Hello Brewerists!

I got a few bits of gear and a Coopers IPA kit for my birthday. Got it all mixed and fermenting earlier this week and I’m now just waiting for the gravity to stabilise.

I work for a malt distilling company so I’m pretty knowledgable on the science of what’s going on but need to learn the skills of doing it with home kit and also what boiling and hops is all about?!

Two questions from me:

1. I have a 23 litre fermenter but have just bought kit to do an all grain recipe and I’d like to keep it to 10 litres so I can experiment. Is it an issue NOT to fill the fermenter to the top? My logic – CO2 is more dense than air so will quickly displace the air and will perform as normal . . . thoughts?

2. How long do most people wait between mashing in and boiling? My logic would say that by boiling all of your first wort (or all your wort if not sparging) you’ll be killing the enzymes and won’t be converting all your carbohydrates, particularly dextrins so you’re missing out on sugars. Maybe efficiency at this level isn’t an issue in home brew?

Thanks and I’ll keep you posted on my bottling and maturation of the Coopers kit . . . not expecting too much ;-) Just order ingredients for a St Austell Tribute :-)

From Alan Partridge, “What’s rude about a body?” Sophie, “Tits!”

Get over yourselves prudish people. I’m not saying all bodys are great to look at but provided people are being sensible – not parading – then what’s the issue?

I did a 10k race in Stockholm and all 8 of us running got changed in a friend’s living room, girls and guys. We’re adults.

Sadly there was no nympho-Kato nor windmilling !

I have three of different thicknesses:

coarse
medium (240)
fine (400)

Is it really as simple as running the diamond file over it at around 30 degrees until sharp. I’ve done this for a while and still don’t have a razor edge I was expecting?!

HPK 18 y/o is a great value dram. Macallan 18 is slightly better IMO but it’s silly money.

As a friend put it the other night. “People see one bottle of whisky for £80 and think – wow that’s expensive. Yet you’ll happily go out on the town and between three of you spend £100 and mild beer and sugary cocktails. Why not invest in a quality bottle and taken enjoyment from that.”

Good point on clearing the brake calipers. I don’t think it’ll be an issue but must check before buying . . .

Thanks for all the info. From what I can see it seems that 15 inch is too big a jump. Will start searching for 16 inch wheels instead.

The best (quickest and least energy intensive) way to dry towels is with good airflow. Heating a wet thing with no forced convection is extremely slow/energy intensive/expensive.

mrben100 – Why wouldn’t you use UFH in bathrooms? Why electric pads instead?

Westward Ho! (say it as though you’re an MC just coming onto the stage)

I think it’s the only place in the country with a punctuation mark in the name. Not bad going.

I’d add that if you leave the UK and plan to come back (later than 2 years time) make sure you each are named drivers on friends or relatives car insurance. This will allow you to maintain your no claims bonus.

My wife and I left the UK for 3 years and came back effectively as new drivers (despite 9 years no claims bonus). Car insurance would have been £280. Instead it’s £650 – grumble, grumble.

Other things – your partner will find a job – my wife became a postie, volunteer farmer etc etc. You shouldn’t be tight for money so these roles for her are more to make her feel party of the community, feel valued and get her out of the house. My wife has loads of get up and go so she was very proactive. Otherwise things could have spiralled downwards easily. You’ll be extremely alone and you’ll always be the outsider. You will make good friends but it will take years longer and doubltess your friends will be non-Germans. It’s always the misfits who drift together!

Do it – take all opportunities. It’ll be hard, you won’t regret it!

I can sympathise with the OP.

I was overwhelmed by the arrival of my wee boy but it certainly wasn’t all beer and skittles. I felt a bit of “this is the best thing in the world, why is my heart not bursting from my chest every time I look at him?” The older he gets, the more we connect, the more I love him.

IMO the bond between parent and child forms over time. Yes you are feeling it very tough and you’re distant right now but unless you give that bond a chance things will never change.

It’s the most emotional thing you, your partner and the relationship between you two will have experienced – no wonder things get heated!

My experience in parenthood is that you need to grow up for it to work. Child comes first. If you and your partner work together, communicate, tackle issues, you’ll make progress.

Your post is a good step to fixing the situation. Communicate.

Hollywood has a lot to answer for!

birney29 – my thoughts exactly.

I had resigned myself to a long wait but being given a target in the last update,
“On current timings it is likely to be mid-late October, however I will keep you updated as and when there is further news.”
I’m feeling excited to be receiving it but annoyed as it feels like we’ll miss it.

Argh

What about the new Maxxis Chronicle? Does it look like a mud friendly tyre?

Where’s me Rooster then?

I thought we were to expect an update the week before last?

I’d like to know where it is – even if it’s going to be late . . .

I don’t fully understand your setup but if the cylinders are connected together by a hose the pressure inside the whole system will be approximately the same. The only thing which will affect the pressure at any given point will be it’s height relative to another point. As we’re only talking a metre difference in height – it’s safe to assume this has little effect relative to the larg pressure (several bar) inside the system.

Does that help?

Air Hare Lair Swavis! DNSB does it for me.

The only evidence I have that it’s not matured in cask is the lack of a “cask matured” statement on the packaging. I know marketing people and they wouldn’t miss an opportunity like that. The casks on the bottle suggest it but I doubt legally they can say it.

Just did a little Google and it turns out they use an “Oakerator (TM)”. The marketers have named the stainless tank. Good job.

I don’t have any strong opinion on it either way. It is different from most other beer in a bar at least.

The interesting part is how it’s packaged and sold. Frequent mention of oak flavours and pictures of oak casks in the advertising. Yet it’s not cask matured but held in a gurt big stainless tank with chopped up bits of oak to infuse the flavour. I expect the colour is also due to addition of e150a. It’s made by Tennent’s in Glasgow.

Just saying, not all is as it seems. ;-)
Not sure you can compare Tornado with Innis&Gunn.

Lots of good advice in here. As mentioned it depends on what you want your house to do from, a box with windows to the full “Grand Designs” bling.

We’re after a “simple” house, but I feel we need an architect to help get our ideas to the “simple” stage because if I were to draw it now it’d be a cobbled together mess. At the end of the day he’ll be doing more than just the plans for the builder, he’ll be adding his own experience and creativity to our project – though I recognise not all of you value that input!!

Once we’ve sold our house we’ll be pulling the trigger and I think we’ve more or less decided on our architect so it should get fun quite soon.

Good point Ourmaninthenorth. From my point of view, building is very risky and I’d happily pay a fixed rate to a qualified and respected architect than wing it and end up with a hashed job.

At the same time it’s tempting to save a few £ks! Good discussion and experiences though.

Maybe for the next house we’d do more ourselves . . .

Thanks Mikey,

My question is really: “How to choose from our short list of architects”

One of the guys quoted a fixed price of around £10k (depending on the plot and work required).

Do your figures of 40-60k include project managing and QS work, as that seems like a lot of cash.

We’re based north Scotland so I imagine the price of professionals varies a bit – the cost of land certainly does!!

Hi Stoner

What is the issue (apart from initial cost and space required for it)?
Another line of thinking is to use a wood burning stove with back boiler to feed the thermal store.

With low heat loss in the house (therefore little space heating requirement) I’m hoping to be able to run the stove in the morning or evening and have water for showers the next day.

Surely a larger stove means you’ll be capturing as much heat from the stove as possible and won’t need to dump heat so often?

Cheers!

The store I am looking at is from Finland (where this technology is quite popular). It has mega insulation so a 1200l store is massive. The advantage is that say you use a wood burning stove to heat it up to 75degC, it’ll lose only around 0.5degC per day.

Obviously if your central heating comes on it’ll cool quicker but the point is that you can gain energy from many sources: wood burner, heat pump, solar thermal, traditional boiler etc and it can be stored there for use later.

Other advantage is high pressure hot water for skin stripping showers.

Navitron website is super-geeky so thanks for that link!

Hot Fiat – sounds like your mate has been sold a few lemons there! I believe these sorts of systems work a lot better if you have a low energy demand house (high levels of insulation and good building standards to avoid cold bridging, have high airtightness, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system).

I presume his thermal store is constantly running cool because his heat requirements are quite large? Sounds awful!

When I say no pumps I’m only talking about the hot water supply for the house taps. Mains pressure cold water in, through coil in thermal store, then out to taps at mains pressure. I’d expect a pump would be needed to feed water to hot water taps from a hot water cylinder (unless it’s in the loft, but you’d still need to pump it to the loft).

Early days so excuse my ignorance!

The attraction of the thermal store is that it can provide mains pressure hot water, (or throttled down a bit, constant pressure hot water) with no pumps etc. Plus we could plumb in a solar thermal set in the future or a wood burning stove.

Dobbo – not necessarily but can a heat pump heat water for a shower AND the kitchen taps at the same time?

DHW will be 60degC or less as you say, it’ll be 80degC at the top of the thermal store and my question is, “how do you generate that sort of temp if your only heat source is a heat pump?”

Cheers for the input.

njee20 – It seems that with the slack head angle on the Trek and fairly large offset of 51mm on the Rockshox fork, there is no toe overlap – not even close actually.

Through necessity rather than want – my MTB frame is cracked! Strangely satisfying though. I had to no brake most of the smoother descents as I just couldn’t hold on and cover the brakes!

Hi all – thanks for the tips on routes in the area. We rode Nidderdale yesterday – the climb up after Middlesmoor was a bit like hard work and the descent on my CX bike was silly. Cleaned it though, but not without a few front wheel stall/endo moments! Some footpath running this morning and then Stainburn after lunch.

Pork pies were AMAZING – pork and apple sauce was our fav, though black pudding was sold out :-(

Is it always this sunny in Yorkshire? No wonder the Tour are coming . . . !!
Lovely area – we will be back here.

Lots of good suggestions, though emphasis is on MTB. My wife will have her MTB but I only have a CX bike –

So anyone got some CX routes?

Great recommendations – thanks Martin! Will get the OS out tonight . . .

We own two cooperages at present so no trouble there :wink:

I’m looking at cask depletions to understand future wood availability.

Can anyone point me in the direction of wood boiler specialists?

I expect most spirit will have evaporated but you’ll still have some lipids and amino acids kicking about. Insignificant I’d expect.

Currently have a lot of spare casks but not sure of specifics in the future (how much we have now is not the point – it’s how much will we have consistently in the future).

No idea of heat load nor bills as this will be a new build office.

At this stage I’m just checking out the options: technologies and suppliers.

As kcal says caramel is added to some whiskies in order to maintain colour continuity between batches to keep consumers happy/make connoisseurs unhappy!

It neither adds nor takes away aroma or character but I agree – if it’s in the bottle it should be on the label.

NB: Casks are oak wood containers, a barrel is a 196 litre cask.

I do this and it works great.

I have a Surly Troll and the Rohloff is held on with a QR skewer – chain tug on drive side. No worries.

My email is in my profile if you want pics or more info.

Have fun!

Distillation does not make Methanol.

Fermentation does. Fermentation isn’t illegal.

Our wee one is 4 months.

Thanks for babyhawk recommendation.

I am enraged by this thread.

So many: your – you’re; their – there – they’re, mistakes!

Argh!!!

Pedantry aside, it’s actually quite difficult to understand what some are trying to say. Why don’t we meet in a pub tomorrow evening and discuss more clearly?! That’d be good.