11 October 2021

Saturday involved an exercise in futility. I spent the day with a 
friend brewing beer. It was my first time but he has several kegs on 
rotation so brews a fair bit. It was a sabro based affair which 
involved 16kg of grain for a 29 litre batch. That really became like 
porridge. It took a lot of stirring to ensure no dough balls were 
left. The bittering hops stank. Really stank. I ended up with some on 
my hand and it was all I could smell for hours. We reached the cool 
down stage after some 6 hours of boiling and so on. To cool it down, 
my friend has a coil which he attaches hoses to. This enables the 
water used for cooling to be used to clean bits of kit off and so on. 
Well unfortunately his wife went watering plants. She tugged on the 
hose as habit tells you to do with hoses on reels. Unfortunately there 
was no more slack and down went the brewing vessel. The garage was 
flooded with almost beer and the brewing vessel suffered an injury. It 
landed on the bottom tap and that left a large dent. Sad times. We 
were 5 minutes from adding the yeast and setting it all off to 
ferment. Alas it was not meant to be. It was a fun day and I learnt 
plenty. It would be tempting but I lack the space to start. Kegs seem 
a good option but actually just involve faffing with CO2. Bottles are 
lots of hard work to set up. I don't know. It would be fun and 
interesting but... space, smells and storage stop me. 

This week involves heading to my parents in Plymouth. It will be a 
nice change and involves not working. That is also good as work as 
become stressful. Too many things going on with too little time and 
trying to do 2 lead roles at the same time. There are some 
opportunities to reduce the work load coming up. Just got to try and 
not overload those people either. Time to pack and get the car sorted!