Lockdown RIS and a Nut brown Ale (sort of ..!)
In Early April I decided to make another slightly modified batch my Russian Imperial stout and timed it so that the Lockdown ESB went into the Cornie the same day so that I Could drop it onto the Yeast Cake.

The #Brewday went very smoothly hitting an O.G of 1.105 (the Tilt reported it as slightly higher but I tend to use the hydrometer for accurate readings..) anyhooo It went off like a rocket and I had a mess to clean up ….

The S-04 yeast really did chew through the Wort but then dramatically slowed after 3 and then very slowly dropped ending up with a F.G of 1.030 making it 10.2%

Yesterday I had a very late Brewday, I got the HLT on and it was up at temperature by 11:00 but after our daily lockdown exercise/dog walk I had a severe case of loss of MoJo and nearly switched the HLT off ! After an internal ticking off the #brewday got going at 14:00

My next post I’ll update with fermentation graph for the Gervin Ale yeast from Wilco’s as it’s the first time using it..
and I almost forgot I put a Demijohn of wine on, made from fruit juice, grape juice and brewing sugar..

With everyone in lockdown I started to look at brewing again and looked at the Brewblox software/ firmware update to the V2 spark board that I built. I have a spare board so decided to tinker . After reading a post mentioning RS485 funcionality I realised my spare didn’t have the IC installed in it’s socket. I had used a MAX3468CPA in my original boards but this is now obsolete but having a quick look you can still get the MAX3082CPA+ slightly slower rated but it should work ! One in on order so thats one for a future post.

Installing the upgrade to BrewBlox didn’t go as smoothly as it could but then I’ve learn’t over the years it generally doesn’t!

I followed the instructions but as I was planning on using just USB missed the brewblox-ctl wifi command, big mistake ! I ended up with the white display scenario ! Turns out after digging around the forum you still need to do this command even if just using USB, so after a couple of tries and a re install I was rewarded with a beep a quick flash of the BrewPi logo and then the grey non populated block screen.

The Wizard for setting up a fermentation Fridge worked well but at the point it came to setting up the one wire sensors I was thrown slightly, no values are shown before you assign them, I have 3 sensors on the bus and it wasn't until assigning one of them that the value appeared ! So at that point it was trial and error warming up each one in turn to figure out which was the Beer and which was the fridge and which was the room.

The interface looks Nice , not as simple to configure but a lot more flexible, I’ll still miss being able to turn the knob and set the beer constant mode before I come out of the shed but hey ho ! I will have to just wipe off my sticky fingerprints from the phone!

Well done Elco and Bob 🙂