Ambiorix gets tastier

Hey all, just a random update. Opened (carefully) another of my ambiorix beers tonight. I got most of this one, though it took about 15 minutes to settle down in the glass - half in the glass half in the bottle meant I got to save most of it! It's quite tasty now, there's still a homebrew twang from it, but it's not as sour as it used to be. That said I'm wondering if every bottle is slightly different, because of different amounts of beer/sugar in each one, as in the mixture i bottled mightn't have been fully homogenous....hmm. I haven't had any feedback yet.

I bottled some of my second brew tonight. A Fixby Gold, which looks nice. I ran out of bottles, some of the ones I had weren't clean enough to use tonight so I'll have to find myself about 8 litres' worth of bottles in the next couple of days. Hopefully it'll be ok in the bucket for a couple of days yet!

And isn't it a great winter we're having? We had been thinking of holidaying in Ireland this year, but seriously, with weather like this? C'mon Bord Fáilte, get something done about it.

Topical Thinking Point for today - The return of college fees would surely be A Bad Thing? Aren't we sposed to be a knowledge economy? If the economics of gaining knowledge are personally punitive, we will not achieve that. Is the tax return on a higher-qualified population not sufficient to cover the costs? I'd have thought it is, but might be wrong. The current system, while not perfect, at least allows equal access to all on a monetary footing. If fees of 3-4k a year were introduced, attendance at courses would be dramatically cut, surely?

Beer Again

Maybe I was complacent, but this morning's brew didn't go easily at all. Well, it did up until when I tried to open the cans. The opener I'd bought was a piece of junk, and is now in the bin. It really wasn't up to it - don't anyone buy a "butterfly" style of can opener!

Then after all that, I forgot to stir the beer, so there was a layer of thick viscous wort in the bottom of the bucket, though I've swirled it around a few times and it seems to have disappeared. A starting gravity of 1.044, with an expected final gravity of 1.010 means I might get 4% ale out of this kit - it's a Fixby Gold.

Fingers crossed it's all worked out. Exasperation hopefully doesn't lead to contamination!