I decided I'd try a faux lager for AG23, brewed with US-05 at 16 deg C. I had the perfect Saturday to brew it. SWMBO came down in the morning and asked if I minded if she and our 10 year old daughter went to stay overnight at her Sister's in North Wales... "I suppose so" I mumbled - whilst at the same time mentally checking off my stock of ingredients for the brew. 
Original Gravity (OG): 1.048 (°P): 11.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009 (°P): 2.3
Alcohol (ABV): 5.07 %
Colour (SRM): 2.9 (EBC): 5.7
Bitterness (IBU): 23.0 (Average)
78.31% Lager Malt
9.8% Vienna Malt
9.8% Wheat Malt
2.09% Cane Sugar (priming)
0.8 g/L Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (First Wort)
0.8 g/L Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.6 g/L Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.1% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil)
I was filling the HLT before the car had even left the road. I weighed the malt out with luggage scales and dug out the cooking scales for the hops, pressed the "on" button and... nothing, completely dead :cry: . No probs, I'd nip to Asda and buy some new batteries... except SWMBO had just driven off in the car. :evil:
Did anything use the same batteries? No. Did we have any spares? No we didn't. Damn it, foiled by technology. :cry:
Someone must have designed a means to weigh things, I reasoned, so I googled "home made scales" and found this site.
It looked simple and I was desperate. I remembered seeing a list of UK coin weights on Pete's beer calc. I found a decent looking coat hanger in a wardrobe and set to work as per the website. I came up with this:
It wasn't pretty, but it did the job. I removed the hanger hook , straightened it out, and concreted it with super-glue and bicarb - parallel to the central "plumb line" hanging from the pivot point on the hanger. I raided my daughters piggy bank for some 20p coins (which, according to Pete's beer calc, should weigh 5g each), and weighed out the hops - I attached a jiffy bag to each clothes peg:
It was obvious right from the start that this was a very sensitive balance, the deflection on the metal rod was considerable for each 20p coin addition. I was so intrigued that I decided to take the whole thing into work today and see how good it was (in my lunch hour of course) :whistle:
First, I weighed 5 of the coins I had used on an analytical balance:
They were minted in the 80s and early 90's and had lost very little weight in 20 or 30 years.
I used a set of reference weights (which was overkill really) to measure 20g of salt on the DIY scales, then checked the weight on a bench-top balance similar to the kitchen variety and it was pretty accurate:
Certainly good enough for weighing out hops. The deflection on the end of the pointer was about 5mm per gram.
I also checked the accuracy of our cheapo Argos kitchen scales ( batteries replaced ) with the 20p coins:
They were, reassuringly, spot on.
At the end of the day, cheap digital kitchen scales are a lot easier to use. With the DIY version, adding hops then a 20p, more hops then another 20p, was a bit of a fag - but it saved my brew-day - the "lager" is now in the garage, bubbling away merrily.
:
John
Original Gravity (OG): 1.048 (°P): 11.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009 (°P): 2.3
Alcohol (ABV): 5.07 %
Colour (SRM): 2.9 (EBC): 5.7
Bitterness (IBU): 23.0 (Average)
78.31% Lager Malt
9.8% Vienna Malt
9.8% Wheat Malt
2.09% Cane Sugar (priming)
0.8 g/L Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (First Wort)
0.8 g/L Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.6 g/L Hallertau Mittlefrueh (4.1% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil)
I was filling the HLT before the car had even left the road. I weighed the malt out with luggage scales and dug out the cooking scales for the hops, pressed the "on" button and... nothing, completely dead :cry: . No probs, I'd nip to Asda and buy some new batteries... except SWMBO had just driven off in the car. :evil:
Did anything use the same batteries? No. Did we have any spares? No we didn't. Damn it, foiled by technology. :cry:
Someone must have designed a means to weigh things, I reasoned, so I googled "home made scales" and found this site.
It looked simple and I was desperate. I remembered seeing a list of UK coin weights on Pete's beer calc. I found a decent looking coat hanger in a wardrobe and set to work as per the website. I came up with this:
It wasn't pretty, but it did the job. I removed the hanger hook , straightened it out, and concreted it with super-glue and bicarb - parallel to the central "plumb line" hanging from the pivot point on the hanger. I raided my daughters piggy bank for some 20p coins (which, according to Pete's beer calc, should weigh 5g each), and weighed out the hops - I attached a jiffy bag to each clothes peg:
It was obvious right from the start that this was a very sensitive balance, the deflection on the metal rod was considerable for each 20p coin addition. I was so intrigued that I decided to take the whole thing into work today and see how good it was (in my lunch hour of course) :whistle:
First, I weighed 5 of the coins I had used on an analytical balance:
They were minted in the 80s and early 90's and had lost very little weight in 20 or 30 years.
I used a set of reference weights (which was overkill really) to measure 20g of salt on the DIY scales, then checked the weight on a bench-top balance similar to the kitchen variety and it was pretty accurate:
Certainly good enough for weighing out hops. The deflection on the end of the pointer was about 5mm per gram.
I also checked the accuracy of our cheapo Argos kitchen scales ( batteries replaced
) with the 20p coins:
They were, reassuringly, spot on.
At the end of the day, cheap digital kitchen scales are a lot easier to use. With the DIY version, adding hops then a 20p, more hops then another 20p, was a bit of a fag - but it saved my brew-day - the "lager" is now in the garage, bubbling away merrily.
:
John
