I’m creating a monster! I did very little planning for today’s brew other than hastily buying ingredients.

Today’s brew day is my 2nd experiment with imparting chestnut flavour into beer.

Kegged my first original stout yesterday, it’s meant to be a vegan sweet stout and it hit a final gravity of 1.

I’ve spent a few days creating a web site for a new beer related database that I created last week.

Brew day! Making a SMaSH (single malt and single hop) IPA in order to explore the Motueka hop.

TODO list for this evening: Clean and sanitise keg Clean and sanitise beer line

Just checked the temperature of my beer fridge before bed and it was down to -0.

Just kegged my Alice Porter attempt after a record 18 days in the fermenter.

TODO list over the next few days: Fix the slight CO2 leak that still exists in my kegerator set up - may require shaving a little of the end of the pipes to ensure they are completely flat against the back of the John Guest fittings and possibly even drilling into the wall of the kegerator to fix the gas splitter in place.

Learning first hand what it is like to be a fermentation vessel this weekend.

I replaced the gas regulator for my kegerator set up this evening s the last (cheap) one was leaky despite much tightening.

My next brew day is Sunday and for the first time I’ll be kegging a beer on the same day as making the next one!

I decided that for my next brew day which is on my birthday weekend to change it up a bit and try a recipe from a major brewer which I have both tasted and enjoyed and as they open source their recipes, that brewer is Brewdog and the beer is Alice Porter.

Brew day #10 today! A re-run of last week’s 80/- brew based loosely on ‘Williams Bros’ grain bill but timings, hops and yeast chosen from other similar style beer recipes.

My first attempt at an 80 shilling type beer has been a bit disappointing, possibly due to the replacement malts that I had to use.

For my first recipe based homebrew I’m going for a Scottish Export type beer.