With the chances of temperatures rising above the early 20s now looking minimal, I decided this morning that it is time to get another homebrew underway. I can use my brew belt to boost the temperature of the fermenting wort but don’t have a fridge to lower it.

I’ve decided to try a 1kg version of Graham Wheeler’s clone of the wonder Timothy Taylor Landlord beer, which I have christened Tiny Tim. I’ve enjoyed a few bottles of Landlord in recent months so it will be interesting to see how the recipe comes out. I mashed 1kg of pale malt along with 53g of crystal malt in 8.8l of water, holding it at about 66°C for 90 minutes. At the moment I am nearing the end of the 90 minute boil that follows. Once I got the wort to boiling point, I added 12g of Styrian Golding hop pellets and another 4g and a generous pinch of Irish moss will go in ten minutes before the end. I’ll then transfer it to a heavy duty plastic jerry can and leave to cool overnight before setting the fermentation phase going tomorrow.

I’ve been using my Raspberry Pi and temperature monitor circuit to keep an eye on progress. This hasn’t been entirely trouble free as I discovered that it wasn’t fixed in its housing firmly enough to plug the two leads back in but, opening the box with a screwdriver, I was able to get that sorted. It has been easier to just watch the numbers scrolling by on my laptop (tail -f on the file that logs temperature data) than to keep going over and taking readings every 15 minutes.

I will report further on Tiny Tim as I make further progress. It does seem to have taken a long time to do the brewing but hopefully I will get another brew on before the cobwebs reappear and make better time.