No strings on the pins, a plentiful stock of balls of all sizes and rental shoes available!

The best part is that my eldest daughter loved the visit just as much as I did so we now have what we hope will be a regular Papa and daughter date venue!

Whereas I used to post semi-frequently about food and cooking I don’t at all any more. I still cook but it is more perfunctory than for pleasure.

Anyhow, despite that today I cooked a dish from memory which turned out to be delicious. It was a “fancy mince and tatties” or a variation on a cottage pie.

In Scotland, it would have been a wet easy dish to make vegan and not lose any satisfaction but here it is sadly not possible.

Anyway, I felt that my brief return to being interested in cooking was worth celebrating. I hope it returns again some day soon.

Anyway, I previously wrote about this family and my desire to become friends with them. (The paternal unit of the family quit his job after reading about my story and is chasing his dreams)

This evening reinforced that desire and it is very much a two way street. Apparently, we are on the verge of becoming family and I am welcome to just turn up unannounced and will have a bed for the night.

Of course, I don’t foresee ever taking them up on that offer, I am happy to walk a few km home at night, but what a gracious offer.

Anytime I can though, I would love to spend more time with them.

(Unrelated and only relevant to the fediverse element of the post, I apparently can no longer post using Tusky)

.. but I am thinking of registering a team for the village’s relay marathon event in late November..

.. it is too hot still for me to attempt to start training so will have to have faith that I can do my bit.. and channel my tough mudder 2015 self.

There may have been tears..

It is very well made and I think it really captures our essence very well.

I am in awe of the skills of the young team who filmed and are producing it.

It is sponsored by a local sweet potato snack company who apparently has an interest in collaborating with us in the future.

Anyway, my wife and eldest daughter are in the team so for the next 2 days they will be dancing in the festival in Kochi City.

I would have loved to participate too but unfortunately Summer is too much for me and dancing outside for hours would be borderline dangerous. Also, my youngest daughter is too young to participate so I will be with her cheering on from the living room (they will likely be on TV).

We will go watch them tomorrow.

This morning I am feeling particularly homesick.

I’ll never not miss Scotland but generally I am fine, but sometimes it hits harder than others.

My sister-in-law worked there part-time for a while and said that her colleagues were keen to meet us. So we met with the former head of quality control and his wife (who we had met before) and the current head of quality control. Another friend joined us and quite unusually, out of the 7 of us gathered, 6 had some sort of academic qualification in biochemistry and/or microbiology.. it was a fascinating evening.

The ex-head of quality control retired and wants to start a new brewery creating a new category of alcoholic beverage (which I will not go into) and I love his idea. I think his plan is very exciting indeed.

He and his wife visited us this morning to ask advice on setting up a company and the various administrative paths we have traversed to get to this point.

I can see a very fun and collaborative relationship developing between us.

My first time in the village hall since we heard about our subsidy result and so many people came over to congratulate us, even the mayor came over to do so.

It was a nice visit

.. and now you are just a month that brings ridiculous heat and humidity, one which I can barely step outside without exploding into sweat.. and one which I dislike above all others.. what happened to you? Where did it all go wrong?

.. and now you are just a month that brings ridiculous heat and humidity, one which I can barely step outside without exploding into sweat.. and one which I dislike above all others.. what happened to you? Where did it all go wrong?

I am so exhausted this morning that I can barely keep my eyes open but this is fantastic news. The dream is still on track!

It has long been my favourite game but I so rarely have the time and energy simultaneously to play anything nowadays and when I do have been exploring other games.

However, yesterday I unexpectedly had a few hours to myself and seemed to have overcome my cold so logged some play time.

I love this game and the Odyssey expansion has just made it even better. I hope I can squeeze in more time to help my bunch of ragtags grow to be strong enough to bring down the empire.

We are not on it.. in fact strangely there are only 2 and they are both in the same city.. this is a nationwide grant and the previous two months had around 20 successful applicants each from various places around Japan..

Something is not right here.. we noticed though that on our feedback we were assigned to group B. So potentially this is the results for group A and ours will come in a week or two (they posted twice in May so not impossible).

Either way, we haven’t heard yet and presumably we would before it was made public so I am trying not to stress even more than I already was..

I wonder if anyone is growing oats in our prefecture..

I have plans for a cranachan inspired golden ale and if all of the secondary ingredients are locally available,even if only seasonally, I will be delighted!

.. I wasn’t able to sleep until the past few nights so I hope we find out EARLY this week..

In Japan in order to obtain a license you need to have confirmed buyers in advance..

So far mainly positive responses, and we’re plenty of backups for those who can’t help for whatever reason.

A little nerve-wracking but necessary task.

Today is a break from filming but a busy day, hopefully mainly in an air conditioned room but lots to do.

Tomorrow is another day of filming but mainly indoors so hopefully more manageable.

Busy times!

Also we should hear about our subsidy application next week..

The remainder of today’s recordings either don’t involve me or are mainly indoors.

So glad we decided to do my bit in English, would have been a lot more than 3 takes otherwise.

I don’t think it is necessarily unique but it is different to my experience.

Food is very important in drinking culture here whereas ordinarily in my experience in Scotland (yep, repeated 3 times, intentionally).. food was generally before or after drinking.. with the rare exception of dinner parties or going out for a meal (as the main event of the evening).

As such the topic of food pairing with beer often comes up and I am entirely useless in this regard.

We bought an Irish red ale for someone as a souvenir and thanks for recent help and I was pushed into suggesting a food pairing.. all I could say was stew.. then in a Japanese context hasashi rice (rice in a sort of tomato demi-glaze meat sauce).

Not necessarily a bad pairing but lucky if it is a good one.. I probably need to study this topic more.

There is a small group of non-Japanese brewers on the island who are very active in their group chats etc. but I am not yet a peer so haven’t previously been invited to participate.

However, we are on the verge of joining them in the industry and this feels like an acknowledgement, which is nice.

I still can’t ✔️ the “become a brewer” box on my site but it shouldn’t be the case for too much longer.

Other child-friendly small-scale construction block brands are probably good too.

Not convinced that the views of 8 people are going to trigger any changes though, particularly as 4 of them are our family.

Having to drive our deceased dog to the crematorium was tough.

His ashes will be scattered in the Pacific Ocean this evening, which is fitting as he loves water.. so long as he didn’t suspect you were using it to clean him!

He had been suffering for a while, and held on way longer than expected but now finally his suffering is over.

He was with us for 13.5 years and will be sorely missed.

Now the onslaught of Summer begins.. going to be around 39°C real feel in a few hours.. currently 34°C.. I wonder if there is anyway to tell the AccuWeather app that I am a peely-wally Scot.. I feel like that’ll bump the real feel temps up by 5°C or so.

At least it will only feel like 32°C in the shade because that’s not oppressively hot or anything..

Humidity is currently 62% and rising. 🥵

He is the chief of the planning department at our village hall and formerly worked in the construction department

He had heard that we were concerned about the planned bypass and interchange which on the current plans cuts into our brewery land.

The meeting was to reassure us, the road to the interchange is a village road and it is this which cuts through our land but he assured us the village would reroute it so that it didn’t impact us.

It wasn’t a necessary meeting but it’s nice that he went out of his way to reassure us!

We had a very positive meeting with our team at the village hall yesterday and they offered some more suggested responses too.

I feel like our case is solid now.

Next and final review is next week.

Each committee member, of which there were 4, marked us on business concept and extent to which our project helps solve a local problem.

The marks are out of 5 and most were 4s and 3s, just the one 2 which we have addressed fully in our response.

Excited and a bit nervous for the next review.

However, we have a seminar to attend on Sunday in Osaka followed by beers so that will help take our mind off of this for a day or two.

So for the sake of those who don’t visit here but check my site from time to time, I will try and post this way more often.

Also, it’s the only way that I can post photos to GtS as my settings don’t allow Tusky to upload for some reason.. it is what it is, I am not spending time fixing it as this way my site clears some cobwebs.

Whilst there I will be taking the opportunity to do as much “research” on Scottish pubs as possible and will hopefully squeeze in some brewery visits.

On my return to Kochi, I am very sad to say that I will be giving up my veganism. I will still be mainly plant-based where possible and am not reverting to full on omnivore, but my health has suffered since moving over here.

Being a vegan in Scotland was exciting and easy, being a vegan in this part of rural Japan is exceptionally challenging and my quality of life as well as my health has suffered.

It is unfortunate but in my opinion, currently a vegan lifestyle is not feasible here just now, if that changes and I can thrive as a vegan then I will be back on team plant-based. However, I have kids to think about and I can no longer allow my health to deteriorate simply to maintain my principles.

I am stubborn, very stubborn but I can find a way to adapt to improve my health and quality of life.

My wife and I have been married for way longer than the required 3 years and I have been living in Japan for longer than the required 1 year.

So, we will start preparing for that application instead, but soon, as I read the processing time can be very long for PR applications.

There are no guarantees of course, I am in my final year of a part-time, minimum wage contract. My wife has a little over a year left of the same contract. We still have some funds from selling our house in Scotland though so we should hopefully be covered there. Aside from their potential concerns about our financial stability though, I cannot see any other areas where they might be concerned.

There will be paperwork involved of course, but most of it is evidence based document collating, unlike a UK permanent residency application which has an enormous amount of form-filling. The main application form seems to be just 2 A4 pages in size.. unless I am missing something.

Whilst this is the first visa renewal or PR application for me, I have was obviously very involved in (the far more laborious) renewals and PR applications for my wife in Scotland, I would be very happy if this was the last one I had to do.

I am not the handiest so will it handle the wait? No idea!

Will it even be necessary or just an over -engineered waste of string? No idea!

Was it a fun project that made me feel a bit closer to my rural environment? It sure was!

Video description: A somewhat rainy scene, water streams down the car windscreen whilst the occasional car passes, in an otherwise quiet village.

Then I wrote 3 new recipes for a 60 /-, 70/- and a “Scottish IPA” based loosely on the traditional brewing techniques and their impacts on bitterness etc. as well as modifying my existing recipe for an 80 /-, tamed my wee heavy recipe to be a dark and smokey 90 /- and modified my reluctant lager recipe to be more interesting.. don’t need to modify my porage stout recipe, it’s good as it is.

All theoretical of course as I can’t homebrew here but they look good and I think they will hit the flavour profiles I have in mind.

Pretty productive day.

Somehow this has recently been extended to asking her to choose who changes her nappy after she has pooed.. I did not introduce this.. and yet, for some reason she ALWAYS chooses me.. I do not approve of this branch of the game.

The area was previously affected by floods, which now should no longer be a thing, and the warehouse has subsided by about 20cm on one side. We are discussing it’s safety and options for securing the foundations with various engineers and should soon be in a good position to make a decision and return to the negotiation table.

We are also considering a new build on a different plot in the village just in case this warehouse is not safe. However, we both really want the warehouse to work out.. it will be like a 3 minute walk from our future house! So I am slowly transferring funds over to Japan in the hope that we can close this deal over the next month or two.

Happy to wait another 3 years or more for the next, thanks.

Right then, time to watch the original TV series! It is after all probably the reason I eventually ended up living in Japan.

If I unfurl one of the fire locks it now reaches under my chin, my hair is pretty curly so it doesn’t necessarily look as long as it is but for the first time we were able to tie it up at the back and it isn’t an unpleasant look. It needs a few more months before the sides can be tied into so I maintain a straggly rogue-like appearance, which is a little different than the full on barbarian look that I have been wielding of late..

.. it remains to be seen how my DPS fairs but I am looking forward to my enhanced stealth skills.

The core beers will have some sort of vector art landscape background (Scottish or Japanese themed) on the label and I have been trying to simplify the logo and info panels. Definitely making forward progress. However..

My wife, whilst being happy with the general designs asked a good question. Do the designs highlight the inclusive ethos we want our company to be based upon and I guess they partially do (they highlight that they are vegan and gluten-reduced) but I am wondering how we can incorporate inclusion for groups of people. Obviously we could use the colours of various pride flags for different designs and it is one option of course..but I think we could do more. We could include images of varied people within the label design but hoping to keep the design somewhat uncluttered.

So, does anyone have any recommendations on good websites or literature on inclusive graphic design? I’ll also search of course but would be grateful for suggestions from more knowledgeable folks than me.

We Are Kochi-ke: Jon Kelbie

Kochi-ke basically means the Kochi family, Kochi being the name of the prefecture where we live.

This is the spiel from the Visit Kochi website is ’ “We are Kochi-ke (Kochi family)” is all about highlighting the stories of the people who make us proud to call Kochi our home. Whether you are living in Kochi now or only visited once, you are part of the Kochi family.’

It’s a short piece about me living here and chasing my dream to become a brewer, and has some nice pictures that our friend Aiko took.

There are 3 levels, and we are going to study for levels 3 and 2. Level 1 is unnecessary, it involves writing sections and I don’t have time for that level of study again but from levels 3 and 2, I should be able to more effectively talk about brewing in Japanese.

So, I spent about an hour or so fiddling with my once presumed dead kindle to wipe it and align it with my JP account. Bought the text book for the course and spent about 4 hours slowly reading through the first chapter of the first part. It is only 5 pages long but I am very rusty so much of it was looking up new kanji, noting the readings and key points. I am now ready to study this part with my wife..

This is the part that doesn’t appear to be considered.. 4 hours for 5 pages.. during February we will study chapters 2 and 3 of part 1, that’s 43 pages.. based on today, that’s about 35 hours of study on top of us studying together, March is the biggest month at 44 pages.. there will be repetition of kanji and I will become less rusty but.. it is pretty daunting.

This chap built his brewery in the gym of an unused former elementary school.. and he received masses of government funding to do so. Reading some interviews and learning about his setup, his brewery is MUCH bigger than we ever plan to be but seems fascinating as the gym building looks about the same scale of the two gym halls that we are currently considering (read: perpetually waiting to hear about) both of which are also attached to unused former elementary schools.

Anyway, it will be the furthest, most rural and certainly coldest brewery that we will have visited, should he agree.

Also completed paperwork, just awaiting checking by my wife, to seek approval for a business trip to the Shizuoka prefecture. It is jam-packed with breweries and has a very vibrant craft beer scene. Exciting times!

.. as someone who may at some point in the future have a brewpub

.. as someone who would like some live music events on occasion at said brewpub

.. as someone with over a decade and a half of working in pubs, most of which had live music

.. as someone who loves karaoke and has been known to sing with some bands at pubs he worked at in the past..

.. as someone who owns an acoustic guitar, though doesn’t know how to play it.. yet..

.. maybe I can line up a gig or two for myself, on occasion..

Now, when I should be sleeping, I am thinking about what a set list might look like.. most of the bars I worked in were (varying degrees of) Irish and so was the music.. I can think of many Irish songs to fit the bill which is fine, my heritage includes Irish lineage.. but I want to have more Scottish songs.. I have some ideas but want to shift responsibility to you so that I may sleep..

.. so, throw your acoustic suitable Scottish song suggestions at me!

.. incidentally, I have sang both Caledonia and The Braes o’ Balquhidder, acapella at a university event in Okayama many years ago.

Afterwards, the brewers are all getting together to have drinks for the first time.

As you are all aware, I am not yet a brewer as the location securing challenge is immense here. Regardless, one of the brewers invited me to the event and post-event drinks. Subsequently, the other brewers shared their enthusiasm for us to come along.

.. enter the 18 month old daughter who has an uncanny ability to cause sleepless nights immediately before days which require more energy..

Excited to be invited to the inaugural event despite not yet being a fully fledged member of the brewing family but by jingo am I tired.

.. I want to make beer that is easy to talk about despite the language barriers.

The long John bottoms eyelessly peered back and nodded, motionlessly before, in a surprisingly gravelly non-voice suggested that “It is time”.

His legs though humbly grateful for the additional warmth knew that it was merely a marriage of necessity and stoicly resolved to endure the additional itch burden they would experience in the months to come.

Reaching out towards the marl grey thermo-regulated undergarments he returned the nod and ceded, “It is time, it IS time.”

As an example of how it’s not actually treated as a special event, just a low key commercial opportunity for retailers, my wife and I have been requested to attend health checks on the morning of the 25th. Pretty sure we had our annual check ups earlier in the year so don’t need to attend but regardless, it’s just another work day.

For the meantime moving onto a book which I have had for ages but wanted to read after the aftershock of intense studying for my postgraduate course had died down.. all about yeast, 50+ pages down this afternoon and mainly just revision at this point, interesting though.

I have a list of 18 brewing books I am awaiting subsidy approval on so I really should make efforts to get through the ones I previously bought through the subsidy.. probably about 70% done with them though.

.. all the while I am silently sitting here, wondering how I can somehow switch it with something so I can keep my firstborn’s first tooth as a keepsake..

As a result I have written a working script to query the DeepL API for auto-translate of short form messages.. I just need to scale the mountain that is the micropub server in order to integrate it.

I will start with only notes, and the process will be that when a new note is posted via micropub a duplicate Japane Hugo template will also be created and the content will be sent to the DeepL API for translation..

Eventually, I’d like to add photo posts but this will require translation of the alt tags too which is slightly more complex than I fancy for the initial phase.

I don’t blog often but long form posts will remain manually translated.

1. It must be able to convert the frequency from 60Hz to 50Hz
2. It must be able to step the power up from 100v to 230v
3. It must have the capacity to run 3 chillers (eventually) continuously, supplying each with 1380 watts
4. It must be able to handle up to 30 A output.. I am a little unclear on whether this is per cooler.

Finding sites selling transformers and sharing all of this information is challenging.. and most of the time they only satisfy 2 of the 4 requirements.. anyway, I’m not yet frustrated! 🙂

Lacking vegan convenience foods has really upped my cooking game!

Not sure exactly when this will happen but I am intrigued..

She knows who I am and seemingly all about me. It turns out this lady is the head of the prefectural government department in charge of bolstering tourism related businesses in the area. Not only that but she is very excited with regards to our plans.. this is a very good sign.

We received some advice on how we might best position ourselves for some prefectural funding..

Good craft beer, vegan food and funding advice are all rare in these parts on their own.. in combination must be unheard of.

.. the low alcohol beer was by some margin my favourite of the 4.. we have 2 other low alc beers from the same brewery and 6 more (4 varieties) from a Scottish brewer (though they appear to have been brewed in Belgium)..

Legitimate research and off to a better start than expected.

The last time I played a similar game was probably Icewind Dale which I remember playing with my old flat mate @lesault@infosec.exchange over LAN but I don’t recall how far into that game we got.

If I was in Scotland I would definitely be trying to get my gaming friends into a regular multiplayer game but not something that I could see working from Japan. I do know a few gamers here though so will try to see if there is any interest.

The lack of maltsters and suppliers of gf grains, exogenous enzymes and yeast nutrients makes it sound like an impossible dream but I’ll pull some threads and see what I can do.

Any pipers here with some advice for an absolute beginner?

Been pricing chanters and they seem reasonable.

Currently, de-googling as much as I can without a custom ROM.

It all started when my fairphone 2 died, completely unexpectedly this evening when working completely fine earlier in the afternoon. No dropping or anything that might make it break.. have returned home and taken it apart cleaned, reseated everything and re-assembled.. still fucked. The last phone I was ever going to buy seems to have outlived that dream.. I am seeing some tech articles in Japanese about the fairphone 4.. wonder if it is supported here..

If I had any idea what the issue was with the phone, I could order spare parts, but would have to order for delivery to my parents in Scotland and then have them send here as there is no support in Japan.

Anyway, not the weirdest part of tonight.. when walking the dog at around 9pm, we met a snake.. only about 25-30cm.. not the bizarre part but wanted to mention it..

So.. I normally keep my eyes primarily on the ground when walking my dog in the dark due to the large wildlife population and me not wanting to step on frogs.. but tonight I looked up and witnessed something which I currently have no explanation for.. so, technically a UFO.. or UFOs as I will attempt to describe.

As I looked up, I saw a line of maybe 9-10 star-like lights, that is to say they looked like stars, they didn´t have perceptible spheres/cones of illumination that you might expect for a light source closer to land.. there is of course a lot of space between the elevation where that sphere/cone of illumination would be perceptible and actually being some sort of gas orb in space.

Strangely, they were moving.. in a line.. too slow, horizontal and linear to be explained away as fireworks (its firework season).. only white light, unchanging, unblinking.. and then after 10-15 seconds, one by one from start to finish the lights went out..

1. I am a very pragmatic, cynical, and logical person.
2. I was drinking some alcohol, but not a lot and on my return from my walk home I disassembled and re-assembled a mobile phone.. so not drunk in any shape or form.
3. I am certain there is some simple explanation for what I witnessed and am not suggesting that i witnessed anything extra-terrestial.

When I told my wife about this on my return from walking the dog, she mentioned that around this time last year her younger brother had a similar experience, albeit with less lights than I saw.

I m curious as to what it could be, I know a guy in the village who is a drone programmer and I would text him to find out if he was doing anything with a large number of drones.. but my phone is fucked.. so I guess I will just have to let my imagination run wild.

Wasn’t able to find reasonably priced individual replacement keys but found a replacement keyboard..

.. I probably should have had a look at the replacement procedure before buying.. this is not going to be fun!

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+X1+Carbon+6th+Gen+Keyboard+Replacement/154084

72 screws holding the keyboard in place.. and a whole disassembly adventure before getting to that stage. I am suddenly cognisant of why I stuck to desktop assemblies in the past.

I may be a concert, my concern primarily the texture and perhaps if we went with chia seeds over flax seeds I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much, but it was very tasty indeed. Went for a cocoa, vanilla and maple syrup recipe and it seems like we will stick with it for a while.

Not sure if it was a result of eating in the morning or not, but this morning I doubled my distance on my second visit to the pool, tapped out at 1km, which was a fair bit further than my target.

Just ordered some dried cranberries in order to ramp up the breakfast decadence and found a Japanese soy protein powder manufacturer who doesn’t put dairy into the mix (you’d be surprised how common a practice that appears to be)..

Then finished a brewing book and started reading up on gluten free beer brewing..

All in all a good day.

It was such a good experience,not just because I didn’t have to drive and the beer was free. For the first time I was with the small core of brewers here and completely accepted within the group despite not yet being a brewer. I loved having a chance to drink with my future peer group and look forward to many future occurrences, but we need to get our brewery odd the ground before I become a fraud!

What was pretty awesome also, was that the head brewer at the new brewery lived in Scotland for about 5 years, studied the undergraduate version of the course that I just (post)graduated from and seemingly work for Brewdog for 3 years.. he knew who I was when I introduced myself and I suspect we are going to become pretty good friends over the years ahead.

We are still traversing a very stressful period of location hunting but today reaffirmed that we made good choices when we decided to start a new chapter in our lives.

There may be an almost complete lack of vegan options for eating out here but the swathes of fresh produce, frequently free, makes giant strides towards making up for it!

Due to today’s shenanigans our 1 yr old didn’t go to nursery, but when I dropped off her older sister I also dropped of her bag as we anticipated her attending after the local doctor checkup..

So obviously there were no used clothes in her bag.. but all 3 face cloths were wet..

They were in a water-resistant zipped bag, just by themselves.. if she wasn’t in attendance how did they get wet? Why do we have to brand everything we supply with our children’s names if they are being used even when they aren’t even there? Wtf?

.. lovely people, their concerns were about how it would work for us rather than anything relating to themselves.

.. they are open to us buying it on one condition, we take all of their land in the village..

.. so we need to find out how much land that is whilst testing water quality etc.

.. beyond exciting!

Fiver years on and I am still very tired but in Japan..

So looks like we are down to two sites, one preferred and one back up, but importantly both I the village we intend to live until we evaporate into the ether. Totally different projects depending on which we get.

We discovered that a close high school friend of my wife’s works with one of the two sons of the owner of the preferred site and he is the same age as me and a seemingly approachable and friendly guy.. seems pretty upbeat that the property could be used for a brewery.. I think we may call the owner tomorrow for a catch up.

Tomorrow..Adventure World

My contract runs until end of June so still a couple of months to go but it is flying past so quickly.

.. meanwhile a forestry friend showed us a few sites on a mountain that may be available at very low cost.. mostly too small but then he showed us an empty house (with workshop and Kura (grain storage building)) at the top of a nearby mountain which is empty.. we are very interested in this site, and on our way down the hill we met the mum of a school friend of my wife who knows who the owner is and is going to pass on our details next time she sees her (hopefully within 2 days).. even better, if we get this place, he is going to try to get the land opposite to build a campsite!

.. we suddenly have several excellent options, all within the village we live in..

.. things are getting pretty spicy!

However the first site is in a wooded hill whereas the new site is flat and has better access.. would be a less challenging and less expensive build.. going to follow the stream by the new site today to try to find the water source and see what it looks like, whir up my fledgling 3d modelling skills and start to put feelers out about it..

Investigating just one site at a time here isn’t advisable given how slow processes are.

Was almost on tears with the first taste.. there is way to much poor to mediocre small batch beer here giving craft beer a bad reputation.. whilst there are great brewers they are small and don’t have a wide spread (generally by choice) but there needs to be way more emphasis on quality over band-wagoning cheap ass table sugar liquors and marketing them as craft beer..

.. and with a sip of beer from the fledgling brewery who first inspired him to (very fucking slowly) follow the same path, his fierce dedication to the raise the quality bar of Japanese craft beer was re-forged.

.. as he reclines against the tiny food preparation area of his inadequately sized kitchen space, the protagonist, not for the first time, has expanded his sights a shade more aloft..

.. it is not for profit but borne from a desparation to be able drink a beer that doesn’t resemble domesticated pet piss that drives his determination.. such is the power of barrel-aged maple ale and raspberry and toasted nut porter..

.. the only thing that could possibly vanquish his unbridled desire to eternally change the craft beer industry in this super corporately focuses nation is the onset of sleep..

.. but our battle-aged hero has an unlikely ally in his almost one year old progeny, her impatient demands for mid-sleep liquid snacks and the females in his family (who represent 75% of the “bedroom”) incessant talent for talking perpetually whilst awake or otherwise..

.. will our grey-haired, white-bearded, ginger eye-browed, middle-aged, peddler of as of yet non-existant theoretical future beers love up to this moments expectations and indeed will he ever stop typing this unnecessarily long drivel-filled, failed attempt at a goodnight fediverse post?

Hard to say really, maybe time wil. te..

💤

My parents arrive for a few months on Friday so could be a good project to start with extra hands.

Firstly, I am happy to report that my move to veganism appears to have cured my hyperuricemia (which was detected the last time I did one of these tests, in uni in Japan in 2010).. this is good news and to my mind somewhat expected.

However I seem to have fairly low HDL cholesterol (just below recommendation) and high triglycerides.. which I am primarily attributing to my intake of monster energy drink as a result of a massive lifestyle change and parenting of young kids.. also whereas I used to snack on nuts in Scotland, almost everything here is seasoned with some sort of animal extract so I snack a little less healthily and more often than I did when I was in Scotland and healthier options were more abundant.

Not too concerned about this as my job will become increasingly physical and I can easily cut back on sugary drinks and fatty snacks.. just relieved that nothing serious came up.

.. I did recently receive a notice that I am eligible for an array of annual cancer detection tests too (not all free). Waiting for the results from the first set of them will be nerve-wracking but I think these annual checkups are a pretty good service to offer.

I really love the design ethics of the frame.work laptops and, as per fairphone, their adherence to the right to repair. I would love to buy one but they too do not (yet) sell to nor deliver to Japan.

I want devices that won’t need replaced wholesale every few years but this seems pretty difficult in this part of the world at this time.

The time to be bold is upon us.. we are going to drop by tomorrow and be more direct than is customary for these parts.. fingers crossed!

.. should be simple enough only minor complication will be for nested notes such as photo descriptions but shouldn’t be much of a hurdle.

Realistically, I am not sure how long I can stay there as at some point preparation for our own brewery will take up all of our time but, I wholly intend to help out as much as I can until we reach that point.

Once we get an agreement in principle then we can get a professional to come and test the water. I’ll borrow a water testing kit too and have a go but that’s just so that I can play with a chemistry set 😄

Then, if all goes well with the results of the water tests we can finally have an official chat about renting or buying the site from the family eat farm.. then the fun really begins!

.. super expensive to bore though and the farm uses pesticides so we’d need to drill down very far.. not sure it’s in the realms of realism for us right now. Will try to chat with the country club about their water supply .

Whilst they were a bit quiet about whether they would pay for exploratory bore hole work at our site, they said our subsidies could be used to test the water pumped up via the country club so this is now plan A.

Interestingly, they think that perhaps the site which I would prefer but which we considered off the table due to multi-level governmental red tape might not be so difficult and may be back on the table. This sliver of hope was very well received!

.. our second winter allegedly starts tomorrow.. I don’t want to work from the office.. although chances are the nursery school will be inaccessible and the day will be spent looking after the girls anyway.

On my 3rd and favourite iteration of a brewery design for the most likely (at this point) future brewing site.. looking cool.. can only imagine how much cooler it would look if I had actually watched or read any tutorial before jumping in arse first.

Going to measure some of the other potential sites from a map and see what I can conjure up for different layouts.. tomorrow that is, for tonight I shall play rimworld!

First on the list of things to work out is how to add floors to the upstairs level in Sweet Home 3D.. was a bit surprised that it wasn’t a very obvious action.. I’m sure I can find a tutorial video or some such.

.. there is a non-zero chance..

So we need to bore to find out.. which is pretty damned expensive.. so we are going to see if the town hall fancy paying on our behalf..

The criteria applied by me is that it had to be repeatable, seemingly intentional and verified by both parents.

The word is Papa - she pointed at a photo of me and said Papa.. repeated 4 times in with pauses between and dual verified!

やった!

.. considered using bridgyfed and turning my site into a fully fledged fediverse account (which I also tested in the past) but I like GtS and I like my current fediverse account so don’t really feel like changing again , even though this would definitely be the easiest implementation as my site is pretty much already compliant.

Anyway, hope everyone’s 2023 is a marked improvement on your 2022? 明けましておめでとうございます!

..

Tonight is barley and kabocha stew Tomorrow is mixed mushroom and black ale pie

Even helped a stranger by pushing their car through some tricky snowy roads.

Under normal conditions it’s a 10-15 minute walk.. but we can’t walk there with kids and presents and there is just no chance that the roads between here and there can or will be cleared..

So, I guess we’re going to be staying her after all, which is good because here is where my bed is.

.. aye, have at it, good luck.

.. now that I have a pair and am wearing them for the first time, I am not sure that they will be coming off before Spring! Though, I ordered another pair of indoor gloves today (with fingers) too.. indoor gloves.. what an eye-opener!

Hopefully we did enough to get the mayor (and his funds) on board for our plan A situation.

.. I initially thought that the vegan offerings would be only from my friend but when we arrived my attendance was announced.. My name was on the menu blackboard and they made a proper big deal about it.. I was a little embarrassed at first but Christ on a bike, the food was amazing!

The weird thing was I met someone who I believe to not be Japanese and indeed to be natively English speaking who perhaps felt that I wanted to speak in Japanese and after an initial chat told me she read my posts on note.com.. a Japanese blogging site.. fuck me, my mind is blown.

.. seemingly I’ve been married for 10 years today..

😶😯😲😳🤯

It will be interesting but I don’t see how I can actually get it done with the amount of events that have been placed in my schedule.. wish I could just clear the decks and focus on this but cancelling engagements isn’t the done thing here, even if you had nothing to do with their arrangement in the first place.

Skip forward 12 years, we are back in Japan and the game that I am struggling to stay awake through is the first and maybe last of the tournament I’ll watch.. My interest in this sport ended at a Scotland vs Canada friendly match in Easter Road some years ago and shows no sign of returning.

Thankfully, I am here to try and support my host country in other ways, so I don’t feel guilty.

.. next stop though is the brewery where I intern, where for the first time in ages, I’ll be drinking the beer!

On the plus side, we are just finalising the schedule for our next business trip to visit breweries in Ehime prefecture at the start of next week. All 5 of the breweries I contacted are happy for us to visit and have a chat, so pretty excited.

Smells pretty good!

Thanks to the village’s early morning public announcement activity any hopes of a long lie to capitalise on the empty bedroom were dashed..

.. this morning I will bathe in espresso and hopefully power through my assignment.. still tired but what else is new..

Seemingly my wife has never seen this completed successfully.. today on my very first attempt, I completed it and won a giant inflatable baseball bat for my daughter.

.. It didn’t seem like something that few people complete but there were a whole lot of people coming over to watch. Life is weird sometimes.

.. SRU - Highland Cathedral .. .. Stanley Odd - Son I voted yes .. Stanley Odd - marriage counseling .. The Proclaimers - cap in hand..

.. wondering if there is some sort of theme developing..

Maybe another mug will help..

Seems like I’m going to have to be the one to reach out to other group members to start talking about assignment 2 as well since no-one else has.. I really think group assignments and distance learning are an awful match but we are where we are..

Covered the material from the lecture, just need to get through the additional reading and maybe make a start on research for my first assignment..

.. but currently I’m trying to work out if I can use a Cornelius keg as a portable continuous coffee ingestion system..

I may also start researching my first assignment on climate change and it’s impact on barley crops.

My wife and brother-in-law (the latter being somewhat of an expert on them) confirmed this morning that we do indeed have a wild boar living about 5 metres from our house.

Going to try and convince it to leave this morning before my brother-in-law takes more.. terminal.. actions. Can’t have a wild boar living quite so close to my daughters.

My daughter saw me on TV though and is seemingly very proud.

.. lined up are “troubleshooting acetaldehyde”, “fundamentals of CIP” and “yeast stress”..

..seriously considering buying one.. I’d far prefer to travel by an electric scooter for short errand runs than in a car..

.. I had, I seem to recall put aside some money for a steamdeck.. can get a kickboard for about the same amount.. hmmm.

.. we were travelling over a local mountain on a rarely travelled road and I saw my first wild boar, a young un, was very cool.

.. was told that some of the snakes around these parts are venomous.. tonight’s dog walk in the pitch black, unlit rural neighbourhood was a shade more edgy than normal.. yon lass from encanto with the super hearing had nothing on me.. I heard EVERYTHING!

Just registered for my next uni course which is exciting after such a long break. So I may study a bit before I head around to my brother-in-law’s place to hook up his internet.

The things I want to do are related to my future brewery but I need to force myself to take the days off when they come.

Full disclosure, I want to make three beers in the future utilising my in-laws’ tea and ’te’ can (artistically.. loosely.. sort of) be pronounced similarly to how the Japanese word for tea is pronounced so I have 2 out of 3 names..

.. and zero recipes.. yet..

Anyway, Instagram seems to be the most useful tool for connecting with locals around here and I’m not dis-enjoying (?) the initial endorphin fuelled set up game.. I have enough traction to combat the slippery slope of these gamefied silos for my personal accounts but for future business purposes at this point for documenting our story is ok, I think.

.. I live in hope but have little faith that this will be the case.

They seem quite interested in our story too and have taken some of my details..

The day started by helping out a my friend Masa and he showed me his potential future tortilla kitchen, then I scouted the Northern boundary of the village and now have 10 potential sites for the brewery.. No clue about availability, just currently un-utilised spots, seemingly abandoned buildings or potentially shared spaces with existing tenants.

Just pulled together a map and document with photos of sites..

.. very much not a day off so I may take my day off tomorrow instead :)

I started calling her “destroyer of worlds” and then she fell asleep on my chest.. so she is MY destroyer of worlds.

.. however I am often here during the week and they often aren’t working despite the sign.. hmm.

If it was down to me I’d just let it win.. fucking knackered!

Would have liked to have been there but I need to pick up my daughter from nursery, it’s been a while since we’ve been able to have dedicated time to ourselves so I’m looking forward to it.

I left today at the agreed time and shouldn’t really work more than necessary but the brewer still had another 4 or 5 hours of work ahead of him.

Would love to stay and help but I have to get home at a reasonable time just now to help look after the kids and house etc.

Tired, thirsty and once again humbled.

Was a hot, humid and long day and the hardest I’ve worked for quite a while but it was also fun and I am very grateful to Ken (Mukai) for inviting me along to help out.

I will never be able to explain why this introvert loves tending bar so much but I really do and despite some language challenges today I loved pouring beers again.

Same again tomorrow when it will be hotter! So for now going to enjoy this beer, have a shower, have some food then grab some sleep.

.. and, our Dog should arrive during the following week, finally!

There is live music all evening too so whilst it’s going to be busy and hard work, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and looking forward to it!

Most of today is likely to be planning for the big event in the city which I’m helping with over the next couple of days, possibly with some bottling (of beer not nerves) and almost certainly lots of cleaning.

Got a couple of hours to slowly get ready and prepare lunch before the 1 hour long drive up windy narrow roads into the mountains!

.. tomorrow is my first day as a brewing intern..

I do not enjoy this aspect of my luck or apparent lack thereof.. I got through all of the nonsensical barriers to getting here.. now that I am here (still without our shipped belongings or dog), I could really do with less shit being thrown in my way.

I’m not sure if it’ll get any engagement at all there, I’m not the biggest fan of the platform but I feel like I need to try and promote any writing about the 地域おこし協力隊 programme in order to justify the time I spend writing about it (over say, reading about and researching brewing science)..

for my own site, I don’t really care if I’m the only person reading my articles (to find the litany of typos I undoubtedly missed) but I need to justify my minimum wage efforts elsewhere.. though I don’t know of a similar platform for English blogs which aren’t built into or upon FB.

Also need to go out and buy whatever cheap cooling technology I can to stop me from spontaneously combusting at the weekend outdoor event.

At 12pm each day this tune (just the tune) is piped through the village PA system.. I much prefer it to the unwelcome 6am tune!

https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=m2RpBNabpXo

I’ve had success getting friends and family to use matrix (and xmpp before then) for quick comms but I don’t know that I’m going to manage to get people on to pixelfed.. and am not sure that I am fussed to try any more.

Being without it for so long and then syndication failing with it on my return is making it feel like a little more work than my new life will permit me.

Conversely, I’m very happy with gotosocial, I can syndicate images here from my site and it just works..

.. on an unrelated note, I started typing this on my computer then when I switched to my phone it was available in the copy buffer.. KDE connect rocks!

Just a quick syndication test before my coffee.

Still a bit peeved that I couldn’t get my self-hosted quill to work since the move but not wasting another day on it.. will manually start uploading the backlog of blog posts, soon.

Anyway, the visit reminded me of the challenge that lies ahead of me in rural Japan and the noses that I’ll be putting out of joint when we get there. Previous visits frustrated the hell out of me because my wife’s grandma wouldn’t let me be a parent, she would drag my wife out of bed rather than let me look after my own daughter. Unfortunately, her health has deteriorated and she is in full-time care but it is an opinion that is pervasive in the elder generations that live in rural villages in Japan (and probably beyond).

Thankfully, my mother-in-law is 100% on board with our parenting balance and my father-in-law knows better than to cross her 😆

.. it turns out I’m still inexplicably disgruntled about the final result of MasterChef Australia 2019 and it threatens to bleed into every one of the 60 episodes..

I’ve subscribed to a bunch of feeds and created channels in aperture (https://aperture.p3k.io ) and the feeds FROM my site appear in monocle/indigenous but none of the other feeds at all are being retrieved by readers.. aperture shows that there are entries for various sources but nothing is showing up..

I guess something needs restarted somewhere.. but it’s not my issue (I think)

There are times that I don’t see me in my daughter (very rare times) - most notably when she is eating and enjoying natto.. but times like these are re-affirming.

I responded, “not normally until you start school which isn’t until you are 7 y.o. in Japan. Why do you ask? Do you want homework?”

She replied in the affirmative so I’ll have a new task as homework setter once we’ve moved.. she then said she’d need a toy computer to do the homework..

So I told her I’ll make her a real computer when we move to Japan.. which made her very happy.. awww a wee geek bud is starting to grow.

I thought of resuscitating my previous Japan related blog (Bushido Dreams) but that was a different time, focussing mainly around my exchange year in Okayama. I’ll still pop random Japan related posts there but for the journalling of our new lives I think a new blog is best.

.. anyway, as I was walking home the name of said blog popped into my head.. it merits explanation (so that you find it just as hilarious-ish as I).. The programme name (地域お越し協力隊) in Roman characters would be something like ‘chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai’ .. so.. the blog name will be ..

Drumroll

.. The KyōryokuTimes

.. BOOM!

.. no I will not get my jacket, I am absurdly pleases with this name.

So now we’re having to try and work out how to transport all of our luggage, a dog, a toddler and newborn to fucking London.. uggghh!

It would be nice to have a little more clarity on how we and our dog are actually getting to Japan too, after KLM fucked us over.

I need to focus on very regular updates to my site once we’re in Japan and maybe try to improve it’s discoverability.. not that I expect many friends will look at my site rather than perpetually send invites to an account which explicitly requests no invites, but it’ll be nice to make it more active just in case.

Still awaiting the arrival of our new baby, I was pretty sure she would arrive before we received an offer on the house.

Thankfully, this should be the first and last house we sell. Next house is a rental then after that we’re hopefully building the last house we’ll ever live in.

This makes life easier as we can get the tram with the weans to the airport whilst my folks bring the luggage and dig in their car. Also means we can say goodbye to friends and get our pre-flight tests done with much less hassle.

Also, waiting for a home report is super tedious.

Fuck the home office getting a visa doesn’t need to be a visit to the pits of hell.

Anyway, can’t wait to meet her despite my somewhat relaxed exterior.

What a wild ride it has been trying to fast-track the usually slow-paces and natural learning curve that homebrewers go through as hobbyists.. During the 29 brew days I squeezed in, I have made mistakes a-plenty and there will certainly be more going forward, but I have also made tremendous progress..

On tap I have two original recipe beers and a third is fermenting.. as an enthusiastic amateur cook that astonishes me (way more than it should). I still cook largely from recipes albeit I may throw my own spin on a dish or play about with ingredients.. and sure, beer is, on paper, relatively straightforward.. but yeast and bacteria are wee divils who like spanner throwing .. the two beers that I have on tap, I could easily envisage pouring in my future breweries tap room with only minor adjustments as well as versions incorporating tea.. the quality astounds me, but that feeds back into the simplicity of beer-making, whilst I’ve put thought and love into my brews, I can only initiate the alchemy..

I am beyond excited to hopefully turn this into a modest, wee, local, sustainable, rural lifestyle and that the hard work of the past few years finds its feet in Japan.

I’m not generally as excited about IPAs as other beer styles but I’m kinda lookin forward to how this is going to work out 🤔

.. I say handily but of course we are flying from Edinburgh, so… Is our dog meant to swim to Amsterdam?

Of course what Japan seems to require in pre-flight covid testing doesn’t seem to align with what is in offer at the airport’s here so will need to search for somewhere that presumably still uses a fax machine..

Meanwhile, I’m teaching my daughter to Pas-de-basque so that I’ve a wee helper when we bring ceilidh dancing to rural Japan! Also need to try and find some DRM-free ceilidh music at some point.

Once the logo is done I can work on developing the website whilst I continue my studies and work on building industry experience once in Japan.

.. does my website need a guestbook that pretty much no-one will ever sign? Probably not.. am I going to add one anyway? Almost certainly!

She is at her granny’s house and just saw a photo of him on the computer and asked “Is that the clown? 🤡” .. bursting with pride 😆

Will wait until we’re a bit closer to our moving date before that happens though. Another weight off my shoulders!

I also have to decline a contract extension offer this week, which I had been looking forward to but if our move ends up being delayed then the joy of handing my notice is likely to be overshadowed by concerns over being unemployed for longer than anticipated.

I’m also taking an alternative approach to my use of cacao nibs this time.. in previous stout brews I used raw cacao nibs and was very happy with the results but I think they might be imparting an undesired bitterness in this beer style. So I’m going to try roasting them and along with a vanilla bean, make a tincture using vodka and will add post-fermentation.

I’ve used neither of these processes before so I’m excited to see how they turn out.

I hope that I can get another test soon and get a better handle on my nerves during it, I don’t need this burden carrying into the new year.

As it isn’t NHS this time they are a little less strict on how many folk can come along so our daughter and my mum are coming.. which gives us a 50-50 split on preference.. (although that would also be the case if it were just the two of us).

There will be a few disappointed people around these parts a little later..

I am sipping it with a big smile on my face. It should be conditioned and poured with a nitrogen mix or just nitrogen and I have neither but it is very tasty and very definitely a stout. Chuffed!

This may or may not be a standard practice in brewing for one of those ingredients (not being coy, I genuinely don’t know) but for the other shrug .. it seems to me to be a likely step in nut milk creation so makes sense (again, no nut milk recipes were consulted).. I quite probably have the liquid to solid ratios completely askew..

..but this is the type of brewer I want to become, somewhat experimental but with these leaps being grounded in my understanding of many years of cooking.. I can’t believe that my nervous, unprepared answer in Japanese in my recent interview regarding why I want to make beer and not whisky (asked because you know, I’m Scottish) is actually a guiding principle..

It’s going to be interesting one way or the other..

Whilst reading the can I spotted that the brewers also used molasses which raised an eyebrow.. not that molasses are very unusual in beer just that they aren’t normally a featured or highlighted ingredient..

Needless to say that it was the first beer I drank from the box.. now I am starting to question whether or not I was reading too much into the word raspberry.. as the beer tasted exactly like molasses and the raspberry was imperceptible.

If you name an ingredient in the presented style of your beer, it really should be a detectable flavour.

Pre-conditioning it tastes quite nice but I wish I had nitrogen to enhance the beer, will stick with CO2 though and am sure that I’m going to enjoy drinking this beer.

If it does drink as well as I suspect it will then I’ll be delighted to have nailed it on first go. I applied a lot of my learning to the recipe and brew day design so it will be testament to me moving in the right direction. Also, I have soooo many recipe ideas based on a stout so fun times lie ahead!

We’ve been lightly chatting via email and matrix since then but today we both overcame our anxiety and met for the first time.

Aside from an early morning covid scare and the torrential rain in Edinburgh, today was a fantastic day.

.. however, even though I have zero experience in statistics or analysis and am not particularly excited by either.. I still feel like this assignment is one which I can nail.. if I can find the enthusiasm to learn about calculating standard deviations and figuring out what the feck ANOVA is..

Definitely having a celebratory drink this evening, flu be damned.

Hell yes! I love my wife’s family and am grateful that they are making space for us but delighted that it will just be temporary whilst we set the new house up.

I love stouts and I feel that they are very forgiving of mistakes (can handle undesirable flavour compounds a little better than lighter beers etc.) but it is so damned tempting to throw in cacao nibs and coffee beans.. must resist! This is to be a beer upon which future stout recipes can be developed.

.. noticed some similarities with The Killing (original not US one) and figured that it’s the same writer.. according to themoviedb.org it is.. woohoo, result.. looking forward to this and subsequent series..

..they scratch an entirely different itch than Tim Minchin, or The Scared Weird Little Guys for that matter..

..anyway, I always struggled to pick one of their songs as my favourite, though probably “The most beautiful girl in the room”, but I recently caught up with their reunion tour and I think, for now at least it is “Father and Son”

https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=i8iK1rhfYpI

T-36minutes..

What I will be doing today: Learning to drive a car for 6+ hours..

Well, at least I’ve got the day off work..

I’ve answered them as best I can, so awaiting corrections then I have a day and a bit to commit them to memory and hope that they don’t ask me something else randomly!

.. it’s basically like an adult battle royale, right?

My wife: well, it’s more like… and.. so and so watched it and said … and before they mentioned it I looked it up and …

A few minutes later.. Blue Danube plays..

Me: .. that’s a reference to Battle Royale..

My wife literally falls asleep..

Let’s call that one a draw.

.. also as a result odt files aren’t accepted.. awesome..

Having a bit of fun with this one, my own experimental recipe and trying out some alternative processes .. will also be my first attempt at brewing with a tea grown by my in-laws so I hope it’s at least drinkable!

Need to pepper some assignment work in throughout the day to try and get it submitted this evening.

However, I’m taking a break now before I make dinner and spend a few hours sanitising my brewing equipment for tomorrow.

Been robbed of sleep for several days by my 3 year old so tonight will be some beers and repeatedly trying and failing to get past the first few days of apocalypse difficulty on project zomboid.

Tomorrow will be a relatively long lie followed by a day of assignment writing, editing and hopefully submitting.

Sunday is brew day, and back to trying to refine my first original recipe, this time including tea in the mix!

My spouse will return on Sunday evening but daughter will still be with grandparents for a few days so..

Monday: (work) brush up on highway code for 6 hour driving lesson and try to fit some 日本語 preparation in for our interview on Wednesday.

Tuesday: a 6 hour driving lesson hopefully followed by a beer and some further 日本語 interview prep.

Wednesday: interview day, should be finished before work and hopefully will get a vocal contract offer, at which point the huge amount of pressure on my shoulders bounces over to the impending driving test. (work) catching up on weeks 2, 3 and 4 of my course work after the ludicrously early assignment. Then hopefully, giving my daughter a big cuddle on her return home.

Modern, peer reviewed papers on the topic generally agree with the claims in the patent.. which is fine and I’ve plenty of references\citations to get the assignment done.. however, its not going to be overly critical which is a concern.

Which is just as well because we have our interview date! A couple of days after my assignment due date and almost exactly a month before the driving test that it all hinges upon. Hopefully, the pressure will ease after that (not that there is any guarantee I’ll pass)..

With this course, work, driving lessons (hopefully), interview with Mayor of future home village in Japan (hopefully), multiple vet appointments, and a brew schedule to adhere to, I’m not going to see the light of day for a few months! (probably as well, I burn way too easily!)

Our (very helpful) vet says.. rabies vaccinations are given once and last for 3 years..

Email sent to DEFRA and expecting to have retired in Japan with a new generation of pets before I get a useful response..

I like the chap in question and don’t for a second suspect anything untoward with regards to the amount he charged my mum and the specs of this desktop, rather I suspect he was just a little inexperienced and may have made some dubious choices with how he spent the money.

Trying to run a windows 10 recovery from usb on this device is chronically slow, I’ve been waiting for it to move to the next screen for over 30 minutes.. it’ll get there but will it be today?

(Before any fossbros jump in, I will be installing Linux (mint in this case) and have already talked to my mum about it, but I need to recover data from the seemingly fucked M2 drive which for now requires me to continue through this arduous tedious process)

It seems that his brewery is doing well and he is looking forward to me joining the community. I too am very much looking forward to joining the community!

Apparently there will be another brewery opening soon in the prefecture with an Australian brewer, the Shikoku brewing community is becoming a very international affair.

For now though I may need a second giant mug of coffee and try to get stuck in to my studies.

relating to future life in Japan and what I want my eventual meishi (business card) to say..

Small Batch Brewer - Mushroom Grower - Vegan Pie-maker

Spent grains from brewing used for growing mushrooms in, mushrooms (and sometimes beer) made into pies and pies eaten with my beer.. If I can split my working life between these pursuits, I will be an exceptionally happy soul.

They were initially planning to interview us in January or February but we explained the timelines around applying for my visa and needing to no well ahead of that for putting our house on the market etc. and they are going to try and arrange interview(s) with the mayor and deputy mayor early to mid-October instead..

My next course started today and first assignment will be due around then.. and hopefully I’ll have some intensive driving lessons next month too..

October looking very busy but hopefully some pressure will be relieved with an official contract offer.

I’ll also update my syndication script to post articles to GtS too.. not that I have or expect to have a large readership but I wondered what people would prefer..

1. Full article but collapsed behind a content warning\subject, or
2. A summary and link to blog post

Not sure which is the preferred etiquette.. I quite like reading full blog posts directly in my timeline but I have previously (manually) posted summaries with links before.. thoughts?

.. I’m away peched!

1. Lion’s mane mushrooms have potential qualities which MAY be able to assist in combatting conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.. but they are rare and at least here, picking them is apparently illegal.. they can be grown though.
2. I really need to experience psilocybin (magic mushrooms), as soon as possible, please.
3. I need to read, Mycelium Running - and will purchase before I go to bed..

.. I also then answered my own question of what to do with spent grain when I become a brewer (not going to give it to cattle farmers.. as most people suggest..).. I’m going to grow a fuck tonne of mushrooms!

It was the first time I’ve done a test and I did not enjoy it.. 20 minutes to go until we find out if the bug that Islay brought how from her first nursery session is going to derail my weekend plans..

She loved it and is excited to go back which is great because the next day is a full day! Was happy to see the class was very multi-cultural as she’ll not have the same opportunity to play with as varied a collection of kids when we move to rural Japan.

Unfortunately for us, she is once again experimenting with acting like a teenager.

Booked a table at Sora Lella - not normally overly excited by Italian restaurants but I am this time!

What works:

• Notes (short form text posts like this)
• Media + Media Descriptions (primarily photos)
• Likes, Shares and Comments (made from this site to activitypub accounts)
• Visibility scopes (public, un-listed, follower only)
• Content warnings

Basically the writing or push phase is done, the reading or pull phase is next and I have a plan but have worked hard enough this week so chilling!

Integrate activitypub interactivity by hooking up to an account using GoToSocial which I’m following the development of closely but haven’t yet experimented with.

Write scripts to poll the GtS API and pull new posts/interactions and write to JSON or yaml files for Hugo to convert to static pages. This might require me to completely rewrite the webmentions endpoint.. I need to think about multiple process flows and make sure that existing functionality isn’t broken.

Properly integrate cactus comments (using my dendrite instance) to relevant posts, which requires clarification from the devs on how to install the appservice without docker. This should enable comments via matrix, webmentions and activitypub which for the first two includes guest commenting.

Redesign how media is displayed, particularly photo albums. Also categorisation via hashtags will need a rejig.. not sure if it is viable to add search to a static site but also an option for investigation.

I currently use the Indigenous app for posting to this site and my semi-anonymous social media facing site (to be retired on completion of the work on this site) which I’d like to continue, which would mean that I’m primarily syndicating to and pulling from activitypub.. I tend to use Tusky for activitypub reading and occasional posting, so I need to also ensure that replies, likes, shares etc. are correctly recorded regardless of the app I use.

Write a script (or do it manually) to pull all of my pixelfed posts and save them to this site.. as I really don’t think that I need to host a single person instance of pixelfed any more.. at the very least if family show an interest I can build another instance using this tld.

A lot of work but it will be transferrable to other future sites for other folks or future brewery purposes.. so worthwhile.. now, where can I find the time?

Now need to try to book an intensive driving course and practical test as soon as I can.

Also, will try to rebook rebook another theory test for Sakino as she was unable to attend today.

Progress..

The primarily function is a quick reference for ingredient profiles and recipes to aid with studies and recipe development but it could continue to grow and be useful for future brewery purposes.

I called it Leann, which is Gàidhlig for beer.

Just a wee geek X brewing student collaboration!

We’ve both passed before so hopefully will again and then we’ll try and get intensive courses booked asap afterwards.

I’m not a fan of cars or driving but a licence is a prerequisite to our application to move to Japan so, we’ll do what we have to do.

The pain being due to the tension in my shoulders and neck rather than the probably pretty light stretching in the course.

I’ll complete all 7 days before concluding if its for me but the warm burn in my shoulder muscles right now isn’t unpleasant.. So, the mind remains open.

When the world inevitably falls apart and we all break into our vaccination-based factions (vacsfacs), I’ll be in the AstraZeneca tribe.. I suggest we strive for alliances with younger tribes as most of us are middle-aged.. I can either be a diplomat/strategist or make us beer..

Focus levels were somewhat low but it should be a decent pass, and I’ve registered for my next course on wort boiling and fermentation, which will hopefully bring the bioscience knowledge to the table after its absence from my last course.

Another sister though.. 24 years my junior.. mind blown!

So much love for my wee girl! Happy birthday poppet!

If only I had time to look a little less “mid-lockdown” before the intro, but hey ho! Glad to have finally me them, would like a proper chat when time allows (preferably when I’m not working!)

It is being considered as an investment in our future brewery as the same kit will be used for recipe development and small batch experimentation.

Exciting!

Combined these two assignments count for 50% of the course mark and averaged, I’m currently sitting on an A, but I don’t expect to end up there after my final assignment, which is released next week.

I’ve found the content of the course to be uninspiring and the method of teaching to be poor so, whilst I’ll put in more effort than the first two assignments as an A is seemingly within reach, I’ll struggle with enthusiasm if the question isn’t a lot more interesting than I expect it will be.

Day progressing very smoothly thus far.

I wish I hadn’t drank 4 Brewdog beers before sampling this but it seems to have a surprisingly dominant caramel flavour, which fits the style and is pretty tasty! Before I get too carried away, I’ll have to taste without external influences but for a first attempt at an original recipe, I am tentatively calling it a success.

It isn’t suitable for infusion with tea, at least I don’t think so, but it might be useful for other purposes in the future.. might need to look into “pastry” beers as I suspect a caramel & hazelnut tart ale might be interesting.

Ach well, ne’er mind.

• Email 1, I had been planning to send since 2018.. but I wanted some brewing experience and knowledge first. It was to Setoguchi-san @ Tosaco and before sending the email, I asked Sakino to proof-read and suggest corrections. When the document was returned I didn’t see comments so thought that corrections had been made. It turns out that as I had the previous version of the email open, it didn’t update with the comments.. so the email I sent has several mistakes :( I really hope that they aren’t too bad and that Setoguchi-san isn’t offended!

• Email 2, was to two brewing brothers from Yamamoto Bakushu.. This time I did see the comments from Sakino and made the suggested corrections before sending.. as the email address on their website seems to be non-functional so the email was rejected.

Just been that kind of a day.

In the meantime, I am going to try and:

• Write introduction emails to some Japanese brewers in Kochi and other neighbouring prefectures in Shikoku
• Reach out to Scottish brewers to arrange post-lockdown brewery visits
• Book and study for my driving theory test
• Contact driving instructors to try and arrange an intensive, automatic driving course
• Try and improve my Japanese by reading and posting to note.com (despite my apprehensions about the platform)
• Brew more beer! Next will be the first of a single malt and single hop (SMaSH) IPA series

It does represent something that I have been avoiding for several years, that is a big centralised site potentially data harvesting me but I’m making an exception as it may be a useful tool for connecting to Japanese craft beer enthusiasts and brewers.

Sakino thinks I am OK to post in English (even though I don’t see any non-Japanese posts) but I feel that I’ll need to pepper some Japanese in as I go, though not to the extent where it becomes a deterrent to posting.

I’m treating this as an experiment and a way to read a bit more Japanese, even if just scanning initially.

Had a taste of the wort before adding yeast and if I’ve done the right thing with the mash, then hopefully some of the sweetness will carry through to the beer.

Had a nice caramel aroma but that is likely to dissipate through fermentation.. probably about 6 weeks before this one is tastes as the style appears to benefit from a longer maturation period..

• Clean and sanitise keg

• Clean and sanitise beer line

• Transfer beer from fermenter to keg

• Clean and sanitise fermenter

• Clean and sanitise mash tun

• Write up brew day plan for tomorrow

• Stop giggling at the rugby scores

It wasn’t the most exhilarating experience and I don’t expect that I’ll hit the lofty heights of my semester 1 grades but it should be good enough for a pass.

The next assignment involves completing 6 industry safety courses and writing a reflective essay on how I would apply this to the whisky packaging industry..

I hope the final assignment is a bit more relevant to my future brewery plans. Looking forward to September’s course already.. it’ll either be on cereals and mashing or on yeast and fermentation.. at the moment, I’m not sure which I should prioritise.

It’s a simple enough process that I even got Sakino to switch to the free and open source FitoTrack app! We just need to record our exercise, save the GPX file to nextcloud and then run a script and about 5-10 seconds later the session is live on our sites!

After a 10km walk today I was standing at the door waiting for our dog to come in, I had a bag of spicy peanuts from Lidl in hand and was looking forward to a beer..

My almost 3 year old daughter, Islay launched an inquisitive line of questioning about the bag in my hand, were they for the dog? what were they? etc. Culminating in the (genuine) question, ”Does mama not love Papa’s nuts?”

.. to which, after confirming the question, I merely responded “not as much as she used to”

• 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.
• Identify why gas doesn’t seem to be filling the kegs (beers are pouring flatter than before, but still quickly) and fix, may be resolved by above step.
• Clean line and keg in preparation for conditioning the porter which is patiently waiting in the fermenter
• Keg and condition the porter
• Replace thermometer batteries and test the beer fridge’s capabilities for imminent cold crashing use.

It seems my eagerness to replace the barb and clasp system of connecting the gas and beer lines with John Guest push-lock fittings might have been premature, with little space to play with in the kegerator ensuring the lines connect flush with the JG connectors is pretty tricky. In a cellar environment the fittings are generally fixed in place so movement is minimal and the risk of gas leak also low but we are where we are and I will make it work!

Brew day number 12 is this Sunday and I’m thinking of going full Sorachi Ace with the 80 shilling.. for science!

Made a Scotch broth inspired soup to go with the rye bread that Sakino is baking and a batch of chili non carne for nachos later.. will make guacamole and salsa once Islay is asleep.. first time cooking with chillies since Islay started eating the same food as us and am very excited about eating it! All #vegan of course.

Will post some photos later when the remainder of the dish is made and nachos constructed!

I’m not really enjoying this semester’s course so far, it was always going to be the least interesting of the brewing related courses, but the 3+ hour lectures and dearth of links to further reading are taking a toll.. Hopefully, it’ll improve in the coming weeks. Just a shame that the first assignment doesn’t interest me at all.. Low enthusiasm but will do what needs to be done!

Normal 80/- focussed service will return afterwards.

Hopefully nothing wil sabotage this brew!

It was very tasty! I love freekeh it turns out, have eaten bulgur wheat many times in then past and freekeh is very similar just a better texture.

One issue was the cooking time.. Converted the fahrenheit oven temperature to celcius and thought this must be too high.. But went with it.. After 30 minutes (15 early) I took the tray out and the sprouts were overcooked and had lost their bite.

Didn’t take pictures but Sakino wants me to make it again for lunch tomorrow so will try to remember to take a few snaps.

https://industryeats.com/brussels-sprouts-butternut-squash-mushroom-veggie-bowl-recipe/

He is suggesting that pasteurisation for small craft breweries is very much ‘a cherry on top’ and due to the volume of hops used and relative high ABV of craft beers, so long as hygiene practices are properly maintained then pasteurisation isn’t really required.

Pasteurisation tends to be restrictively expensive for small breweries and the technology tends to be power hungry so not great for a sustainability focussed brewery.

On the plus side, hopefully I’ll find out details about both of the mid-semester assignments today and make a start on researching them.

.. it’s drinkable, there are the sort of caramel notes you might expect but they are far too subtle.. might have been better with marris otter but there was none in stock at the brewstore..

..deciding whether or not to switch recipes before I place my order this evening for the first brew of 2021.

Happy Hogmanay until then.

I’m not great with too much heat either (like Japanese summers) which is less than ideal.

Give me a lukewarm, dreich, rainy, Autumnal day any day.. yes, I am Scottish and also yes, that does describe the vast majority of Scottish days!

When she woke up this morning, I gave her a big hug and told her how proud I was of her for being a brave girl as she recounted the story.

.. then spent 35 minutes trying to convince her to eat some breakfast to no avail!

Rollercoaster!

I wish I had known about Lothian Supply Co. before as it would have cost me £50 less for the initial purchase of the same gas bottle as compared to the brewstore in Edinburgh! The top up was only £5!

Once feeling has returned toy wrists, I’ll hook it up to my kegerator and hopefully, so long as I didn’t completely decompress the keg before noticing my lack of gas, I’ll be pouring a glass of delicious Imperial stout in a few hours time!

So, for anyone interested in how kōji is used in the production of saké, here is my poster on the topic .

It is somewhat wordy for a poster and not a gleaming example of topnotch graphical design, and I was marked down for this, but I like words.. so…

Special thanks go to my friend ‘on the inside’ and 後輩, Andrew Russell who works at Imada Shuzō saké brewery (今田酒造) in Akitsu (安芸津), Hiroshima and who owns the Origin Sake blog .

4 questions all relating to DNA, microbial genetics and manipulation or engineering of yeast cells.

I had hoped for a somewhat more practically relevant topic to sink my teeth into but we are where we are.. and for me it is the only topic in the course that I didn’t study at all.. ah well, so be it.

3 of the questions have a max. word count of 500 and are worth either 10% or 20% of the total mark and the other has a max. count of 1500 and is worth 50% of the mark. The whole assignment makes up 60% of the course total.

I’m still awaiting the result of my 2nd assignment which I’m hoping will be shared soon.. but regardless, IF I can catch up on lost sleep from the past week then I can nail this final assignment.

I’ll need to register for next semester’s course which will be related to filtration and packaging.. I think.

Context: (from assignment mark return announcement) “40% is the pass mark, >60% is good and >70% is excellent.”

I was worried as I’ve never written a science-y report (I got a B in higher physics in 1993 and didn’t study since..) but feeling much less apprehensive now.. though I’m not going to rest on my haunches, it’s going to take considerable effort to achieve anything close to this again.

I was planning to upload my assignments to my website (unless humiliating failures) for anyone interested in the topic so am glad the first one is presentable.

Session is a VERY secure and private end to ended encrypted messenger. Based on signal but without a reliance on ANY personal data, including telephone number. It also doesn’t collect any data!

Session is available for mobile or desktop and more information can be found on their site: https://getsession.org

I may be encouraging those that I convinced to join my xmpp server that this might be a better option..

I need to find time to write up a blog post on my last two brews as well, but not today.. just biding time until the working day finishes and I can pour myself a nicely chilled imperial stout! Tick tock..

Last week was a breakdown of the names and high level functional overview of the component parts of cells from different groups and whilst undoubtedly important, was incredibly difficult to read about whilst trying to maintain even a minimal level of consciousness.

On the flip side, learning about carbohydrates, saccharides, linked carbon chains and rings etc. is actually helping me wake up this morning..

I feel like I may be naturally aligning more to the biochemistry elements of the programme over the microbiology elements.. or at least these elements are making more sense at this early stage.

Delaying yeast dump 1 until tomorrow, then I’ll get the first glimpse of how it’s going.. fingers crossed that its 1.030 or lower (previous best at end of fermentation is 1.041 with this beer).

I made some adjustments to make some of the processes more efficient but unlike earlier attempts they were a direct result of previous lessons learned.

This brew was perhaps my last before the lessons of my brewing & distilling programme settle in so it was personally important for me to use my previous message experiences and adjust accordingly before the bedrock of understanding the scientific processes was formed.

My original gravity target was 1.083, according to my hydrometer I hit about 1.0823 and my refractometer 1.083.. the latter may require tuning.. but if you’ll permit a slightly emotion fed response ‘ya fuckin dancer’

The big test however is the final gravity, the target is 1.016 and my last 3 brews of this same beer haven’t breached 1.041.. so whilst I’m happy with today’s brew and I did my best to oxygenate the shit out of the wort.. I’ll not be satisfies unless the FG is lower than 1.020

I don’t know what these numbers mean either, other than a measure of sugar to water density.

Slowly approaching boil, about an hour ahead of my last brew.. and 3 ahead of the brew previous to that.

If all goes well then I’m hoping this will be the last brew where I use a grain kit and will move on to actual recipes and ordering specific grains, hops & yeast.

The only criteria I have to satisfy is to hit or be very close to my final gravity target.. if I can do that then the brew will have gone well. In order to achieve that I’ll be utilising some kitchen implements (sieve and whisk) to try and increase the oxygenation of the wort before pitching the yeast.

First brew with my wife assisting, should be fun.

Very anxious about this, aside from the huge uplift in covid cases here (which is very unsettling), she hasn’t been away from us before for so long and I’m not sure she’ll cope well as the realisation that we aren’t there settles in.

Also, handing a mini-vegan to non-vegans for any length of time is a concern because nutritional balance is super important.

She’ll probably have a blast and it’ll just be me wracked with worry.

I already know what my two assignments will be and am excited to get started.. tomorrow!

A little saddened to see facebook and google groups promoted (definitely won’t be joining those) but have had to hold my nose and request access to a couple of linkedin groups.. As a contractor I can’t really risk deleting that account unfortunately.

Productive day though and I did fit in a chapter of the audiobook for ‘Beer’ by Charles Bamforth so there was almost a study element in there too..

I’ve not studied science since higher Physics which was in 5th year of high school some 28 years ago.. and I’m playing a little bit loose with the definition of study here..

Challenging but fascinating times await!

Put the foot down before arrival that we would not be visiting the onsite restaurant and bar under any conditions.. otherwise been keeping to ourselves and I almost felt sort of relaxed a few times..

.. I’m to sleep in the awning.. with midges so I’m sure tomorrow won’t be unnecessarily awkward.

It was also the first time that I’ve struggled with the physical distancing restrictions.

As we heard stories of loss I really wanted to be able to hug my friends and also to be able to share a beer, that I made an am proud of with them but neither of these things were possible.

There were moments of awkward silence that wouldn’t have existed but for our disparate proximities.. and to top it all off, Islay got tired just before they left so my hope that our hugs could be transferred to them via her were not realised.

We’re doing the right thing but today was particularly difficult.

There is a surprising amount of depth to the game and a lot to learn.

I doubt that it’ll present a challenge to the best base-builder game of all time (Rimworld) but it is keeping me entertained for now.

Large coffee consumed, glass of water at hand and a full keg of delicious stout on tap waiting for me at the end. Let’s do this!

Not only is home-popped corn awesome, pretty healthy and a great vehicle for nutritious yeast, but Sakino isn’t a fan so it’s an activity for just the two of us.. even if Sakino did like popcorn, Islay wouldn’t let her near the bowl anyway.

Tasty, not too unhealthy snack with the added fun of trying to identify popcorn art!

On the other hand, trying to make it to the end of a movie with a 2 year old is still somewhat of a pipe dream!

It seems ages ago that I applied and excited to get started.

I need to make start on studying the suggested book (‘BREWING’ second edition - Lewis & Young) soon, hopefully once Sakino submits her dissertation in a few weeks I’ll be able to find some me time.

I finally found out how to deal with hyphens in frontmatter in hugo (the documentation of which is a lesson in frustration).. Now to see when I hit post if reverting my micropub endpoint hacks have broken anything..

I’m now using a webmentions hook to deliver interactions to the site.. though, I want to fiddle a bit with nginx to move some of the php files to a non-public directory..

I’ve given the html a semantic overhaul which will hopefully make it reasonably accessible though there will be more work to do there (particularly around captions and alt tags for images).

In this vein I also removed all floats (I think) and am using grid and flex for layout. Have dropped a bunch of excess html and css too..

Have hidden my switch to 日本語 button until such time as I actually have a reasonable amount of Japanese or bilingual content.

Still a work in progress but much further down the line than previously.