Brewing: St Peter's Ruby Red AND General updates and whinery

Hey, so it's been ages huh?  Truth be told, I kinda fell out of love with brewing after the Geordie Mild went down with the same infection as the Old Ale before it and the Wherry ended up having been left too long and gone off, then decided to leak all over my record collection (thank god MDF is so absorpent -no records were harmed!).  I've gotta be honest, I felt pretty low about the whole thing.  But this weekend it seemed about time to head back into Pop's and pick up a new kit.  I initially went for Fixby Gold until I saw that they had the new(ish) St Peter's Ruby Red kit in.  I've heard great things about both this beer and the kit, so figured I'd pull the trigger on it.

So I left the fermenting vessel sterilising all night and day, then sterilised it again with all the equipment in it when I got home from school today and set about brewing.  It's a pretty standard 2 can kit (open can, pour in contents, add water) apart from the fact that it comes with a sachet of 'hop powder'.  It seems this is maltodextrin powder (some kinda sugar) infused with hop oils.  You make up the kit as usual, then add this powder and stir it in.  The hop smell is pretty damned powerful when you open it and stirring it in made the beer smell wonderful.

So anyway, I just put this to bed in the boiler room, will maybe check on it in a few days.  Another thing I have done to avoid contamination is leave the immersion heater out (in fact, I've thrown it away in a fit of frustration) as I think that may have been harbouring germs.

As ever, thanks for reading, and I'll update you when I check on this baby...