Oatmeal Stout

All the Docherty boys got push Scooters for Christmas this year. We’ve been having fun out a number of times already. I might be using mine for commenting on days not suitable for my bike. Anyway all great fun, and a good excuse for some exercise. The boys are doing well on them, and they should have some good fun with them at the Caravan once the site opens. Me too! BTW Fiona tried many times to get a photo with the boys actually looking at the camera, but they were just having too much fun

Solar report for the first 14 months of use.

Total Generated by Solar Panels: 3099KWh

Total Exported by us to the National Grid: 2217KWh

Total Imported by us from the National Grid via Meter read differences: 6362 - 4,065 = 2297KWh.

Total Electricity consumed by us outwith our own generation means: 2217 – 2297 = -80KWh.

Well I’m pleased with that…

The solar array was completed on Thursday the 26th of August, and the first full day of generation was Friday the 27th. We went on holiday on the Saturday, but for the whole week we were away it worked hard during many long hours of good sunshine. To date (7th of September) 12 days, we have generated 125KWh, which is an average so far of 10.41KWh per day. I know last week was exceptionally nice, but the last 2 days have also been exceptionally poor. This is a pleasing output. To compare, our energy use through January -> July is approx (310+290+280+150+200+210+240Kwh)/(210days) = Approx 8Kwh per day. At least at this time of year we will be generating more per day than we require, and exporting a little bit. We will be monitoring performance over the year to see how this works out. So far from the FITS we should have earned 125*(41.3+1.5) = £53.50. I’ll be looking forward to the first cheque from my power company, and I’m looking forward to a vastly reduced electricity bill.

Here’s some nice pictures of the final installation:

The guys got busy this morning building the rest of their scaffold tower. Its quite a height:

I was in the office most of today, but Fiona reliably informed me the tower moved back and forward several times from one side of the building to the other. Unfortunately our vegetable patch is in the way at one side, and some things may have unavoidably got squashed. Fiona said the guys were very polite and worked with care. Today they’re job was to screw the supporting rail hooks under the rafters of the roof, with a few roof tiles removed in various places, and then put back on top of the hook. There is also a vent box fitted at the top left side of the roof, and this allows the DC cables to enter the loft of the house. By the end of the day most of the rails were in place, and apart from a few additional rails and maybe a few extra hooks, the only thing left to do is mount the panels onto the rails. The installer suggested rejigging the original plan slightly for symmetry, or installing an extra panel at cost price at one side. We decided to add another panel, which will give us slightly more capacity than originally planned. Here’s some pics of the roof at the end of today:

The last two pictures are taken from one of my velux windows:

The solar installation started on Monday morning, and the installers started promptly at 9. By 11 they had the inverter and various bits in place in the secret cupboard off the study (that I had been clearing all weekend). But work stopped, when the installers discovered that part of the scaffold hadn’t been delivered by the supplier. You can see the part that got built on Monday:

Here’s a pic of the guys preparing some equipment in their van. Tom who is the main installer and the proprietor of the company was very upfront about the scaffold problem, and made good progress on the other parts of the install, I’m really impressed with the work so far. Busy in their van with bits for the inverter:

The new cupboard off the study on Sunday night just before works start:

On Tuesday the scaffold still hand’t arrived, but Keith the electrician arrived, and he’s now completed all the wiring from the mains box downstairs to the study cupboard upstairs. The work looks neat and tidy. I’m impressed by all the cool big buttons The big red box is the “Sunny Boy” Inverter. Its a 2.5Kw grid connected inverter which means that it synchronises with the grid and pumps current back out. It also intelligently detects when the National Grid goes down, and switches itself off. This is the slight downside, it does mean that in a blackout, you have no electricity even if you can generate it. But the feature is there for safety, it prevents an overload of the inverter (It doesn’t attempt to power your local town ), and it doesn’t electrocute the poor engineer down the road trying the fix the national grid. Both the grid tied inverter and the DC current direct from the solar panels require a manual switch (black for DC & red for AC) for isolating everything if required, the switches also have padlock holes for locking out when engineers are working in your area.

Our mains box downstairs is now looking a fairly busy place. We have an export meter, an AC generator disconnect and lockout switch, and a RCD and breaker on the inverter wire, all feeding into the main house bus.

Were getting our solar panels installed this week. Work starts on Monday. But I’ve lots to do before then.
First I need to open up our secret room, as this is where I plan to get the electrical equipment installed. I feel like Howard Carter in 1922 breaking through into Tutankhamen’s Tomb.

Okay so Wednesday night I blogged about my yeast starter, and Thursday night was pitching night.

First things first, everything is sterilized, this is the bit that takes the most time. I use “VWP”, which is an easily rinse-able cleaner and sterilizer available from most home-brew suppliers. Absolutely everything that will contact the beer or its ingredients is steeped in this solution for 30 minutes, and then well rinsed. No pictures, they would be boring. The wort syrup from the supplied cans are now put into cooking pots, and set to boil on the cooker. This helps to get all the sticky stuff out, and aids the dissolving of the syrup in the water added later.

Some kettle boiled water is now added to the fermenter, I use oven gloves to empty the cans of wort into the fermenter. Some more boiling water is added to the empty cans to extract the last bits of syrup (be careful, everything is boiling hot, and some of it sticks).

Okay the fermenter is then topped up to 20.5 ltrs with fresh cold water straight from the kitchen tap. You can be very fussy (cleaning/removing chlorine/adding stuff) with your water supply at this point, but I think the water from our kitchen supply is good enough.

When all of the wort has dissolved into solution, it is time to check temperature. The yeast prefer the temperature to be around 20C to ferment beer. The initial temperature must be below 30C, or else there’s a risk of killing the yeast, or at least doing something bad to it. At just about 20C the yeast will get off to a good start, with a little extra heat.

The whole yeast starter from Wednesday night is pitched into the wort, and then the beer is stirred well to aerate it. From the pictures you might be able to spot the thick 30% layer of yeast in the starter bottle that had grown since its was started 24 hours earlier from a small packet of dried yeast.

Next I use my new gadget, which is called a wine theif. This allows me to extract a small amount of the wort in order to check its “Gravity”. This is a measurement of the sugar quantity in the wort, and provides a way of measuring the progress of fermentation, and is used to calculate the final alcohol and sugar content of the beer. Inside my wine theif, is the hydrometer, which is a glass floating bulb calibrated to indicate the gravity. Tonight the figure reads “1.044″, which is a reasonably high sugar reading. This might turn out to be a higher % beer than my previous batches. UPDATE: On Saturday afternoon the gravity had reduced to 1.020, thats 0.022 that has already been turned into alcohol.

Finally the fermenter is stored in the under stair cupboard (out of harms way, or at least little hands). There’s a lid, and bubble valve on the top to prevent any contamination, but still allow quantities of CO2 to escape. The fermenter will be checked my me every day, to see what the gravity of the forming beer is. When the gravity hasn’t changed over a period of 24hours, then primary fermentation is deemed complete. This will typically be after 4 to 6 days. On day 2, I will rouse the yeast (give it a good stir) to get the yeast back into suspension, and to add some oxygen.

That’s it till later.