As I'm sure you can see from the shitty picture above, nearly everything has arrived successfully over the last couple of days. I had a bit of a nightmare with missing the odd delivery as I work shifts (the poor fella driving the Parcelforce van had to lug a fuck-off crate of bottles to my house not only once, but twice), but asides from a custom-made bung to fit the glass carboy, a 10 inch funnel and a clip-on thermometer, everything has arrived and I'm busting to get going on the debut brew.
I've been putting some finishing touches on making my first IPA recipe my own, and getting the boring bits out of the way (converting metric to imperial and so forth). I also spent an evening earlier this week reading up on yeast and all the fascinating shit that can be done with it. I had a mini-panic after browsing several home brew forums and thought that I might have to cook up a batch of yeast starter, something which was a little bit daunting as I haven't done a proper brew, well, ever (pouring lager malts into a bucket with a pile of sugar and yeast nearly ten years ago doesn't count, does it?). What started as a frustrating, almost boring internet sesh (seriously, it's yeast for fucks sake) turned out to be quite informative and educational. Yeast starters is something I will definitely be experimenting with in the future. 
On the subject of yeast, I've got myself a batch of White Labs' WLP001 liquid yeast currently chillin' all dormant in the fridge. White Labs seems to be industry standard in growing liquid yeast, and the Californian variety seems perfect for the IPA recipe I am trying to achieve. The fact that you can even get different types of yeast for different types of beer fries my head (as above, it's yeast for fucks sake) but it opens up a whole can of worms of potentially harvesting and cultivating my own yeast from past brews if it's something that I *really* want to save. I also read about a guy scraping the yeast out of the inside of bottles of Westmalle Tripel, which really got me thinking...
I was drinking a Lagunitas IPA recently and it got me thinking of how lagery it tastes for an IPA; it's got that really heavy feeling to it, like Stella Black or some of the higher-end Peroni stuff. That got me thinking what to do about my second brew. It might be jumping ahead a little, but after the first batch I should have approx. 60g of Cascade hops and 70g of Chinook hops left, and almost a whole jar of pilsner malts from Briess. I had the idea to do an experimental lager, brewed with Chinook and then dry-hopped with a few Cascades; essentially the opposite of the original brew idea, but I can't seem to find anything online (yet) about these types of hops being used in a lager, so I'll get back to you on that.
Time to wrap up this quick post. Hopefully, by the time you hear from me next, there should be five gallons of *something* festering away in my glass carboy.
As always, thanks for reading.
Peace,
Sean
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