available...

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