National Homebrew Club Ireland

A merry Christmas to one and all  ;)

I must have been a good little brewer this year, as I found this lot under the tree on Christmas morning  :)

Happy brewing to everyone for 2016!

(http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b607/Parky07/IMG_2794_zpsnslicbkw.jpg)

Nice one! I think I have the same refractometer (although I bought mine a fortnight ago). Let me know how you get on with it. The instructions for mine were in Chinese, in which I am far from fluent.

I got FOUR identical Angram CO beer engines. They were all serviced less than 18months ago, too (according to the sticker), so should have years of fun with these!
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXF1GkLWQAALo1q.jpg:large)

Supplemented by a couple of bottles of wine and some boxers. Oh, Will_D, I got a book about Welsh Farmhouse Brewing, too! http://www.amazon.com/Farmhouse-brewing-Elfyn-Scourfield/dp/B0007C69F6/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 (http://www.amazon.com/Farmhouse-brewing-Elfyn-Scourfield/dp/B0007C69F6/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) Although at 12 pages, 'book' is a little generous.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Graincoat for my Grainfather, book on beer and food pairings and a couple of those spiegelau IPA glasses

I got the White/Zainasheff Yeast book also, and a couple of teku glasses. Pretty light this year on the beer/homebrew presents.

The top of the range bottle capper for me :)

Santa organised another pump for the rebuild...230v chugged...😄

A gift voucher for a beer making workshop at the London Beer Lab. You choose a recipe and brew 20L on their equipment, come back to bottle it a few weeks later and take it away. Should be a bit of craic

I got 2 kg of hops and grain to go with them :)   Very practical santa in my house, she's great...

And I've got the day free to brew tomorrow for the first time in ages. I can smell the hop oils already :P

Quote from: Parky on December 25, 2015, 06:10:48 PM
A merry Christmas to one and all  ;)

I must have been a good little brewer this year, as I found this lot under the tree on Christmas morning  :)

Happy brewing to everyone for 2016!

Parky, how is that homebrew journal laid out? I've looked on Amazon and it doesn't show what sections it is broken up into.

Cheers

Lovely stuff, looks like Santa has been good to everyone this year  ;)

@Tom - The instructions I got with the refractometer were in English, so I can get you a scanned copy when I'm back in work next week. Wasn't much there, just info on calibration, usage and a conversion table.

QuoteParky, how is that homebrew journal laid out? I've looked on Amazon and it doesn't show what sections it is broken up into.

There are three basic sections in the journal - first the 'numbers', OG/FG/IBU/Colour, etc., next the ingredients, hop and grain bill, yeast, boil time and cost. Finally. the mash and fermentation schedule. There's a full blank page for notes, which is what I like about this particular journal, as it gives me enough space to describe the full brewing technique I've used and also tasting notes as the beer matures over a few weeks.

The beer journal has space for 50 recipes, and I actually got a similar one last year (now full !!), so it suits my purpose nicely. It's mainly geared to all grain brewing, but with so much space for notes I've used it for extract and kit brewing too. It's not that expensive (some shops on Amazon will be cheaper than other of course, so shop around), and is well bound, so worth getting as a starting point for keeping all your recipes in one place. 

Quote from: Parky on December 29, 2015, 12:41:37 AM
There are three basic sections in the journal - first the 'numbers', OG/FG/IBU/Colour, etc., next the ingredients, hop and grain bill, yeast, boil time and cost. Finally. the mash and fermentation schedule. There's a full blank page for notes, which is what I like about this particular journal, as it gives me enough space to describe the full brewing technique I've used and also tasting notes as the beer matures over a few weeks.

The beer journal has space for 50 recipes, and I actually got a similar one last year (now full !!), so it suits my purpose nicely. It's mainly geared to all grain brewing, but with so much space for notes I've used it for extract and kit brewing too. It's not that expensive (some shops on Amazon will be cheaper than other of course, so shop around), and is well bound, so worth getting as a starting point for keeping all your recipes in one place.

Thanks Parky, sounds good, just what I need. Ya it's not that expensive in fairness., will pick one up. Cheers for the detailed description. Hope you fill it up over the next year again

I normally keep notes but on my last brew I put the notes onto Beersmith. I had taken a lot of details re water makeup test results, heat up time. OG dilution rate etc. But didn't somehow save them and yes my pc crashed deleting everything. So i reckon I'll be having one of them
On the current topic Santi managed to squeeze an SS Brew Bucket down the chimney, I've given it a wash with hot water and washing up liquid, then filled it to the brim with hot water and two scoops of Lidl Oxi and left it soak for half an hour, this is to remove the oil and polish from the machining process. I now need to passivate the stainless according to the instructions with 7 ozs of Starsan diluted in 7 Gallons US water. I've only got 5 ozs of Starsan, so I'll have to wait to order more to finish the job.

Anything on my laptop has a hard and cloud backup
Longer exposure time on the Ss or use less water and tilt for equivalent amount of time on each side with lid on??

I've banged off an order to homebrewwest as they're open this week, the etched volume markings on the inside of the fermenter are susceptible to being removed, so I reckon I'll follow their instructions to the letter, rather than risk removing them by leaving it soaking too long. Apparently Bar Keepers Friend wipes them off  ???
I've had a good look for the missing notes in archives etc but no joy

Quote from: Sorcerers Apprentice on December 29, 2015, 06:20:21 PM
I normally keep notes but on my last brew I put the notes onto Beersmith. I had taken a lot of details re water makeup test results, heat up time. OG dilution rate etc. But didn't somehow save them and yes my pc crashed deleting everything. So i reckon I'll be having one of them

I set up the folder where the recipes are stored to the cloud. I use Onedrive but I'm sure any other option would work. I can access the recipes from any PC I set up the same way. I wasn't going to pay extra for the BeerSmith cloud option
I don't get the not saving though. Maybe you have different settings from me but it every change I make it saves it straight away.

It saved the recipe, just not the notes, I had left the page with the notes open as I was adding more notes throughout the brew day. I had previously saved the recipe but hadn't hit the save on the note page. The next day I found the pc off and when I booted it up the notes were gone. The recipe was there just no notes

I got a 20 gal brew kettle by SS Brewtech and a trip to England for a one day beer judging course.

Any pics of the brew kettle?

Its in the box at the moment. I'll stick up some pics once I use it. Its this one here http://www.ssbrewtech.com/collections/kettles/products/copy-of-ss-brew-kettle-20-gallon

@Tom - Made good use of the new refractometer during the week, brewing an Irish Red Ale. The gravity readings were spot on when compared side by side with the hydrometer, and adjusted for temp., so I'm happy enough with this one.

See attached (hopefully) instructions in English that came with the refractometer, my Chinese is a bit rusty too  ;)