Many moons ago, I was on a trip in Dorset and we visited a country pub near Swanage, which I believe was the Square and Compass. I remember being very taken by the cider, which was apparently brewed locally and tasted totally different to the commercial ciders I was familiar with at that point.
Many years later, I need a project, and the internal squirrel brain settled on the idea of doing some home fermentation. I’ve fermented beer before, which was drinkable but nothing special. Given that I live in Kent and am surrounded by apple orchards, it seemed a good idea to investigate cider-making.
From experience, I knew I’d need some things, and I’d need to learn some other things. But one thing I definitely wanted to do was have some way to observe and track the fermentation process from the comfort of anywhere but the spider-infested horror that doubles as my garage.
I also needed some way to protect my fermentation set-up from accidental kicks or other hazards, like having a spade fall on it.
My daytime job is SRE, so I decided to SRE the censored out of this.