Trying is the first step towards failure.

I hope the copyright owner (I guess that would be the enormously talented and generous Matt Groening) won't be upset.

Anyhoo, after telling you all how easy big beers are, I suppose it's time to admit that the mighty pale ale supposed to be at least 7% is actually a measly 6.5%.

Why? If I tell you it should have been boiled longer to concentrate the wort? Any guesses? Something to do with a heater?

You, boy at the back. That's right. Heater on the copper gave up on us. So there you go. I now always meant it to be 6.5%

I think its going to be good though. Obviously not as strong, or as intense as planned, and paler of course. Probably not a bad thing as it turns out, since it's quite progressive as it is. First outing at the Ulverston Beer Festival: Thursday 2nd September to Saturday 4th September.

Oh, why didn't I listen to Woolpack Dave...

See, a while ago the big element on our copper cut out during the boil. We managed to limp along on the little one (which will keep the boil going). I can't get at the head where the connections are without moving the copper (that's as much fun as it sounds) out of the corner where that nice Mr. Porter put it, so it wasn't until the next day that I managed to get in there with my trusty roll of insulating tape and bodge things up.

Job done?

Mr Woolpack pointed out that I should have used heatshrink as it's less prone to slip. But I hadn't got any - that's a bit silly. I didn't get any - that's really stupid of me.

And of course, it's just come back and bitten me. i.e. it's gone faulty again. We're not even boiling, there's 650 litres of wort in the thing (weighs a lot) so it's an immovable object.

Back of envelope calculations suggest that it's going to take something like 4 hours to come to the boil, and I'll probably have to boil for at least two hours rather than the 90mins that we usually do. I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to get home, but it'll be late.

Learning is fun!