Weeknote 2020-30

My monitor went bang last week, so I’ve been working on my laptop screen propped up on a pile of books. Work arranged for me to have a new monitor which arrived on Tuesday. They sent me an upgrade - it’s a couple of inches bigger than my old screen and 4k rather than 2k. It’s absolutely lovely, probably partly due to how grateful my eyes are to not be peering over my desk at a laptop screen any more.

First world problems though. The bezel on modern monitors is so small there’s nowhere to put a webcam without obscuring some part of the screen! I know, cry me a river, right.

I bought a new pot for brewing beer in. After much hand wringing I finally settled on the cheap and cheerful route and ordered a 20L stainless steel stock pot from eBay. It cost all of £30 and is so thin that the base pops and bends when there’s a decent amount of liquid in it.

That being said it does do what I wanted it for and the handles are riveted on well which is important when you’re moving around large quantities of boiling sugar water.

I brewed my first batch in the new pot on Tuesday night and all went very well. I’m able to do full wort boils for the batch sizes I brew now and that makes the whole process much easier.

Now I have 7L of an American IPA in the fermenter, hopped to about 70 IBU’s with Chinook hops. Gravity was 1.061 so I’m hoping for an abv of about 6.4%.

I hit all my expected gravity numbers this time around, which isn’t that much of an acheivement considering it’s an extract brew, but it at least means I’m building an understanding of boil off rates on my system, so I’m pleased.

And I also set fire to a tea towel. Don’t ask.