So it's been quite a while since I have been able to devote any time or energy into my brewing endeavours. Life has had other ideas for my time, throwing Jenny and I the curve ball of international immigration. Although because Jenny and I have been separated for the past 4 months, when I am not working on immigration paperwork (or busy phoning the National Visa Centre) I have had a little bit of time to rekindle my brewing hobby and dream up ways of turning it into more than just a hobby.
During my time at University and my subsequent first years of brewing I was operating on a fairly slapdash system. I spent some time working at local and national breweries in Scotland producing beers on proper systems and for mass market consumption. But my own kit left a lot to be desired. I started brewing from kits in much the same way many home-brewers do, making beer that was hardly worthy of that distinction. As time passed and I became more familiar with the brewing process I moved on to doing all-grain brews. But this is where things got difficult.
Since I was a university student living on a small budget in a small flat I didn't really have the means to set up a proper all-grain system. I had only one vessel, a borrowed 13 litre stock pot that remained permanently perched on my electric hob. I had no mash tun, sterilisation was always a problem, volume was always an issue, and getting my hob to put forth enough energy to boil 13 litres was damn near impossible. So this is how things continued for 2 years. I dreamt of being able to run a 3-vessel system like the one I was apprenticing on at The St. Andrews Brewing Company but my space and budget did not allow for it. When I arrived back in the U.S. in February of 2013 I found myself with lots of time and very little to do with it. I had plenty of work to do for Jenny's visa application but this work involved a lot of waiting (weeks of it actually) so I quickly hatched a plan to get back into brewing. I had plenty of experience on proper systems and was tired of doing things half-ass in a kitchen. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
My goal was to build a personal set-up that was not so much 'home brewing' as it was commercial brewing on a very small scale. I spent the first few weeks planning my design and making lists of the materials I was going to need. Luckily there is a very helpful home brew supply store in my area that was able order much of the necessary supplies for me. To help with the financial part of the set-up I visited an auction in the city and bought a very large (20 gallon) stock pot to use as a hot liquor tank and a small wine fridge to store my hops and yeast. The process was long and labour intensive but during the early days of May 2013 all of the kit started to arrive and I was able to start constructing the brewery I had been dreaming of.
Once all the kit arrived I was eager to brew my first batch on my new system, but I didn't know what to brew. Eventually it dawned on me to contact the owner of the St. Andrews Brewing Company and request some of the recipes that I had brewed on his system. I figured I had already brewed these exact beers and knew what they should taste like. It would be a good test of my equipment. I decided to try the IPA recipe first and set my first brew date for May 19th.
During my time at University and my subsequent first years of brewing I was operating on a fairly slapdash system. I spent some time working at local and national breweries in Scotland producing beers on proper systems and for mass market consumption. But my own kit left a lot to be desired. I started brewing from kits in much the same way many home-brewers do, making beer that was hardly worthy of that distinction. As time passed and I became more familiar with the brewing process I moved on to doing all-grain brews. But this is where things got difficult.Since I was a university student living on a small budget in a small flat I didn't really have the means to set up a proper all-grain system. I had only one vessel, a borrowed 13 litre stock pot that remained permanently perched on my electric hob. I had no mash tun, sterilisation was always a problem, volume was always an issue, and getting my hob to put forth enough energy to boil 13 litres was damn near impossible. So this is how things continued for 2 years. I dreamt of being able to run a 3-vessel system like the one I was apprenticing on at The St. Andrews Brewing Company but my space and budget did not allow for it. When I arrived back in the U.S. in February of 2013 I found myself with lots of time and very little to do with it. I had plenty of work to do for Jenny's visa application but this work involved a lot of waiting (weeks of it actually) so I quickly hatched a plan to get back into brewing. I had plenty of experience on proper systems and was tired of doing things half-ass in a kitchen. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
Once all the kit arrived I was eager to brew my first batch on my new system, but I didn't know what to brew. Eventually it dawned on me to contact the owner of the St. Andrews Brewing Company and request some of the recipes that I had brewed on his system. I figured I had already brewed these exact beers and knew what they should taste like. It would be a good test of my equipment. I decided to try the IPA recipe first and set my first brew date for May 19th.
No comments:
Post a Comment