Pulling the pony up the mountain

The new counterflow chiller works, but I had a big fight with it yesterday to get my wort cooled for pitching. 11pm in the cold garden trying to fit the piping, cutting myself on the copper and covering myself in hot and cold work alike.
The beer is in and the yeast is pitched. Let's just hope my multi-mouth powered siphoning hasn't tainted the beer. Time to have a head to head with engineering to get the kinks (to put it mildly) out of the process.

I have to return to the crime scene tonight to clean the pipe work and some of the items I couldn't face dealing with at 12:30am

Hop shopping.... the last stop before lift off!

There are so many factors to a beer and so many types to try.... I've been doing way to much reading on yeast and hops and I think I'm ready to get back into the brewery (now partially located in the garage) and get my brew on.
As a keen hop head and lover of the IPA I figured the best way to get some of my commercial beer drinking (mainly lager) mates over to the ale was to brew steam/common and lager of my own. Then hop over to the pale ales and by next Christmas they'll be drinking porter like the best of 'em!

I've purchased some San Francisco yeast which will allow me to brew 'common' beer types and lagers. This will also force me to practice rinsing and propagation. Mainly because the yeast is so damn expensive!

I've purchased a few little add ons and will be making use of the fridge in the garage. Item's I've purchased are as follows:

Siphon upgrade - My current one is pants and this is a very important step to get right!
A fermenter with a bottler attached - This will be my lagering vessel and making bottling a lot easier!
Concial flask - This is for propagation
Thermostat - This is to control the fermentation and lagering temperatures in the fridge.

I'm now working out my four brews and what hops I'll need for each of them.... here's the list so far:

Cascade
Tettnanger
Centennial
Saaz

I'll post some info on these at some point soon as well as the base recipes I want to work from.

The stuff I've got so far

So many homebrew shops provide a great starter kit to help you on your way to brewing some nice basic kit brews. That's just dandy but there might be a few other items you might want to think about on top of your basic package.

Here's my current list of gear:

15 Litre boiling pot with lid
Glass Carboy - lovely but there are plastic alternatives.
Plastic fermenting bucket with airlock
Grain/Hop bags
Funnel
Syphon tubes
Racking Cane (Basic)
Bottler (basic)
Thermometer
Hydrometer
BIG spoon
BIG jug
Brewing belt (for temperature regulation)
Santisation powder

48 - 500 ml bottles with flip off tops
2 5 Gallon plastic barrels (although I'm a bottle convert so not in use)

On the wish list

Bucket fermenter with airlock and bottling tap  (little bottler)
1 Litre Jar
4 250 ml Jars with lids
A much better racking cane
Brupak Electic Boiler (Mmm pricey!)

So there's nothing quite like a home brewer taking pictures of his equipment and endlessly going on about it. If you're still reading this post then firstly well done!

Secondly in essence my lessons here are:

Hop and grain bags for extract brewing (your next step from kits) are invaluable
It's worth investing in decent syphon/racking cane - you want this to go smoothly
Buy a BIG pot for the boil - until you get a boiler.
Always have 2 fermenters

What are the jars about I hear you cry. They're for yeast rinsing covered in the R&D posts a little later.