Rahlon

Two Kits On The Go, OH YEAH!

May 032012

So today I’ve started two kit brews going. The first one is a Muntons Imperial Stout which I’ve had my eyes on for a few months but only now just got around to getting, but what is an Imperial Stout? Well to answer that I’ll first delve into the history of stouts and what they are.

Stouts originate from the “Porter” beer style. Porter is a dark beer which owes its lineage to brown beer. Originating from 18^th century London the drink was popular with river and street porters this is where the drink gained its name. Stout used to be known as Stout Porter which was a variant of Porter which made use of roasted malts. Over time the “Porter” part of the name was dropped and stouts flourished into distinctively different style of beer. (More info: http://beeradvocate.com/articles/305)

Imperial Stouts (also known as Russian Imperial Stout) are another step in the evolution. Strong in ABV and malt character, they were developed by Thrale’s brewery in London specifically for exporting to Russia to the court of Catherine II. Imperial stouts have had a major revival lately, with many craft breweries experimenting with them. (http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/84)

The second one is a strawberry wine, from Youngs and will my first wine homebrew. Thankfully I already have a demijohn from Ginger Beer Exploits… The method is pretty straight forward though it looks a little more involved than beer with my having to add extra stuff at different stages, but still simple enough.

So for my next post I’ll probably be talking Ginger Beer again, this might not be for some time though since my demijohn is now occupied. I may acquire another since they’re fairly cheap.

Ginger Beer

Homebrew No Responses »

Apr 102012

Batch 2 of my ginger beer is almost done so I thought I’d do a bit of a write up on the recipe. Ginger beer is very cheap to make and requires very little equipment, at its cheapest you can brew it in bottles (With a bit of care taken to avoid an explosion) using bread yeast. I’v been brewing my ginger beer in a demijohn with an air lock, this gets rid of the possibility of an explosion due to pressure build up, it also allows me to lower the risk of bacteria and oxidation destroying the drink as well.

You may be wondering how can brewing ginger beer lead to an explosion? When brewing, yeast is used to convert Sugar to CO2 (Carbon-dioxide) and Alcohol, if you brew in sealed environment like a bottle, the CO2 cannot escape this leads to a pressure build up and eventually explosion, if you’re using glass this can be very dangerous.

I looked at several recipes when designing my first batch, most of them are designed for people with no brewing equipment:

The recipe I eventually set on was one I found on a forum:

Ingredients
Two lemons
450gms sugar
8 pints (4.4litres) of water (enough to fill a demi-john)
Flat teaspoonful of Dried Yeast
100gm Fresh root ginger
Two heaped tea spoons of tartaric acid (Cream of Tartar)

Equipment
A large pan that can boil four and a half litres of water
A jug
A glass
A coarse cheese grater
A wooden spoon
A 1 gallon demijohn
A bubble seal for the demijohn
A lemon juicer
A lemon zester
A fine sieve
9 glass or plastic bottles of 500ml volume with screw caps (eg plastic coke bottles)

Method
1. Put 8 pints of water in the large pan and bring it to the boil
2. While the water is coming to the boil…
scrape the zest from one of the lemons
grate the ginger on the coarse cheese grater
add the sugar to the ginger and lemon zest in a bowl
cut the lemons in half and squeeze the juice into the jug
add the tartaric acid to the lemon juice
put the yeast into some warm water with a little sugar in a glass
3. When the water has boiled ….
add the sugar, ginger and lemon zest to the water, turn off the heat and stir
allow the water to cool to roughly blood heat, stirring occasionally
add the lemon juice and tartaric acid to the water
add the yeast mixture
4. Use the jug to pour the mixture into the demi-john
5. Seal the demijohn with the bubble seal
6. Stand the demijohn in a warm place for 48 hrs at a bubble rate of 40/minute
7. After 48 hrs pour the mixture through the sieve into the jug and fill the bottles leaving an air gap for the pressure to build up in. Screw the caps tightly onto the bottles (8 pints (4.5l) should fill 9 bottles)
8. Leave the bottles at room temperature for 24 hrs
9. Put the bottles in the fridge for 2-3 days to allow the yeast to settle (failure to do this may result in an explosion!)

1. Open the bottles slowly to release the gas
2. Pour the whole of a bottle into glasses, as any gingerbeer remaining in the bottle will contain quite a lot of yeast.
3. Drink
The ginger beer made this way should be fizzy and fairly sweet.
If you ferment the mixture in the demijohn for longer than 48 hrs then the alcohol content will increase at the expense of the sweetness – try different times to suit your taste.

I slightly deviated from the method after bottling by only leaving it 12hrs at room temp to make sure I was safe using glass.

For my second batch I decided to go a bit crazy and use a lot of ginger as I felt the last one was quiet weak:

For 1 Imperial Gallon (8 pints):
200g Dextrose (brewing sugar)
500g Lactose (milk sugar)
225g Ginger
1 lemon zest
Juice of 2 lemons
1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
1/4 tsp creme of tarter
wine yeast (Had no ale yeast in)
OG 1.060sg

I’m also allowing it to ferment for much longer (about a week) because of this I’ve used a lot more suger, I’ve also included lactose (a form of sugar found in milk) which does not ferment so it sweetens the drink unlike the dextrose which is eaten by the yeast; I used 500g as I was unsure how much I would need, it didn’t taste very sweet so I opted to use a lot and see how it turns out.

My recipe is obviously a work in progress; I’m going to alter it slowly after every batch and work towards a recipe that suits me. I’ll post an update once it’s ready to drink with my thoughts on it’s taste and what adjustments I think will be needed for batch 3.

Home Brew Beer

Homebrew No Responses »

Apr 042012

Well well well, looks like yet another one of my blogs fell by the way side, left without content for a year. Since my last blog post I’ve become quiet interested in brewing beer so I plan to post my brewing logs here so that I may track what I’ve made.

So where did it all start? I’ve always been interested in trying it out some day, but it was one of those things that I had no way into and I have far too many hobbies to begin with! A friend of a friend does a lot of brewing at home and it was after discussions with him I decided to take it up; he helped me out by pointing out what would need and preparing my first batch. I started with a start up kit from Young’s, the kit had most of what I needed and was very cheap at £26. (Wilko’s have them). Four weeks latter, I had some really nice beer in a cask which I bought for £24.

Beer School from BrewDog.

The ways that home brewers make beer can be rougthly split into three categories:

All Grain – Starting with the raw malted barley, sugar is extracted from the grain in to water with a process called mashing. After mashing the water (now known as wort ) is boiled for over 1-2 hours, during this hops are added to bitter and flavour the beer. Following this the beer is cooled and yeast is added, the wort then sits in a vat for 14 days where the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Lastly the beer is bottled or barrelled then left to mature or/and drank.

Extract Brewing – This is the same as the above except that mashing has been done for you. The wort comes in can which you mix with water and continue with boiling as above.

Beer Kits – This is the easiest way to brew beer but lacks flexibility the taste is pretty much set. Like Extract brewing the mash has been done for you, but additionally the hops have also been done, this limits how much the beer can be changed.

I’ve mostly stuck to beer kits at the moment, although I’m going to move on to all grain latter this year, now that I have my foot in the door. Apart form the initial kit that came with my equipment I’ve brewed St. Peters Ruby Red Ale, and BrewFerm’s Triple. I’ve also bought a glass demijohn and brewed a ginger beer (more on this next post).

Brewing has been a really good source of fun and interest for me, I’ve really enjoyed researching the science behind the brew. I’ve still got a lot to learn but I’ve had good results so far. Latter this year I plan to build a Mash tun which will allow me to go to all grain, in my next post I’ll be talking about Ginger Beer, and share the recipe I’m working with and adjusting.

Nixie Tube Clock Project

Electronics No Responses »

Jul 122011

A couple of months ago I got my hands on some Nixie Valves/Tubes, I’ve now finally got around to doing something with them. The plan is to reinvent the wheel an make a clock with them, but in the long run I want to put an LCD screen bellow the nixies that shows tweets from the people I follow on Twitter, as well as maybe some other info such as the weather.

To do this I’m using an Arduino variant made by the London Hackerspace called Nanode, this is very similar to the standard Arduino except that it includes an Ethernet port for network communication. Having this Ethernet port will allow me to not only pull tweets from Twitter, but also sync the time so that the clock will always be correct!

So what have I made so far? I’ve put on a breadboard the basic setup for the clock part. The plan is to have 4 nixies multiplexed with a single Chip using Optical Isolators. The chip I am using is an old Russian km115, This allows me to cycles through the different cathodes on the nixies by only using 4 pins on the Nanode, Think BCD.

I currently have the the chip placed in the breadboard with a single nixie connected. Four LEDs are in place which will be replaced by the optical isolators for the Multiplex. For now I’m just having the Nanode cycle through the different digits with a small delay. The nanode is going to handle all the work in terms of deciding which nixie should show what number, keeping the time, the twitter connection, etc.. To power the nixies I’m using a 9v battery connected to a power module made by Kosbo. This power module outputs about 189 Volts, I’ve also got a 5k6 resistor in series with the the nixie to limit the current being pulled (The nixie’s limit is < 3.5 mA.) obviously with such a voltage I need to be a bit careful to make sure it doesn’t get anywhere near the nanode, hence why I’m going to use optical-isolators. Though let’s just say with 180ish volts I have had some shocking good fun with this module. I think I’ve managed to shock myself about 3 or 4 times now!

I’ve started work on the code for the nanode, at the moment it just cycles through the numbers 0 to 9, and through the different LEDs (defined as opto in the code). I’ve posted the code in pastebin, viewable here .

Obviously not very much to it yet I have a long way to go. The next step is for me to work out how to use the Nanode’s Ethernet port as well as decide how the clock is going to look. I do have a piece of clear plastic which I’m thinking of embedding the nixies into, but I’m still working out the specifics.

Thanks goes to Matt Lloyd from Nottinghack who’s helped me out a great deal with this.

Simple LED Project

Electronics No Responses »

Apr 122011

For a bit a fun I decided to calve out the back of a stress ball shaped like Linux’s Tux logo. I then inserted two LEDs and wired them to a Resistor and a 9V battery.

If your wondering why there is a second resistor that’s for when I plug it into my Arduino, I’ve got a few project ideas revolving around this one.

Arduino, Resistors and LEDs, oh my!

Electronics No Responses »

Jan 282011

I’ve finally got around to grabbing myself some electrical components and a microcontroller. I’ve been wanting to learn to how to work with this stuff for a long time; I’ve always regretted not choosing systems and control as my GCSE DT subject. So I’m starting small and grabbed a book to work with, as mentioned I’ve bought a microcontroller, specifically an arduino uno, so far seams really easy to work with and a great deal of fun. You can program the Arduino unit in C using a provided compiler. What’s really great though is that there are tons and tons of free tutorials and schematics to get you started, not to mention the amount kits you can buy that come with everything you need. ( See http://arduino.cc for more info)

I have built up a 3x3x3 LED matrix using the Arduino. I used 3 100Ω resistors on the ground lines, admittedly I’m not overly sure if that’s right, though through trial an error it seamed to give me the best result. I should really throw in some Transistors, but I’m not too sure how to work with them yet, not to mention I have none in stock. So far I’ve programmed a few basic animations working on some more, I’ll post a video once I have some to show.

The basic way set up of a 3x3x3 LED matrix is to do each layer seperately, solder all the cathodes of the LEDs together to form a grid, leave the anodes pointing downwords, then make the next layer the same way and solder the anodes from the above layer to the lower ones, do this again for the third layer. You can then light indervidual LEds by grounding the cathodes the LED is connected to, and giving power to the anodes the LED is connected to.

A much better tutorial on how to make it can be found here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/3x3x3-LED-Cube/

I’ve just ordered a big batch of components so with any luck I’ll become competent enough to give some real tutorials on electronics, but for now my forte is programming.

Welcome to the New Blog

Uncategorized No Responses »

Jan 222011

Time for me to attempt a new blog. Completely new format this time, for those that read my previous blog. This blog is focused on technology, be it programming, electronics or devices. I hope to to write about my projects and post code snippets and tutorials.

That’s it for this post, hopefully many more to come, with more bulky-content.

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Rahlon

Two Kits On The Go, OH YEAH!

Ginger Beer

Home Brew Beer

Nixie Tube Clock Project

Simple LED Project

Arduino, Resistors and LEDs, oh my!

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