Back in June 2023, an interview with me was posted on the village blog in Japanese. Given Visit Kochi recently posted about me and the website is seeing some traffic, I thought it might be a good time to post a translation of the article here.

Moved from Scotland and preparing to set up a brewery! Working towards his long-time dream in Hidaka village.

Now, in his second year (as of July 2023) with the Hidaka Village Community Development Cooperation Volunteers in Kochi Prefecture. Jon is originally from Scotland. He is married Sakino, from Hidaka Village, and they lived together in Scotland, but moved to Hidaka Village in June 2022 to raise her children in an environment rich in nature. He is working towards becoming a craft beer brewer.

Q: How did you become interested in Japan, Jon?

A: It all started with a TV series I saw as a child called SHOGUN.

My interest in Japan was sparked by a TV series I saw when I was eight years old called SHOGUN.

It is the story of an Englishman who is shipwrecked on a voyage to China and washes ashore in early Edo period Japan, where he bonds with the warring feudal lords and lives in Japan. I still remember the interesting sensation of learning about the Edo period customs, Japanese culture and the Shogun along with the main character.

When I was 29, I decided I wanted to learn more about the Japanese language and culture, so I quit my job and enrolled in university. Then, when I was in my third year of university, I went to Okayama University to study Japanese culture in Japan. That’s when I met my now wife Sakino.

Q: What made you decide to move from Scotland to Hidaka Village?

A: When my first daughter was born, I wanted to raise my child in a place with a lot of nature.

When I came back to Hidaka Village, Sakino’s family home with my daughter, I thought, ‘I want to raise my child here’.

It is surrounded by mountains, with a beautiful river nearby and rice field paths where you can take relaxing and quiet walks. I had always wanted to raise my children in an environment where there is a connection with nature, away from a life dependent on technology, and the environment in Hidaka Village was ideal for me.

I also thought I liked the way Christmas is spent in Japan. In Scotland, Christmas is a big event, the whole place is sparkling with lights and it is normal for children to receive many presents. Children even compete with each other to see how many presents they have received. Some parents even go into debt to buy presents so that their children aren’t ridiculed…

But the presents bought in this way soon become boring and aren’t played with, it is wasteful. I have always felt uncomfortable with Christmas being swallowed up by capitalism and deviating from the original purpose of Christmas.

In Hidaka Village, when you go for a walk at Christmas time, the whole village is not covered with Christmas decorations, and there is only one Christmas present for the children. Rather than being a stresfful event, we eat dinner as a family in a relaxed atmosphere. This way of spending Christmas suited me perfectly.

Q: Why did you decide to set up a craft beer brewery?

A: Since I was in my twenties, it was my dream to open a brewery.

I loved drinking alcohol so much that I actually dreamt of making my own since I was in my 20s. In Scotland, it’s not illegal to make alcohol at home, so I used to make beer at home with friends.

Whilst I knew that I wanted to make beer one day, I had a busy and varied career that involved bartending, working in retail, banking and starting my own IT company, among other jobs. Working like that, I was inevitably too busy to actually make the move to open a brewery…

Once I decided to live in Hidaka Village with my family and I began to refocus on my dream of opening a brewery at the timing of this big change of environment.

Q: How did you end up training at Mukai Craft Brewing as a cooperative?

A: After a discussoin with a friend, I wrote to Mukai-san from Scotland to express my feelings and was accepted as a trainee.

When I started preparing to move to Hidaka Village, I was introduced to Masa-san (Masahiro Tsuzuki) by Sakino’s brother who lives in Hidaka Village. Masa-san has long experience abroad and is an English-speaking Regional Development Cooperation Volunteer.

When I told Masa-san that I wanted to set up a craft brewery in Hidaka Village, he introduced me to Mukai Craft Brewing and said that there was a Japanese-American in Kochi who was preparing to set up a brewery.

I sent a hand-written letter to Mr Mukai in 2020, once MUKAI CRAFT BREWING had opened. I wrote to congratulate him on opening his brewery but included a lot about myself, my hopes and dreams, and why I wanted to open a brewery in Kochi… I ended up writing 8 pages in that letter. It was almost like a love letter (laughs).

That was the start of a long-lasting contact with Mukai-san. After I was officially appointed as a member of the Hidaka Village Regional Development Cooperation Volunteers, it was a natural progression that I was given the opportunity to train at Mukai’s brewery.

Q: Please tell us about your activities since coming to Hidaka Village.

A: I am learning about brewing online and on site.

I go to Mukai Craft Brewing two days a week to learn how to make beer and about the brewery.

Mukai-san is a good teacher, having originally been a high school teacher of chemistry and physics. It is very interesting and instructive to learn how to make beer from a chemistry and physics perspective! Mr Mukai has become my mentor and friend.

I also put a lot of effort into finding the ideal place to build the brewery. We want our brewery to be a place where people can come to enjoy good craft beer in a relaxed atmosphere.

Every day we go around the village looking for a place, but it’s not easy…

Even if we find a good place, it may be difficult to trace the owner(s), or there may be no running water… On the other hand, even if we are allowed to use the land, it may not have a great view of nature that we hope to find.

For us customer experience is ultimately important, and we can’t compromise on wanting a place in the mountains or next to the Niyodo River with a good view and clean water, so We continue to search more so that we can find a place that is close to my ideal.

Q: How is life in Hidaka Village?

A: Various people talk to me and I’m gradually learning to understand the Tosa dialect (laughs).

When I go shopping at the nearby village market in Hidaka, I stand out somewhat as a foreigner, so the ladies who work there often talk to me which is fun and helps me learn some Tosa dialect!

There are still many things I don’t understand because it’s difficult, but I’m gradually starting to understand things like ‘kojanto’ (a lot) and ‘ame furi yu’ (it’s raining) (laughs).

Hidaka village has many interesting people, it is quiet but lively and a great place to raise children.

Q: What kind of activities do you want to carry out in the future?

A: I would like to collaborate with local people in order to make different styles of beer.

I want to collaborate with various people in the community to create distinctive, local beers.

For example, it might be interesting to make a beer that goes well with Masa’s tacos or a beer using tea from the Kiriyama Tea Farm. Or we could try using strawberries or foraged fruits, herbs and vegetables grown in or around the village…

Kochi is rich in ingredients, so I’m excited to come up with all sorts of ideas!

Photo credits: Aiko Kato, Hidaka Village Community Development Cooperation Volunteer

Interview by: Yuka Murakami, Hidaka Village Community Development Cooperation Volunteer

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

Towards the end of May this year we visited the 保育園 (hoikuen - nursery school) that my daughter would be starting the following week and boy were we in for a few surprises!

Compared to the nursery schools in Scotland there are so many rules and such a big list of mandatory purchases!

Rule examples:

• Long hair has to always be tied up.
• No skirts or dresses to be worn, also no jeans.
• Children have to have urine tests twice a year (at the nursery school).
• Children have to physical checkups twice a year (at the nursery school).
• She has to take a daily nap (she hadn’t done this for over two years).

When we mentioned to our dress loving aspirational princess that she could only wear trousers and t-shirts to nursery she was surprisingly OK with that, the following day when we mentioned about having to tie up her hair she was less than impressed.  Shortly afterwards she opted to have her hair cut into a bob.

We had to order a list of items (or rather pay for them, the nursery ordered them on our behalf) prior to the start of attendance, from a bento box for carrying crafting related items along with related paraphernalia through to PE kit, and received a further long list of items to buy before she started including a futon for naps, multiple towels, bags and changes of clothes as well as pajamas.  A not quite complete photo and list follows.

Photo contents from left top to right bottom:

• Futon bag (w)

• Futon (w)

• Futon towel (currently too hot for the futon blanket so towel used instead) (w)

• Nursery group hat (d)

• Indoor shoes (d)

• Indoor shoe bag (d)

• Swimming bag (d during pool season)

• Swimming towel (d)

• Swimming costume (d)

• PE Kit (thus far only required 1 day in 2 months)

• Hand towel (d)

• Backpack (d)

• Temperature, attendance and pool permission book (d)

• Pouch for nursery letters etc. (d)

• Bag for pajamas, changes of clothes etc. (d)

• Pajamas (they have their own bag too - not pictured) (d)

• Book (borrowed from nursery semi-frequently)

• Borrowed book card (with borrowed book)

• Two changes of clothes (d if required)

• Mask (d)

• Rice or bread bento box (d)

• Bag for bento box (d)

• Cutlery (d)

• Water flask (d)

• Toothbrush (d)

• Cup for rinsing after brushing teeth (d)

• Bag for toothbrush and cup (d)

• Pool shoes (w)

* d = daily, w = take at start of the week and pick up at end.

Food is provided except for rice or bread, the bento box we ordered can contain either plain rice (no pickles, furikake, salt etc.) or bread but not both.  We need to check the menu to know the food being served each day so that we send the correct implement for eating with, we cannot send a selection.

In relation to food, prior to coming to Japan our daughter was primarily raised on a vegan diet, though outside of the house we were more flexible.  This is not an option here, we have no input into the nursery menu and whilst there are always lots of fruits and vegetables there is also a lot of meat, poultry, fish and dairy etc.  No alternative menus are available and this proved to be a tricky sell to our daughter initially.

She also had to wear a mask in class (this requirement has since been dropped but may well appear again due to a local rise in coronavirus cases).

It was pretty daunting for us as parents, even though my wife attended the same nursery, so I can only imagine what it was like for our daughter.  Actually, I don’t have to imagine, it was tough but she proved to be a battler.

A few months in

Our daughter has now been attending nursery school for a couple of months and despite initial stumbling blocks, primarily relating to reticence to eating meat and fish, she has flourished.  She eats pretty much any food presented to her and she takes naps more often than not.. which makes trying to get her to sleep at night a.. delight!  The transition period took several weeks during which her permitted hours of attendance were slowly extended and though it felt very slow at the time, it was probably for the best in retrospect. 

My daughter’s Japanese has pretty much surpassed mine by this point and now we’re seeing the start of a future challenge to get her to speak any English!

Our second daughter has began her transition period and is having to adapt to powdered milk (formula) and being bottle fed from having previously been 100% breast fed.  The nursery do not have the capacity to store breast milk pouches or bottles and it would appear that we didn’t actually pack the breast pump anyway (probably due to different voltages rendering it useless). 

My wife starts her 地域おこし協力隊 (chiikiokoshikyouryokutai - regional revitalisation scheme) next week as well as a contract to teach at university but we are still struggling to transition our baby onto the bottle so hoping that the 役場 (yakuba - town hall) can be flexible until our baby can attend nursery full-time.

Thankfully, the list of items to take to nursery for the baby is pretty small at this point: nursery group hat, changes of clothes, nappies, a milk bottle, a daily update card, a futon and blanket etc. and a bag to carry everything.

Oh I almost forgot, we have to record and report on things such as when our kids went to sleep and when they woke up, did they have fun in the evening etc.  There is certainly a feeling that nursery school here is just as much about training parents on how to raise their kids as it is for teaching children to become citizens.

Edit: It is now 13th of June and we have a Kei car, which both of us are able to move, our house sale did complete but we are experiencing difficulties in transferring funds over. We have yet to purchase a second car due to the issues with transferring money but are looking at e-power (an EV basically but with fossil fuel charging the battery) hybrid of some description.

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

Originally written on 2nd of June 2022 and published over a month later!

I vehemently dislike cars, or rather I dislike their contribution to fossil fuel utilisation and destabilisation of our planet. I had to obtain a driving licence in order to be offered a contract on the 地域おこし協力隊 (chiikiokoshikyouryokutai - rural community rejuvenation) programme and I took lessons and passed my test very reluctantly. I’ve been in some very swish (and some not so swish) cars since passing my test and when asked afterwards for my opinion on the cars, it has generally been along the lines of “well, it got us from where we left to where we wanted to go”.

Perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that I have an absolute disinterest in cars. I have an overwhelming disregard for the unnecessary burning of fossil fuels and I would be delighted to not contribute to the rapid escalation of the climate crisis.

However, since moving to rural Kochi, we have come to the sullen realisation that if we don’t procure and subsequently drive a car then we’re essentially going to die of starvation in an empty rented house.

The village that we are in has 3 train stations, all on the same line, but only one train an hour, two in evening peak hours. There is no bus service here. The village has a drug store, a Daiso (a 100 yen shop), some convenience stores, a few farmer’s markets and a few small supermarkets.

Whilst the options for prepared foods for this vegan are next to non-existent we are surrounded by a wealth of fruits and vegetables, many of which are offered to us for free.

The 100 yen store sells a lot of kitchen implements, cutlery and crockery but much of it is plastic, which we’re not buying.

Japan, even rural Japan, is pretty good for buying refills for household supplies rather than purchasing plastic containers each time one empties so in this regard the village shops are sufficient.

We’re only buying used furniture for the rental house we are due to move into, but we can’t buy that in this village, we have to go further afield and we can’t transport that on the train.

The heat is already too much for our baby on the walks to drop her older sister off at nursery school and the heat is only going to rise over the coming months.

The burgeoning craft beer industry here is dispersed in very rural places with excellent water but no public transport.

We have zero choice but to purchase a mobile air-conditioned chariot that can get us to where we need to be from where we are. Sadly, my wife and I need generally to be in different directions at the same time so we frustratingly are going to need two cars. One of which will need to be sufficiently big to fit our family of 4 and our not so small dog in.

Currently, the electric vehicle charging infrastructure is lacking around these parts though we suspect this will improve over the coming years, and we’re going to be renting a house for at least a year or two so can’t install a proper charging point there. We can’t buy EVs, despite this being the only acceptable solution in our collective eyes.

So, we’re buying a Kei car (small boxy car) and a larger … car (I’ve no idea about different types etc. not interested).. second hand of course and I’m insisting that they are both hybrids.

This however takes time, time to find acceptable options and time to transfer the funds over here to buy them. Our house sale should settle in 11 days time, so hopefully for the sake of our kids, we’ll manage to get some sort of X to Y transportation vessel before the sun reaches its blazing potential.

Of course I haven’t driven since passing my test in December last year and my wife is the same but from January, and neither of us have driven automatic so who knows if we’ll even be able to make them move.

Edit: It is now 13th of June and we have a Kei car, which both of us are able to move, our house sale did complete but we are experiencing difficulties in transferring funds over. We have yet to purchase a second car due to the issues with transferring money but are looking at e-power (an EV basically but with fossil fuel charging the battery) hybrid of some description.

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

Originally written on 1st of June 2022 and published over a month later!

Today was one that two of my household were eagerly awaiting, it was the day that my 4 year old daughter started 保育園 (houikuen - nursery/kindergarten) and the day that I started my 地域おこし協力隊　(chiikiokoshikyouryokutai - which deepl translates as Regional Development Cooperation Volunteers) contract!

There were numerous mandatory items to be purchased in advance of my girl starting her new life (which will be the topic of an upcoming post)and equally numerous forms to be filled out and processes to be completed in advance of my contract starting.

My wife and mother-in-law took our excited lass to her classroom in the morning and due to the small size of kei cars, I walked to the 役場　(yakuba - town hall) where my wife was now feeding our baby girl, post dropping off her older sister. It was only an introduction day at the 保育園 so we expected to have our meeting with my new employers then walk to pick up nursery girl once done.

However, anyone reading this has probably already taken more time to get this far than the entire length of our 役場 visit :D. We arrived, the most senior person from the relevant department and two subordinates took us to the mayor’s office (he and the deputy were out of town) where I was officially entered into the employ of the village council. This involved the senior chap reading a sparse text from my official acceptance letter and me saying thank you etc.

We filled the rest of our time walking to a convenience store and enjoying some chilled coffee (my enjoyment of this beverage has taken me quite by surprise - its a long distance from the experience of once hot coffee which has been forgotten and subsequently consumed at room temperature) then as we were a few minutes early to pick up our daughter, we spied on her from behind a sign to see if she was enjoying herself and fitting in. She had a mixed day but is looking forward to going back tomorrow!

My brother-in-law and myself then picked up a number of second hand furniture and appliance items that we had purchased at the weekend and delivered them to our new house. We still have a number of essential items to procure before we can move in but we are on our way, at long last!

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

As I write this, I’m sat in a dark room full of boxes, typing as quietly as I can on a mechanical keyboard so as not to wake up our 9 day old baby daughter.  

Our house is sold (but for the legal agreements), our flights are booked (despite KLM cancelling on us with little notice) and we’re trying to sell or donate anything that we aren’t taking with us to Japan.  

The last stress (hopefully), is the race against time to try and get our new daughter’s Japanese passport in place before the flights, and also a few minor loose ends to tie up with regards to our dog (who is coming with us).

We have just 12 days until we move out of the house and live like nomads for two further weeks, then all going well, we will be in Japan, in my wife’s parents house and trying to shake off jet lag.  Shortly afterwards, we will be checking out the new rental house we have lined up and then going shopping for a bed, probably other things too but for this insomniac, the bed is the single most important piece of furniture before we move into our home for the next few years.

This is the void between our recent past lives and our future.

This blog post is the first of a (hopefully frequently updated) journal of our new lives in rural Japan, and our experiences in the 地域おこし協力隊 (Rural Rejuvenation Cooperation) programme in Hidaka-mura (日本語), Kochi prefecture in beautiful Shikoku.  My wife and I both successfully applied to the programme and I start my contract on the 1st of June.  

Though I hope the focus of this blog will be fairly generalist and not solely focussed on my attempts to create a business (not in depth anyway), I intend to establish a small craft beer brewery in the next 2-3 years and it was on this basis that my contract was offered.  

I am quite interested too in perhaps having a writing side gig so this journal also is an attempt to get back into writing regularly and to establish somewhat of a portfolio!

Emotionally, I am a bit of a mixed bag at the moment!  Raising a new born baby as well as a 3 year old excited big sister is somewhat tiring, as you might expect, and we’ve had numerous setbacks and obstacles to overcome and it has been the most stressful period of my life but aside from this I am exceptionally excited to start our inaka life, though I will miss Scotland hugely and so for that reason I am slightly apprehensive.

I wrote a Japanese article on note.com (日本語) called シンプルライフ (A simple life) which summarised my hopes for the next chapter of our lives, and the essence was that I hope to focus on three core facets of life:

1. Family - More time and focus on my wee, growing family. This also extends to community, both our village and the Shikoku craft brewing community.

2. Food - Both my wife and I love cooking and our 3 year old daughter is also very interested in cooking, so we want to cook more often together and to support that desire we are going to grow our own fruits, herbs and vegetables.  I also want to promote vegan food options and possible even do some pop up vegan kitchens on occasion.

3. Drink - The primary conduit for this will be my brewery, but its not just about making and selling beer, its about education and collaboration.  I, of course want to make delicious beers, but in addition to that I want to enjoy drinking with friends and family.

As well as these core fundamentals driving our new lives, I want to write about it!  I think rural rejuvenation is an awesome idea, and I am excited by the opportunities to contribute to our village’s future successes, and those of neighbouring villages of course.  I’d like to encourage others to give such schemes a try.  I had no idea I qualified for such a programme, and so hadn’t given it much thought until a friend (who I met through my mother-in-law) from the programme encouraged us to go for it.. and well, Caledonia-exit apprehension aside I think that following through on the inkling of an idea, might be the best decision I’ll ever make!

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

For the last few years, I’ve written a blog post at the start of the year and a summary post at the end of the year.  I’ve found it a very satisfying process and I think that doing so has actually encouraged me to achieve some of the stated goals.  That’s not to say everything I’ve planned has worked out, we all know how the global events of the past few years have caused many disruptions.  However, it seems to be a new tradition for me and one that I am happy to continue with, as such, the following are my initial thoughts for what I would like to achieve in 2022.

Prep house for sale, sell it and offload stuff

Several years ago we decided to have a double-garage renovated into a large livable space.. the contractors we engaged for this work did a half-assed job (at best) then vanished into the ether before completion.  Shortly afterwards we became parents and the renovation work was parked for a while.  I tried on numerous occasions to engage tradesmen to complete the job and almost all were devoid of any interest in finishing someone else’s job.. but we did find someone and finally in the second half of last year progress towards completion started.. the handymen involved have done some great work but the lead chap’s baby boy had emergency brain surgery a few months ago and (very understandably) this caused delays to the completion of the work.  We had hoped to be in a position to put our house on the market this month but realistically it will likely be closer to the end of February, if we are lucky! If we don’t acquire a completion certificate from the council then this project is likely to end up costing us chunk when we sell the house.

After receiving a quote from a Japanese removal company for shifting the little amount of our possessions we wanted to take to Japan, we have realised that we really need to cut back even further!  Already I was only really taking clothes, a few computers, books and brewing equipment so there isn’t a huge amount of scope for cutting back further.  Either way, we’ll have a large house full of stuff to either sell (big ticket stuff only), donate or recycle.  In an ideal world we’d donate everything but realistically finances are going to be tight for a few years in Japan so we need to try and make some pennies by selling some of our possessions.  Particularly, as the UK pound is likely to be comically weak against the yen.

Our current house is the first we bought so we have no experience of selling a house and as such haven’t the slightest clue about timescales etc.  I know that this is a highly desirable area and houses sell quickly but I am not sure about the administrative and legal timescales so I’ll need to look into that tout de suite!

Practice driving

Despite my reticence, I acquired a driving license towards the end of last year and have hence satisfied the contract prerequisite.  Whilst I still lack enthusiasm in this sphere, it is a practical reality that since we’ll be living in rural Japan, I will have to drive.  It is our strong desire not to add to the global fossil fuel consumption levels and hugely favour electric vehicles over internal combustion engine options, however we need to do a reality assessment when we move over to see how likely this is given our location.  It is also our preference to use public transport wherever possible and plausible and to walk or cycle for very local stuff. 

Regardless of what type of vehicle we end up with and how we use it, I need to get some practice in before we leave Scotland as I’ve only driven a manual car thus far.  To this end, we’ll sign up to enterprise car club which is the only real option for a new driver, and hopefully hire electric or at least manual cars somewhat infrequently so as to gain some basic level of competence.

Deepen my growing brewing knowledge

This aim is two-fold, on the one hand, I will continue with my postgraduate programe in Brewing and Distilling and complete the final (of four) courses in December this year.  However, up until now I have been studying whilst working full-time and satisfying many requirements for moving to Japan so I have mainly been studying only to pass assignments, and whilst I have learned a great deal from the courses, I intend to properly study and research many aspects of brewing once I have a lot more time on my hands.

On the other hand, I hope to gain industry experience during the few years that it will take to establish our own brewery.  As I’ve written about on this site a number of times, I have been in contact with a brewer in our future prefecture and he is happy for me to spend some time with him at his brewery!  The details are still to be discussed (in person over some of his delicious sounding beers!) but this is very positive and my hope is that I can similarly spend some time assisting other brewers in the same vein.

Move to Japan

This is obviously an easy one to achieve but there are still some prerequisites to be satisfied and stresses to overcome before we take flight and then we need to get services hooked up (superfast broadband) and furniture purchased for our new rental house, only after which will I consider the move complete.  Hopefully further down the road we’ll be in a position where we can build our own house but that will almost certainly not start in 2022.

Continue sustainability drive

For the past few years we’ve been trying to do our bit to lessen our impact on the global climate emergency, moving to rural Japan gives us a renewed opportunity to go even further.  I plan to write a dedicated blog post on our current and future efforts, we’re not experts but are doing our best and will continue to make improvements as we go forward.

Find brewery location and start the ball rolling

Once we get to Japan, we need to find a suitable location to build a brewery and lease or buy the plot.  Whilst it is possible that there may be a building in the area that might be suitable for our purposes, it is our preference to build our own place from the ground up so that sustainability is a guiding principle in the design and resource provisioning.  In addition to finding a suitable location and starting to build the brewery, we need to build a business case and do a considerable amount of paperwork to acquire licenses to brew and sell beer.  How much of this is viable in our first year especially given it’ll probably be in year three that our brewery opens is unclear, but efforts will certainly be made to make progress in this regard.

Collaborate with others for the benefit of the community

When I refer to community I really mean communities as there are distinct groups of people that I want to help, there is the local village community, the prefectural brewing community, the island-wide brewing community, sustainability-related communities and under-represented communities (women, LGBTQIA+, minorities, charities etc.).  In each case, I want to volunteer my skills (or lack thereof) to help these communities with their particular challenges however I can.

Spend more time with family

Work-life balance is key for this next year and all subsequent years!  We have another baby on the way and I want to be as much a part of raising her as I have been already (and will of course continue to do) with our first daughter.  Despite the work required to achieve all that we wish to achieve, this will be done via a framework that guarantees dedicated family time.  Our future life is going to be a simpler one, built around three very basic needs - family, food and drink.

In some regards this aim equates to normality and perhaps not something that necessarily requires specifying in plans for the year, I don’t think it is exceptional for a father to want to spend time with and share the responsibility of raising his family, but for me, I feel like it is of paramount importance that I reaffirm my commitment to family time at the start of each year as it will be a guide in the many decisions I will have to make in the coming year.

Spend more time cooking

Throughout the past year, whilst I have still been cooking a fair amount, I haven’t spent as much time planning and making delicious food, rather I’ve been cooking in order to share the load in the provision of household meals.  This is because I have spent so much of the time that I previously spent cooking, brewing instead.  This had to happen and I have no regrets but I love cooking and when we move to Japan, I’ll have a whole new selection of ingredients to learn about, which excites me. 

As our daughter Islay has developed she has, perhaps unsurprisingly, gained an interest in growing food and cooking and some of my favourite times in the kitchen of the past year have been spent teaching her how to cook and enjoying eating these dishes together.  I look forward to spending much more time in the kitchen with my wife and kids this year!

Become a forager

Since becoming vegan almost 4 years ago my love for mushrooms has exploded, to the extent that my daughter’s nickname for me is now mushroom.. Over the past year or so, thanks largely to a small number of people on the fediverse and to the accelerating climate emergency, my interest in foraging has also exploded.  I have already bought a number of excellent books and have started tentatively collecting small amounts of fungi from nearby woods just to start working on my identification skills, but time is currently a limiting factor.  When we move to Japan, I really want to hone this skill, I’m not just interested in foraging for mushrooms but the wide range of locally available wild produce (always gathering sustainably) and am developing thoughts around how I might use these in some experimental beers in the future.

Get fit(ter)!

I generally steer clear of this new years’ resolution trap, but I’m including it this time as I’m going to need to improve my fitness to be successful in my move from a desk-bound IT consulting hermit to a far more physical career in brewing.  So, once I’ve finally hung my IT boots up (for the second and last time!), I’ll don my trainers and start getting fit again.  Probably the most likely ways I’ll achieve this are through walking, cycling and yoga, though once we’re settled in Japan, I’d really like to add kayaking to this repertoire.

So there we have it, my initial list of aims for the next year, I will keep checking back on this throughout the year and do my best to adhere to them.  I wish you all luck in your own endeavours throughout the coming year.

頑張ります!

After a slow start to my series of six single hop and single malt (SMaSH) beers and a small departure from the series, I returned to complete a very satisfying three brew days using some very popular hops. In order of appearance, I used Amarillo, Centennial and Mosaic.

Aside from having a strangely enticing name, the Amarillo hop is one which I’ve seen appear in a number of beers and recipes and is one which is described by hop book author Stan Heironymus as “intensely fruity (citrus, melon and stonefruits)”. It was a very drinkable beer but due to the timing of the hop additions I missed the intensity, as such was my first choice hop in a short series of dry-hopped SMaSH IPAs.

Centennial seems largely to be a ‘support’ hop and I’ve not often seen it as a headliner, which is likely more a reflection of my novice stature rather than indicative of its actual commercial use, however I see it frequently and wanted to see how it faired by itself. It was described by Mr Heironymus in “For The love of Hops” as uniquely floral so I have an eye on it for a potential green tea ally in future creations. The aroma is certainly less fruity than my previous SMaSH beers and the taste is somewhat floral, not quite piney but definitely a hint of a plant.. quite dry to taste as well. I’m not sure that the hop necessarily shines by itself but can see how it could positively influence a beer in combination with other hops.

The final hop in this series is Mosaic, and I’ve noticed that A LOT of brewers like to add this hop in the latter stages to really enhance the aroma of the beers, and though I have not yet tapped the beer, the aroma from the keg on transfer post fermentation was awesome, so I cannot wait to crack this one open. S H says “Rich in mango, lemon, citrus, pine and, notably, blueberry” so I have plans for this one rounding out a future stout idea that I have.

Impressions on mosaic: the aroma isn’t particularly strong, but I suspect that mosaic does most of its magic in the dry hopping stage(s), I picked up notes of fruits but not the sharpness of citrus, this was more of a soft fruit aroma, not stone fruits but maybe faintly berry-ish. The flavour of the beer sort of reinforces this, the (blue)berry hints are subtle and you could be forgiven for missing them completely but in direct comparison to the centennial SMaSH it is fruitier, also the hop flavour itself whilst just as pronounced as the centennial beer is a little lighter and more refreshing in comparison.

Note: The centennial and subsequently the mosaic beers were the first to be kegged since I replaced the O-rings in my kegs for the first time and there isn’t the slightest hint of oxidation in either so I’ll definitely need to make it a common practice to replace the rings reasonably frequently to avoid spoiling good beers with uninvited oxygen!

Normally, I’d write a little about the brew days here but they were very uneventful and efficient so not much to say.

The grain bill for each of the beers was 4kg of Maris Otter (Low Colour from Simpsons) and the yeast was White Labs WLP01 California Ale which I opted for because I wanted light, crisp IPAs for this series of beers.

For each of the 6 brews in this and my earlier post a single hop as used and the measurements and timings are as follows:

• 20g start of boil (60m)
• 40g 15m from end of boil
• 40g after boil once temperature of the wort was cooled to 79 degrees C.

I used protofloc (carageenan/irish moss) to assist with fining.. and that’s it, very straightforward recipes for very straightforward beers in order to focus attention on individual hops. I learned a fair amount with these 6 brew days and have already embarked upon a short series of 3 dry-hopped beers using 3 of the hops from this series. At the time of writing this (way back in August!), I had just that morning kegged the first of these beers, using the amarillo hop and the aroma filled my kitchen, it was gorgeous! I was brewing a Citra version and I opted for Mosaic for the third.

Onwards!

In January last year, I wrote a blog post about my provisional plans for 2021 , this seems as good a time as any to review the plans and assess how well I managed to move towards achieving them.

With the global challenges of 2020 bleeding through to much of 2021, there were certain goals that were either not legally achievable or I simply didn’t feel that the risk of infection was low enough to pursue the goal in question. Protecting my family from covid-19 was a constant consideration and at times perhaps I was more cautious than I strictly had to be but in this regard I have absolutely no regrets.

So “excuses” given, let’s review the plans in order of their placement within the previous post:

Japanese Local Government’s Rural Rejuvenation Initiative (kyouryokutai programme - 協力隊)

Whilst not explicitly highlighted as a goal for the year, my year start blog post mentioned that pretty much everything I planned for the year was done so in order to enable us to apply to this scheme. Both my wife and I successfully applied and were accepted into the kyouryokutai programme for Hidaka village in Kōchi prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan. My contract is due to start on June 1st 2022 and my wife will start a few months later once our second baby is old enough to attend kindergarten. I was pretty nervous during the interview with the town mayor, deputy mayor and various village people but they were very lenient on me with their questioning and I held my nerve and responded appropriately in reasonably acceptable Japanese. There is an implicit requirement for a driving license, but as long as we were trying to obtain licenses, the village officials seemed to be content and if we need or needed to learn in Japan, I don’t think this would have been a particularly big deal.

Brew more regularly

In January I set the target at completing 15 brew days by the end of 2021 and in order to enable this to happen we invested in an additional conical fermenter, allowing me to be able to brew more frequently (approximately every two weeks). I am delighted to say that at the time of writing, I have managed 18 brew days with 1 more planned before the year ends!

Thanks in part to teachings from my part-time MSc in Brewing and Distilling course, in big part to great advice from my friend Ken from Mukai Craft Brewing and in part due to my diligence and experimentation, I’ve progressed quite well this year. I decided to put my tech skills to use and developed a beer recipe database and front end web site (which still needs to be more populated) which also helped me lean on the knowledge of other brewers in order to get to the point where I am developing my own recipes. I’ve still much to learn and much recipe development to do but I have been reaching out to family who are experts in tea in order to help me think about flavour combinations that will make for unique and interesting beers featuring their delicious products.

My brewing will hit somewhat of a wall early next year as I’ll need to pack up my equipment for transit to Japan where it is currently illegal to brew anything over 1% ABV (alcohol by volume) at home. I’m not overly concerned by this as I have always planned to brew low alcohol beers as part of my beer line up and this will give me adequate opportunity for experimentation with different techniques for doing so.

Establish brewing network in Japan

I reached out to a number of breweries during the first half of the year and established contact with some cool brewers, I look forward to future in-person meetings with these brewers and more. I had plans to contact every brewer in Shikoku but there are so many new breweries popping up so it was becoming less viable. Instead I accepted an invitation into a facebook group offer to a group for Shikoku craft brewers. I had to create a new account because I don’t have a personal one, nor do I have any intention of creating one, but access to this group of brewers has already proven invaluable and so putting my principles aside in order to be part of this community seemed to be a worthwhile idea.

Once I’m in Japan, I have the opportunity to work with Ken Mukai from Mukai Craft Brewing for a while, which I am very excited about. The details are yet to be discussed and I certainly don’t want to be a burden or outstay my welcome but with our own brewery being 2 to 3 years down the road, I’ll be happy to help Ken out for as long as he can use me. Aside from this, I hope to experience brewing at other breweries around the prefecture or island in order to strengthen community relationships and glean industry knowledge from the brewers who have come before me.

Experience breweries in Scotland

This has unfortunately been the main challenge affected by covid-19’s continuing prevalence. It has been a difficult time for breweries (as it has for everyone) and whilst many of them have adapted well, it just wasn’t feasible to visit them during the year. I did manage a few brief chats during the Edinburgh beer festival but otherwise I’ve not pushed this as a priority due covid concerns, and lack of time really, learning to drive, studying my course, working full-time, preparing for interviews, looking after my daughter and preparing for our second daughter, as well as trying to brew as often as possible has meant that I’ve had almost no free time to allocate to this.

I did contact a brewery, one of the creators of which is a friend of a friend, and whilst they seemed happy for me to visit at some point the timing wasn’t ideal as a new head brewer was about to start and get used to operations etc. Trying to find a good time to even meet for a beer proved to be a challenge and so, unfortunately the visit didn’t happen.

Whilst I am a little disappointed not to have managed a single visit, I’m not going to let it bother me, if I can fit a visit in during 2022 before me move to Japan then cool, but with a new daughter incoming, my priorities are likely to shift.

Continue studying the science of brewing

Very happy with progress in this regard. I’ve completed two courses now and am on the verge of completing my third of four. Indeed, at the time of writing this I am somewhat procrastinating when I should be studying for the final assignment which is due in 5 days time.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that I have enjoyed each of the courses equally but regardless they have all been invaluable and helped me greatly develop my understanding of brewing. Due to the fact that I have been so busy with everything else in the year, I have primarily been studying to pass the assignments and not been able to really deep-dive into the bones of what I am interested in, however, I have been gathering lots of resources so that once I am in Japan and have more time on my hands, I can really settle in and study everything I want to study.

After this current course is done, I have a final course which due to scheduling won’t start until September 2022, it will be focussed on cereals, malting and mashing processes and I look forward to learning more about this from an academic perspective.

Get house in order

After much searching we found some very good tradesmen to work on finishing our garage conversion, unfortunately due to their personal circumstances the work which is almost complete has been on hold for a few months so we’ve not achieved the progress that I hoped but they have done an excellent job and I’m hopeful that they can complete the work soon and we’ll be ready to put the house on the market early in 2022.

We were very lucky with regards to our future living situation and have a rental house being held for us until we move over to Japan. We will need to live with my in-laws for a short while in order to furnish the rental house but I’m very happy that we’ll be able to move into a space of our own shortly after arriving in the village.

Groundwork for future brewery

Nothing much has changed in this regard since the post at the start of the year, which said:

Most of the work required towards our future brewery, can’t really start until we are in Japan. Also, as the intention isn’t to establish the brewery immediately, but rather continue my studies and gain some industry experience, the majority of the groundwork is really just research and clarification into licensing requirements and laws, and understanding the hoops that we need to jump through when the time comes, the more we can line up in advance the better.

At this moment in time, I’m thinking that we may build a taproom before we work on the brewery. The thinking is that a) we’ll need one, b) it will help with networking with other craft brewers if I’m selling their beers, c) will potentially open up collaboration opportunities for exclusive small batch limited edition brews to be sold in our taproom and, d) it exploits my almost two decades of experience in working in pubs in Scotland.

The intention would be to have uniform branding between the taproom and brewery, and so we can do work on reserving web domains, logo design, and as above, reaching out to brewers etc. before moving over.

However, I have reached out to a graphical designer friend who has agreed to turn my logo design draft into something of a more professional quality! I’ll be working on the website and reserving domains etc. soon after moving to Japan.

Obtain a driving license

After paying an agency who were sure they would be able to sort out driving lessons with an automatic car in our area with no issues, they failed to do so, the result being they charged me £150 for booking a £62 driving test. Dicks.. So, in somewhat of a panic I sent out emails to each and every driving instructor or agency that covered our area and was very lucky to get a response from Kate at Fastrackpass .. but we had to go with manual as there was no automatic availability. With an incoming test I had little choice but to go for this option. Kate hooked me up with a local driving instructor Duncan and set about finding a better test date and location as the one I had booked wasn’t at our local test centre (due to covid-19 related backlogs it was a take what you are given scenario). Within days of my first driving lesson, Kate had managed to secure a test a few weeks later than the initial one but at my local test centre. Many lessons were taken before the date but I felt that we had only just finished learning right before the test, so my nerves were a jangly bag of spanners on the day and I failed within the first 10 minutes of the test.

However, I needed to get a license and ideally one with a date of issue that is more than 90 days before our exit from Scotland as this is a requirement for the conversion of UK to Japanese driving lesson to be a relatively straight-forward process. As such, we lined up a few more lessons which were more focussed on practice and confidence building, and tried to find another test date, which was actually yesterday.

My wife who had an issue with a BSM (British School of Motoring) instructor just not turn up for her first lesson, also switched to Duncan, and Kate was lucky enough to find her a test at our local centre (rather than in Stirling which is too far for the instructor to lend his car), her driving test is soon - fingers crossed! BSM were somewhat difficult to get a refund out of but after several months of following their processes, I found an email address in their terms and conditions and we sent an email demanding a refund on the threat of invoking trading standards and solicitors. Refund was issue within the hour!

.. oh yeah, I passed.

Continue to find family time

2021 has been a fantastic year in regards to witnessing the development of my daughter, she is awesome! Frustrating as hell at times, but I am so happy to spend time with her and miss her terribly when she spends time away at her granny’s house.

As also alluded to a few times above, thanks to a last roll of the dice kind of situation, we have a new baby on the way due in mid-March! Opinions were split in the household and wider family over preferences for the baby’s sex (obviously not really important, health being the only real property we care about) with my daughter and I being in the minority with a preference for another little girl. The 20 week scan was inconclusive in identifying sex but the sonographer was leaning heavily in the female prediction camp, a second scan at a local ultrasound centre reinforced this opinion but again couldn’t be certain, so whilst we may still be surprised when they arrive, it seems like baby number two will be devoid of an Y chromosome, packing instead, double Xs.

2021 brought some unexpected, awesome news out of the blue. One Sunday during our weekly Papa & Daughter movie and popcorn session, I heard someone pop something through our mailbox but didn’t get up to investigate immediately as I was enjoying cosy time with my daughter. When I checked later there was a hand-written, hand-delivered letter to me which was a pretty unusual event. Whilst the letter contained some potentially concerning health news (which is in hand and not currently a concern) it also contained the phenomenal news that I have a sister whose existence I knew nothing about until that point. The letter was from her mum, the wife of my biological father (whom I’ve had no relationship with since I was an infant - a pattern which will continue) and it introduced my sister to me as a 20 year old who has “always” known of my existence. The letter rocked me but tentatively I reached out and we finally made contact by email in June, we then agreed to communicate using online chat via matrix and met in person for the first time in November. We have briefly caught up again just a few days ago and we’re looking forward to our next meet up. So whilst not in my original thoughts for the year, this definitely qualifies for inclusion under family time!

-–

This may have been the most stressful year of my entire life, and we’re not out of the woods yet, there is still a lot to get done before we move to Japan (hopefully in late April), but I have to be pretty happy with the goals that I did achieve, yes it would have been great to visit some Scottish breweries but I can become a brewer without having done so and perhaps there will be an opportunity or two in 2022, though I’m not investing much hope in that being the case with Omicron cases on the rise.

We’ll have to see if our plans are affected by covid-19’s resilience, but those are considerations for another post in the new year covering my plans and goals for 2022.

Onwards!

Since some time in 2018 (maybe 2017), I have been tinkering with self-hosting decentralised, distributed services thinking, as many like me have thought, that once I’d configured, secured and tested the application then I would be able to convince friends and family to move over to it from the big bad centralised alternatives.  I’ve written some blog posts in the past in relation to this (linked at the bottom of the page).

Over time, I came to realise that most people aren’t going to move, and that’s fine but the primary reason that there wasn’t much effort from me to “onboard” *shudder* friends and family to these services is because they were all in varying levels of pre-release development and lacked functionality or reliability that those (largely) non-techy people are used to.. So I simply didn’t really invite anyone to the majority of them, with the exception of my xmpp and matrix servers.  I’m in the process of **hopefully** moving my last friend from xmpp over to matrix and I’ve got double-figures (just) of my people on my synapse instance.

However, that didn’t deter me, I’ve had a great time experimenting with and trying out LOTS of different decentralised apps, mainly activitypub cognisant, over the past few years and regularly raise bug reports, feature requests or generally just try to help the developers of those apps as much as I can along the way.  My whole outlook on software development has changed positively due to these interactions. 

If I remember correctly, over the past few years, I have hosted:

• Friendica
• Diaspora*
• Mastodon
• Pleroma
• Pixelfed
• Osada
• Zap
• Peertube
• Funkwhale
• Plume
• Nextcloud
• Mumble
• GoToSocial
• Prosody (XMMP)
• Synapse (Matrix)
• Dendrite (Matrix)
• Cactus Comments
• Gitea
• Email

My initial hosting efforts were on a chunky x86 server with lots of RAM etc. but for the past few years I’ve moved my sites and apps onto lower energy consumption single board computers (SBC) and rarely have I experienced any issues (though building early versions of plume on one was somewhat of a nightmare!).  I’m not going to go into the various reasons for ditching or keeping the apps that I host currently, but happy to discuss in comments or my contact links, should you be curious.

Whilst I still think that my friends and family should move over to decentralised alternative services, I’ve decided that (with a few exceptions) I’ll not be their host or admin going forward nor will my endless experimentation with the newest distributed app on the scene continue.

The primary reason for this not actually social media or technology-related, but I am on a path to a major lifestyle change and I will simply not have the time or inclination to be sat in front of a computer for as much time as I currently am.  Next year, we are moving from Scotland to rural Japan, I am (again, and this time finally) hanging my IT boots up and will become a craft beer brewer.

I’m in the process of moving those apps that I want to keep and use within my household over to subdomains of this one and ditching the others, again with a couple of exceptions:

• GoToSocial - I love this (under development) app and was the first person to host it on an SBC! I raise bug reports etc. whenever they come up.  I am in the process of integrating it into this website and already, when I post here, the post is also sent to my account on GoToSocial.  I still have to engineer the scripts for two-way synchronising but its not urgent, I’ll get to it.

• Pixelfed - I have a link below to a relatively dated post on why I stick with pixelfed, I see a lot of potential here and as such it is one of the two apps which will remain under my nipponalba.scot domain tree.  I think once bugs are sorted and the groups feature is released this offers the most likely portal for friends & family to move to should they wish (I know this contradicts what I said above but that’s just the way it is).  Also I like the dev and he has been very approachable and grateful for my contributions to the project, which is nice.

• Nextcloud - Currently used by my household and my mum, but as soon as the [Quartz64]https://pine64.com/product/quartz64-model-a-8gb-single-board-computer/ is production ready, I’ll be giving it a beefier SBC and will configure a spare SBC for my parents to have their own instance (backing up all data from Scotland to Japan is not going to be a great experience).

• Synapse (x2) - As mentioned above I now have multiple friends and family with accounts here and I hope to add more - so it is the second of two services to remain under the nipponalba domain.  I also just created a second instance (as dendrite development is glacial) for this domain, primarily to bridge to cactus comments, obviously should any of my close family who happen to share my surname prefer an account on this instance then they can have one.

• Gitea - I’ve conjured a really fast and light website publishing process thanks to gitea and so it remains as long as my websites do.

• Email (maybe) - Currently and until we move to Japan at least, we are using tutanota for our email.  I self-hosted the email before (on a VPS) but the IP address range wasn’t trusted by google or microsoft so emails to people I needed to contact weren’t being delivered, or were sent directly to spam.  If we can get a static IP address from our internet provider in Japan then hopefully I can self-host email again without trust concerns.

That’s it, aside from my static websites and various convenient apps such as bitwarden_rs (password manager) and beehive (automation tool) .

Going forward, rather than wanting to host everything for everyone, I’m more interested in trying to help my family and friends host their own services or sites - should they wish to.

Previous related posts:

Distributed or Federated Social Network

The Fediverse

Why Pixelfed?

I like to break up the slight monotony of a series of the same type of brews with a guest beer brew day, where instead of focussing on a technique or ingredient influence, I can just chill out and make a nice beer. For my 17th brew day, I opted for Siren’s Undercurrent Oatmeal Pale Ale as something about the recipe resonated with me and I love oats in a beer. I don’t remember ever sampling this beer before and perhaps if I had, I may have opted for something a little more interesting (for my taste), my attempt at Siren’s Undercurrent was disappointingly underwhelming.

The brew day was pretty straight-forward with the only real difference to my normal routine being a slightly longer boil which, and I may be mistaken here, lends itself to a slightly sweeter finish.

I wasn’t able to get one of the hops (Palisade) so switched it out for Williamette.

I was tired the night before so had decided to clean and sanitise the brewing kit in the morning before the brew, this is always a mistake but sometimes unavoidable and basically always leads to me struggling to get my head in the game. What should have been a very easy brew day turned out to be a series of micro-errors.

• I had issues with recirculation during the mash stage which led to higher than desired temperatures for part of the process.
• Once again the poorly designed additional filter around the grainfather inlet valve was swept to the side and rendered useless, leading to a little more grist getting into the wort.
• The hop spider got blocked and so required intervention post whirlpooling and cooling,
• And there were a disappointing lack of bubbles when transferred into the fermenter. Even after giving the wort a vigourous shake, the bubbles dissipated quickly leading to what I expected to be a fairly lacklustre fermentation.

I did however, hit close to both original and final gravity targets but the resulting beer lacked a little character and as this was before I replaced the o-rings in my cornelius kegs it was ever so slightly oxidated.

That said, every brew adds to my experience and knowledge and this one was no exception.

Onwards.

Two out of three ain’t bad..

.. but the third was excellent!

After a semi-successful run of 80/- beers in an attempt to develop the base for my first future commercial beer, I have moved on to the study of hops. In order to best study the contributions of the humulus lupulus I’ve been brewing a small run of SMaSH IPA beers, which are brewed with a single malted barley grain bill and a single hop. I’ve stuck to the same yeast for each of the brews but I did swap to an extra pale ale maris otter malt for the third brew, from very slightly darker pale ale malt.

Again, like in previous brews, due to the length of time it takes for a beer to be brewed and conditioned, along with the frequency of my brew days (approximately every two weeks), I can’t directly apply lessons learned from the previous brew day to the next one. As such, in the case of these three beers, the third beer benefited from lessons learned from the first brew (although the first beer hadn’t yet been carbonated or conditioned by then).

Each of the pretty straight-forward brew days went smoothly but the first two beers were somewhat underwhelming, drinkable but with very muted aroma and flavour profiles. I quickly realised that I had made somewhat of an error of judgement in the first two brews, which I’ll explain in the moment, and made a correction for the third day which was a game changer.

The realisation dawned on me when I was thinking about tea bags, particularly the pyramid bags that my in-laws use to package their tea in. For the first few brews and for several previous brews, I had been using muslin bags to place the hops in for each of the additions, but unlike in the case of a tea bag where there the leaves are loose and there is a lot of space within the bag for them to move around, I had packed the muslin bags pretty tightly, so that they wouldn’t open (I was using very small bags) mid-boil. As a result, I think that there wasn’t enough surface contact with the hop pellets and they weren’t able to properly breakdown and emit their goodnesss in to the wort. On the third brew day I reverted to using a hop spider which allows the hops to move freely but captures (most of) the spent hops (trub) so that they don’t make their way into the fermenter. My suspicions were correct and the third beer was in no way muted.

For each of the brews I used 4kg of maris otter malted barley, pale ale for the first two and extra pale ale for the third. I opted for extra pale ale for a little more of a neutral flavour impact from the grains and to accentuate the hop contribution.

I used White Labs WLP001 California Ale yeast for each of the brews as it is a reasonably neutral yeast with regards to its own flavour impact and is good for light and crisp ales.

In each of the brews I used 100g of the selected hop for the day. 20g at the start of the boil, 40g with 15 minutes left in the boil and another 40g at flameout, once the wort had chilled to 79°C.

Brew day 1: Motueka was the hop of choice and is one that I’ll revisit. I chose this because I have enjoyed a number of New Zealand beers over the past few years and for some reason it is the one hop that stuck in my mind from reading the cans. It is an aroma/flavour hop with low alpha acid content (~7%)which means that it isn’t often used for bittering. According to ‘For The Love of Hops’ by Stan Hieronymous (2012), Motueka imparts a citrusy flavour, most notably lemon and lime as well as tropical fruits. My muted version has a sort of dull tropical fruit feel to it but not prevalent enough to identify.

Brew day 2: I chose Challenger for its noted aroma and flavour contributions (wood and green tea according to James Morton (2016)) with an eye on future tea based beers. Again, it is a low alpha acid hop which will likely be important as tea may impart some bitterness, depending on the type and timing of its addition. Stan Heironymus (2012) mentions that this hop was embraced by English brewing company Bass and is noted for its fruity and spicy qualities. As per above, my use of muslin bags has resulted in an underwhelming, muted but drinkable, if not exactly enjoyable beer.

Brew day 3: Citra! A very popular hop for homebrewers and commercial brewers alike, famed for its dual purpose utility, in that whilst it is a reasonably high alpha acid hop (12%) and is therefore great for bittering, it also imparts a very crisp, citrus fruity flavour which in my beer, I perceive as grapefruit*. Mr Heironymus (2012) has the hop as being “rich in passion fruit, lychee, peah, gooseberries, and a laundry list of other unusual (for hops) flavours”. This beer is probably the cleanest, crispest and best brewed beer that I’ve made so far. It isn’t exactly complex but there is zero oxidation and it drinks beautifully. I’m very, very happy with this and will be pouring myself one as soon as today’s SMaSH brew is over (Amarillo).

This was also the first brew which I used my new Plaato valves which prevent an issue that brewers can experience when cold crashing, called suckback, and my first attempt at cold-crashing. The glycol chiller that I have is only capable of chilling down to 4°C and struggles to maintain that, so the temperature fluctuated a bit between 4-6°C. In a commercial brewery, you’d probably be aiming for around or slightly below 0°C but despite this, there was some improvement in haze reduction and final beer clarity. I’m happy with this first experiment.

*Segue: I recently learned that whilst we all have around 1000 olfactory receptors which sit behind our noses and are activated in unique combinations which may invoke memories or pre-conceived flavour profile, before building a flavour perception in our brains. However, we each have only around 360 of these receptors active, and they are not the same 360 receptors for everyone so we genuinely perceive flavour and aroma differently. This is why you can read a wine, beer or whisky (or anything consumable) flavour profile and be entirely bewildered after tasting as to how anyone could have arrived at those descriptors (Heironymus 2012). It isn’t ALWAYS pretentiousness!

I took a break after this mini-series to brew a beer by Siren brewing, which I’ll write about next time, there were an abundance of tiny mistakes, my head was not in the game, and though I’ve yet to taste it, I don’t have high expectations.

References:

Heironymus, S. (2012). For the Love of Hops - The Practical Guide to Aroma, Bitterness and the Culture of Hops. 1st edn. Boulder: Brewers Publication.
Morton, J. (2016). BREW. The foolproof guide to making world-class beer at home. 1st edn. London: Quadrile Publishing.

The last brew of the first quarter of 2021, and the final attempt at an 80 shilling base beer, for now at least.

For my previous brew I used some small quantities of left over grains from the brew before that, and adapted some previously brewed 80/- recipes to create my very first original recipe. However, in order to reduce the number of small volumes of differing grains that I would need to use, I attempted to refine the recipe for this brew.

The last beer is still conditioning so I still don’t as of yet know exactly how it will taste but my gut feeling from sampling and smelling the wort at different stages of fermentation is that it won’t quite manage the level of sweetness that I am looking for in order to compensate for the bitterness when I introduce roasted green tea to the recipe later in the year. In order to try and improve on this as well as refining the recipe I also reduced the mash time by 5 minutes in order to try and retain some (but not a lot) of non-fermentable complex sugars.

As well as the Melanoidin malts which I introduced in the brevious brew, I also added some DRC malt - which is a double roasted crystal malt, it apparently contributes a caramel raisin flavour without the associated bitter astringency of some darker malts. I have a reasonably clear idea of how I want my eventual 80/- x roasted green tea beer to taste and I think the DRC malt will help achieve this, I will probably also introduce some orange rind when I come to experiment with tea, presuming I have a base beer to work with.

Last time I accidentally omitted Sorachi Ace from the recipe and used Magnum, this time I rejigged the hop additions and made First Golding the primary hop with some Sorachi Ace addition at flame-out for the “vanilla, tea and coriander notes” that it allegedly imparts, hopefully with such a late addition, I’ll avoid the intense lemon flavour associated with the hop when used for bittering.

Again as per last brew, no dry hopping, this is ostensibly a malty beer.

My usual yeast (White Labs WLP029 - Edinburgh Ale) was out of stock! So I had to choose between a Dusseldorf Alt or Irish Ale style yeast.. The profile of the latter was closest to the Edinburgh Ale yeast so I opted for that.. and hey, many Scots such as myself have Irish heritage so the beer is still authentic ;) .. actually on that, Williams Bros use Nottingham Ale yeast for their 80/- so..

I will create a recipe template for the site and post the recipe details, stages and notes at a later date.

The original (standard) gravity on this beer after transferring to the fermentation vessel was 1.048.. I’d like it to retain some sweetness and as such I’m not really sure of a target final gravity, I’ll just take what I get really.. I expect the ABV will be around 4.5% but we’ll see.

As mentioned above, I still haven’t tasted my first original recipe beer so trying to refine the recipe is a bit bold.. Only about 4 weeks left until I get to taste it and see if my efforts were worthwhile!

What’s this? A brew day blog post on the actual brew day? My, aren’t we organised!

With reference to the title, ‘mair’ is Scots for ‘more’ and colloquially a shilling was called a bob back in the day, with the Scottish beers being often referred to as 70 bob or 80 bob etc.

As a result of having some excess grains and hops from my previous brew , today’s beer will be unique and I guess this was my first attempt to design my own recipe. It wasn’t merely a matter of ordering less grains and swapping in those I had in store, though that was part of it! I actually made some conscious decisions on grain choice with respect to my brew day plan.

My previous 80/- brew day had a 50 minute mash, which if I understand correctly results in a sweeter beer as there is a smaller window for the amylase enzymes to break down complex sugars into mono- or di-saccharides which can be consumed by yeast. The result would be a lower alcohol beer as there is less ethanol converted and due to a higher amount of residual sugars a richer mouthfeel and sweeter beer. At least this is my understanding. However, I want to provide as much nutrition to the yeast as possible, to exhaust it before conditioning and I think the 50 minute mash, or at least my management of it led to an excess in active, hungry yeast in the resultant beer, or at least at the bottom of the keg of said beer.

So, I went with the more familiar 60 minute mash but I still want this beer to be reasonably sweet, for future addition of a slightly bitter adjunct, and as such I opted to include Melanoidin malts, 10% of the grain bill. The blurb on the brewstore website states that if this ratio of aromatic (melanoidin) are added it can add a honey-like flavour to the beer.. Sounds good to me and should hopefully make up for the lower volume of residual sugars in my beer, to some extent.

With regards to the hops I have (Magnum, First Golding and Sorachi Ace), I did a bit of reading about their bittering and flavour profiles and decided to include both Magnum and First Golding.

• Sorachi Ace if used for bittering can lead to a an intense lemon flavour but for flavouring it can bring vanilla, tea & coriander notes, these both sound great but I mis-remembered and thought that these weren’t all suitable for this beer. I intended to use them towards the end of the boil initially.
• First Golding is a very commonly used hop for this style of beer, its bittering contribution provides a refreshing crisp finish and when used for flavouring can bring orange, marmalade and soft spices to the beer. Both sound good, I’ve gone with this as my primary bittering hop and added some at the end for flavour.
• Lastly Magnum, a hop with high alpha acid content which is very popular for bittering IPAs, Pils etc. (In Europe anyway). Though it isn’t used much as a flavouring hop, it apparently can impart subtle spice aromas, like nutmeg and this holds interest to me. As such, I’m going with some Magnum mid-boil so that it’s bittering contribution is there but restrained and some in the last 10 minutes with a hope that it subtly adds a little complexity to the flavour.

On double checking the qualities of the hops, I actually did mean to use some sorachi ace.. oh well, plenty left for next time.

No dry hopping, this is ostensibly a malty beer.

For yeast, mainly due to limited alternative stocks at the brewstore , I’ve gone with WLP029 - Edinburgh Ale. It’s the same yeast used for the previous 80 shilling brews and it makes sense to have some part of each brew to remain uniform.

I will create a recipe template for the site and post the recipe details, stages and notes at a later date.

The original gravity of the beer on transfer to the fermentation vessel was 1.050 which is a bit higher than the other export beers that I’ve brewed which signifies a higher sugar content, so long as the yeast activity is fervent this should result in a slightly stronger beer, I’m hoping for the 5% ABV area which would make my final gravity target around 1.012.. but I’ll be happy with around 1.015ish, I guess. In addition, the beer looked very clear, was a gorgeous colour and smelled great.

It remains to be seen if my experimenting results in a tasty beer, but given this is my first attempt at my own recipe and will be tweaked going forward, so long as it isn’t bad it’s all good!

I am going to have to change beer types soon though as I am running out of 80 shilling based puns for blog titles! Let’s face it, in that regard, I’m never going to top 80 chillin !

I departed from my current series of Scottish export type ales to make another dark beer for my birthday, or rather the brew day was for my birthday the actual beer is still a few weeks away. I opted for one of Brewdog’s recipes which they have open-sourced for several years, all publicly available for free as in pdf format, or on their website or for a small fee as a hardback book. As this is an published and open-sourced recipe and not part of copyrighted recipe book I can actually post the details for a change! Brewdog has a lot of critics, but I’m not one of them, I enjoy a number of their beers and commend their efforts towards sustainability . I am not however associated with Brewdog or in any way a Brewdog fanboi, unless James discovers this page and hey! I’d really love to come and see your brewery!

Another departure I made was that I ordered the ingredients of this brew from The Malt Miller rather than The Brewstore as the recipe calls for specific grains, yeast and hops that were unfortunately not available from my preferred, more local, supplier. I initially tried to find alternatives for each of the grains but it soon became clear that I was moving further and further from replicating the Brewdog version of the beer that I just had to look elsewhere. I was very pleased with the delivery and service from The Malt Miller and my only criticism is that I had to order larger quantities of grains than required as they don’t offer the smaller increments that The Brewstore does, opting for 50g implements rather than 10g. I also had to buy 100g hops packets even if only 5g of hops were required but hey ho, the excess will not go to waste!

On to the Brew day! The full recipe can be found here and the ingredients for a 20L brew were as follows:

Malts:

• 2.63kg of Extra Pale
• 0.88kg of Munich
• 0.38kg of Crystal 150
• 0.31kg of Special W - which I couldn’t find so replaced with Dark Crystal
• 0.44kg of Carafa Special Type 1
• 0.38kg of Flaked Oats - Which were unavailable so I used torrified Oats
• 0.31kg of Torrified Wheat

Hops:

• 5g of Magnum at the start (Bitter) - only 5 grams of bittering hops.. presumably this recipe was designed at higher volume and this is a scale down, but maybe not shrug.
• 25g of First Gold in the middle (Flavour) - had to somewhat guess here, my understanding is that if the hops were added in the middle (30m) they would be roughly 50% bittering and 50% flavour, so I opted for 25 minutes before the end of the boil.
• 25g of First Gold at the end (Flavour) - It isn’t uncommon to add hops at 0 minutes left but I read that end could mean anywhere from 15 minutes left to 0, so I opted for 5 minutes until end of the boil for this addition.
• 25g of Sorachi Ace at the end (Flavour) - same as above.

Yeast:

• Wyeast 1056 - American Ale - This was the first time that I used Wyeast and it was a smack-pack, where you smack the .. pack.. to burst the liquid yeast sachet, introducing it to a solution which activates and nourishes it before pitching into the fermenter. Pretty neat!

Not really much to say about the day itself, it went to plan without any drama, it was very enjoyable and followed by popcorn and movie day with my daughter, a good day all round.

Whilst I haven’t yet transferred the beer from fermenter to keg and therefore don’t have an actual FINAL gravity reading, it has been stable for the past few measurements.. the scores on the board (I do care this time!) are:

Brewdog Alice Porter Original Gravity: 1.053
Jon’s Alice Porteresque Original Gravity: 1.053 - booyah!

Brewdog Alice Porter Final Gravity: 1.013
Jon’s Alice Porteresque Final(ish) Gravity: 1.012 - やった！

Brewdog Alice Porter ABV: 5.2%
Jon’s Alice Porteresque ABV: 5.3%

I’ve no idea how close to the original this is going to be once it has finished its journey but {your deity of choice or not} on a bike I am looking forward to tasting it!

Yesterday, for the first time in many years (almost a decade), I took an hour long lunch break, during which, again for the first time in many years (much less than a decade though) I went out for a bike ride. It was suprisingly a beautiful, if not slightly cold day which definitely helped me start this new and hopefully lasting exercise routine.

Today, it is basically a storm outside with very strong wind and much rain but as I noted on a social media site (distributed, federated, free and open source obviously), “Bit of a dreich day for my 2nd lunchtime bike ride.. but I am of rain, I was born in Scotland, dreich is my daily driver, a wee bit of rain and wind won’t stop me… Only my resistant legs can do that! 33 minutes more of this psyching up to go.” and psych me up it did, I completed a revised circuit and though I considered doing a second circuit (as I intend to progress to soon), I figured that it would be better to stop after one so that I can cycle again tomorrow, rather than push through and encourage the jellification of my legs.

In the same update I also said that I’m “Going to give FitoTrack a go today.”, which is a free and open source fitness tracker app with lots of stats, devoid of any data harvesting or adverts, that enables me to track and monitor my progress in much the same way as you might expect of a similar, commercial app tied and bound eternally to a google data centre. The GPS seemed to be reasonably accurate though admittedly not 100%, I seem to recall my garmin watch being of an equivalent level of accuracy and you are able to export your workouts as GPX files or share to whichever apps you have installed on your phone that you may wish to share to, in the form of a png image file. On this point, I have raised a feature support ticket requesting an option to choose the size and file format of the shared file as it is quite large.

If this sounds like something you might like then you can find the FitoTrack app on F-Droid - or other non-ethical purveyors of apps which I’ll not link to here, alternatively you can download the source from their codeberg page .

TLDR: This brew day was successful, in that at the end of it wort was transferred to my conical fermenter. As of yet, some weeks later it is not ready for drinking testament to which is that I just suffered a weekend of yeast eating all available mono-saccharides they could find within in my gut.

The grain bill for my tenth foray into homebrewing was taken from Craft Brew by Euan Ferguson and is more or less identical to that of William Bros ’s 80/- recipe included in the book. William Bros are a craft brewery from Alloa , home of my aunt and also a town with a brewing heritage and one that I, for some reason, associate with 80 shilling.

The hops were Goldings 5.2% (the percentage being an indication of alpha acid volumes) and the yeast was White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale Yeast (WLP028).

What was notable about this recipe were the lack of volumes for water and wort at the various stages and any indicative suggested method to follow. As such, I crafted a brew day plan based on previous brews and hope that it works out.

In absolute contrast to the previous attempt at this beer, this brew day was almost flawless. After the Grainfather blocked pipe incident that sabotaged my previous brew, I took to the net to find a solution and found that Grainfather themselves had admitted this flaw exists and created a filter basket which sits at the top of the mash tun above the upper filter plate and catches errant grains before they reach the circulation pipe.. at least in theory. In practice, this only works if you are brewing a beer with sufficient enough a grain bill to allow the upper plate to sit high enough for the walls of the new filter basket to sit higher than the height of the circulation pipe inlet at its lowest setting.. this was not the case in this brew and I had to spend 47 of the 50 minutes holding the basket in place, with my fingers millimetres above the 71°C wort being circulated below. It seems to me that a far more useful solution to the issue would have been for the basket to be welded to the removable circulation pipe inlet hence ensuring the basket cannot fall below the height of the inlet itself. As mentioned in the previous blog post, looking into this a bit more to see if I could fashion this solution, instructed me that this needs a brazing specialist and is not really a viable option during lockdown.

Aside from this, the brew day was good. This was the first brew which I’ve done that mandates a 50 minute mash, previously this has always been at least 60 minutes. The purpose of the shorter mash is presumably to allow for a sweeter wort and resultantly a sweeter beer as the amylase enzymes have less time to breakdown the non-fermentable polysaccharides, so a greater volume of these are transferred to the fermentation vessel and as the yeast cannae eat them, into the beer. As I am trying to work towards a reasonably sweet brown ale for a future recipe idea, I was happy to give this a go.

The nominal O(riginal)G(ravity) target for this beer (it was a bit of a hybrid but taking the gravity targets from the William Bros recipe) was 1.048 S(tandard)G and I hit 1.043 which is a little further from that target than I would normally hit if following the recipe verbatim, but the focus of these series of beers is the impact of the grain on the colour and flavour of the beer so hitting gravity targets is an added bonus, if it happens. The F(inal)G of the William Bros beer was 1.012 with an ABV of 4.2%, the FG of my beer after two weeks in the fermenter was 1.018 which would be disappointingly high if I cared, but I don’t.. honest.. and results in an ABV of 3.9%.

The current status of the beer has been impacted a little by my kegerator finagling (replacing spar and clasp connections with John Guest connections, replacing gas regulator and trying to eliminate the gas leak that I previously found) and so doesn’t seem to have carbonated effectively with the two weeks of conditioning, it’s back on the gas feed and I’m giving it another week or two. I do NOT want to ingest more live yeast from this beer! On the plus side, the aroma is excellent, it has a treacle-like richness to it that I hope is reflected in the final beer, whenever it decides that it is ready!

I am about to keg my latest beer from my eleventh brew day and hope to cold crash it if I can convince my beer fridge to run at close to or below 0°C, I’ll condition it first to try and avoid any oxidation, finger’s crossed that it works!

TLDR: This will be a short post as my first brew day of the year was sabotaged by a blocked pipe! However, given that this site is primarily a journal of my brewing experiences and lessons it would be amiss of me to exclude it.

The grain bill for my ninth foray into homebrewing was taken from Craft Brew by Euan Ferguson and is more or less identical to that of William Bros ’s 80/- recipe included in the book. William Bros are a craft brewery from Alloa , home of my aunt and also a town with a brewing heritage and one that I, for some reason, associate with 80 shilling.

The hops were Goldings 5.2% (the percentage being an indication of alpha acid volumes) and the yeast was (unused but would have been) White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale Yeast (WLP028).

What was notable about this recipe were the lack of volumes for water and wort at the various stages and any indicative suggested method to follow. As such, I crafted a brew day plan based on previous brews and hope that it works out.

The brew day was a little less organised than usual but went reasonably smoothly until post-boil when it came time to rapidly cool the wort before transferal into the conical fermenter. The metal circulation pipe on the grainfather got blocked by wayward grains and therefore wasn’t pushing the boiling hot wort through the counterflow chiller, also as the pipe contained boiling hot wort and I don’t have heat resistant gloves, I was unable to try to investigate and fix until the wort cooled to a more reasonable temperature. It took several hours for the wort to cool by which time I had struck the day off as spoiled. If you let wort cool naturally then it massively increases the risk of dimethyl sulfide formation which would have resulted in a very unpleasant beer.

In the heat of frustration, I had decided that after a string of issues with the Grainfather that I was going to immediately replace it. However, once I had naturally cooled down over a period of some hours, I thought better of spending several hundreds of £s for a replacement. As it happens, the grain creep into the pipes is a known issue and after customer feedback to that effect a new filter was created which should help control this. It was £16 so I bought it. This should stop overflow grains getting into the mash pipe and into the wort at the bottom of the mash tun, which should reduce the amount of grains making it into the circulation pipe (though given I had to hold it in place for the duration of the 50 minute mash during brew day #10, I feel perhaps it might have been designed a little better - apparently correcting this flaw will require a brazing specialist so £16 is potentially only the start!).

However, there is an additional point of risk. The inner sleeve\grain basket of the unit has a gap between it and the mash tun (which it needs) and if pouring grains in from a wide receptacle (such as a big soup pot) then there is a risk that some grains will fall between the sleeve and the walls of the mash tun into the wort at the bottom and be sent to the recirculation pipe. The additional filter should catch these during mash though. I have (mid-mash on brew #10) adapted my process to transfer the grains using a small 500ml jug from pot to tun. I also need to order heat-resistant gloves as a back up.

Anyway - as I wrote the draft of this post (as always) I was brewing again, same recipe as above but with a clear pipe, a new tentatively positioned filter, a more organised start and due care during the mash in stage. Fingers crossed!

Intro

For my final brew of 2020 and my first foray into brewing from recipe books as opposed to pre-measured and packaged kits, I opted for a Scottish export style beer, loosely an 80/- (shilling) style. Whilst I knew before I made the choice that I did not have the correct gas for conditioning this beer style - it prefers a CO2-Nitrogen mix and I only have CO2 - I opted for this beer style as a non-complex malty departure from stouts.

As the focus of this and future brews will be on learning the different flavour influences of the ingredients of beer and not so much on process, then I’ll ditch the template I had been using in previous posts for a looser, more flavour focused form.

I suspect that as I’m learning from recipes in copyrighted books, I’ll not be able to share exact details of the recipes but we’ll see how it goes.

..brew time!

The recipe that I followed was “Scottish Export” from BREW by James Morton .

The first challenge of this brew was that I was unable to order the precise ingredients listed in the recipe. So I turned to an online resource, brewing grain substitution chart , for suggestions on replacements. A very basic but very handy reference spreadsheet for common grain alternatives.

I swapped out the Maris Otter, which is the base malt and makes up the bulk of the grain bill, for Golden Promise Finest Pale Ale, the Special B malt for Dark Crystal and the Pale Crystal malt for Light Crystal. The additional flavour malts were Amber and Chocolate.

The grain bill was ~4kg and each of the grains were measured in the following percentages of that total:

I had to also source a different hop as the suggested East Kent Goldings was out of stock, I had been assured by the recipe preamble that the hop choice wasn’t overly significant so I opted for Williamette, having never before heard of it (though this is a questionable reason for the choice).

The yeast was White Labs WLP028 - Edinburgh Scottish Ale Yeast.

I also used Irish Moss, for the first time, as a process aid - it to clarify the beer by enhancing the removal of some proteins that can otherwise contribute to haze formation.

As always, all ingredients were sourced from the Brewstore in Edinburgh.

The hope was for a malty, very lightly hopped brown ale which can be adapted and made my own in future brews. As this was the first attempt, I wasn’t expecting perfection just something I can work with as a base for furthering my understanding of the influence of the grains.

The brew day was very straightforward, it was an easy recipe to follow and everything went smoothly.

The beer

The resulting beer is drinkable but not overly enjoyable, it’s a bit reminiscent of how I remember this style of beer tasting in the 80’s but I had hoped for a little more of an exciting tipple (photo to be added once I have CO2 again to pour one).

The biggest disappointment is that there is very little head retention. This cannot be attributed to the non-preferred gas being used for conditioning, head retention is related to proteins and dextrose and it seems there was some deficiency there in the final beer. It is possible that the beer required more conditioning time before being poured, I left it for 2 weeks in a ~5°C kegerator, unfortunately I don’t really have anywhere to properly condition the beer at a stable, ideal temperature of 12°C, still perhaps it could have been conditioned for longer.

It is also possible that the replacement grains that I chose lacked the desirable properties of those in the recipe and that some adjustment might be required in order to protect the foam retention properties of the beer, for example, adding oats or wheat malts, or a greater proportion of crystal malts (though the latter seems unlikely given they already made up ~10% of the grain bill).

However, it is most likely that the addition of Irish Moss removed too much protein from the wort resulting in a poorer head retention. It used half a protofloc tablet for a 20L brew, but it seems like that measure is recommended for a 25L brew and as such this is likely the main culprit.

That said, as a first step in a learning process, I’m happy enough with it, we’ll drink it ;)

Next

Plans for next beer - change up the grain bill and adjust irish moss measurement!

I found the recipe for Williams Bros Brewing Co. 80/- and have modified my grain bill based on it. I haven’t changed the yeast to match theirs, nor am I using the mix of hops that they are using, I will stick to a singular malt with few additions to simplify the process. The grain bill contains oats and malted wheat so hopefully the next beer will retain its foam for longer than the current one.

Photos

Back in January 2020, I wrote a blog post about plans for the upcoming year . The other day I was reading through the post and wrote a reflective review of progress made during the past year. This was a pretty satisfying process for me, so I figured that I would do the same for 2021 in the hopes that when I review progress at the end of the year, I’ll be even more satisfied.

The overarching goal for the year is similar to last year, progress towards becoming a brewer and preparation for applying for the Hidaka village kyouryokutai (協力隊) scheme with a view to moving to the village once we’ve wrapped up the house sale and other loose ends here.

During the past year, we’ve been evolving and re-prioritising plans for future projects in Japan should our application be successful and the focus from a career point of view will be in the realm of craft brewing, putting food-related plans on the backburner for future attention. With that in mind and reflecting on the progress made during 2020, the following are my plans & goals for 2021.

Brew more regularly

I managed 7 out of a planned 12 brews during 2020, and many lessons were learned during each brew. Following great advice from a new craft brewer contact in Japan, I will be focussing on brewing more frequently as I need to make the focus shift from learning to beer design. I am hoping to brew a new beer every 3-4 weeks. If I can crank out 15 beers this year, I’ll be delighted.

My final beer of 2020 is currently conditioning in its keg and is a Scottish export (80 shilling) style. I intend to brew a few more similar beers but each time adjusting the balance of grains, in order to further my understanding of the influence of different types of malts. I also want to introduce oats into the recipe because oats are fucking great in beer!

After my brief experiment with brown ales, I am intending on focussing single malt, single hop (SMaSH) brews during which I’ll use the same malt but change up the hops for each brew. I hope to really gain a greater understanding of both the different flavour contributions and bittering qualities of each distinct hop. There are a huge number of hops available so I’ll need to be selective as I aim to have completed this run of beers by around the middle of the year.

After these two experiments, I’ll move on to attempting to design the three beers that I have in mind for my main lines in my future brewery. I don’t expect to be able to master or finalise these designs this year but I hope to produce some tasty, if unpolished, beers of my own design during the second half of the year.

As my new friend explained, there will likely not be the opportunity to brew again in Japan once we move until I either find a job working at a brewery or I establish my own brewery as Japanese homebrewing laws are very restrictive.

Establish brewing network in Japan

In December last year, I wrote an 8 page letter to a brewer in Japan (Ken Mukai of Mukai Craft Brewing ) in order to congratulate him on opening his brewery and to introduce myself as a hopeful future collaborator (and friend!). I was pretty nervous about this if truth be told, but the letter was well received and coincidentally a mutual friend had been talking to Ken about me the day before the letter arrived! In an email response, Ken provided me with some really useful information and advice and key amongst these was the suggestion to reach out to other brewers as well and tell them my story and plans. So, I will!

This is going to be a challenge as I’ll need to really un-rust my Japanese in order to contact the majority of brewers, there are some other non-natives who I’ll be able to more easily communicate with but I need to improve my Japanese anyway and this is a great opportunity to do so!

In addition, there is a new resident of Hidaka village who joined under the same kyouryokutai scheme as I intend to apply to, his business plan is also to create a craft brewery in our small town. Far from considering this as a potential threat to our own plans, I hope to engage with our future neighbour and help in any way that I can to collaborate with and ensure the success of his brewery.

Reaching out to strangers like this is pretty daunting for me but it’s one of the few steps we can take whilst not in Japan to help with our future plans.

Experience breweries in Scotland

Once the covid-19 situation calms down and is hopefully eliminated, I intend also to reach out to some breweries in Scotland with a view to visiting and hopefully witnessing or assisting in a brew. I have a reasonable relationship with my favourite brewer up in the north east of Scotland (no not that one), and though the specifics might need to be negotiated, they are very open to a brewery visit once things calm down.

I also have a friend of a close friend who has his own brewery in East Lothian and who is apparently also very open to a visit and for me to ask any questions I can think of.

I’ve previously visited Stewart Brewing in Loanhead in Edinburgh on one of their craft kitchen brew day experiences, and I believe they have pretty close ties to my university so I may be able to arrange an active site visit there too.

Also, at previous craft beer festivals I’ve briefly spoken with the owner of the Alechemy brewery here in my town and he was pretty open to a visit too, so I’ll need to get in contact with him.

There may be other breweries who I can speak with, such as Barney’s or Pilot in Edinburgh who I’ve had friendly conversations with in the past but this is all dependent on lockdown restrictions being lifted and covid-19 being “under control”.

Continue studying the science of brewing

I have so far completed one semester of my MSc in Brewing & Distilling programme and am very happy with how it went. My next course which is focussed on maturation, barrel aging, filtration and packaging starts on Monday 4th of January and I am excited to get started again.

My second semester course will either be on malting, grains and mashing or yeast and fermentation, I’m not sure which I’ll opt for first as I need to do both but either will be really interesting and these are the two courses that I’m most excited about.

In between semesters, I hope to find time to enhance my understanding of topics I studied in my first course, such as microbial spoilage and cleaning-in-place with a view to researching brewery design to take the first steps in investigating options for my future eco-friendly, sustainable craft brewery.

The year ahead looks really interesting in this sphere, I will only have one course left to complete (as I’m only doing the brewing specific courses for a postgraduate certificate) and likely it will be in the second semester of 2022 with a gap for the first part of the year - which will hopefully enable us to move over to Japan and get settled in.

Get house in order

We couldn’t make any progress here last year and we have to this year in order to hopefully sell our house in 2022. We need to finish the garage conversion to the level that the council will provide a completion certificate, we need to renovate the en suite and give the garden and external brickwork some love. It should all be achievable if the current plague gets the fuck out of town.. but I’ve been burned so many times by contractors so confidence in this area is low.

Groundwork for future brewery

Most of the work required towards our future brewery, can’t really start until we are in Japan. Also, as the intention isn’t to establish the brewery immediately, but rather continue my studies and gain some industry experience, the majority of the groundwork is really just research and clarification into licensing requirements and laws, and understanding the hoops that we need to jump through when the time comes, the more we can line up in advance the better.

At this moment in time, I’m thinking that we may build a taproom before we work on the brewery. The thinking is that a) we’ll need one, b) it will help with networking with other craft brewers if I’m selling their beers, c) will potentially open up collaboration opportunities for exclusive small batch limited edition brews to be sold in our taproom and, d) it exploits my almost two decades of experience in working in pubs in Scotland.

The intention would be to have uniform branding between the taproom and brewery, and so we can do work on reserving web domains, logo design, and as above, reaching out to brewers etc. before moving over.

Obtain a driving license

In order to apply for the kyouryokutai scheme and to move to Japan, I need to have a driving license. I’ve previously taken some lessons but due to the demands of work over-reaching into my life those were put on hold. That was several years ago, so I’ll now need to resit the theory exam as my previous pass has now expired. The intention is to find someone who does intensive lessons for automatic cars and I’ll try to arrange that for the Summer (the season referred to as Summer in the rest of the world, not the 3 days of sunshine during the Scottish year). I’m going for automatic as most cars in Japan are automatic and I’m just not that in to driving.. It’s a necessity for both the application and for future plans as we’ll be living very rurally, but excitement levels aren’t overly high and I’m holding out what hope I have that we’ll be able to buy a second hand electric car when we move over.

Continue to find family time

Finally, as busy a year as I have lined up for 2021, these plans cannot be at the cost of restricting time to spend with my daughter and wife. There are goals that must be achieved in order for our plans to progress on schedule but they will need to be achieved around family time.

Onwards!

In January last year, I wrote a blog post about my provisional plans for 2020 , this seems as good a time as any to review the plans and assess how well I managed to move towards achieving them.

It probably goes without saying that the global disruptions of this past year have rippled into each of our lives and resultantly some of the plans have been impacted due to situations outwith my control. Also, during the first five months of the year, my wife was working on her MA dissertation, which meant that most of my spare time was dedicated to looking after my daughter, which was great but not conducive to productivity in other realms.

So “excuses” given, let’s review the plans in order of their placement within the previous post:

Japanese Local Government’s Initiative (kyouryokutai programme - 協力隊)

Our plans to apply for this scheme early 2022 have not at this moment changed and feeling around the family is that we have a very good chance of success with our application, however there is one dependency that is going to require a little more social stability and less prominence and threat of covid-19 to achieve. If I’m to apply for this scheme I need a driving license!

Japanese Language Proficiency Tests

I did initially start studying for JLPT N3 at the beginning of last year but this was railroaded by the pandemic and continuous lockdowns slashing my available free time considerably. I’ve re-evaluated the necessity of sitting these tests and as I don’t really intend to work for someone else in a permanent role, I don’t actually think that the proficiency tests are really that necessary. I will have to work on improving my Japanese both spoken and written (typed) and may revisit in the future but for now under current circumstances this is being shelved.

Brew Regularly

My plan for last year was to try and brew a beer each month, so 12 in total, 1 of which had already been brewed (and poured down the drain), I managed a further 6 brews - taking my total at this point to 8 brews over two years. Obviously, this is a little less than I had hoped, but given the circumstances and the tangible improvement in both my brewing knowledge and the quality of the beers, I’m reasonably happy with progress made.

I managed to brew 2 American IPAs, 2 New England IPAs and 4 Imperial Stouts, with the latter darker brews I played around a little with adjuncts, coffee and cacao nibs in this case, which was very rewarding.

Study the Science of Brewing

In this realm, more than any other, great strides were taken! My application to join the MSc Brewing & Distilling (distance learning) programme at Heriot Watt University was successful and I’ve completed my first course, which was Beverage Microbiology and Biochemistry. I’m still awaiting the final marks for this course but my first couple of assignments were well received and very well marked(!) so I have high hopes.

Studying microbiology and biochemistry with no background in science was certainly a steep learning curve, and as I have no aspirations to becoming a scientist, sometimes the content of the course felt a little unnecessary to my particular aims, however other parts were fascinating and really helped boost my understanding of the brewing processes. I still have a lot to learn in this area, and have certain sub-topics that I really want to drill into when time allows, these are: cleaning-in-place, microbial spoilage & strategies to mitigate and eliminate contamination.

Cook-A-Lot

I probably cooked just as often in 2020 as in previous years, however, most of the time the main aim was sustenance rather than making time to cook delicious dishes. It did happen, but with constraints on time being what they were the frequency of cooking “sessions” was lower than I’d have liked. I did make some pretty memorable stews with barley over the last few months.. I might have become somewhat of a barley addict..

Get the house in order

Lockdowns, a neighbour who ignored lockdowns from day 1 and had a constant, daily supply of labourers and other craftsmen visiting his house and a general urgency to protect my daughter from this coronavirus strain meant that absolutely no progress was made here.

All in all, considering that circumstances we all had to face, I’m reasonably content with progress towards our plans during 2020. I would have liked to brew more often, I would have liked to have sat and passed JLPT N3 and it would have been great if some work on our house could have been completed. However, I am firmly on my way to becoming a brewer and whilst more focus will be required over this next year to further progress, I’m happy with the steps taken to achieve this goal during the past year.

Onwards!

Wow, 5 months have passed since my last homebrew journal entry and it was written on the day of the first of today’s summarised brews. The seventh of my brews was back in late September just after I started my PgDip Brewing and Distilling course , much writing about beer has happened since then but all academically and not on this site, though I am happy to report that things are progressing well in that area and for anyone interested I have links to my assignments on my bookmarks page .

Anyway, let’s crack on, shall we?

In the same vein as my previous post I’ve decided to bundle both brews together as they were using the same base recipe with minor adjustments to adjuncts. As you might expect with a series of brews that are essentially the same, improvements were notable in each subsequent brew and the last one, in which I had assistance from my wife, zero mistakes were made.. not a typo!

As I’ll be covering two brews I’m going to condense my normal layout a little and skim over parts which went well for both brews. Both brew days went smoothly but in the area of gravity measuring a discovery was made in the latter brew which proved to be a valuable learning experience.

The Beer Kit

The beer kit for both of these brews was this Imperial Stout 23L All Grain Beer Kit (pictured above) from Edinburgh based brew store .

The kit contained a pre-ground bag of grains (unspecified) and 2 vacuum-packed foil wrapped packs of hop pellets (namely hop A and hop B).

The yeast for both brews was a dried yeast (Mangrove Jack’s M44 West Coast Ale Yeast ).

Additionally on brew day #6, I tweaked to volumes of the adjuncts from the previous brew to try to produce a more chocolate-y stout so I used 150g of cocoa nibs and 100g of coffee beans. On the next brew day, I reduced this to 120g of cocoa nibs and dropped the coffee altogether.

The ingredients were accompanied by some general brewing tips and as always the …

Brew Day Sheet

This very handy two page guide split the brew into its composite stages and provided target temperatures, gravity readings and volumes as well as space for recording timings and measurements throughout the day. It was very useful and despite my occasional flapping it kept me pretty much on track. The composite parts of the sheet will be incorporated below in the stage sections.

Stage 0 - Prep!

No issues here on either day so, moving on!

Stage 1 - Striking & Mashing

This stage went very well on both days, though on brew day #6 I accidentally brought the temperature down to 66°C for the mash, but recovered to 68°C and maintained the temperature for the hour. During both brew days I took more time to constantly, gently, mix and move the grain bill around whilst the temperature was reducing from the strike temp. of 76°C, than I had previously. In earlier brews I was concentrating on getting the temperature down quickly and less focussed on loosening the grains and breaking up clumps, this led to a more vigorous approach which it seems might have been somewhat counterproductive.

As noted previously my grainfather is definitely struggling a little with consistency when heating and maintaining heat, it is a candidate for replacement when time and funds are more ample.

Stage 2 - Lautering & Sparging

Again, I followed a similar procedure on both days which was to gently coax the water from the grains during lautering, breaking up the grain bed gently so that the wort could flow a bit more easily. When it came to sparging, I was a little bit more aggressive with the breaking up of the grain bed, allowing the rinse water to pass through somewhat quicker than before. Compared to brew day #5 this process completed almost 2 hours earlier!

Stage 3 - Boiling

On both of these brews, and in comparison to previous brews, there was a much more generous protein build up at the start of the boiling stage. It took about 6 minutes to break it up and this I believe is a good sign and is a direct result of the tweaking of my mashing method.

Stage 4 - Hop Additions

The schedule for this both brews was:

• 36g of hop B at 60 minutes (start of boil)
• 36g of hop A at 25 minutes (35 minutes into the boil)

In addition for the second of the brews:

• 150g/120g of cocoa nibs at 5 minutes (55 minutes into the boil)
• 100g of coffee beans at end of fermentation for 24 hours for brew #6.

No whirlpools again, this is a future experiment because its an invite to chaos with the false-bottom in my grainfather.

Stage 5 - Cooling

No notes were taken with regards to cooling and I have no adverse memories of this part of the process, so I gather all went well.

Stage 6 - Fermenting

As a result of learning more about yeast on my microbiology course, I had developed a deeper understanding of the requirements for a good fermentation by the time I did my 7th brew, I have a deeper still understanding now but it remains to be seen how that plays out in future brews! As such for brew #7, I was intent in increasing the available oxygen for the yeast for the initial phase of fermentation, and the conical fermenter is a little too heavy to lift and shake.. So after transferring the wort from height (normal procedure), and through a sieve (ineffective), I experimented with using an electric whisk (sanitised of course) and this definitely greatly increased the surface oxygen and produced the amount of frothy bubbles that I was looking for.

For reference the following were my volume and gravity targets and final gravity (FG) results:

• Desired Volume: 23L
• Actual Volume (day #6): 23L
• Actual Volume (day #7): 18L is what I have written in my notebook.. but that can’t be right!
• Desired OG: 1.083
• Actual OG (#6): 1.081
• Actual OG (#7): 1.083
• Desired FG: 1.016
• Actual FG (#6): 1.041
• Actual FG (#7): 1.041
• Actual FG (#7 with a device I can actually use): 1.022
• Desired ABV: 8.9%
• Actual ABV: ~5.25% (but really ????)
• Actual ABV: ~5.51% (but really ~8%)

As previously suspected, I am not using the refractometer that I have used to measure every one of my brews, correctly. It seems to measure higher gravities reasonably well but doesn’t fall below 1.040, which isn’t ideal since every single final gravity target is lower than that by some margin. Having received advice from a few mutuals on mastodon, it seems like it needs to be calibrated with purified water and maintained at 20°C +/- 0.5°C and needs to be regularly recalibrated.. Thankfully, I had a hydrometer lying around which requires no calibration and which gave me much more promising results. It does require a sacrifice of more beer for measuring but for some degree of accuracy that’s fine with me. Also as a result, I don’t really know how close to previous targets I hit but.. onwards!

Stage 7: Kegging & Carbonating

During the transferring of beer to keg on brew day #7, I took multiple samples at different stages to measure with the refractometer as mentioned above, this was really to rule out a niggle that maybe at different stages of the transfer there would be different trub concentrations that perhaps were affecting the gravity reading of previous samples taken from the tap at the bottom of the conical fermenter.. it didn’t really seem to make much difference but a worthwhile exercise nonetheless.

Stage 8: Drinking

Both beers were delicious, the first was a novice attempt to come close enough to Mouse Mousse chocolate stout by Fierce Beer and I don’t think I was overly far away but perhaps the coffee inclusion detracted from the comparison a little. The beer didn’t really taste much like an imperial stout, which tends to confer an oily quality and strong alcohol flavour, it was instead a very easy to drink and pleasant, if not slightly thick, chocolate stout with a subtle coffee aftertaste. It was a glorious success and did not last long in this stout loving household.

The latter beer was my greatest triumph yet, not only because finally I acquired an accurate reading of the final gravity but it is (not was, more on that shortly) indisputably an imperial stout! By lowering the cocoa nibs volume, the strong chocolate flavour of the previous beer was lessened but still a little more than subtle and it is very much my favourite beer so far. Unfortunately, after pouring some of it, I noticed that I was out of CO2 and had to immediately stop pouring lest I decompress the keg.

Due to lockdowns, my access to the shop where I bought the gas canister is essentially outlawed and so I’ve been without gas for over a month.. I have just a few days ago discovered that the shop is actually supplied by a company in my town and that they would be happy to top the canister up if I can swing by their warehouse! I’ve had conversations with a local taxi company explaining that they’d be transporting a pressurised gas canister and we’re good to go. I just need to clarify cost of top up and how long the process will take (whilst the taxi meter ticks) and then hopefully this week I’ll be able to continue pouring my best beer yet!

Next up will be my first foray away from kit beers as I try a Scottish export type style from a recipe book. I chose the recipe due to its process simplicity and low volume of hops so that I could play around with different grains over the next few brews and see how I can tweak it into something delicious.

Subtitle: A little less stout*

As I sit waiting for the mash stage of my 6th brew to complete, I figured this was as good a time as any to post the belated summary of my previous two brews.

I’ve decided to bundle them together as both brews were using the same base recipe and whilst one was a pretty smooth ride, the other was a catastrophe of errors!

As I’ll be covering two brews I’m going to condense my normal layout a little and skip over parts which went OK for both brews.

First though, a small bit of background on these two brew days.. Brew day number 4 was on a Friday, a day which is traditionally reasonably quite for my job and thus, I figured a day where I could fit in a brew whilst also working.. That Friday was not a normal Friday, that Friday demonstrated the clairvoyance and devilry that my colleagues apparently possess.. just as every single stage deadline approached, I was called, pinged or otherwise engaged to carry out some work. Stage transitions were rushed, wort was spilled and walls were decorated in partially formed stout.. It was a terrible idea and a disaster of a day!

Brew day 5 was an entirely different beast, having learned from stupidity, it was scheduled for a quiet Sunday. Every stage was carefully considered, measured and executed and bar introducing the 2nd hop 5 minutes early and not having fine mesh hop bags available, the day was a resounding success!

The Beer Kit

The beer kit for both of these brews was this Imperial Stout 23L All Grain Beer Kit (pictured above) from Edinburgh based brew store .

The kit contained a pre-ground bag of grains (unspecified) and 2 vacuum-packed foil wrapped packs of hop pellets (namely hop A and hop B).

The yeast differed between brews, one brew day #4 I used a liquid yeast (White Labs WLP001 California Ale Yeast ) and on brew day #5 a dried yeast (Mangrove Jack’s M44 West Coast Ale Yeast ). Though, to what end this contributed to differences in the beer, I am still too inexperienced to ascertain.

Additionally on brew day #5, I added a couple of adjuncts, 100g of cocoa nibs and 100g of coffee beans.

The ingredients were accompanied by some general brewing tips and as always the …

Brew Day Sheet

This very handy two page guide split the brew into its composite stages and provided target temperatures, gravity readings and volumes as well as space for recording timings and measurements throughout the day. It was very useful and despite my occasional flapping it kept me pretty much on track. The composite parts of the sheet will be incorporated below in the stage sections.

Stage 0 - Prep!

No isues here on either day so, moving on!

Stage 1 - Striking & Mashing

On brew day #4, I started poorly and continued in a similar but more frantic vein.. First mistake, aside from scheduling a brew on a work day, was that I had pushed the pipework too far down into the heated grain was unable to retrieve it, resulting in grains being able to bypass the false floors and potentially block the filer in the brewing unit.

On brew day #5 there seemed to be some sort of blockage in the circulation pipe and it wasn’t circulating as much as I’d have liked, but I managed to fix this on the fly with only a momentary drop in mash temperature.

Otherwise, the striking and mashing stages went OK for both brews, though I noted yet again that my grainfather is definitely struggling a little with consistency when heating and maintaining heat.

Stage 2 - Lautering & Sparging

DISASTER ZONE! For day #4, I was very, very flustered by this point and was trying to rush the sparging stage. In order to try and get the sparge water to drain more quickly, I was attempting to stir and break up the grain cake, however the metal bar supporting the insert containing the grains and water was not designed for additional weight, the force that I was applying was too much for it and it kept disconnecting from the unit and as a result wort and grains were propelled around the room, primarily up the wall and over a frustrated amateur brewer! I was certain at this stage that any hopes of making a drinkable beer were ruined.

No issues experienced here on day #5, I made no attempts to rush the process, though I did very gently stir the grain on occasion when I couldn’t hear water passing through. It took almost 4 hours! No mess though!

Stage 3 - Boiling

Nothing to see here.

Stage 4 - Hop Additions

The schedule for this both brews was:

• 36g of hop B at 60 minutes (start of boil)
• 36g of hop A at 25 minutes (35 minutes into the boil)

In addition for the second of the brews:

• 100g of cocoa nibs at 5 minutes (55 minutes into the boil)
• 100g of coffee beans at end of fermentation for 24 hours.

Post boil on brew day #4, I attempted a whirlpool but the additional false bottom within the unit was rising every time I got some sort of pace going.. conclusion, no more whirlpooling attempts with this set up.

Stage 5 - Cooling

This is where the grainfather’s flaws come into play, whilst trying to rapidly cool the wort and transfer to the fermenter, it’s heating unit kicked in and started super-heating the wort. The fermenter is thankfully temperature controlled and was able to cool the wort back down to the target range before I added the yeast.

This happened on both days but I was more mentally equipped to deal with it on the second of the brew days. Added a lot more time to the process though!

Stage 6 - Fermenting

My experiences with previous brews led me to purchase a cheap cooling system for my fermenter, involving an ice box and pipes which pump cooled water through the sleeve of the fermenter. As such despite the wort hitting the fermenter at a higher temperature than desired on both of these brews, I was able to cool it down in the fermenter before pitching the yeast.

Not much otherwise to report here from a process perspective, the only difference between both stout brews was that after arriving at a consistent final gravity reading for the second of the brews, I added 100g of coffee beans which had been briefly rinsed with boiling water into the fermenter, and then let it steep for 24 hours.

Despite the calamity of the first of these days, the gravity figures were surprisingly similar which you might think would mean a similar alcohol by volume figure.. that doesn’t appear to have been the case, although the estimate is pretty much the same the drinking experience suggests that the second beer was considerably closer to the target than the first. The impact of the booze after drinking was definitely more obvious with the latter beer.

For reference the following were my volume and gravity targets and final gravity (FG) results:

• Desired Volume: 23L
• Actual Volume (day #4): 23L
• Actual Volume (day #5): 22L
• Desired OG: 1.083
• Actual OG (#4): 1.070
• Actual OG (#5): 1.069
• Desired FG: 1.016
• Actual FG (#4): 1.040
• Actual FG (#5): 1.044
• Desired ABV: 8.9%
• Actual ABV: ~4%
• Actual ABV: ~3.5%

This leads me to believe that I have a little bit more to learn about how to use my refractometer. The first stout might have been around 4% the second was not, it was definitely much stronger. I have a fairly high resistance to alcohol (not a brag) and I was decidedly tipsy after just 3 schooners of it, 3 similar sized 5% beers have little noticeable impact normally. Yes, this is circumstantial but I’m calling the 2nd beer as hitting its ABV targets regardless of the evidence suggesting otherwise! This screams user error to me!

Stage 7: Kegging & Carbonating

Not much to mention here, I’m reasonably well versed in this process now and didn’t experience much worth reporting, except disappointingly off-target figures, but as noted above, I suspect I am somehow recording these inaccurately.

Stage 8: Drinking

The first beer turned out to be surprisingly passable, it wasn’t a clean tasting beer, it had a bit of funkiness, probably due to the comedy of errors surrounding it’s inception, but it was assuredly drinkable regardless. It was a homebrew though, no doubts about that, it would be returned at a bar and replacement sought.

It seems though that perhaps stouts, in our house anyway, have a larger buffer for success than IPAs do.

The second beer was OUTSTANDING! It was exactly what I wanted it to be, it’s an imperial stout so not really designed for ease of drink, it’s thick and oily, carries a punch in flavour and alcohol volume but is rounded off with very subtle hints of coffee and cocoa. This wasn’t just passable, it was wonderful! As I sit here, now at the boiling stage of my current brew, I can only hope that I am able to replicate this level of beer for my 3rd imperial stout in a row!

Imperial stout number three is so far going well, and is basically the same as from brew day #5 but with 50% more cocoa nibs. They are only in the mix for about 5 minutes so not much time to make an impact so we’ll see how that goes.

Onwards!

• A little less stout came to me one evening in the 90s as I sat in the Bell’s bar in Aberdeen for happy hour with a good friend. The bar was quiet, and to entertain ourselves we were re-branding the drinks we could see at the bar or marketing them with new slogans. One of my funny at the time creations was Guinness Lite with the slogan ‘A little less stout’. Whilst we went on to get fairly inebriated that one always stuck with me.. then some time later when I took my girlfriend (now wife) to Dublin to propose, we visited the Guinness storehouse and I discovered that at some point (possibly the 70s based on the font and graphical stylings) that Guinness in fact did have a beer called Guinness Lite, though I have no idea if they ever used the slogan ‘A little less stout’.

As stated in my founding post for this beer focussed blog, I have future plans to one day establish a modest craft brewery of my own in rural Japan. In order to help achieve those goals I tentatively applied for the MSc Brewing and Distilling By Distance Learning course run by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Learning to brew beer through practice and experimentation is all well and good but I really wanted to understand the science behind the brewing in order to be be prepared to tackle future challenges and ideally preferred to do so in a structured manner, so this course seemed perfect for my needs.

Unfortunately, the soft requirement for entry into the course is an undergraduate degree in science or engineering and my degree in Japanese language and culture fits neither bill so I was apprehensive that I may not be considered. I therefore lined up some former lecturers to provide references if required and penned a passionate accompanying statement ensuring the university that faith in me would not be misplaced.

Fortunately, the soft requirement was indeed soft and without any request for references I have been offered an unconditional acceptance into the programme, which I have confirmed! WOOHOOO!!!!! If we’re honest, this is probably more to do with harsh financial challenges facing our universities than it was to do with my passionate plea but either way, come September 2020 I shall commence studying in the programme which I think makes my dreams to open my own brewery far more attainable.

Whilst, this is an MSc course, every new student is enrolled in the postgraduate diploma course and opts in to the dissertation for MSc at a later date, should they wish to pursue this. I do not currently have plans to complete the MSc, nor even the PgDip but rather intend to exit after completing 6 courses and attaining a postgraduate certificate (on completion of 4).

My reasoning is that I’m attaining industry knowledge which will then be applied in practice to my own company, as such I am not so inspired to study the courses relating to academic writing and research. This could however change and the course offers me the flexibility to make tho choices further down the road.

In recognising that I don’t have a science background the offer also included a book recommendation for me to prepare for the start of the course, which shall be studied intently during the coming months.

I am very excited to start, a little daunted by the idea of studying a postgraduate science programme but ready to face the challenges and rise to them!

As I settled down to read over the brew sheet for my impending Imperial Stout brew and after over 2 hours of cleaning and sanitising kit, I made a discovery.. I did not have enough yeast for the next day’s brew and had no means of acquiring more in time. So I hugged the windows in this mobile network black spot we call home in order to latch on to a signal to advise my scheduled brew buddy of the postponement.

YEAST

When buying the beer kits I have been using to learn brewing, I had noted that for certain kits I could choose dry yeast or liquid yeast. I had previously read in slightly out-dated brewing books that liquid yeast is superior to dry yeast and so I have, for the last few orders, been opting for liquid. As it turns out, in doing so I’ve unknowingly been brewing with insufficient volumes of yeast!

Nowadays, due to improvements in the science dry yeast is apparently pretty close to liquid yeast in terms of quality but one advantage to liquid yeast is it enables you to create a yeast starter. This is currently too advanced a process for me to include but in essence you create a low gravity wort using dried malt extract and pitch the yeast into this a day or two before, which enables you activate and grow the yeast cultures so that you have sufficient volumes to pitch into higher gravity worts. Still with me? (who am I kidding, I’m the only one reading!). This is also advisable if your yeast is a bit older.

As a result of the previous paragraph, when you order liquid yeast in the kit, you are only sent by default one sachet. If you don’t make a yeast starter then this is likely to be insufficient, and you have the option of ordering more. If only I had realised this at the time of ordering I’d have an exciting stout in the fermenter.. and my last beer would be much better!

This may go a large part of the way to explaining why I missed my final gravity reading in the last brew.

So today, I’ll order the extra two sachets of liquid yeast required to munch on high gravity stout wort and then I’ll buy dried yeast going forward until I’m ready to advance to yeast starters.

Force Carbonation

As I opted to skip the bottling phase for the time being and keg my beers, I have been trying to follow steps with regards to properly carbonating the beer post-fermentation. Carbonating using CO2 rather than brewing sugars is referred to as force carbonation (not force carbonisation as I keep calling it) and the trick is knowing what PSI or volume of gas to introduce to the keg for how long.

Force Carbonation NOT Force Carbonisation

Everyone seems to have their own method and so for the beers I have made up to now I had opted to follow a generic instruction from the manufacturer of my brewing kit, Grainfather. Their instructions are simple to follow:

• 30 PSI for 2 days
• 10-12 PSI for 1 day
• 8-10 PSI and refrigerate for 4 hours

They are simple to follow but haven’t really worked for me, in each case the resultant beer was a little too flat. My experiments thus far in correcting this have been disappointing, for my NEIPA I cranked the PSI up for too long, resulting in a massively over-carbonated beer, I’ve been able to eek it down again but there is a lasting bitterness in the beer as a result.

I’ve been looking in to this and possibly the issue is that I’ve not been considering temperature as a variable. When I pressurise my kegs, I do so inside the kegerator (for that is where the gas outlets live) and this is maintained at a temperature of 4°C whereas the instructions above seem to infer that the keg is only refrigerated for the final age.

My meanderings led to further discoveries, namely gas carbonation charts and gas carbonation calculators because I, of course, and not re-inventing the wheel here.. many brewers precede me and careful web searching could have saved me a bit of effort.

Different beer types have different recommended gas volumes and working out how to deliver this volume at my working temperature can be attained using either the charts or the calculators (the latter being quicker, easier and more likely to be my way forward).. so from here on in I’ll be using this calculator from Brewer’s Friend, a website which I suspect I’ll be visiting often.

After the abject failure of my previous brew determination was high. Mistakes would not be made, at least not with regards to the most important stage of the process, sanitisation!

This was my first brew day with assistance, in the form of my dad, and having someone to “teach” really helped my focus throughout the day, not only were there considerably less mistakes there were also notable improvements throughout the steps compared to previous attempts.

TL:DR I DIDN’T DESTROY THIS BEER!! WOOHOOO!!

In my summary of brew day ichi-ban I described in detail (my understanding) of the steps involved so I’ll not go into as much detail this time but will attempt to follow the me structure.

The Beer Kit

The New England IPA 19L All Grain Beer Kit was the same beer kit that I had used in the previous disastrous brew however due to issues with online payment I had to vistt the brew store to pick up, and the hops that were included in this kit were different from the previous kit. I’m a novice so I didn’t question this at the time but at various times during the brew I considered that perhaps I had been given the wrong hops.

In the kit this time was a bag of mixed grains, 200 grams of Chinook hops as well as a sachet of White Labs WLP066 London Fog Ale Yeast (liquid).

As previously ingredients were accompanied by some general brewing tips and the …

Brew Day Sheet

This very handy two page guide split the brew into its composite stages and provided target temperatures, gravity readings and volumes as well as space for recording timings and measurements throughout the day. It was very useful and despite my occasional flapping it kept me pretty much on track. The composite parts of the sheet will be incorporated below in the stage sections.

This was actually missing from the kit on this occasion but I had the previous brew’s sheet and I noted all of the important steps and numbers in a notebook.

Stage 0 - Prep!

Not only did I clean and sanitise EVERYTHING immediately after the last brew, on the night before this one, I went through the whole process again! This time however, on the advice of a retired chemist on the fediverse I noted every measurement and each step down.

In addition to directly address the issue that wrecked my last beer, I bought accurate measuring devices in the form of a glass pipette set which enabled me to measure exactly 2ml of the ’no rinse’ sanitiser in with 1 litre of water for the spray bottle.

I also endeavoured to spray less enthusiastically, or rather less intensely.. enthusiasm levels were high regardless of the somewhat tedious task at hand. The extra focus on preparation definitely provided a solid foundation for the next day’s activities!

Stage 1 - Striking & Mashing

Another lesson learned from the previous brew was to heat the strike water as soon as I rolled out of bed, this meant that by the time the brew started the water was already at the correct temperature.. enabling me to spend just short of an extra hour with my daughter before I started in earnest.

Previously, I had noted that the thermometer probe wasn’t secure and had slipped out during the last brew.. this was firmly taped to the unit this time and didn’t budge through the whole day.

With the mash, we actually actively mashed and stirred the grain in for the entire duration of the water dropping from 76°C to 66°C.. this was tough work, I’m not entirely sure how long it took but my dad and I took turns, and in actively working the mash for the whole time we not only reduced the cool down time considerably but also released more sugars into the wort than previously.

This stage was absolutely nailed, a marked improvement on previous attempts, and the benefits of having a brew buddy became very apparent, very quickly.

Stage 2 - Lautering & Sparging

According to the brew sheet for this NEIPA recipe, approximately 8-10 litres of 76°C water should be rinsed or sparged through the spent grains in order to hit a pre-boil wort volume of 25 litres.. I needed 12L which was the same as last time.

It could be that there are improvements that could be made to this part of the process so I’ll maybe agitate the grain a bit more during this process to release more sugars and move the sparge water through, I suspect that of the 12L poured in a fair amount was still sitting within the grain cake.

Stage 3 - Boiling

Somewhat excitingly (likely to a very limited audience only) there was some proper protein build up as the wort hit the boiling point. I had experienced this during a trip to the Stewart Brewing Craft Beer Kitchen with friends a few years previous and was a little confused as to why it hadn’t happened on my earlier brews.. but it seems that our increased activity during the mash stage was the reason. What nice, natural, confirmatory feedback on our enhanced efforts!

With the confidence that the thermometer probe was securely attached and accurately measuring temperature, after breaking up the protein with a paddle, the rest of the boil went very smoothly.

We filled the time reading brewing books and chatting about my future brewing plans in Japan. As my dad was driving later in the day we weren’t drinking.. my next brew buddy is a non-driver!

Stage 4 - Hop Additions

There was an initial 50g of the Chinook hops as a 10 minute (from end of boil) addition, then the hop stand which involves lowering the temperature post-boil to 70-80°C, adding in another 50g of the hops and holding the hot wort at that temperature for 30-45 minutes, we went for 40 minutes at 76°C since 76 appears to be a special number.

So far the hop stand seems to be a specific step for this style of beer and must contribute to the hazy or rather juicy look of the final beer.

Whilst we were reading in the previous stage, I had spotted a note attached to a recipe from BrewDog’s DIY DOG 2017 which stated that they get the be results when dry -hopping for 5 days (rather than 4 recommended elsewhere) at 14°C. It wasn’t overly clear if they meant specifically with the recipe the note was attached to or as a general rule of thumb but with my newly acquired chiller, I gave it a go.

Hop schedule for this brew was:

• 50g of hops at 10 minutes (50 minutes into boil)
• 50g of hops post-boil in a hop stand
• 100g of dry hops post-fermentation for 5 days at 14°C

Stage 5 - Cooling

Post-brew it occurred to me that I missed a step which could logically fit in this age, I briefly mentioned it in my first brew post and will remember to do it next time.

The whirlpooling stage is primarily meant to separate trub (errant hops or grains which managed to escape the grain basket post-sparge) from the wort by dragging them down to the bottom of the .. boiling vessel.. but also the act of a 5 minute (yup!) whirlpool will also cool the wort a little, albeit slower than the cooling coil that comes with the Grainfather.

We cooled the wort to 18°C and transferred into the fermenter at a higher elevation than previously in order to increase the oxygen in the wort for the hungry yeast.

Stage 6 - Fermenting

The target original gravity (OG) for this beer is 1.063 which on my previous disastrous brew I hit on the nose, this time though I missed it by a little, landing on 1.059.. There was about an extra litre of of pre-boil wort and it seems that this was extra sparge water resulting in a very slightly weaker final wort.

The fermentation of this beer was the most active (noisiest) so far.. even into day 8 there was still the occasional bubble through the airlock. However, as previously experienced the active yeast increased the temperature of the wort in the fermenter, and it occurred to me finally that I had forgotten to buy a cooling system, so I ordered an inexpensive one and took immediate action whilst awaiting its delivery.

On noticing the temperature creeping up to almost 23°C, my wife and I carefully moved the fermenter on to a worktop in the utility room, opened the window to a Scottish winter and watched the temperature drop. The fermenter has a heating element so whenever it drops below the target temperature it slowly recovers.. so whilst there were a few periods where the temperature was slightly below 18°C, they were brief and the heat never exceeded 20°C for the remainder of the fermentation window.

During the fermentation, I noted that the yeast dump deposits were a bit smaller than previously but this made sense because the yeast was .. expiring.. at a slower rate. Where the fermenter previously went dormant after 4 days it stretched out twice as long this time before fermentation seemed to be done.

Again though, my final gravity (FG) reading was higher than the target and this time I’m not sure why. It was closer to the FG this time (1.026) than last time (1.033) so some progress is being made. Perhaps I need to look into the pH levels of the water or perhaps it will improve upon the introduction of a 5 minute whirlpool.. This is a challenge I feel will take a bit of time to understand.

As a result of missing both OG and FG targets my final ABV (according to the Brewer’s Friend Calculator ) is 4.33% had I hit my OG this would have been 4.86%.

For reference the following were my volume and gravity targets and final gravity (FG) results:

• Desired Volume: 19L
• Actual Volume: 19L
• Desired OG: 1.063
• Actual OG: 1.059
• Desired FG: 1.013
• Actual FG: 1.026
• Desired ABV: 6.6%
• Actual ABV: 4.3%

Stage 7: Kegging & Carbonising

I force-carbonated the beer for 2 days at 30PSI, brought it down to 12PSI for another 24 hours, hooked it up to the tap and lowered the pressure to 10PSI. However, as I had noticed on my first brew this resulted in a slightly under-carbonated beer so I cranked up the PSI to 30 for another 24 hours.

Stage 8: Drinking

Vindication you taste awesome! OK, dialling it down a bit.. this is a tasty beer, I would be happy if I ordered this in a pub and would enjoy every last drop. I wouldn’t necessarily rush back to order it again though but that’s an issue of personal taste..

I like my NEIPAs to be almost fruit juice like, certain hops give off more fruity qualities that I think are better suited to a NEIPA than others. Chinook has some of those qualities it seems but also some resin-y qualities, this is fine, Fierce Beer make a very nice juicy beer which is quite resin-y (Late Shift ) but it just isn’t my personal preference.

As an exercise in brewing this was a fantastic experience and my confidence and enthusiasm has been restored.

Will I drink this beer? Of course, with pride and I’ll make it again, but next time I’ll use El Dorado hops and see if they taste like I think they would taste without the accidental inclusion of sanitising chemicals.

For the next brew, I have a friend joining me and whilst we enjoy this NEIPA, we’ll be having a crack at an Imperial Stout.. arguably my favourite type of beer!

Since December 2018 I have hosted a Pixelfed server, intended for family and friend use but in actuality currently only used by myself and very occasionally my wife.

The reason that I’ve not applied a @dansup level of marketing to encourage my circle to move over to the platform yet is due to a few bugs and polish items that I am awaiting, but as we are edging closer to a version 1 release, I thought this might be a good time to jot down my thoughts on the application. Primarily intended for the audience that the instance is targeted towards.

I have previously written about the fediverse and why I have left facebook, google etc. so if you need a primer then that’s the place to go first.

What is Pixelfed?

Pixelfed is, in a nutshell, a free and open-source instagram replacement. It allows you to upload photos and short videos, create albums, collections and ephemeral stories and enables sharing and interaction across the fediverse.

Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica etc. users can follow a Pixelfed account and interact with the posts and account owner from the safety and comfort of their own hidey-hole.

Further information can be found at pixelfed.org .

Why use Pixelfed?

I’ve been asked this question a couple of times by folks already using federated social media. Their reasoning is usually that the other application such as Mastodon and Pleroma not only allow you to upload media but also to have media only tabs so why have another account on a photo & video only site?

This is a fair question and I sometimes upload photos to my pleroma account rather than Pixelfed.

However, most of the applications that I host are provided on the basis of the use cases of family and friends. In my circles instagram is very popular and pixelfed is pretty close functionally to instagram, getting closer by the day and improving on the concept too.

I do also use Pixelfed though and there are unique aspects of it that I like such as the organisational functions such as the ability to create collections or hashtags discovery groups.

I like that Pixelfed processes the photos on upload (massively decreasing storage space for me) and I like, though rarely use the photo editing functions such as cropping and filters.

I don’t think I ever used stories, if it was even called that on instagram, but I can understand why others might find it fun, interesting or useful.

An upcoming feature named circles which will enable you to create groups of friends/followers who you can share photos or video with and no-one else will see them. This sounds good, whether or not I’ll personally use it in practice remains to be seen.

Scopes enable you to manage the visibility of your posts, either:

• public - visible by everyone via a public timeline
• unlisted - will appear on publicly profile page but only followers can see in their timelines
• followers only - can only be seen by followers even on profile
• circles - SOON™

This enables me to have a private account for photos of my daughter which are only visible to people I personally approve - family and friends only. This is a common feature across fediverse applications.

Embedding! You can now embed photos and profiles into other blogs or web pages, which is nice!

I like the developer(s). This is generally common for most of the open source apps that I use, the developers are generally very open to feedback and are excited that people are using their application. Marketing mogul and time-illusionary @dansup is no exception! I have had many interactions with him over the past 15 months or so, and whether it be a unique issue I was experiencing during initial set up, a feature suggestion or a bug report the interactions are always gratefully received and pleasantly handled, and wherever possible bugs are fixed as quickly as they are reported. This interaction means a great deal to me, it re-affirms my decision to leave faceless corporations in favour of people-oriented open source developers.

Wish list

As mentioned above, I have been waiting for the application to be in a more polished ate before trying to onboard family and friends and whilst I feel we are nearly there I have small list of outstanding tasks or features that I’m looking forward to being addressed:

• A federated timeline or federated discover page - I think that the discover page will only really bask in it’s glory when it allows discovery of accounts and media from other Pixelfed instances.
• Remote account avatars - Currently avatars for accounts from other remote instances are not pulled, it’s a minor thing but it makes the application feel unfinished (which it is of course!)
• Fixing the bug I raised eons ago ;) - #1359
• Notifications for all interactions - Currently notifications are limited and don’t include comments.
• Ability to choose photo order when uploading multiples
• Webfinger support - a bit jargon-y but makes searching for other accounts more user-friendly. Added since post
• Instagram and Pixelfed imports - The ability to import media from instagram or other Pixelfed accounts. It’s coming, I’m patient.
• Pixelfed app - There are a number of apps on your chosen phone OS and I like them, but I think having an official Pixelfed app will help bring people onboard.. most folk are used to an app per site which seems pretty inefficient to me but for this reason a Pixelfed app will be really help shift folk over to the platform. This is also in progress.

This list used to be a lot bigger and I’m sure it won’t be long before it shrinks again.

Pixelfed is a fantastic application and I look forward to encouraging tho close to me to join.

Pixelfed on Mastodon

On our return from our most recent trip to visit my wife’s family in Japan I posted on my pleroma account about my ambitious plans for 2020 in order to hopefully facilitate a move to rural Japan as early as Spring 2022.

This article is an attempt to flesh the out a little and to have somewhere that I can more easily refer to for updates, amendments etc. So in no particular order:

Japanese Government’s Rural Initiative (not correct name but will update and write about in greater detail in the future)

This is a scheme aimed at encouraging more families to move from the big Japanese cities to rural locations, with a focus on encouraging retraining, community involvement and company creation. Each town government has its own requirements and the can change on an annual basis.

Successful applicants have up to three years to make a life in the town and contribute to the local economy, during which time the government will subsidise rent, home refurbishments and pay a regular, sufficient wage. After three years then you are on your own so to speak but by then hopefully you have established an income of your own.

A brief look into the scheme would suggest that so long as I have a driver’s license by the time of application and am capable of participating in an interview, then I should qualify. I already have a litany of ideas the biggest of which is to have my own craft beer brewery however, it is a mid-to-long term plan and hopefully some of my more immediately implementable ideas will impress the government officials when the time comes.

Japanese Language Proficiency Tests

Initial plan is to sit and pass JLPT N3 - which I should already be able to do, but the intention is to study for it properly in order to establish a study pattern for the more challenging N2 exam which I hope to sit in 2021.

If I’m to get back to a level where I can participate in a Japanese interview for the above scheme then the JLPT exams will help to focus me and fill the large gaps in vocabulary that have appeared since I graduated with an undergraduate degree in Japanese in 2011 - not that I was particularly good with the language back then, I was more interested in Japanese feudal history.. regardless, N3 this year, N2 next.

Brew regularly

Starting next week, I’ll be trying to brew a different beer each month and attempting to study the science of brewing so that by the time we move to Japan I have a solid knowledge-base from which to reach out for potential brewery internships as brewing beer at home is kind of illegal in Japan (unless under 1% ABV).

I am still a beginner and my second brew was somewhat of a failure. I hope to improve my understanding of the basics, tighten my quality control process and become very familiar with the different grains, malts, hops and yeasts over the next few years. I’ll initially probably be focusing largely on IPAs but before we move to Japan I want to experiment with dark and sour beers. I’ll endevour to record everything in my blog and as my Japanese improves, add translations where relevant or interesting to build towards a profile which can be understood by potential future employers.

Study the science of brewing

Hand in hand with the brewing plans, I hope to find some online courses or books from which I can learn more about molecular biology etc. I want to be in a potion where I understand protein chains, yeast storage and quality, water quality etc. This knowledge will be very important when the time comes to establish a brewery but also before then it will enhance my ability to design beers based on more than a hunch about tasty flavour combinations.

I recently re-visited the Heriot Watt University MSc Brewing & Distilling course page and discovered that it may be possible for me to study towards a Postgraduate Certificate online which if an application was successful would enable me to study exactly the content that I will need to for a career in brewing. I have contacted HW admissions and if I get a positive response to my multiple questions then I think I’ll apply for this course which would begin in September this year. Fingers crossed!

Depending on work-load and progress with this, I may also reach out to some Scottish craft brewers to see if there are any prospects for short-term internship or shadowing to set in place for next year.

Cook-A-Lot

I already do a fair amount of cooking at home and when time allows like to spend 4-6 hours in the kitchen making delicious #vegan food. However, as my future in Japan will revolve around both drink and food and in all cases vegan varieties of them all, I need to up my game and focus on mastering some fundamentals from which potential menus in potential cafes or food trucks might be devised.

I’ve previously worked in the kitchens of hotels and pubs in a variety of roles and several of the roles involved cooking for the public so I’m not completely unfamiliar with the requirements, but if I’m to be a lone vegan cook in our wee village in rural Japan, then I’ll need to really understand dashi options, umami and cooking with the local ingredients I’ll have at hand. Fun!!

Get the house in order

Literally! We’ve had an unfinished garage conversion for several years now! The building contractor who was hired to do the work upped sticks and ran away when the council returned a list of issues. Since then it has fluctuated in importance and several attempts to enlist the help of other contractors to finish the job have failed. We need to get this fixed once and for all or selling the house in a few years time is going to be somewhat of a challenge.

Sundries

Undoubtedly there will be more plans made, developed and or abandoned as the year progresses, but I hope to write about as much of it as possible, particularly where it relates to potentially interesting information uncovered as we learn more about the process and challenges of moving (back) to Japan.

Next year: driving license, JLPT N2, studying for Japanese beer proficiency tests (yes, really), strengthening of pretty much everything above.

Enthusiasm for my second brew day was very high, expectations were moderate and preparation was good (or so I thought). Enthusiasm for writing this blog post after the disappointing conclusion to the brew day was somewhat minimal, but at the me time I am a new brewer and I need to record failures as well as success if I am to learn from my mistakes!

TL:DR this brew failed and resulted in all of the beer being poured down the drain!

In my summary of brew day ichi-ban I described in detail (my understanding) of the steps involved so I’ll not go into as much detail this time but will attempt to follow the me structure.

The Beer Kit

I had hoped to use the me beer kit consistently for the first three or four brews but I also wanted to step up from 11L to a 19L brew and the previous beer kit was not in stock for this volume, so I opted for New England IPA 19L All Grain Beer Kit , once again from Edinburgh bad brew store . I knew off the bat that making a NEIPA is a more involved process but I was up for the challenge.

In the box this time was a slightly damaged bag of mixed grains, some of which were clearly oats and as I hold the opinion that any beer is made better by the inclusion of oats, I was pretty happy with that!

In contrast to the previous brew I also knew which hops I was using! 200 grams of the excitingly named El Dorado hop as well as a sachet of White Labs WLP066 London Fog Ale Yeast (liquid).

As previously ingredients were accompanied by some general brewing tips and the …

Brew Day Sheet

This very handy two page guide split the brew into its composite stages and provided target temperatures, gravity readings and volumes as well as space for recording timings and measurements throughout the day. It was very useful and despite my occasional flapping it kept me pretty much on track. The composite parts of the sheet will be incorporated below in the stage sections.

Stage 0 - Prep!

I almost feel like I should address this section last but as I’ve already shared the disappointing conclusion to the brew day, I’ll grudgingly explain the one major mistake of the day which added an unplanned heat to the drinking of the final product.. think less of habanero and more that acid vat from robocop.

As I had previously extolled as the most important factor of the entire brewing process, I cleaned EVERYTHING and sanitised EVERYTHING so that no stray bacteria would contaminate my beer at any age of the process.

Look how shiny it is!

The issue wasn’t with cleaning, everything was as clean as it needed to be. The issue wasn’t that I forgot to sanitise anything, absolutely everything that had any contact whatsoever with the ingredients and the wort at each age of the process was sanitised. So what was the problem?

Over-sanitisation, or rather insufficient attention to detail when mixing the sanitiser with water resulting in the wrong ratios and a much more potent solution than I should have been spraying on absolutely everything.

The sanitiser bottle comes with a 10ml measuring, eh neck section.. which is the amount to be mixed with 5L of warm water. My spray bottle holds only a volume of 1L so I eyeballed 2ml .. because obviously there is such a huge margin of error that this was a class A idea.

I have had some sound advice from a friend on the fediverse who previously worked in pharma, which I shall be following henceforth! Namely, record everything in detail to which I’ll also be incorporating proper measuring implements.

Let’s leave this disappointment behind and move on to the actual brew day, shall we?

Stage 1 - Striking & Mashing

The temperatures involved in the striking and mashing ages mirrored that in my previous brew though obviously the water volumes increased for the larger grain bill and thus the heating process took a lot longer.

Note to self: Start heating the water as soon as you get out of bed!

This should have been a straight-forward, stress-free age and a simple repeat of la time, however I discovered my first issue with the Grainfather brewing unit, and that is that the thermometer probe does not snap or lock into place. Due to this, the probe actually slid out a little and the temperature readings as a result were not accurate. When I noticed and pushed the probe back in, the accurate reading was higher by several degrees than it should have been.. and by this point I had already mashed in·

So the strike water was too hot and it took longer to cool to mash temperature, which elongated the process and would have impacted on the gravity and potentially the taste of the beer had it not been already, unwittingly destroyed by this point. I tilted off the lid from the Grainfather which would normally be sitting atop the unit, in order to try and facilitate the cooldown process.

Otherwise, the grain bill was well mixed and mashed and despite this minor setback I was excited to plod on.

Stage 2 - Lautering & Sparging

According to the brew sheet for this NEIPA recipe, approximately 8-10 litres of 76°C water should be rinsed or sparged through the spent grains in order to hit a pre-boil wort volume of 25 litres.. I needed 12L to hit about 24L thanks to the increased evaporation in the previous stage. This would presumably have very slightly weakened the wort but not by enough to be concerned.

An off-the-cuff amendment to bring the brew day back on track, morale was still high!

Stage 3 - Boiling

By this age of the brew things have been a bit more hands off for a while, and I was really starting to feel the impact of my scheduled brew buddy cancelling on me, again, for the second time. The whole process was much longer than the previous, smaller brew and extended by the thermometer issue. I was at home and could have attempted to alleviate my encroaching boredom but as I’m still learning the basics, I didn’t want to become too distracted and make more mistakes.. So the isolation started to set in around now.

.. the boiling stage is pretty tedious to write about.. wort boiled for 60 minutes, next!

Stage 4 - Hop Additions

This was the stage I was looking forward to the most, aside from drinking this gloriously hazy, juicy New England IPA that I was crafting. A new process to test and learn!

There was an initial 50g of the El Dorado hops as a 10 minute (from end of boil) addition, then the hop stand which involves lowering the temperature post-boil to 70-80°C, adding in another 50g of the hops and holding the hot wort at that temperature for 30-45 minutes.

It took about 15 minutes to reach the temperature range and add the hops.. I appear to not have recorded the temperature nor time I maintained the wort at the temperature.. but it was within both target ranges.. I’ll do better with the recording next time.

As it turns out this is the only added complexity in this NEIPA brew as opposed to the previous US IPA brew and it would have been nice to enjoy the beer and mull over the influence of this new process.. hindsight!

It did make for an even longer brew, that’s for sure.

Hop schedule for this brew was:

• 50g of hops at 10 minutes (50 minutes into boil)
• 50g of hops post-boil in a hop and
• 100g of dry hops post-fermentation for 4 days

Stage 5 - Cooling

During my first brew, I over-chilled the wort and introduced the yeast at too low a temperature potentially killing off some yeast from the get go, I was not going to make the same mistake again.

This time, I very carefully cooled the wort to 18°C before transferring the wort from the brew unit to the fermenter and only pitched the yeast once the temperature had been maintained for a little while.

Stage 6 - Fermenting

Just prior to pitching the yeast into the fermenter I took a sample for original gravity (OG) measurement, my target hydrometer reading was 1.063 and my measurement read 1.063, through the tiredness I felt vindicated that perhaps my amendments had fixed everything and in just two short weeks I’d be swimming in glorious, juicy beer..

I had issues with hitting my gravity target on my first brew and one of the reasons I think was that I didn’t try to oxygenate the wort on it’s journey into the fermenter, so I tried to do so this time and next time I’ll try a little harder to do so..

The liquid yeast and hitting the target temperatures before pitching definitely appeared to make big improvements, this time the fermenter bubbled much more rapidly, aggressively and for several days longer than before. So much so that it naturally increased the temperature in the fermenter to higher than the preferred range.. I adjusted the temperature regulator accordingly.

It was during the 10 days of fermentation that I started to suspect something had gone awry. Every 2-3 days I would take a yeast dump (much more carefully this time!) and a sample to measure progress. I also tasted the samples.. for educational purposes, you understand.. and immediately was concerned that this beer was hotter than anticipated. I did however already have a cold and a sore throat so I wasn’t absolutely sure if my suspicions were on point. So I continued.

Again though, my final gravity (FG) reading was higher than the target and this time I suspect it’s a combination of the higher strike and mash temperatures leading to a longer mash process as well as despite my attempts, under-oxygenating the wort when transferring into the fermenter. It possibly wasn’t aided by excessive sanitisation liquid contaminating everything.

I’m still learning, I’m still learning, I’m still learning.

For reference the following were my volume and gravity targets and final gravity (FG) results:

• Desired Volume: 19L
• Actual Volume: ~19.5L
• Desired OG: 1.063
• Actual OG: 1.063 - NOT A TYPO!!
• Desired FG: 1.013
• Actual FG: 1.033 - Also not a typo.
• Desired ABV: 6.6%
• Actual ABV: ~4% again.. probably.. I guess

Stage 7: Kegging & Carbonating

I had identified and resolved the minor CO2 leak from my gas cylinder and honestly, this might have been the smoothest part of the whole process.

I force-carbonated the beer for 2 days at 30PSI, brought it down to 12PSI for another 24 hours, hooked it up to the tap and lowered the pressure to 10PSI. I left it for a couple of days more before pouring as I was pretty ill and also pretty busy.

Stage 8: Drinking

So, was it all worth it in the end? sob gulp sob

My heart was already seeking consolation from my ankles by the time I came to pour the beer. On a positive, it looked gorgeous, it smelled fresh and lightly hoppy and the head was bubbly, stubborn and inviting.

However, I had to check my neck immediately after drinking to ensure it hadn’t burned through my throat and poured on to my chest.

Without any further ado, I unhooked the keg and poured all 19L of the “beer” down the sink. Gutted! The brew day was about 8 hours long and it was really hard to keep up concentration levels for that stretch of time.

For the next brew, which of course there will be on our return from Japan in January, I hope to try the same beer again and correct the one major and few minor mistakes. I will have a brewing buddy this time, a real one and not just the kindly souls from Estonia and Finland!

The much anticipated first brew day in what I hope to be many subsequent and incrementally improved brew days finally culminating in a career in the #craftbeer industry, has come and gone. This shall be a summary of the events as well as the mistakes I believe that I made along the way and thoughts on how to fix them for my next brew day.

The Beer Kit

For the first handful of brews I am trying to understand the methods and get used to the equipment that I’ll be using for the next few years of home brewing and so I have opted to buy all-grain beer kits in an effort to focus on process. The beer kit for brew numero uno was this US IPA 11L All Grain Beer Kit from Edinburgh based brew store .

The kit contained a pre-ground bag of grains (unspecified), 2 vacuum-packed foil wrapped packs of hop pellets (namely hop A and hop B) and one sachet of Mangrove Jack’s M44 West Coast Ale Yeast.

The ingredients were accompanied by some general brewing tips and the …

Brew Day Sheet

This very handy two page guide split the brew into its composite stages and provided target temperatures, gravity readings and volumes as well as space for recording timings and measurements throughout the day. It was very useful and despite my occasional flapping it kept me pretty much on track. The composite parts of the sheet will be incorporated below in the stage sections.

Stage 0 - Prep!

This was added to this post as an afterthought but it is far to important to be so. Not only did I have to finish setting up my brewing equipment and hooking up gas etc. to my kegerator.. I had to CLEAN EVERYTHING and SANITISE EVERYTHING! Not doing so can lead to the beer being infected and being undrinkable at best.

I’ve worked for many, many years in bars and kitchens, I’m an avid cook and I have drilled myself during this time into always maintaining a clean and organseid work area (only in the kitchen!) so this wasn’t a stretch. I also found it very relaxing and quite nostalgic to be cleaning beer lines etc. again after all this time.

There was little risk of me not doing this stage well, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it all the me.

Always thoroughly clean and sanitise your food/drink preparation and equipment.. anything that comes in contact with the beer or ingredients during the brew day must be clean and sanitary.

Stage 1 - Striking & Mashing

In a nutshell the mash is the introduction of the grain bill to the hot strike water and steeping at an ideal temperature for a set period of time. The process activates enzymes which breaks down the starches in the grains into sugars which are then dissolved into the hot water to create wort.

The first part of this stage is measuring the volume of strike water (12L) and getting it up to ideal temperature, in this case 76°C. Whilst there really isn’t much room for error here, I did heat the strike water in an electric urn rather than in the mash tun.. it may have been quicker the other way around.. we shall see next time.

I then slowly introduced the grain bill into the water, stirring as I wanted to ensure that any grain clumps are broken down and then once the porridge-y concoction as in place, we reduce the temperature to 66°C to steep the grains for an hour. The temperature of the mash influences the body of the beer, lighter and drier beers are mashed at slightly lower temperatures than full bodied beers. This beer is middle of the road, a medium bodied beer.

So far, so good!

Stage 2 - Lautering & Sparging

Lautering is a term used for the removal of the spent grains from the mash tun, leaving only wort behind which in larger volume brewing is transferred to a separate boiling unit. My grainfather acts as both a mash tun and a boiler so I guess my beer is only partially lautered??

The next process is the exquisitely named sparge! This step in my generously named ‘brew kitchen’ involves lifting the inner chamber of the grainfather and pouring 4-6 litres of 76°C water slowly through the spent grains so that all of the remaining sugars are rinsed off and into the wort below.

My target wort volume after sparging was 15L and I’m relieved to report that I hit the target on the nose.

Two stages down and though there may be some efficiency gains for next brew, no actual beer affecting mistakes yet!

Stage 3 - Boiling

In layman’s terms, this method involves raising the wort to boiling temperature and maintaining that for a period of time, in this case 60 minutes.

NAILED IT!

Stage 4 - Hop Additions

This is where it can get a little tricky because the hops have different functions or rather add different qualities to the beer depending on when they are added. Hops add flavour, bitterness and aroma, I guess technically bitterness is a subset of flavour but it’s my blog and after buying the kit and brewing it.. my beer so :P

Hops added at the start of the boil are bittering hops and when added later in the boil or even post-fermentation this is for flavour depth (as in not bitter notes) and aroma.

The schedule for this brew was:

• 10g of hop A and 10g of hop B at 60 minutes (start of boil)
• 10g of hop A and 10g of hop B at 7 minutes (53 minutes into the boil)
• 10g of hop A and 10g of hop B - Dry hop 4 days. The hops are added to the fermenter (secondary if you have one) once the beer has fermented and left to steep for 4 days.

I had noted from various books and online videos that a very important process when adding hops is called whirlpooling and involves using your stirring implement of choice (sanitised of course) and creating a whirlpool in the wort for about 30 seconds, this allows the hops to disperse more evenly into the beer (or something like that, I need to revisit the theory).. and this was the step where I met my first challenge.

Due to me opting for a small batch, I didn’t have a lot of liquid to work with and struggled to create a proper whirlpool without hitting the false bottom inside the grainfather and potentially dislodging filters etc. The same challenge awaited me with the dry hopping stage.

So lesson 1, make larger volumes of beer! There are probably other ways to have overcome this challenge but too late for that now!

Stage 5 - Cooling

During this stage we rapidly cool the wort from boiling to a target temperature of 18-23°C for transferring into the fermenter. In my case using the grainf