The story continued...
"Brewing beer is neither complicated nor expensive. It's the responsibility of the brewer to make it as complicated and expensive as their wife will allow."
Due to Britain not actually making anything anymore it was down to those crazy Europeans to get the brewery started. I managed to forage some (hmm shiny!) 50 litre stainless steel cooking pots from eBay France and within surprisingly few days a delivery from those ever efficient Germans arrived (when did they sneak back into France?) - thank you Google translate!
After the excitement of the big boxes being delivered, endless jiffy bags of necessaries arrived daily to convert the big pans into a something like a brewery. Supplemented by many many visits to a large grey corrugated hell-hole known as B&Q (or Belchy & Queasy as I'm sick of the place) I was soon in full fettle.
The first task was to fit kettle elements to two of the giant vessels. Q-Max cutters made lovely neat holes and before long I had created kettles big enough to make tea for the whole street. If the beer brewing fails at least the tea brewing will make us popular for the Jubilee.
As I started to connect the pipework the brewery started to make sense. The brewing course fresh in my mind I tried to relate my homemade kit to the shiny industrial set-up at the college... trying to think of a witty simile here...ah, no, there isn't one... Eventually all the connections were made and the pans were officially transformed into a hot liquor tank, mash tun and kettle.
Now they had a job to do and I had a new "occupation" - brewing...
It'd be great to see some photos of the kit you have. I seem to remember you were keen to try a "Red Ale" back in the day, is that still the plan or is it a going to be a big IPA?
ReplyDeleteI have brewed something that roughly fits the red ale profile. It is difficult to get the red ale malt flavour, I don't know if it is to do with the Americans having more grades of crystal malt to choose form or what but UK brewers never seem to get the flavour right.
ReplyDeleteI have got a bit bored with big IPAs, partly through drinking them for a long time and largely now knowing that it's quite easy to pull off (relatively) because loads of dry hops cover a multitude of sins!