Also, at the weekend I was in Copenhagen visiting the European Beer Festival. This was an amazing event with lots of interesting things. Expect some blog entries from me about this over the next few days.

And thirdly… last week we released the Camra Good Beer Guide 2009 mobile edition to coincide with the launch of the book. You can find more information about this on the Camra web site.

To get wifi working on this laptop I use the following packages:

• acer_acpi : Provides access to the special keys, one of which turns wifi on or off.
• madwifi-ng : The kernel driver for the wifi network hardware.

With the previous version of kernel 2.6.23 this was working fine, apart from the wifi light switched off during the boot, but if I pressed it at the right time, it would all work fine.

With 2.6.24 several problems occured:

Firstly, the gentoo stable madwifi-ng and acer_acpi packages no longer compiled. After some false starts, I found the easiest way to get around this was to use the unstable versions. This is not so drastic as it sounds. One of the problems with gentoo is that less used packages take a long time for new versions to get into gentoo as masked or unstable and even longer to move from unstable to stable. As a result stable versions are often very old, and even the unstable can be several versions behind the author’s stable version. In this case, I found that acer_acpi has gone through a lot of versions. The latest stable in gentoo was 0.5, but the latest unstable is 0.10. The actual latest stable version at code.google.com/p/aceracpi/ is 0.11.2. However I didn’t feel in the mood to make my own portage overlay ebuild or build from source and lose the advantage of gentoos package management, so stuck with 0.10

Secondly, The madwifi-ng module (ath_pci) started giving errors during startup something like:

wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: ‘Hardware revision not supported’ (HAL status 13)

After a lot of googling and documentation reading, I found it does this if ath_pci is loaded whilst the wifi is disabled. It is enabled by pressing the wifi button, or can be done automatically with:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/acer_acpi/wireless

However the new version of the kernel was automatically loading both acer_acpi and ath_pci automatically (from udev?) with no opportunity for me to run any scripts in between. So all the examples and tips I had read about the above echo command were useless. I wasted a lot of time trying to do things like ‘rmmod ath_pci; modprobe ath_pci’ in various config files and scripts, but it was all messy and didn’t work.

Finally I found a very simple solution… acer_acpi takes parameters during a modprobe such that

modprobe acer_acpi wireless=1

will automatically turn the wifi on while the module is loaded.

Unfortunately this was not the complete answer as udev was loading the modules before anything else, even the modules in /etc/modules.autoload/kernel-2.6 were being read afterwards.

Reading more about modprobe, I found the solution to all my problems was simply to create a file /etc/modprobe.d/acer_acpi containing:

options acer_acpi wireless=1

Then run:

update-modules

Now my machine boots up perfectly starting up the wifi without any intervention from me.

By the way, here is another tip, for if you want it to use ethernet when a cable is connected (because it is faster), and wifi when available is to emerge ethtool and add the following into /etc/conf.d/net

preup() {
# Test for link on the interface prior to bringing it up. This
# only works on some network adapters and requires the ethtool
# package to be installed.
if ethtool “${IFACE}” | grep -q ‘Link detected: no’; then
ewarn “No link on ${IFACE}, aborting configuration”
return 1
fi

# Remember to return 0 on success
return 0
}

I like pubs where I can take my children and hang out for a few hours in the afternoon drinking real ale in a friendly environment and possibly enjoy some snacks or food.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to read today on the BBC news website that Wetherspoons are discouraging children from their pubs by only allowing people to have two drinks in a pub if accompanied by children. Also see Stonch’s beer blog for more on this and my comment on BBC Have Your Say. I will be avoiding Wetherspoons pubs from now on even though they are generally good for real ales.

Another thing that annoys me is how difficult it is to get any food in town centre pubs at certain times of day, especially in the evenings.

The pub should be a social place where the whole family is welcome during the daytime. That is the only way you will get more middle class non-smokers to spend more time there and spend more money. If pubs continue to behave like they did before the smoking ban, discourage children and not have any real ale (preferably from local breweries) and not serve affordable bar food throughout the day, then of course they will lose customers.

Another thing I don’t understand is why pubs don’t have a more varied selection of bottled beers. It is fair enough that the cellars can only handle a limited number of draft beers, but bottles can be easily purchased and put in the cabinets behind the bar. Instead the only beers you normally see in pubs are just bottled versions of the same mass produced lagers that you get everywhere. Even when you see some Belgium beers they are normally the same readily available ones such as Leffe and Duvel, and you hardly ever see anything unusual such as a seasonal porter or selection of beers from local breweries.

If pubs do not go out of their way to encourage new customers, make them welcome and provide something you can’t get at home, then you can not expect new customers to magically appear. When you can buy a better selection of bottled beers in the supermarket and sit at home with friends then why go out to a pub that makes you feel unwelcome, only serves one beer, plays annoying music, fills every wall with TV screens showing football and makes you feel like a nuisance if you try to order food.

The Punch Bowl staff and landlady were friendly and welcoming as usual. In addition they offered free turkey and cranberry rolls, and warm mince pies to all the customers. The Morland Original I drank was in good condition and well served.

The Anchor was next… we were greeted in a friendly manner. Even though this is also a Green King pub, they try to have a good selection of the guest beers that Green King supply. We chose the Abbot Reserve, which being rather strong we only drank halves. I remembered this beer from the Anchor Beer Festival a couple of months ago and was eager to try it again and I was not disappointed.

The Brewery Tap near the entrance to where the old Morland brewery used to be before it was converted into flats is also a Green King pub. But similar to the Anchor they always have a good selection of GK guest beers. We ordered the Hardy and Hansons bitter which I have enjoyed there many times before. For some reason after the first sip, we did not enjoy the taste and thought it was a bit sour and must have gone off (bottom of the barrel?). We mentioned this to the barman, who called over the manager. The manager tried some himself and assured us that nothing was wrong with it. As we took some more mouthfuls, it started to taste better. I think that what happened was that our palettes were conditioned from the Abbot Reserve we had recently drank making the H&H fruity hops taste more pronounced. This is excellent customer service because even though we were wrong about the beer being off, we were treated with respect and offered replacements (which we declined as we realised that the H&H was actually all right). Generally the Brewery Tap always have their beers in excellent condition and served at the right temperature.

Finally we went to the Stocks Bar at the Crown and Thistle. Normally they have four real ales available including Wychwood and Brakspear beers, but unfortunately they only had one beer on that day. The bar maid gave a good explanation as to why this was. The one beer that was available was Old Peculiar, which we enjoyed a couple of pints of. The only problem is that the beer is served a bit too cold (though I have heard rumours that the cellars are being modified to remedy this soon). This is not a big problem.. just let it warm up a bit in your glass before drinking it. We were served our beer in handled glasses. Even though they were quite difficult for the bar maid to reach, she was cheerful and friendly. It is details like this that make good customer service.

So top marks to all of these four pubs. My Danish companions were very happy and impressed with the English pubs and beer.

Anyway… on to the point of this post. While scanning the logs I noticed that someone at O2 likes their beer… the server names of their mobile phone network seem to be named after breweries. Although it is the major multi-national breweries so whoever named them is probably not a real ale drinker.

Here are the names of some of the O2 hosts from 193.113.200.0/255

heineken.london.02.net.
guinness-eri0-2.london.02.net.
murphys-eri0-2.london.02.net.
beamish-eri0-2.london.02.net.
caffreys-eri0-2.london.02.net.
radius-vip.london.02.net.
alaskan-eri0-2.london.02.net.
ushers-eri0-2.london.02.net.
emu-eri0-2.london.02.net.
skunk-eri0-2.london.02.net.
heineken-bge0-1.london.02.net.
gmi-mis-db1.london.02.net.
gmi-mis-p2.london.02.net.
heineken-bge0-2.london.02.net.
tetley.london.02.net.
tetley-ce0-1.london.02.net.
tetley-ce0-2.london.02.net.
heineken-bge0-3.london.02.net.
carlsberg.london.02.net.
alaskan.london.02.net.
ushers.london.02.net.
carlsberg-bge0-1.london.02.net.
tunji.london.02.net.
carlsberg-bge0-2.london.02.net.
carlsberg-bge0-3.london.02.net.
ralph.london.02.net.
dave.london.02.net.
guinness.london.02.net.
kronenbourg.london.02.net.
murphys.london.02.net.
spitfire.london.02.net.
spitfire-ce0-1.london.02.net.
spitfire-ce0-2.london.02.net.
bengal-fmagcgi310.london.02.net.
guinness-eri0-1.london.02.net.
murphys-eri0-1.london.02.net.
beamish-eri0-1.london.02.net.
gmi-mis-db2-0.london.02.net.
caffreys-eri0-1.london.02.net.
register.genie.co.uk.
murphys-eri0-3.london.02.net.
beamish-eri0-3.london.02.net.
caffreys-eri0-3.london.02.net.
alaskan-eri0-1.london.02.net.
ushers-eri0-1.london.02.net.
uma-bkp.london.02.net.
watergate.genie.co.uk.
kronenbourg-bge0-1.london.02.net.
dns0.02.net.
dns1.02.net.
beamish.london.02.net.
caffreys.london.02.net.
emu-eri0-1.london.02.net.
arsenic-2.london.02.net.
kilkenny.london.02.net.
alaskan-eri0-3.london.02.net.
ushers-eri0-3.london.02.net.
skunk-eri0-3.london.02.net.
emu-eri0-3.london.02.net.
emu.london.02.net.
skunk.london.02.net.
skunk-eri0-1.london.02.net.
bass.london.02.net.
bass-ce0-1.london.02.net.
bass-ce0-2.london.02.net.
kronenbourg-bge0-2.london.02.net.
kronenbourg-bge0-3.london.02.net.
stella.london.02.net.
courage.london.02.net.
courage-ce0-1.london.02.net.
courage-ce0-2.london.02.net.
stella-bge0-1.london.02.net.
stella-bge0-2.london.02.net.
stella-bge0-3.london.02.net.

There is no recipe to speak of… basically I made some dried wine yeast (10 teaspoons) into a starter with a little brown sugar boiled in water and cooled. Pitched it into the apple juice in the containers I collected the juice in (food grade 5 gallon plastic). The next day it was fermenting out of the top and all over the floor… so I took it outside for a few days until it had calmed down.

Today (about three weeks after it started), I transferred one of the containers into a Hambleton Bard plastic pressure barrel. While I was at it, I measured the brix reading. According to my calculations this gave it a final gravity of 0.996, which is less than 1. I thought that was impossible. Water has a reading of 1.0000. So I also measured it with my hydrometer and came up with the same answer. I then tested my hydrometer in water and that measured 1 as expected.

If this is correct then this would mean all the sugar has been fermented out, and it would have an alcohol by volume of 9%. Tasting it, it still has a lot of sweetness, and it has not finished fermenting (gas was still being produced in the fermenter).

How can it possibly have a gravity of less than one, and still taste sweet and be fermenting?

It tastes quite nice.. a bit of sweetness, but also that real cider bite to it. It doesn’t have a lot of that sulphor smell and taste that cider often has when it is young. Last year it took several months to become drinkable.

Maybe someone else wants to check my calculations:

Original Brix was 16.2%, which equates to about 1067 gravity. Other members of the brew group got similar readings.

Brix today is 5.7%, and a hydrometer reading is 0.996.

This gives me an abw of 7.3% and abv of 9.1%.

There must be some other explanation for both the refractometer and hydrometer readings to come back with such a silly value.

There is an advert on autotrader but so far have not had any sensible replies.

Within a few hours of the advert going online, I received an email that read:

Hello ,

I saw the advert of your listed Car on theAutoTrader webpage when looking across for a good Car for my kid and i felt i should ask if you still have it for sale cos i pick interest in it..If you do have it,pls do let me know the present working condition of the Car,also the lask amount you would want for the Car

Do note that i want this to be a very quick sale as i have to move from UK to a new base now,but would like to complete the Deal on or before then..

So get back to me ASAP and let us get on..

Thanks

This looked a bit suspicious because

• Very poor English spelling and grammar.
• Nothing specific in the email relating to the particular car I am selling.
• Reason for a quick sale seemed suspicious.

I looked at the email headers and noted:

Received: from [41.204.224.5] by web27513.mail.ukl.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:21:34 BS

whois 41.204.224.5 showed it to be an IP address in Nigeria. Needless to say, I did not follow this up.

A few hours later, another email…

Hello seller,
I saw your advert while surfing via the internet and
am willing and interested to buy your NISSAN car.
Get back to me via my email if the NISSAN car is still
available for sale.
Are you the owner???
State its condition. send its recent pictures if available.
What is your last offer????
You can also ring me on my mobile: +447024076129
I look forward to read from you about the NISSAN car
soonest.

Best Regards

All the same signs as the previous one… poor English, no specific information apart from the insertion of NISSAN into what is presumably a template. A real buyer would be wanting to know when they could come and see it and take it for a test drive and be asking more specific questions about the car. A whois of the originating IP address was an American ISP.. also not promising for someone buying a car in England! So I have ignored this also and assume it is also a scam.

A search around google found several sites of car buying scams. I think the basic mechanism is that they will say that they need the car quickly and then send you some money, but will send too much and want some of it back. After they receive the money back it will be found that the original transaction was illegal and the bank will take all the money back. I am not sure if they also have a way to get the car as well leaving you out of pocket and without a car (but probably not if the scammers are in places like Nigeria).

I’ll add more scammer examples as I receive them. Luckily I have used a specific email address for this advert so I can set it up to automatically junk things once the car is sold.

Yet another one…

Hello,
Am Thomas from ireland who came acoss your advert ,and who will really like to know if your Car is for sale and the condition of the Car if is in a good condition..And also i will like you to get back to me with the last offer of the the items……………
Best Regards………
Thomas…………….

Why would someone in Ireland be interested in a car in Oxfordshire? Again, lacking any specific information about the car and featuring poor use of the English language. The whois showed the IP address as belonging to Eurosat, so it is feasible that the sender is in Ireland.

And yet another… this is from somewhere in Africa:

Good Day,

How are you and your family today, Meanwhile, I saw your advert on the web for sale. and i will like you to get back to me with the following enquries.

—- The last asking price ?

—- The present condition,including the last asking price ?

—- If any picture is available mail it to me soonest.

Let me know if the car have any problem I will be looking forward to hear from you soonest

Regards

lucas mcnamara

Incidently, all of the emails have come from yahoo.com addresses and sent by webmail.

I’m still waiting to get a single genuine enquiry…

And another…

GOODDAY TO YOU, I AM MAILING TO SHOW MY INTEREST IN YOUR:

YOU HAVE FOR SALE, SO LET ME HAVE SOME PICTURES OFIT BECAUSE I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO COME AND TAKE A LOOK AT IT AS AM A BUSY MAN BUT BE HONEST WITH THE PRESENT CONDITION OFIT WHEN GIVING ME DESCRIPTION. I WILL BE PAYING YOUWITH A CHEQUE AND I WILL WAIT TILL THE CHEQUE CLEARSPRIOR COLLECTION. SO GET BACK TO ME WITH THE DETAILS AS BELOW:

1. NAME THAT WILL BE ON CHEQUE :
2. FULL ADDRESS THAT THE CHEQUE WILL BE SEND TO :
3. YOUR CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS :
4. ASKING PRICE:

CONCERNING THE SHIPMENT, I HAVE A DELIVERY FIRM THAT
WILL COME FOR THE PROPER PICK UP FROM YOUR LOCATION
AFTER YOU HAVE RECEIVED THE PAYMENT. SO LET ME HEAR
FROM YOU WITH THE DETAILS FOR PAYMENT REQUESTED ABOVE.
WAITING TO READ FROM YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, HERE IS
MY CONTACT PHONE NUMBER 07024015372 IF YOU WILL LIKE
TO DISCUSS ANYTHING WITH ME ON PHONE.

MANY THANKS
TOM NICOLAS

I think you’d have to be an idiot not to see this one as a scam. Tell-tale features: all in upper case, information about cheques and money transfers, asking for pictures (pictures are in the autotrade advert already). Why would anyone pay to ship what is a standard car? Maybe you could understand if it was a classic vintage car, but not a standard mass produced hatchback!

Final Note: After two weeks of advertising on Autotrader I did not get a single genuine contact. But got 37 scam emails all of similar style to the ones above, almost all through yahoo mail. I also put an advert on EBay-Motors which did get some genuine enquiries, but I ended up selling privately to someone local.

Conclusion: Autotrader online adverts are currently a waste of money unless they can do something to reduce the scammers.

The plan was to collect two seperate runnings from the sparge, dilute the first runnings to match the second, and then treat both runnings the same in terms of hops, boiling, etc. Then to compare the tastes.

Recipe

The recipe is almost the same as the previous batch (Wild Hop Beer), which actually gives us 3 things to compare.

Giving total expected og=1048 and fg=1011

I expected to make two batches each of about half the normal amount of 25L, however things didn’t work quite to plan.

Mashing was more or less the same as before… 2.5Gallons of boiled water dropped to mash tun and cooled to 170F. Grains stirred in and temperature adjusted to 150F and left for 90 minutes.

This is when I realised my first major mistake… I had forgotten to put the manifold inside the mash tun! Not a problem I emptied out the mash into stockpot, replaced the manifold and put the grain back in and left to settle for a few minutes. The first runnings were very cloudy, so I recirculated the initial runnings for quite a while until they became clearer (note recirculating means collecting some wort in a jug from the run off tap and pouring it carefully back into the top of the mash tun).

My second mistake was not calculating what I was planning to collect. Partly this was because I had no idea on how the sugar level changes as sparging proceeds, and secondly because I hadn’t really thought about it, so had to quickly do some adhoc arithmetic.

I started sparging and collecting first runnings. Whilst sparging I regularly measured the brix against the amount of wort collected as I thought it could be useful in the future. The measurements I made were:

This needs to be put into a graph to make any sense of it.

Note I stopped collecting when brix was still 5% (aprox 1020 sg), because otherwise my second runnings would have become too dilute.

I ended up with two batches:

First Runnings: 14 Liters, brix=19.0%, og=1076
Second Runnings: 15 Liters, brix=8.2%, og=1033

First Runnings

Topped up with 15 Liters more water. After the boil was left with 15 Liters @ 15.4% brix to which another 8 liters of water were added to dilute it.

Hops at start of boil were:

Total ebu=18.7

15 minutes before end of boil, I added 10g Goldings and 10g Wild hops and teaspoon of Irishmoss.
5 minutes before end of boil I added 10g Goldings and 10g Wild hops.

Yeast was Brupacks top fermenting yeast made with a starter of 30g DME. This yeast was shared between the two batches.

Second Runnings

I didn’t dilute this as it was already fairly weak (15 Liters, og=1033).

Hops at start of boil were:

Total ebu=18.7

This is the same proportion as for batch 1 but reduced to account for lower volume.

15 minutes before end of boil, I added 6g Goldings and 6g Wild hops and teaspoon of Irishmoss.
5 minutes before end of boil I added 6g Goldings and 6g Wild hops.

After boil, brix=9.4%

Cooling was not a problem this time because Colin from the Oxford Brewing Group had provided me with extra tubing and fittings to connect the tap to the immersion chiller.

Fermentation

Both batches were fermented for 4 days and then racked to secondary fermenter where they stayed until May 22nd (5 weeks) and then bottled. Half the first runnings were put into a 10L polypin. Primed with 75g DME shared between both batches in proportion to volume.
First Runnings are in green-topped bottles. Second Runnings in Red-topped.

Results

Initial tasting while bottling is favourable… even without conditioning they both taste good, but the first runnings taste smoother.

I will be taking samples of both batches to the Taste and Swap tomorrow where I hope to get more feedback on the taste differences between them… although they have not had much time to condition.

Grain Bill

Expected og of 1042 and fg of 1010 giving abv of 4.4%

This was based on 25 liters with 82% efficiency.

Also added one teaspoon of Brupacks DLS.

Hops

Planned for around 25 ebu, using the wild hops mainly for aroma/flavour. As the wild hops were unknown, I estimated that they were Fuggles variety and had 4% alpha acid content.

Copper Hops:

Aroma hops:

Wild: 25g, 10 minutes before end of boil along with teaspoon of Irish Moss

Wild 25g 1 minute before end of boil.

Yeast

Packet of Brupacks top fermenting ale yeast. Used a starter of 25g DME in 1/2 pint of water, boiled for a few minutes and cooled. Also added teaspoon of yeast nutrient.

Process

This was in a new kitchen so my process was different than usual. In addition I had recently obtained a 60L stock pot and planned to boil on the gas hob instead of using the electric boiler. I expected that this would allow me to collect more run off from the sparge and allow for evaporation, whereas with the electric boiler I did not have room to allow for evaporation and had to top up the wort back to 25L.

25L of water was boiled in the electric boiler.

About 10 liters was dropped into my mash tun (picnic cooler) and left to cool to the strike temperature of 170F (Note I am using Farenheit here because that is what my thermometer measures in).

Grain was mixed into the water, and got desired mash temperature of 150F.

Left to mash for 90 minutes.

Whilst waiting for the mash I topped up electric boiler with water and reboiled. Then transferred into my sparge tank (a plastic bucket with a tap on it).

I sparged (using Phil sparging arm) and collected 25 Liters of wort with a brix reading of 9.8% (1040 og… slightly lower than expected).

The wort was put into the 60L stock pot and some extra water added (5.4L) to allow for some evaporation.

Wort was boiled on the gas cooker… the new cooker has a central ring that is much bigger than the others, but unfortunately this did not provide enough power to bring it to a vigorous boil, so had to also use one of the other rings as well.

I boiled for 90 minutes adding the hops and Irish moss at the appropriate times.

The next problem I encountered was that the cooker was now a long way from the sink (they used to be close to each other). I did not have enough tubing to get from the tap to the immersion chiller. Instead I simply placed the lid on the stock pot and left it overnight to cool.

The next morning, the wort was siphened (I don’t have a tap fitted to the stock pot yet) into fermenting bucket. To avoid infecting the wort with my mouth bacteria when starting the siphon I followed a tip that someone at the Oxford Brewing group suggested of putting a section of larger tube over the end to suck on and then removing it when the siphon started.

I only managed to collect 19L of wort (did not account enough for evaporation and trub loss). The brix reading of this was 10.2%.

Pitched the yeast and left it for 6 days to ferment. Transferred to secondary fermenter under airlock and left for 2 weeks before bottling (primed with 80g DME) on 11th February 2007.

fg = 1008, final brix = 5.4%, making an abv of 4.1%

Taste

Very nice, malty and hoppy. Certainly wouldn’t be disapointed if served this in a pub. The wild hopshave quite a strong after-taste, but this may mellow out after being left longer to condition.

I plan to take a few bottles to the Oxford Brewing Group’s Taste and Swap event tomorrow (2nd June 2007) to get some other people’s opinion.