Half Sound

Tried to make beer.. had a meltdown instead.. 😑

I knew if everything wasn’t in order I would have trouble focusing. Brewing was the only thing I really wanted to do with my day, but evidently, I got a bit derailed. Never known it this bad.. Do I need help?

Started with the morning coffee. Release valve on the machine jammed stiff, so of course I dismantled the group head to diagnose & fix it.
Then realised I needed to breakdown & clean all the equipment, as I haven’t brewed at all in 2022.
That turned into cleaning the entire area as I saw how much dust I was disturbing.
Neither of those tasks were finished when I noticed the radiator behind the fermenter bench wasn’t straight, so took a look
behind it - was just hanging off the wall by a thread.
Took it off the wall & realised some a**hole had just screwed the brackets for a 25kg radiator straight into drywall with wood screws. No anchors or anything.
Started gathering the tools to refit it, resisting the urge to carry on cutting some boards for the loft I saw lying there waiting to be done, noticing instead how sunny it was outside.
🤔 Then started wondering how much solar I could generate by putting panels on the shed roofs, and wether it would be enough to power the bar/fridge.
Got a stepladder, measured up the roofs, bought a Victron 100v solar controller on Amazon, & spent the rest of the day lying on a hammock trying to figure out which panels and wire gauge to pair with it.

No beer was made.
Accepted defeat, and took this photo in B&W, cos that’s how grey I’m feeling. 😒

My day job; aka how I pay the bills while brewing and creating drains my wallet of every penny I put in there.

I work with hundreds of talented, creative and intelligent people, and it takes every single one of us put together to create award winning drama. It’s much bigger than just who you see on the screen, or walking up to that podium to collect the award. *Present All 23*

&tv

Finally finished setting up the brewery in our new home, just in time to make a nice backdrop for Christmas dinner 😃. No time for a Christmas brew this year, but I’m looking forward to firing up the brewery over the holidays to make a highly drinkable EPA, using the fresh U.K. grown hops harvested from our sailboat hop garden in Scotland.

I was a bit worried about the hops this year, as the mast they were climbing up got blown over in one of the mad storms, and they had to be harvested/dried in a rush, only to sit there in a bin bag for a month while there was so much to do here. But as I was pulling the hop cones off the bines yesterday, in no time at all I noticed my hands covered with the pungent aroma of sticky fresh lupulin powder.

Half the bag has gone to my partner-in-cicerone , so we can make the same holiday beer together, (albeit socially distanced) in expectation of being able to drink the final produce together properly next year, and compare results.