Big Ideas Brewing ....!

I had to run into town tonight. I found myself on my last legs regarding booze and baccy. My snus supply is due tomorrow. But, I can't say what time that might finally get here. I stay up late and smoke most at night. I didn't fancy smoking recycled in the morning.

And my keg of Coopers Stout is rock bottom. It clearly wasn't going to last me the night. besides which, the next keg only went in on the 15th. So, having had a week of Coopers, I'm now faced with two weeks on the Guinness, till That keg's barely ready to drink. Bad beer, and money down the drain then.

Now, yesterday, 16th, I put Two more 5 Gallon brews into Fermentation Vessels. (That's 'Big, White Plastic Buckets' to the uninitiated.) They'll be kegged and approachable in a few weeks now. More fucking Guinness I'll have to buy in the meanwhile ....! This, obviously, just isn't working.

I was explaining this to Tom as he drove me in tonight. Thinking as I was talking, as I do. And that talking / thinking it through led me to the solution.

Someone, on the beer forum, had long since mentioned my getting a fuck off great Fermentation Vessel. At the time, I'd agreed. But, then I got so busy I had no time for brewing and anyway, the doubt crept in; What if I fucked up the procedure and wound up with gallons and gallons of vinegar?!

Well, my recent hours in the kitchen, washing, rinsing, sanitising, rinsing and rinsing, refilling, making beer in a whole host of FV's and kegs changed my view. Fact is, I now realise, one can just as easily prepare one Huge FV as fuck about with two or three separate, smaller ones.

In fact, concentrating on one bigg'n would be a comparative piece of piss, compared with repeating such a monotonous procedure. Boredom leads to mistakes. That's how brews get ruined.

So, here's my plan: There's a guy in town, every Saturday. He sells 'Barrels'. Plastic ones. All sorts and sizes. Farmers use them for storage. Cut them in two for drinking troughs, all sorts. I'm going to see if he has a 25 Gallon, food quality one available. Such a 'FV' could easily hold Twenty Gallons of Coopers Stout. Enough to fill Four Kegs. And it'd still ferment out in about a week, same as five gallons would.

Do a single ferment. Twenty gallons. Fill four Kegs, inside about a week. Inside another week, get another 20 on. A week later, as the second FV of the Second 20 becomes ready to Keg, so I'd be able to start drinking the first of the first ferments beer. By the fourth week? I'd have drained the first of four Kegs. Three to go. Four more going onto the rack. I'd Finally be producing beer faster than I can possibly drink it.

That'd mean I'd be making a 'surplus' of beer. Beer which would be sitting around, waiting to be drunk. Get a Third FV on and I'd have Kegs gathering dust! That is as it should be. Purists reckon one shouldn't even look at a pint of Home Brew till it's been sat, 'conditioning', in the Keg for at least a month. I drink my Coopers Stout at two weeks, max. Economic necessity, on the one hand. It tastes simply fucking fantastic, even that young, on the other!

I need to sit down with a calculator and note pad here. Work out the exact and on going logistics of all this. I mean ..... What if I can get myself a Fifty Gallon FV? Knock out maybe 45 Gallons at a run! Fuck ....! That'd amount to One Days steady work. And over Two Months of superb Coopers Stout, costing me just cents a pint!

This needs looking into!