Over / around the Normandy coast, June 6th 1944. Irrespective of the tragedy of war it must have been a sight to behold.

quite possibly singletrackmind, i’m just not sure what i was smelling / tasting to start with as i couldn’t put my finger on it!

i’m going to seek out some experienced brewers (i have a line into a commercial brewer) and get their honest opinion on it. i know PF is reasonably local to me (central Scotland) so anyone else local? we could meet for a bike ride somewhere and have a wee tasting session mid ride? might not be conducive to shralping the gnar afterwards though…

Just popped a brew i bottled back in early sept, so about 9 weeks in the bottle. Its definitely benefited from more time in the bottle, the off flavours are definitely reduced and the aroma and bitterness are actually mellowed. carbonation, colour and clarity is pretty good too. actually enjoying it, although its not perfect. Fired me up a bit for a brew at the weekend though! I have 100g each of east kent goldings and centennial and plenty of MO. i’m thinking a smash with centennial? I’d like to do something with a hop overload at the end, keep the bitterness down to make sure its not one of the flavours i’m getting.

as a final note i’d echo the thoughts above too. this is one of my favourite threads on here and the generosity of knowledge, advice and good natured banter is great. Some of the threads on here could do with following this example.

EDIT: Perhaps we can do a joint order to Nikobrew at some point if it saves costs
Definitely up for that…although I’ve currently got enough for somewhere between 15-25 brews so might not be for a while! Although, I’ll probably be bored of Citra, Cascade, Centennial, Amarillo and Galaxy by then, so maybe we could do a swap of a few.

i’d be up for a hops group buy too. I’ve been getting my hops from Brewuk and they seemed fine, but i’m not experienced enough to know if they are great.

i’ve just ordered a custom BIAB bag as i was sick of the one i had not quite fitting properly, and i think i’ll ask for the water treatment for Christmas, 2015 with be the rise of Potters brewery!

Incidentally what do you call your brewhouse? I called mine Potters because the magic happens in the cupboard under the stairs. More like David blaine at the moment to be fair – stuff hangs around in there and doesn’t do much for a couple of weeks and it smells a bit funny when you let it out 😉

old KB seems to be ok at going round things after 3 or 4 goes, not ideal in rallying where mulligans dont exist.

i agree though, fundamentally the same as all his other vids and was bored half way through.what a noise though….

Classic STW misread on the first reply…

indeed, its not even that early 🙂

Is this you?

Seriously if i had blackbelt skills and some had just done that to me i’d see it as an invitation to treat 🙂

walking dead, boardwalk empire?

young teenage boy doing a wheelie with no hands

poor kid had no hands, give him a break…

Hey, good luck with the first brew! I discovered the root cause of my siphon working badly at the weekend. I’d put a nylon filter bag over the end of the siphon at the FV and it was causing the siphon mechanism to suck in air around the seal, instead of sucking in the wort. Once i ditched the filter bag it worked like a charm. sadly i’d stirred up the wort a good bit by this time so it was pretty cloudy by the time i got it into the bottling bucket. There was a small amount of splashing too when it started. I took the opportunity to use one of the c02 capsules i got for pressurising my barrel to purge the secondary FV and let it sit for a good few hours to settle.

so, my top tips would be:

1. take your time. i used to think any exposure to oxygen was bad, but its not bad enough to warrant you rushing and making a hash of it 🙂
2. make sure your bottles are spotless – clean throroughly, rinse well and look through them at a bright light – any remaining gunk will be easy to spot.
3. buy a little bottler, a bottle sanitiser and a good bottle capper. the expense is worth it!

good luck!

what canyon do you have out of interest?

If i buy a canyon i’ll barrel over as a foot passenger on the ferry to belfast then drive to dublin and pick up my bike from there – work it in with a wee visit to some friends over there. sounds well worth a 10% saving on 3.4k on a spectral CF..

chilli & lime gin.

:O i missed that one, lucky escape by the sounds of it.

you must now open it and provide a report!

off to pop a tanqueray ten and fever tree…

lol @grahamS

We were at the Good Food show in Glasgow last weekend and i was surprised by the number of Gin stalls there were – i lost count at 7 after several double helpings (with and without tonic) 🙂

I picked up a bottle of Martin Millers for £20 as it was a good balance between dry and aromatic. Some of them were a bit too 😮 dry for me, but i was tempted by a bottle of the Edinburgh Gin were it not for the £25 price tag. Good to see lots of startups though producing spirit.

I have tried the botanist gin up there ^ and it is lovely, and note they are going to start distilling gin on Harris next year, before whisky production starts.

gin does make me feel horrendous mentally the next day though…

hey, good to hear you have sorted out a new bike! you mentioned on a thread i’d started that you were on the hunt for something new. you’ve got me thinking too about the specialized now 🙂

i used to have an enduro 2007 model and did enjoy it, so the 29er enduro should be on my list really. its a bit more travel than i think i need but i do quite like the look of them, especially the sworks :O

i assume you got a large, what spec level did you get? whats it like weightwise?

living up to your name there – nice work!

Thanks John,

I’ve always been super-paranoid about oxidisation, so i’ve transferred from primary to bottle almost straight away, but i might give it a go after i’ve dry hopped this brew for a few days. Thanks for the advice and sorry to hijack your thread!

i hadn’t give the Sc range much thought to be honest, 5010 looks nice in black though. they are pricey 🙂

its on the list nick, that exact spec seems pretty much ideal. not sure if the CF version is worth 600 euros more for 1.5lb in weight though.

the canyon price/ spec is prety hard to beat on paper, the transition is 1000 euros ish more for a lower spec – thats the benefit of a direct business model i suppose.

thread resurrection.

doing a pointless paper exercise to put the canyon spectral AL/ CF, transition scout and banshee spitfire through a ranking system, because i’m bored and the wife is watching SCD.

what criteria would you use to rate a bike assuming you can’t ride it?

i’ve come up with: price, geo, looks, spec, weight so far. any other criteria?

done, quite a thought provoking survey actually.

whats your procedure for secondary jd? i think i might try my brew thats been fermenting for 2 weeks for a period of 5 days of so in secondary with a dry hop. any advice?

sorry to hear its a brew day down 🙁

what happened j_d?

I like your thinking regarding ordering one, this bike would be on my list for sure. Thanks for the info!

IPA! IPA! IPA!

Sorry aroche, I’m on mobile browsing, what’s the cost of your new cf? There is a lot about the canyon that appeals but the lead times are a consideration

What’s the current lead time on a spectral these days?

I like you. Been a while since someone like you frequented this place. I look forward to many entertaining threads.

At least Kaesae and Surf-Mat were literate. Njee hit the nail on the head, its like reading the forum at 2.0x speed. I feel exhausted just reading his comments, not to mention trying to ignore the spelling and grammar atrocities.

The overpriced Apple one. In black leather. Nothing fancy but I quite like it.

+1 here, in brown. It fits well and looks ok. I was going to get the silicon one but i’d heard people saying they make excellent pocket lint cleaners.

Not sure Hora, thats why i was asking 🙂

I agree in principle though, most of the time these features such as travel assist and super damping are set and left alone at best, or not used at all.

“Top end assembly of the RC charger damper is different to the RCT3”

what does that mean in real terms LoCo? I’m trying to decide if i build a bike which forks i’ll fit, but can’t see compelling reasons to buy the more expensive ones.

But given that the shipping is already showing may

wow. are they pedalling them over from china? thats some lead time and like you say even seeing that on their website will probably lead others to look elsewhere

hey pf- would be good to meet actually, could even combine it with a bike ride if you fancy it. can’t make a brew but can still chuck a leg over 2 wheels 🙂

its a fair point on beer age, because the stash is kept in the house now i dont think any brew has lasted >1 month really, so it might be too young still. there is a bit of sediment in the bottles but not tons of it. i’m sure i will crack it but i was hoping this brew would have been a bit of a eureka moment, not a urea moment 🙂

i was wondering about a brew with no bittering hops to see if its a bitter flavour from boiling them, so might just go daft with hops on one brew. the frustrating thing is the lead time to find out its not as good as you hoped 🙁

j_d any links to the beer line cleaner? i dont know if its relevant but the last few times i’ve used my youngs autosyphon it seems to have introduced bubbles in the syphon (god knows how as its submerged) just wondering if that might be an issue as the beer tastes different between racking to bottling fv and after its carbonated in the bottle (which i’d expect to a degree)

lots of things to tweak. i am near the williams bros brewery and know someone who works for them so half inclined to send a bottle their way and ask for their opinion on what the off flavour is. i’m certainly not going to be stealing their market share any time soon:)

hard to put my finger on it j_d, definitely not a germoline / chemical smell and not obviously vinegary either. its more organic than chemically taste. aroma from the beer is almost always not as bad as the taste. head retention isn’t great on the beer either. it just tastes a bit bitter, but its a fairly consistent taste that i’ve got from all my brews.

cleaning wise i use vwp, lukewarm water and a triple rinse. sani wise i use starsan, 1.6ml / litre or 8ml for 5l measured using a small syringe so near as dammit accurate, unless my dilution ratio is off.

so, opened may latest bottled brew after 11 days in the bottle and… meh.

it tastes a lot like the others tbh. a bit sour almost, like there is no hop aroma, just quite bitter. not undrinkable, but its not getting better. wife remarked on the smell of yeast so clearly i’m dragging a lot into the bottle and my pouring wasn’t the best. plenty of fizz with a generous half teaspoon of sugar- almost too much i think as it was lager fizzy, but at least i know a level half teaspoon is enough.

got quite a dunt off it so i think the ABV is up there, but i wont relish drinking the rest in a hurry. i think i’ll leave this batch for a few months and retry.

anyway, any homebrewers in the central belt of scotland? i could do with a distinguished palate to critique my brew and help decipher what the various flavours are, because after 5 brews that all tasted pretty much the same i can’t tell whats gone wrong in the process 🙁

so it (the spectral CF) will be delivered in time for the 2016 model then 😉

agree with Rick, i would be gutted and very, very annoyed if that were me. They must have known about supply dates and issues before the end of that week and another 3 months lead time is crazy.

The spectral does look lovely though. any ideas on price for the 150mm 1×11 option?

i assume by purging an FV you are just filling it with c02 basically?

Cheers

cheers – thats the sort of feedback i was looking for. They dont look as nice as dmr vaults, but at half the price and over 100g lighter i think i can live with that 🙂