Two things on my mind today when it comes to the second attempt at brewing. The first was to check how the yeast was doing. The first time I used one of these packs, I was really concerned that it didn't look the way I expected a yeast starter to look - there wasn't much going on on top of the thing at all, just the odd bubble. A quick trawl of the internet and I found the pictures at Jims Beer Kit and Beer Dude did look like what was in my bottle - and the 'yeast cake', the layer of creamy-white at the bottom, was the important thing to look out for. So after the starter had been going for 24 hours or so, I took a picture which shows everything appears ok. Thin foam on the top and a good layer of yeast on the bottom.I also did something that's probably really not a good idea, which is before I started on today's jobs, I took the foil lid off the jar and gave it a sniff to make sure there wasn't anything obviously wrong with it. It smelt very nice - no doubt I was running the risk of letting some nasty in, but I find it very difficult to trust everything's going ok...
Having done that, the main thing to do today was to spend an hour or so sterilising all the brewing equipment that I'm going to use tomorrow. That's my home-made mash tun / hopback (following the instructions in Wheeler and Protz's book) - basically one fermentation bin inside another. The outer bin has a tap at the bottom; the inner bin has no tap and has lots of 3mm holes drilled in its base. There are another two fermentation bins, one with a tap and one without. Then there's the boiler - a 27 litre Burco-type catering boiler. And the miscellaneous equipment - a paddle for stirring, the thermometer, hydrometer and trial jar, a big glass jug, the siphon tube (not used for a few days, but it's as well to clean it at the same time). I think that's everything! The lids were all sterilised too and then snapped onto the bins to keep it all safe and sound for tomorrow.
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