Hello from Aberdeen, Scotland

[PolyVinalDistillate]

Hello all. New brewer here still working from kits, but building up to the real thing!

 

[razz]

Welcome PVD. Ask questions, make beer and have fun!

 

[PolyVinalDistillate]

Thanks for the welcome : D

 

[Maves]

PVD? I reckon you're a chemeng from O&G background. You'll get some great beers from good kits, e.g. a Coopers can plus some steeped grain (carapils maybe) with added hops to your taste. Mashing can come later when you have multiple wins and have the basics down pat. The Coopers website has many recipes. Try an ale then a lager. Lagers would be good for Aberdeen; just ferment outside as long as its above 11C.
Speaking of distillate, have you ever tried distilling a wee heavy at 8.5% ABV? The malt & hop flavour is sublime.

 

[PolyVinalDistillate]

PVD? I reckon you're a chemeng from O&G background. You'll get some great beers from good kits, e.g. a Coopers can plus some steeped grain (carapils maybe) with added hops to your taste. Mashing can come later when you have multiple wins and have the basics down pat. The Coopers website has many recipes. Try an ale then a lager. Lagers would be good for Aberdeen; just ferment outside as long as its above 11C.
Speaking of distillate, have you ever tried distilling a wee heavy at 8.5% ABV? The malt & hop flavour is sublime.

Good guess - but nope - I just have a misleading nick! : D Electronic/software engineer historically working mainly in underwater digital holography. Though lately I've been moving into sensor and power supply development.

The only kits I've made so far are Festival German Weiss, 3rd batch in the process of being drunk. I have intended to get started on homebrew for some years now, but rising costs of buying commercial and a tight year for my business is what finally pushed me to get set up.

Temperature has been a minor issue, but I've milled a blank circuit board into a giant flat resistor and use that as a variable power (peak 50 W) hotplate under the FV to maintain ~22 °C. As for bottle conditioning, I place all the bottles in a Really Useful Box on a gantry (giant storage shelf) near the ceiling of the living room, which keeps them above 19 °C at least. A bit paranoid that one's going to explode and set off the others at some point and that my box won't be enough to contain the mess...!

Distillation is of course illegal here in the UK without a license I believe... Or perhaps it's now just that you have to declare any distilled quantities and their strength, then pay tax on it... I'm a bit fuzzy on that, though I did look into it at one point.

When I was wee, a - shall we say associate - did quite a lot of distillation of an orange/sultana mixture that was brewed in a 25 gallon bin, double-distilled using a hot-water copper tank and Liebig condenser constructed from copper pipe and scaffolding pole, then cut down to 50% with spring water and some glycerin, obtaining about 5 gallon batches. First distillate came over at around 30% and still had all the nasties. Second distillation was carefully brought up to temperature to fraction off the methanol (which went in a bottle for treating foot-fungus) before the ethanol came over at about 80%. All that stopped a long time ago though - at the time "terrible piles" was cited as the reason (though the real reason was of course over-imbibing - piles was the symptom!).

 

[Maves]

You do things in a big way. My "still" was a lab flak and tube into a beaker to get about 20 - 30ml after heads and tails.
I like your flatbed resistor. What's the voltage and how do you regulate the current? Temperature or power setpoint control? Quite inventive to mill your own but they are so cheap now I don't think I would bother.

 

[PolyVinalDistillate]

Alas, I've no space to do things in a big way - I'm in a pokey wee flat with my wife and 2 YO! But 30-odd years back I lived in the Cairngorms and got to witness the full process by someone who did do things big in a decent outhouse : )

Work-wise, I mainly do electronics design and have some bits of kit to aid in prototyping things before sending off stuff for manufacture - an A4 milling machine being one such item. So when I had to open all the windows in my "workshop" room for better ventilation following a solder-pot incident, I had the means to quickly throw together a hotbed to keep the beer warm!

Nothing fancy to control for now - just a 36 V adjustable benchtop power supply, making it effectively a power setpoint. My milled resistor wasn't carefully designed either, just happened to be about 25 ohms so I get 1 A at 25 V. I was particularly strapped for cash at the time as we had just paid for the wedding after a slow couple of years for the business, so made sense to use what I had lying about : )

 

[Maves]

As my Scottish Grandmother always said "Must do is a good master".
I'm E&I and process control is my aim. I have experienced advanced control techniques in many industries but I love to apply gut feeling to brewing.

 

[PolyVinalDistillate]

At some point, I'll probably hook up a very, very basic control system - just based on a thermistor and a comparator with hysteresis. None of that PID nonsense - I can live with +/- 1 degree! Just haven't had time to do it yet. I'll maintain the whole gut feeling aspect by not actually doing any maths when I do finally design it though! : D