Sunday Brew day

After a bit of a lazy start I was prompted by my lovely lady to get a brew on – given the lead times for brewing and needing to build a stock up for the great summer we are going to have next year ( I can dream ) now is the time to get the first one into the fermenter and then plan the next one in 4 weeks time and the third 4 weeks after that – then they will all be in place ready for relaxing on the deck or at my brothers around his wildlife pond. 

With All Grain BIAB brewing the brew process takes most of the day when you have not prepared in advance so the Kitchen gets taken over.  Getting all the gear in and ready – sterilise the bits of kit that needs it – weigh everything out and get your head around the tasks and the order and making sure everything is in place to hand – very much like cooking a cake or a meal, the more you have in place and ready for each step up front the easier and smoother the process goes.

So first off a light IPA / Golden Ale style – using Vienna lager grain and Pearl base malt grain with a single hop,  El Dorado. I will use a Safbrew S33 yeast to give a neutral brew leaving the hops to come through – the yeast is used in Trappist style beers so should give a good length to the taste. Looking to be about 3.8% abv so a nice summer drink, a long store in the bottle in cold temps is good for it – hence doing this one first to get it into the garage store in winter. It should be a light golden ale with fruity undertones and a sharp clean finish. It is a repeat of an earlier beer I created, Baroque, with a slight change to the hop bill – 30% more hops so that it will store longer and should smooth out and balance nicely with a bit more of a hoppy finish. It’s a bit of a hybrid beer this one, not an IPA, not a Lager not a English Ale, a Golden beer is probably the best description of it.

Photos of the process – hey beer and photos – guess I had better make some beads soon then to meet the blog name

 

The big pot on the gas ring to get the water up to mash temp

The grain, as I dont brew very often I buy it in 3kg bags makes it easy to use and not hang about 

The hops - they went into the wort in three stages, 1st at the end of the mash the 2nd set 20 mins before the end of the boil and the last set at the flame out until the wort was cool enough to add the yeast then all the hops come out - my lady kindly made me some hop bags so they were easy to remove compared to the last brew

Once you get the water up to 75 degrees c the grain goes in this cools the wort to the optimum temp of 66c - the Mash, this is then left for 60 mins at a temp of 66c to get the sugars out of the grain. Holding the temp of the pot at 66c for 60 mins means you need to insulate it so it gets a thermal blanket, a lid and then wrapped in two more heavy wool blankets

60 minutes later - Bang on - means I have got pretty much the best out of the grain and not induced any bad elements that can cause the beer to taste 'off'

And now with the grain removed the wort is boiled for 90 minutes - a rolling boil that reduces the liquid down and concentrates the sugars - it is also the time you add the Hops to extract the flavoids and oils to act as preservatives and add distinct flavours to the beer

 Then you cool the beer as quickly as you can and bring it to a safe temp for the yeast to be added - you can see the hops in the bags, from this point its when things can go wrong if you dont get the temp down fast and the yeast in and started quickly wild yeast and other bugs can get in and ruin the lot. My chiller coil is copper pipe and I run cold water through it - in goes cold water out comes hot water - a basic heat exchanger that helps rapid cooling and reduces the time the wort is at risk from infection.

The brew is now in the fermentation vessel with an airlock so with a bit of luck in 4 weeks it will be beer and a few months later it will be drinkable beer !

A day at Slimbridge WWT

It was a cold day but a bright sunny one, so we decided to go to Slimbridge WWT and take our eldest daughter, Eleanor.

As you may imagine loads of photo opportunities but I cannot say I am really happy with any of the resulting shots, despite the light being good I had problems pushing the shutter speed with the aperture I wanted coupled with a low iso – ah well future rule – if you carry the tripod – use the damn thing !

Anyway, hand feeding was done, the moorhen has a gammy leg so was happy to sit down to eat , sweet.

 I saw it around the same place last time we were here, lots of people feed it so it survives, in the wild it would be long gone so rather nice it is looked after. 

The mallard on its front at their feet had a go at jumping for the grain, being greedy, none of them can say they are not well fed ! The landing was less than graceful.

 It was feeding time with the otters, these are American river otters – although they now have evidence of UK otters on the site – a dog otter south end and at least one female to the north so a bridal suite (holt) has been built within the reserve and they await developments.

The Kingfisher hide allows good views of a couple of feeders and the local birds make good use of the opportunity. A few nice- ish studies of our ‘ common’ birds.

Male Goldfinch

Male Chaffinch

Great Tit

As can be expected the hides give good views of visitors and the captive birds give good views with no need to get muddy or use long lenses. I can cope with that, on a cold day I don’t really want to creep in the undergrowth and I don’t have the silly money for a mega lens

Lapwings

mixed bag

Eider male seeing off a competitor

Eider male head detail

Flamin bingos- Flamingoes

Comb billed duck - Sarkidiornis melanotos

This is the back of a pintail - the feather patterns are really lovely

Pintail detail

The café on site is good and an enjoyable lunch was had by all – a great day, most enjoyable,  some reasonable photos but many missed opportunities so a return visit will be planned in the neat future.

Last but not least a very small fungi - would not be me if no macro shots - its on deadwood and you can see the ice bottom righ - sunny but cold !

Calocera cornea

A Grey weekend but a nice one

Well it was a grey weekend but a rather nice one really, weather was grey damp and not exactly inviting but Eleanor, our eldest daughter came over Friday night for a visit and a sleep over – we had a very nice evening and enjoyed watching the film RED – a bit of silly with a great cast list and some enjoyable spoofs of other movies. 

Saturday was a trip to take Eleanor to her goddaughters 4^th birthday party up in Ogmore Vale Life Centre, we dropped her off and then took a leisurely drive over the top towards Port Talbot and stopped at Afan Forest Centre - http://www.afanforestpark.co.uk/. Looks like we will have to go back another day for a walk or two and take the bikes once I get the roof rails on the car. Then drove back to pick Eleanor up and off back home, the views over the area from the top are – or rather will be, great when the day is not grey and wet so another reason to go back and walk the hill tops.

Sunday we decided post Yokes morning migraine to go for a walk to clear our heads and pick some rose hips after seeing Hugh double barrelled make rosehip syrup – decided we had to have a go at that – recipe is simple and here – http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/oct/21/recipes.dessert even I can follow that one.

We walked the coast to St Donats, King Georges field, interesting name, tinternet says -  ‘These Fields were created throughout Britain in memory of the King, who died in 1935, ‘to promote and to assist in the establishment throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of playing fields for the use and enjoyment of the people’. Then back via the road to home. On the way around we saw a few nice birds, male Stonechat, Buzzard, Peregrine Falcon, Linnet, and all the ususal suspects.

Loads of ivy in flower along the walls – its good stuff, it offer shelter to bugs and birds, not a brilliant shot, but it’s a wren. Spent ages watching it hunting through the ivy feeding up.

While it looks to be a drab little brown bird I have seen one close up in the hand – each and every feather is beautiful in shades of brown with a spotted pattern on it. Truly Ivy is top of the list for late autumn food for insects, hover flies and the like so is really important and no it does not destroy trees or walls unless it is simply the weight of it in stormy weather and the tree or wall is already damaged, it is a climber not a parasite. This is a male common wasp – Vespula vulgaris. you can tell its male due to the length of the antennae, the males appear in late summer to mate with the female - she is the only one to survive the winter to start a new colony

I know a lot of people don’t like wasps but if you stay still and don’t flap and fuss then they don’t think you are attacking and will leave you alone. In fact blow on them, they will move away in most cases, once they work out there is no food they recognise they leave anyway. They are a really great asset to gardeners as they are predators on other insects – caterpillars etc. so help you keep the pests down.

That was about it for the weekend still wet and grey but now dark as well – time for a homebrew, testing the Orc. It’s a dark heavy beer with a sweet malty start and bitter follow on, only problem it has is that it’s a bit lively. I made a mistake with the yeast it was not up to the job so the beer has fermented more in the bottle than is good for it – so far the only way to get a reasonable drink poured is to pour into a 1lt measuring jug, let the head settle down and then pour it into a glass – a bit of faff but the beer is good and worth it!

A Trip to Cornwall

Well, that was a birthday, thank you all for the cards, and to my eldest daughter, Eleanor, it’s a lovely picture and brought back many memories, my sincere thanks lovely. To my youngest, Verity, yes I know you listen and I can say I am happy that you pay attention as well. I look forward to indulging myself in the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’. To my lady, mmm coffee and now fresh ground, splendid.

We took Friday 8^th off and we went to Falmouth to visit youngest daughter as her birthday was on the 7^th, so not only delivering presents and cake but went out to Ask Italian in Truro for dinner, and very nice it was too.

Saturday was a day at Eden, http://www.edenproject.com/ - I can honestly say, if you have not been there, make the effort, it is seriously worth it. It is one of our all-time favourite places any time of the year. The great thing is that if you buy your ticket and gift aid your payment - it’s an all year ticket, that means  you can go back as often as you want on the same ticket for 12 months from purchase – so for us that’s great every time we go to see Verity we will go to Eden, it changes so much with the seasons there is always something new to see. 

So this time Verity was able to borrow a couple of lenses from Uni and took some great shots. I look forward to seeing her blog updated, hint, hint !!

We finally had to leave Verity back at Uni around 6pm and as the roads were quiet we got home about 10pm, to say it rained all the way does not describe it, the driving was challenging given the M5 / M4 reputation for accidents but traffic was light so no really issues. Now to edit and show off a few photos I am not too unhappy with.