Unexpected hiccup

So I had to go into hospital on Monday to have my appendix (it was gangrenous, yuk!) out and am currently convalescing at my parents' home.

This means that Brewery japes will have to be put on hold for awhile as I don't know when I will recover the ability to do all the lifting of water filled containers required.

This means that the Old Ale currently fermenting, and now almost certainly stopped and ready to rack into a barrel, will have to sit there a while longer.  I hope this won't have too much of an effect on it, but we'll have to see...

Calendar update

I really will do some schoolwork soon, but I've just worked out a better way to add the calendar to the site, so if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see it in all its multi-coloured, interactive glory.  The red events are my brewing activities and the mustardy ones are real ale events from Aletalk's calendar.  Click on one for more details.

I've also been putting some thought into the idea of 'monetising' this blog.  I think that's Googlespeak for 'putting adverts on' and I would normally be dead against this sort of thing (and am currently 90% against it).  All I was thinking was that if the income that could come from this monetising would be enough to put towards purchasing ingredients and equipment, that would be a good thing.  I'd imagine, however, that one probably gets about a penny a month, which would make it ludicrously ineffectual.  If you are reading this and have a Blogspot blog that you have monetised (or even if you don't), could you comment here with any thoughts you have on this please?  That would be awesome!

Update: Old Ale

So I have yet another snow day today, thanks to overnight snowfall.  I am going to get a whole pile of work done today, but first I thought I'd test the Old Ale as it's now at the 10 day mark.  The Hydro read 1.011 at about 17C, which Beer Engine tells me is actually 1.010.  This suits me down to the ground.  Beer Engine also tells me that this gives me a roughly 4.9% ABV beer, which would have been great during these winter months, but my skewed timing means I'll be drinking it around March time, so might not be quite so good.  I've really got to get my head around when I need to be brewing different types of ale...

New feature: calendar

Hey, you!  Do you enjoy reading about the exploits of that crazy guy at the Boiler Room Brewery?  Do you sometimes feel like he doesn't let you know when he's planning on doing things?  Do you wish there was a way that you could find out when he's going to do things in the brewery at the click of a mouse?  You do?

Well, luckily for you, I have just set up a Google calendar, which you can (hopefully) find here.  I'm going to try and 'imbed' it somehow into the blog too  I fully intend to keep this up to date not only with what I plan to do, but with what I actually end up doing too.  I'm not sure why, but it seems like the right thing to do...

Update: Brewer's Choice Old Ale

I've just taken a sample of this to check the gravity after a week in the FV.  It's at 1.014, meaning it could do with dropping another couple of points.  I was planning on leaving it in for another week anyhow, which I will definitely do now.  After all, I've still got about 8 pints of Linthwaite left in the barrel.

I obviously had a sneaky taste of the sample I'd taken out, am drinking it now actually.  It's pretty dark and tastes malty rather than hoppy.  Smelling it, there is very little hop aroma.  In the mouth it has a decent amount of body and some dominant smoky/coffee flavours.  These will mellow as it matures in the cask. At the end, you get just enough hop bitterness coming through to balance the maltiness.

It's a promising start...

Brewing: Brewer's Choice Old Ale

So I'm back at school tomorrow so probably should have been finishing off lesson plans and that sort of gubbins today, but the Linthwaite is looking kinda low and I need this brew to be ready to go into that barrel when it's empty, so figured I'd stick it on now.

Only took a few photos partly because most of what I did has been charted on here already and partly because I was also cooking dinner towards the end of the brew so didn't really have time.  So let's go:

The ingredients for this brew.  This particular kit is different from the others I've done in that it's a dry kit.  In that there silvery packet are some muslin bags containing various specialty grains and hops, which get steeped in hot water for a time, then the liquid i mixed with all that Spraymalt (2kg of the stuff) and diluted to the standard 23 litres.  I liked the fact that I didn't have to open any cans.

This is the bags in the pan, ready to have boiling water poured over them.  As far as i could tell, there was one bag of hop pellets (Fuggles I think) and three different bags of grains (no idea what they were).

The bags steeping.  They give off a wonderful smell.

And finally here are the used bags, looking much like spent tea bags.  I had a good old poke and sniff of them and ascertained that one of the grain bags was quite fine, black and smoky, making me think it was black malt or something similar.  Another smelt kind of caramellish, so that could be Caramel, but I'm no expert.
After doing this process 3 times (a 20 minute steep each time), the rest of the brew was the same as ever: mixing in loads of spraymalt, adding cold water and pitching yeast.  I think it all went well, but the proof will be in the drinking in about 2 months.

I guess that's me done, thanks for reading, I'm off to bed to panic about tomorrow...

All set for 2010!

Merry New Year! I hope the next year holds a whole pile of wonderfulness for all of you, and that you had a marvellous Christmas full of drinking and far too much food (I certainly did).  Santa brought me some brilliant brewery related presents, which I shall share with you now.
First up, a group shot:

A book of recipes; a general book about setting up a brewery properly; an Electrim 'Mashing Bin' (really a boiler) and (best of all) my very own Boiler Room Brewery T-Shirt (merchandise may become available very soon...)

Another shot of the T-Shirt 'cos I love it so much:

And finally the inside of the boiler (needs a hop filter made for it really, but I intend to start off just using hop bags to save needing one.  It's essentially a plastic bucket with a kettle element and a tap, but I could never have made one myself as some people have.  The best thing about it is the thermostat.

Also on the way, but not yet with me thanks to Hop and Grape being out of stock, is a 'mini keg starter set' made by Brewferm, which I'll obviously put photos of up here when it does arrive.

I'm hoping tomorrow I'll get time to put the next kit (a Brewer's Choice Old Ale) on tomorrow, so you may well hear from me then...