Adventures In Brewing

well, goddamn me, where has the time gone? i think facebook is sucking the life out of me. Plus i am being busy with my now 3 weekly jaunts to the gym and some general lazing about to be fitted in. still, i am working on the backlog of exciting mundanity in the bustle of ilarwill and maclean

so here we are over a month ago now, james has a new toy for father's day. i bought him a brew kit to satify his yen for flat warm english beer (let's see how that pans out when the temperatures ramp up to 40, hitting 35 regularly at mo). He got going on it eventually, with over-enthusiastic help from our daughter. i was able to source a kit for english beer and the pack contained also recipes for brands of beer.
however, james reckoned that with the first brew, prudence was the safer course and just went with the generic english bitter.

Caitlin took over really early on and has since been enquiring when her beer will be ready....










the whole process was relatively straightforward, especially if you are only taking photos of the moment. the majority of the mixing up took place in the bathroom, leaving a lingering odour of hops with some brief forays in to the kitchen for reasons i forget now. then the cask was put into the shed to work its magic....

unfortunately, just after this, we endured a surprise cold snap so after a few days of scratchy head, beard tugging, we (ok, james) lugged the cask back inside where it made a fetching addition to the living room, right next to the wood stove. gave the farmhouse that extra touch of class we both felt.

Zara has recently built a big deck out back so obviously we had to christen it...her dad, Dale, showed up with some fresh prawns so Z and I sat outside with pink champagne. On Dale's advice, James trotted home and collected a beer to sample (this being about a week or so after it was bottled from the cask) and we all had a try. the opinion was 'green, but good' so James is looking further ahead and is now preparing himself to have a go at some more complicated recipes....