Hi all. OK, I'm regretting the nick now. It seemed funny at the time...
Anyway, I'm Stephen from Dublin. I've been homebrewing for about 3 years now. I started when I was living in Poland and someone gave me a few kilos of honey that I didn't know what to do with. Made a godawful mead (actually, it became drinkable a year later), and gave up meadmaking for the instant gratification of beer.
At the moment I'm not brewing nearly enough as I'd like to. See, I need an equipment upgrade to take the hassle out of certain parts of the process. So I'm working on a brewery rebuild. I might be asking some questions on the Equipment forum soon!
Looking forward to getting back into brewing and maybe going along to the local club!
Avast! I like your name. Good job.
What are you upgrading?
As for the equipment- everything, really. Currently using a too-small stockpot to heat water, a bucket and bag as mashtun, and the too-small stockpot again as a kettle. It's quite the pain, so I'm thinking of the bucker-boiler with kettle elements as the HLT and kettle and a false-bottom or bazooka screen in a bucket for the MLT. So nothing very fancy as yet, but I do want temp control on the HLT as I typically spend far too long trying to prepare, say, 15 litres of water at 75 degrees.
Once I have that done, I'll address the real bottleneck: packaging. I hate bottling and don't have time for it. I have a nice brown ale waiting far too long in the FV because I can't be arsed to bottle it. So I'll be getting kegs and fridges and all that. Yay!
Welcome to the site Stephen. Where in Dublin are you
Shanna
I'm out near Heuston at the mo. Bad side: apartments aren't great for brewing. Good side: a comfortable stagger home from Mulligan's in Stoneybatter, Bull & Castle, and any other number of sources of good beer.