Name for Summer Lightning clone, and Homebrew Primer started

I mentioned the other day wanting an election themed name for the brew I made the other day and Housemate has come up with one for me.  As I made the beer on the day of the first televised debate, it will be called "I agree with Nick" as that was such a popular phrase during the debate.

Also in the news, I have begun writing a Homebrew Primer.  Several people at school have asked me to write a little thing that explains the process of homebrewing and the equipment one needs etc.  On account of me being nice and all, I decided to oblige and sat down yesterday and wrote.  It all came quite easily and I ended up with about 3,500 words written quite quickly (about 6 pages).  I'm going to write one more section, edit it it etc. then make it available for free download on this site.  It will start off just about getting into kit brewing as that's the simplest and the one I know most about, but it will expand when I learn more about the other methods.

New Stuff AND St Peter's goes in the barrel

So, I remember mentioning in a previous post that as well as all the swell stuff I got for Chistmas, I was due something else that hadn't arrived in time on account of stock shortage or something.  Well, it arrived and my parents brought it up to me last weekend.

These will be what I put my self-designed beers into so that I don't have to make (and drink) huge amounts of experimental beer that might taste rank.  They should also get a bit of use at parties as they're a good size and less complicated than the other kegs I have.  This is how one keg looks with the tap fitted:

The kegs themselves are pretty cheap too so I expect to buy a few more and get a good rotation going on them.  There is also a plan in the pipeline to use these kegs to deliver homemade beer to my friends and family, which I shall elabourate on further once I've worked out exactly how it will work.

Also in the news today: The St Peter's Ruby Red has been put in the barrel and is hopefully doing its secondary fermenting as we speak.  I'll let you know how it tastes in a week (I'm not going to wait for it to mature properly).

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!

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...

Wouldn't it be luverly?

Was 'busy' whiling away some time today when I should really have been doing something else and I found Brewlab's website and details of their 3 day brewing course, which looks awesome to me...

Maybe I'll have to start saving towards this...

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...