blogamist - Beer Blog

Ways To Brew - Part One - Starter Kits

2011-11-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

There are three ways to brew beer at home using either Kits, Extract or All-Grain. Then there are a couple in between, Extract with steeping grains and Partial Mash....so actually make that five !
Time wise you need to set aside about 30 minutes to make a Kit, Extract about 2hrs and All-Grain about 5 hours.( Includes cleaning equipment, cooling wort etc)
Its not a bad idea if your new to brewing to begin with the basic starter kits. It provides you with some of the essential equipment at a lower initial outlay & helps you learn some of the techniques you will need to perfect your brews.
I'm going to write about each method, starting with kits.

Starter Kits

Starter Microbrewery Kits come in a few different formats, ranging in price from £25 to £65 depending on what options you choose. There is also a product called BruBox, which I haven't used, in which you ferment and serve from a polythene cube in a cardboard box.
A good value starter kit with barrel, I would suggest this one St Peters Starter Kit ( click to open in new window )
Or with bottles Custom Starter Kit ( see section on bottling before you decide )

The basic minimum you will need is as follows:

25 Litre fermenting bin + lid
Testing Jar & Hydrometer ( Although you could get away without this but is a good idea, if you want to take it seriously)
Paddle or long handled spoon
Syphon - I would recommend an auto-syphon
Steriliser - I just use Milton Sterilising tablets which are easy to use and cheap.
A 5 gallon barrel or plastic PET bottles

What I personally would recommend if you can afford it and intend to move up to extract or full grain.

25 Litre fermenting bin + lid with hole for airlock
Rubber Grommet + Airlock
Trail Jar and Hydrometer
Liquid Crystal Thermometer to affix onto ferment bin
Plastic Paddle
Auto-Syphon
Steriliser

In addition for bottling...

A 2nd 25 Litre fermenting bin with hole drilled for tap ( Bottling Bucket - also handy for sterilising stuff in)
Little Bottler Complete (comes with correct tap for above bin)
Bottle Capper + crown caps
500ml Glass bottles - Wilcos is cheap + collect all those old bottles

I have A LOT of bottles

You can buy 500ml PET bottles from Coopers as well.
I do use these to supplement my glass bottles.

Barrels ( plastic kegs) are easy to fill and you then don't need the bottling bucket & bottling equipment. I have three kegs but prefer bottles. Avoid the top tap barrels they will make you angry !

If you decide to go with bottles, a couple things are worth thinking about.
Firstly, bottling 40 pints can be an effort if you don't have the extra bottling bucket and 'Little Bottler' attachment. With the extra bottling bucket you can rack (siphon) your fermented beer off the trub at the bottom of the primary fermenter and mix in your priming sugar in there as well. Adding the priming sugar to the bottling bucket means you will get an equal carbonation in your bottles. Also if your using 500ml bottles; without the bucket you will need to prime a lot of bottles.
You can buy carbonation tablets which make it easier, I've never used them so can't comment if they are any good, but have read some negative things about them.
Secondly, you will need to clean and sterilise all those bottles....fine if you have the setup and patience like I do.

I've recently started using Huber mini-kegs & then bottling the remainder.
These carry 5 litres and the integrated tap serves a great head. Even better it costs £4.92 and is re-usable. I'm definitely buying more of these they are awesome !

Beer Kits

Ok so you have your micro-brewery equipment, now make some beer. There are now hundreds of kits to choose from and generally come in two formats.

1. Single 1.7kg Can of liquid extract. These require in addition either 1kg of brewing sugar, 1kg Brew Enhancer or 1kg DME e.g Coopers, Youngs & Geordie kits

2. 'All Malt' Kit - containing two tins of 1.7kg liquid extract. e.g Muntons Gold , Woodfordes & St. Peters kits

For both you still need sugar, brew enhancer or DME for bottling

Some home brew shops sell their own kits, but these are dry 'extract kits' (DME) and you will need to boil the hops. Check with the shop before buying. Also, there are some 'no boil' extract kits out there, you just steep the hops like a tea bag and make like a normal kit. Just be aware there are some differences in some of these kits.

So for the normal kits the prep time is about 30 minutes, sterilise all equipment that comes into contact with the wort. The basic steps are as follows

1. Place the can(s) of extract in warm water for 5-10 mins to soften the malt extract and make it easier to pour out.

2. Sterilise the fermenter and empty the can(s) into the fermenter, then add a little boiling water to the cans and wash out into the fermenting bin to get as much malt extract out as possible.

3. Add additional sugar or spraymalt (DME) (if required in instructions, single can kits only)

4. Add 3 litres of boiling water and stir until all the ingredients are dissolved. ( Sterilise the spoon first )

5. Top up to 23 Litres with cold water. Ensure wort is below 30 Deg before pitching yeast.

6. Sprinkle yeast on top and stir.

7. Place the lid back. If using an airlock ensure it is half filled with sterilising solution or cooled boiled water. Place somewhere warm and away from direct sunlight for approx 4-6 days.

8. Ferment until bubbles have ceased (if using a hydrometer when gravity remains constant).

9. Transfer to Bottle or Barrel ( prime with sugar as instructed )

10. Keep somewhere warm (room temperature) for two days then store somewhere cool for 2-3 weeks until beer has cleared.

The above is taken from a kit instruction book. I would mention a couple of tips...

Temperature is important. Temp of wort should be between 18-22 Deg for ale, 9-15 Deg for Lager. Don't forget the wort could be as much as +5 degrees higher than the room temp.Use a stick on thermometer. Keep it constant as well.
Sterilise everything, spoons , lid, work surfaces , hands ...everything OK
Don't keep opening the lid and having a peak..leave it alone
If you get yeast ( Krausen ) coming out of the airlock, don't panic. Either fit a blow-off tube or occasionally remove the airlock and clean with sterilising solution. Check the wort temp is not too high.
If nothing has happened after 72hrs ( i.e no airlock activity or signs of Krausen ) check the temp is in the correct range, it might be too cold. Move to a warmer place for 24hrs. Check the lid is on tight. Try rousing the yeast by gently swirling the fermenting bucket, making sure you don't suck the liquid into the wort from the airlock. Or open the lid and stir with a sterilised spoon as a last resort.
If in any doubt leave it for 10 days in the fermentor. If anything it will improve the beer. I routinely leave mine for 14 days. ( see Conditioning Phase )
There are many options from priming your bottles / barrel for carbonation. I would use either Dextrose(Glucose), beer enhancer or spraymalt(DME). Beer enhancer is a mix of Glucose & DME. DME is about 80% fermentable so will give more body to the final beer. Different style beers benefit from different priming sugars but I use Glucose the most. You can use granulated sugar if you wish, I was put off using it from reports it added a 'cidery' taste to the beer, but reading up recently I think thats a complaint for the early days of brewing when kits weren't as good. This article by John Palmer is worth a read 'Priming and Bottling'
Don't suck on the syphon when racking your beer. Get an auto-syphon or learn the proper way to do it ...see this vid "Racking Your Beer - Brew Your Own Magazine"

Conclusion

I must admit I didn't find many of the kits I made taste that great. The Muntons Gold range seemed ok but compared to my brews since moving to all grain, they simply aren't the same as using fresh ingredients.
I would recommend doing a few kits to hone your sterilising, syphoning and bottling skills. It also helps to understand your fermentation temps and times.

Move to extract brewing as soon as possible if you have the time, its definitely worth it. Being able to create your own recipes or clones of your favourite beers, and the smell of fresh hops is second to none !

Bumper Hop Harvest 2011 E.K.G

2011-09-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

So back in April 2011 I decided to have a go at growing my own hops. I opted for East Kent Goldings (Redsells Eastwell), can't quite remember why exactly as there were about ten to choose from. I was tempted to try growing Cascades but given I live not far from Kent, why not grow something that's proven in my local climate and its a pretty versatile hop for the kettle as well.

I ordered the Rhyzome from Essentially Hops, and planted in a large plastic tub. I initially arranged three bamboo canes in a teepee style setup. According to the instructions once the plant had started to grow, I was to select three vines and train them around the three canes I had erected. So I duly ignored that and let five grow.

Once they started to grow they shot up pretty quickly, so I extended the bamboo cane across the shed and over the top to the fence. As it grew I split the five shoots accordingly.

I watered everyday, and fed with tomato feed every fortnight. I'd read in many articles that you are unlikely to get any flowering in the first year....bullcrap in my case, the thing went mental. Perhaps the weather this year helped, but it was soon flowering little white buds.

Then as you can see below some pretty big cones

So I've just tonight harvested the crop, probably a week too late as its now constantly raining. I used about 180 grams of it a week ago to make a new 'Best Bitter'. As this was 'Wet Hopped' I multiplied the required hops by five, to take into account the water content.

I've dried the remainder off in the oven and laid out on a sheet with a heater and a fan. And will put in the freezer once dried out. At the moment the house smells amazing !

Amarillo A.P.A

2011-08-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

This is an American Pale Ale recipe with Amarillo hops. Also try this with Cascade hops or a mix. I like to carbonate this one quite high and serve chilled like a larger, ideal for a hot summers day in the garden.
You can buy this as an extract kit from BrewUk.

Haven't quite perfected the chill haze issues I have....working on this !

Lots of grapefruit flavour in this one, went crazy on the aroma hop steep this time around..reduce the late hop addition if you like to 25 g.

Recipe: Amarillo American Pale Ale

Style: American Pale Ale

TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications

--------------------------

Boil Size: 27.77 l

Post Boil Volume: 21.53 l

Batch Size (fermenter): 19.00 l

Bottling Volume: 19.00 l

Estimated OG: 1.047 SG

Estimated Color: 8.7 EBC

Estimated IBU: 29.6 IBUs

Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %

Est Mash Efficiency: 81.7 %

Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:

------------

Amt Name Type %/IBU

4.00 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) Grain 100.0 %

22.00 g Amarillo Gold [6.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 18.7 IBUs

26.00 g Amarillo Gold [6.70 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 11.0 IBUs

50.00 g Amarillo Gold [6.70 %] - Aroma Steep 10.0 min Hop 0.0 IBUs

1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) Yeast -

0.50 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining -

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out

Total Grain Weight: 4.00 kg

----------------------------

Name Description Step Temperat Step Time

Mash In Add 10.43 l of water at 73.1 C 65.6 C 75 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 22.29 l water at 75.6 C

Ferment: 14 Days in Primary ( 10 days if your eager)
Carbonate: 2.1 - 2.3 Volumes Co2

Prince Of Orange - Full Mash Recipe

2011-08-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

The key to this recipe is to get a good fruity medium/full body and good balance between the sweetness and the bitterness.

Its important to use the Danstar Windsor yeast as you want to have moderate attenuation, which will leave a relatively high final gravity.

The second time I brewed this I couldn't get Windsor so used Safale S-04 and it was no way near as good (watery) . The orange peel smells amazing in the fermenter but does dissipate during fermentation and just gives a subtle flavour in the final beer.

I think I used M&S Spanish oranges the first time and they seemed better than the cheaper ones I bought second time around. Go for a good mature orange, perhaps buy them the week before and let them ripen up more.

Recipe: Prince Of Orange TYPE: All Grain

Style: Special/Best/Premium Bitter

---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------

SRM: 21.7 EBC SRM RANGE: 9.8-31.5 EBC

IBU: 32.8 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 25.0-40.0 IBUs

OG: 1.043 SG OG RANGE: 1.040-1.048 SG

FG: 1.012 SG FG RANGE: 1.008-1.012 SG

BU:GU: 0.767 Calories: 443.5 kcal/l Est ABV: 4.4 %

EE%: 75.00 % Batch: 19.00 l Boil: 27.77 l BT: 90 Mins ( To ensure good hot break boil for 20-30 mins prior to first bittering hop addition at 60 mins )

Amt Name Type # %/IBU

3.00 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 84.7 %

0.36 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC) Grain 2 10.2 %

0.03 kg Black (Patent) Malt (985.0 EBC) Grain 3 0.8 %

Total Grain Weight: 3.54 kg Total Hops: 56.00 g oz.

---MASH PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------

Name Description Step Temperat Step Time

Mash In Add 8.84 l of water at 75.7 C 67.8 C 60 min

Mash Out Add 4.95 l of water at 92.0 C 75.6 C 10 min

---SPARGE PROCESS---

RECYCLE FIRST RUNNINGS & VERIFY GRAIN/MLT TEMPS: 22.2 C/22.2 C

Fly sparge with 18.32 l water at 75.6 C

---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------

Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.032 SG Est OG: 1.043 SG

Amt Name Type # %/IBU

0.15 kg Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 EBC) Sugar 4 4.2 %

20.00 g Challenger [6.45 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 16.9 IBUs

22.00 g Challenger [6.45 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 6 11.2 IBUs

0.5 Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 7 -

14.00 g Challenger [6.45 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 4.7 IBUs

0.75 oz Grated Orange Peel from 6 oranges(Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 9 -

---FERM PROCESS-----------------------------

Primary Start: - 14.00 Days at 21 C

Bottle Condition: - 14.00 Days at 20 C

Style Carb Range: 0.80-2.10 Vols

Bottling with 1.8 Volumes CO2: About 100 grams Malt Extract or 85 grams of beer enhancer

Brewing - Internet resources

2011-08-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

Over the years I have collected hundreds of bookmarks on brewing related information. So I thought I'd save people new to brewing the effort of sorting through the drudge and share some of the best resources I've come across on the web.

Brewing Information

http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html - Buy the book, but some of the content is here

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page - Good resource for reference

http://brewwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page - Another Wiki

http://byo.com/newbrew - Good collection of articles, blogs and resources

Blogs worth following

http://www.mrmalty.com/article.php - Jamil Zainasheff

http://northernbrewer.blogspot.com - see also BrewingTV

Video Resources

BrewingTV - With over 40 episodes already notched up, Michael Dawson, Jake Keeler & Chip Walton present a fantastic video brewing series. Lots of great info on techniques, interviews and brewery tours that really capture the essence of what home brewing is about. Also, a great insight into the ever growing & exciting US craft beer scene.

http://www.homebrewingvideo.com/category/all-videos/ - The episodes on extract brewing are worth watching.

Podcasts

You can get both these on iTunes as well, so I listen to these on my iPhone.

http://www.beersmith.com/blog/category/podcast/

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/

Homebrew Suppliers (UK)

There are a number in the UK. The first three I have ordered from before. I predominately use the first two.

http://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/

http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/

http://www.brew-it-yourself.co.uk/

http://themaltmiller.co.uk/index.php

http://www.colchesterhomebrew.co.uk

Misc brewing equipment

http://www.eurowirecontainers.com/acatalog/S353.html - Cheap Stockpots

http://www.magnumbarsupplies.co.uk/#/ice-sheets/4522277366 - Cask Cooling

http://newstore.vvessel.com/

http://www.brupaks.com/equipment.htm

http://www.pubshop.co.uk/catalog/cellar-c-23.html?osCsid=e056e915efc92e6e3b6f13bc084a33e8 - Cask accessories

http://polypins.co.uk/buyit.html - Bag in a box polypins

Recipes

http://www.beersmith.com/beer-recipes/

http://www.beertools.com/html/recipes.php

http://www.northernbrewer.com/docs/all-grain-kits

http://www.hopandgrain.com/index.aspx

http://www.homebrewmart.com/beerreci.html

Articles on Partial Mashing

http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/48-partial-mashing/511-countertop-partial-mashing

http://brewing.lustreking.com/articles/stovetopallgrain.html

http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/08/01/introduction-to-partial-mash-brewing/

http://menuinprogress.com/2009/02/partial-mash-brewing-and-ipa-recipe.html

Useful Free Tools

http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

http://powersbrewery.home.comcast.net/~powersbrewery/mastercalculator.html

http://www.practicalbrewing.co.uk/calculators/beerengine/

Articles on Off Flavours and chill haze

http://www.homebrewzone.com/off-flavors.htm

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-1.html

http://www.jovialmonk.com.au/brewManual/No_homebrew_taste.pdf

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3506/Off-Flavor-Flash

http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/23-clarity/490-conquer-chill-haze

http://www.professorbeer.com/articles/diacetyl.html

Forums

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/index.php

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/

http://www.the-online-homebrew-company.co.uk/homebrew-forum/

Brewing Beer - The early years

2011-07-25T07:33:00.001-07:00

I wanted to start writing about my real passion, and that's brewing. I first started brewing about 20 years ago after looking for something to do one summer between college terms.

I'd stumbled across a tiny display in 'Boots the chemist', featuring beer kits & thought 1) I'm bored 2) I like beer 3) I like making stuff 4) It was cheap. I found an old brewing bin in my dads garage he had used for making wine and made my first brew.

It was so long ago I can't remember much about it except that is wasn't that great, but none the less my friends and I drank it ( well we were students and if it was alcoholic, we consumed it ! ).

I think I brewed about 3 or 4 times then gave it up......fast forward twenty years, financial issues and a divorce later I end up back living at my parents until I got sorted. So again bored, liking beer and making stuff, but 20 years wiser and armed now with the internet, my interest in brewing was rekindled.

I was initially amazed at how much home brewing had advanced, and with literately thousands of websites dedicated to brewing techniques, supplies, recipes & discussion groups I was hooked even before I'd even started.

Anyone who knows me well, will know the saying 'RTFM' , and this applies to anything new I'm doing. So with my new found interest I ordered Graham Wheeler's 'Brew Your Own British Ale'

I read this book before I even got started, and initially I didn't fully understand extract or full grain brewing, but it did give a good general overview of all the processes, equipment and terminology. The 100 recipes in the book looked interesting and made it even more exciting; I couldn't wait to make some of these beers..........to date I have never bothered doing any of these recipes ! I'd found a new beer hero...John J Palmer

I took the sensible option having read many forums, and decided to start with a few kits. The advantage of this, is its the cheapest way to start and you can re-use all the equipment when scaling up to extract or all-grain. Its a good idea to start at this level so you get used to some of the more general techniques like cleaning, sterilising, syphoning, hydrometer reading, temperature control & bottling.

I started with the Woodfordes Wherry Micro Brewery , which 3 years later is roughly about the same price I paid but now comes with a 40 pint pressure barrel included.

I followed the instructions to the word using spring water from the supermarket and then after fermentation, bottled into 500ml glass bottles. I had bought about a dozen of these from Wilkinsons ( another great find as they have a store 10 minutes walk from me) , plus I also used some 1 litre PET bottles I had collected.

After two weeks of bottle conditioning I must say I wasn't impressed. It was better than the stuff I'd brewed some 20 years ago, but was bland and uninspiring. It did have a slight off taste which at the time I put down to the mysterious and much quoted 'Home Brew Twang'.....I will do a separate post on this as it turns out this so called 'twang' can be a multitude of things and is a rather generalised description.

So after my first attempt and pouring over even more blogs and forums I decided to try another kit, but this time ignore the kit instructions and try racking the wort to a secondary after 7 days and attempt some dry hopping, with 7 days in the secondary. For this bought a 'Better Bottle Carboy' and used a Muntons 'Nut Brown Ale' kit with 1kg of Light Spraymalt.

The result was a slight improvement. The dry hopping didn't seem to produce the lovely fresh hoppy smell I wanted, more like a rubber tyre. But taste wise was ok, it was at least drinkable but not at the quality level I would have wanted before sharing it out with friends and family.

It still had that twaaaannggg taste as well..now I was getting annoyed.

For weeks I mulled over my process and equipment, was I missing something obvious. People were raving about how good their beers were with the same kits, what was I doing wrong, was I just expecting too much or was there something I was doing that was ruining the beer.

So I decided to look into extract and partial-mash brewing in more detail and found 'How To Brew' by John Palmer. Well this book was a revelation, daunting at first but is now my beer bible even 3 years later. I have read this book more times than I can recall, even more than my 1998 copy of Reader Wives !

At this point I'd had no idea of the importance of temperature, water, fermentation process let alone the array of different yeasts at a brewers disposal. At this point I had already decided to give kits one more chance and this time I went for a 'Russian Imperial Stout' from Muntons premium Gold range. I'd realised that I was leaving the fermenter in the garage, and the temp fluctuated between 10-20° C, so using a spare aquarium heater I had, drilled a hole in the fermentation bucket so I could dangle the heater in the wort, using a rubber bung to feed the cable through to seal it. This time compared to before the fermentation was much more rigorous and I had to skim the top of the wort several times.

After seven days I racked to 5 Gal King Keg pressure barrel and after 2 weeks gave it a taste. Well it was duly poured down the drain, it was a disaster. Looking back know I'd wrongly assumed the thermostat on the heater was correct ( I didn't have a temp strip on the fermenter) & at that point hadn't grasped the concept that fermentation itself can raise the wort temp by a number of degrees.

Due to this failure I wanted yet one more try, this time with the 'Docklands Porter' from the same Munton Gold range. This time I used my Better Bottle fermenter as my primary and moved it to a room in the house which had a constant 20° C. Also, I left it for 14 days then moved it to a fridge for a further 5 days before racking to the keg.

Success at last ! It still had a slight twang and some slight estery banana flavours but was very drinkable.

Up to this point I was about to chuck it all in and give up. But I had learn't a lot of good lessons, and several years on since stepping up to extract, then partial-mashing to full mash those lessons still resonate.

1. Keep it consistent - Good record keeping helps. Record things in detail so that next time you can make minor adjustments. Initially I made the mistake of changing my process by too many factors and didn't approach it methodically. Even more so when you start creating recipes and you brew that perfect pint, and then next time you can't re-create it !

2. Control your fermentation temperature - Different yeasts work better at different temperatures. Also remember the same yeast can produce different flavours at different temp ranges as well. Understand the yeast profile in detail, most companies provide detailed information on their products. Keep temps constant, invest in an LCD Stick On Thermometer.

Ale is typically fermented at temperatures between 15 and 24 °C (60 and 75°F), aim for 20°C .

Lager fermentation temperatures from 7 to 13 °C ( 45 to 55 °F ) 10°C seems to work for me.

Again the above depends on the yeast strain and style of beer your fermenting.

Fermentis - Strain Guides Wyeast - Strain Guides Danster - Strain Guides

3. Let the yeast do its job - As with above, different styles and strengths of beer require different fermentation schedules. Part of the fun of home brewing is experimenting, so don't just take peoples word for it. You can scour forums as much as you want, you will get a whole range of answers and leave you still not knowing what to do. I would suggest you experiment for yourself with the pros and cons of racking to secondary fermenter. I personally leave all my beers in the primary for 14 days, letting the beer condition and mature as the yeast continues to clean up the wort. I laugh in the face of Autolysis, and this is only likely to happen if left for longer than say one month.

The only exception to this, and the only time I would rack to a secondary is 1) Brewing a Larger 2) A High OG beer ( > 1.060 ) 3) Dry hopping

4. Don't Panic - Things will go wrong, don't stress over it, often enough it will turn out fine.

As long as you clean and sterilize everything that touches the wort, I wouldn't worry to much about long lag times, stuck fermentation or yeast krausen exploding out the fermenter.

Keep a spare packet of yeast at hand for emergencies, be patient and use a blow off tube in the first few days.

I've had plenty of disasters, all but one turned out fine in the end.

5. Be well prepared on Brew day - Make sure all your equipment is clean and sterile. Prepare your water the night before if doing all-grain. Ensure you have measured all your ingredients and use a brew sheet to organize your brew day. I'd recommend using brewing software like Beersmith ( my software of choice ) , Promash or BeerEngine

6. Experiment and have fun - Crack open a beer and enjoy... though keep it to one beer !

Especially when doing a full mash. Once or twice I've forgotten some late boil additions or done something dumb which isn't a good idea when you have 5 gallons of wort at 100 °C.

To date I have brewed over 20 different recipes and brewed about 175 Gallons of beer, my house is starting to resemble a brewery !

So now I've started this beer blog I'm going start adding all the interesting techniques, issues, equipment and brew days I have experienced to date, and hopefully help and inspire other brewers to brew great beer.

Ian

- Head Brewer - Dark Steam Brewery Company

ZXTM - Filter content in forms

2010-07-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more annoying than getting spammed via your webforms. Using ZXTM's trafficscript you can filter out unwanted content. In the below example a reviews webform was getting badly spammed with links, advertising and attempted hacking. You could use Regex rules in the below as well if you wanted. It is also possible to maintain a "bad word" list in a database and have the ZXTM look it up.

$path = http.getpath();
$body = http.getBody(4000);
if( http.getmethod() == "POST"
&& $path == "/review/add_review"
&& ( string.contains( $body, "groups.google." )
|| string.contains( $body, "freehost.com" )
|| string.contains( $body, "blog.360.yahoo.com" )
|| string.contains( $body, "dreamstation.com" )
|| string.contains( $body, "cialis" )
|| string.contains( $body, "Bactrim" )
|| string.contains( $body, "Mumbai" )
|| string.contains( $body, "href" )
|| string.contains( $body, "javascript" )
|| string.contains( $body, "iframe" )
|| string.contains( $body, ".js" )
|| string.contains( $body, "SCRIPT" )
|| string.contains( $body, "HREF" )
|| string.contains( $body, "EMBED" )
|| string.contains( $body, "xmlns" )
|| string.contains( $body, "IMG SRC" )
|| string.contains( $body, "videoUrl" )
|| string.contains( $body, "http" )
|| string.contains( $body, "HTTP" )
|| string.contains( $body, "Umeh" )
|| string.contains( $body, "mpacuk.org" )
|| string.contains( $body, "drugsnoprescription" )
|| string.contains( $body, "xbox" ))

){
#log.info( "Review".$body); ### unremark to log info for testing
connection.discard();

}

ZEUS ZXTM - Rate Limiting requests

2010-06-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

Zeus Traffic Manager is a fantastic load balancer and provides a number tools to manage your network & web enabled applications.
I have been using their Trafficscript for number of years now, and it provides a powerful tool to control your network traffic.

One such benefit is rate shaping, which can be triggered by any http header information you wish. It could be by user-agent, cookie or Url. Below is an example of how I rate limit users hitting specific Urls which can put excess load on the servers if abused.

Firstly, you need to create a "Rate Class" on the ZXTM appliance. In this case I have limited requests to 20 over a 60 second period.

Now you need to create a Trafficscript rule and assign it to the ZXTM Virtual Server.

# Look for a cookie - If the users cookie contains their sessionId we will use that to identify the user. This is because traffic may appear from behind a proxy or office IP which would cause the rate limit to assume all requests are one user

$userid = http.getCookie( "_session_id" );

#get URL - grab the URL from the request so we can apply the rate limit to only the Url we want to.

$url = http.getRawURL();

# If no cookie use IP - If there is no cookie, then either the browser has disabled it or in 99% of cases its a crawler

if( $userid == "" ) { $userid = request.getRemoteIP(); }

# Now we apply the rate shaping if the Url contains "search" or "login"

if( string.regexmatch( $url, "^/search" )
|| string.regexmatch( $url, "^/login" )) {
rate.use( "limit", $userid );
}

The result will prevent any denial of service and smooth out normal traffic to ensure all users get a good response.
You can then apply different rate classes to different requests as needed. For example you could rate limit based on user-agent.

Page load performance & SEO

2010-06-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

Last year Matt Cutts from Google mentioned that a new ranking factor might be introduced into the google index algorithm.
Site speed is not only important to for keeping people on your site but can have an affect on the speed google indexes your site. Now it would seem it will affect ranking as well.

There are many tools out there to monitor performance and this should really begin at the development stage with tools such as Yslow and Firebug.

Yahoo have just released Boomerang which is a piece of javascript that you add to your webpages. This measures performance from the end users point of view so gives you greater visibility on real life performance

http://yahoo.github.com/boomerang/doc/

Converting a local OS into an Amazon AMI

2010-06-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

Converting a local OS into an Amazon AMI

These are the steps required to convert a local Linux OS instance to an Amazon AMI machine image. In this example I have converted a 64-bit CentOS 5.2 XEN VM instance to an AMI and launched it on EC2.

Pre-requisites

In this example I will assume you have installed the Amazon API and AMI tools and correctly setup the security keys as per this guide.

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2008-05-05/GettingStartedGuide/?ref=get-started

You will need the following files:
wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.zip

wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip

wget http://ec2-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-modules-2.6.18-xenU-ec2-v1.0-x86_64.tgz

Creating the AMI image

The first step is to prep the system for booting properly in EC2. When booting, it will be forced to use the EC2 kernel, rather than the currently installed one. You can use other kernels by launching the instance under a different AMI/AKI identifier if it matches yours.

Prep kernel:

Unzip the tarball ec2-modules-2.6.18-xenU-ec2-v1.0-x86_64.tgz to /lib/modules/

Prep network:

Remove any hardware addresses in “ifcfg-eth0” and configure for DHCP
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
TYPE=Ethernet

Prep fstab:

This can be done manually if you have specific volumes to mount, but I recommend letting the ec2 tools create it for you in the next section.

Building the AMI image:

Create a folder to create the image, in this example I use /image. You will need enough free space to create the image and it must not exceed 10G.

To create the image run the following command:
ec2-bundle-vol -d /image -k ~/.ec2/pk-.pem --cert ~/.ec2/cert-.pem -u --no-inherit -s 4000 --generate-fstab

When prompted for the arch type, select either i386 or x86_64 as required.

"--generate-fstab" - will create the required EC2 fstab file for you.
"--no-inherit" - Required if not re-bundling an EC2 image
"-s 4000" - This sets the image size in MB. I have made it as small as possible; I will then add a persistent volume to it and symlink /home /opt/ & /var/log/ to this.

Uploading AMI image to Amazon

You will need to upload the image to an S3 storage bucket so that it can be registered as an AMI instance.

ec2-upload-bundle -b tl-ami-images -m /image/image.manifest.xml --location EU -a -s -d /image/

"-b tl-ami-images" - This is where you define the S3 bucket name
"-m /image/image.manifest.xml" - Location of the manifest file created using ec2-bundle-vol
"--location EU" - US or EU

The access-keyid & secret key can be obtained from the AWS account under "Your Account"

Register & launch the new AMI

You can either use the API tools or the AWS Management Console to do this. The AWS Management Console is web based and much easier to use.
In the AWS console click on AMIs, the select "Register New AMI"
In the "Register Image" box enter the path to the S3 bucket image.
In this example you would enter tl-ami-images /image.manifest.xml

The AMI image will now appear in your list under "private" AMIs.

To launch open the "Instance" screen and select "Launch Instance"

Click "Select"

If you haven’t created a KeyPair or security group then do so. You only need to do this once for all instances. Launch it and your good to go !