The cold is playing havoc with our brewing. Having bottled the wine, we’ve turned our attention back to more traditional ales, and we’re trying our hand at a Norfolk concoction.
It’s not difficult – so long as it’s not cold. But right now it’s cold. Very cold.
The thermometer in the greenhouse, which is probably a degree or so warmer than the outside world, is reading -2C. I had to break the ice in the chickens’ water this morning, and because the little dripper nipples at the bottom were frozen up I then had to get the boiled kettle to defrost them, keeping the chickens out of the way.
I wouldn’t like to be one of them right now. I doubt feathers are particularly warm, and even if they are they still don’t come down below their chicken knees, leaving their legs and ankles exposed to the elements.
But they’re not the ones brewing beer. We are. And the cold has left us with a bit of a problem. The brewing process should have been finished at the weekend, and certainly there have been no new bubbles through the airlock since then, so we naturally assumed it was done. Testing its gravity with the hydrometer this evening, though, it was still reading far too high, implying that it isn’t done at all.
So we’ve snapped on the lid again, refilled the airlock and put it back beside the little oil-filled radiator (set to low) for another few days of fermentation.
This is the first time we’ve brewed beer in the winter, and we’ve both been surprised how different it is to doing it in the warmer summer months.
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