A Quick Visit

Took a wander down to the Allotment this morning, it's been a little while since I did anything, it's hard to get motivated at this time of year.

I was surprised to see the chilli plants still doing okay in the greenhouse. Even with the cold spell they are still nice and green, with some fruits still ripening on the bushes.

Got yet another small harvest of Yummy and Habañero  peppers, at this rate I won't have to grow any hot peppers next year at all.

The Garlic is all still doing great, so had a good weed around all the plants, Marco and Elephant Garlics are all doing the best so far with the Germidour Garlic that was planted a bit later on just starting to poke their heads up above the soil.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="702"] Before Weeding[/caption]

Next year I really need to get some more Autumn & Winter veg going as apart from a bit of Kale there is not a lot growing for us to eat over the Winter months. I do have a small amount of cabbage that was just chucked in from a few old packets of seed, but apart from one they don't seem to be doing that great.

All in all I only spent a few hours weeding and hoeing but it didn't look like I made much of a dent in the weeds really, but to be fair  that's a job for the spring.

More Garlic Planted

Planted some Germidour garlic on plot 120 this week, that I bought from the good ol' garden center.  2.99 ukp for three bulbs which I thought was quite good. Once it was split into it's cloves I got 39 cloves in total, which has nicely filled the garlic bed up.

 

The Elephant Garlic and the Marco garlic's have already poked thier heads up, so hopefully this years garlic crop will be prolific as in total I have planted 84 cloves of garlic.

Good job we use garlic alot, because if they all do well, that's one hell of alot of garlic. Some of which I'll keep for growing on next year as I did with the elephant garlic from last year.

Rain Stopped Play.

Got some more digging done today before the rain stopped everything. Was quite happy to see that the Marco Garlic that was planted at the end of last month was already shooting above ground. No sign of the Elephant Garlic as yet though.



The climbing beans are still not ready to pull up as I am collecting the seed from what is left growing on the plants. The weeds are taking over that section of the plot and I am now dreading the time when I have to dig it all over, but at least next year I'm dividing that area into two sections to hopefully make things a bit easier.

Talking of which, on another part of plot 120, where the broad beans and beetroot grew this year, I'm also sectioning up this area to make things better next year coping with the weeds. Still have to harvest some more beetroot from this area, but I took to the spade and fork and sorted half of it out.



Took loads of hardwood cuttings from the blackcurrant and Jostaberry bushes, about 10 of each and planted them where the courgettes,squashes and pumpkins  where growing as this section has now been cleared of plants.



So that's all the courgettes and butter-nut squashes done for this year, there's still one pumpkin hanging on in there.



The sweet peppers and chillies are still fruiting but it won't be long now before there are finished for the year, the one's that are left I will pick next week maybe and then one or two of the plants I'll try and over winter. The rest will hit the compost heap.

Still loads to do, mostly tidying up and getting ready for the new year of growing.

Bottled : Fat Rabbit IPA

After a total fermentation time of 15 days the Fat Rabbit IPA is now in bottles, 42 500ml bottles all nice and full.

This beer was brewed on the 18th Sept 2014 and was left in the No-Chill cube on top of 25g of Challenger & Redsell's Eastwell Goldings hops, then was fermented for 5 days at 20'C, at this point I added 50g of hops as a dry hop addition, and left this to finish fermenting until today when it was bottled. The final SG did not fall as far as I had hoped. It finished at 1016 from 1058 so around 5.5% ABV which is fine by me.

Each bottle was primed with 1/2 a tsp of normal granulated sugar apart from one special bottle, where it had a added kick in the form of a whole dried home-grown habanero chilli. This is a special bottle for a friend.

Thanks to everyone on the Home-brewing Community on Google for their assistance on the final SG of this brew.

Bottled : Peach Wine

As from this post I'm trying out a new format to the blog and not going to post every stage of the brew process as individual posts anymore but will post just 2 blogs post per brew with the brew-day being one and the bottling day as the other, with a break down of the process. Just to save a little time and make the posts easier to find when I look back at them.

Bottled the Peach Wine today that was made on the 26/05/14. Got 5 full bottles (750ml) and a half bottle for drinking young. So pretty good all in all. It's a nice colour and from a quick taste test not a bad wine at all.

• 26/05/14 Made up the wine Must
• 27/05/14 Yeast and Nutrient added.
• 01/06/14 Racked into Demijohn
• 14/07/14 Racked
• 15/07/14 Clear-It wine fining's added.
• 30/09/14 Bottled

Autumn is here, Garlic Planting time!

Well Autumn seems to be here, and the harvesting from the Allotment is now slowing down.

I went down to the plots to do lots of sorting ready for winter, a general dig over and tidy up, with no more beans to pick I was preparing to remove all the canes to be stored over winter in the shed, but I have now decided to leave the beans alone for a while while I collect some free bean seed for next year from the pods that were to big and stringy  to eat.

So I just ended up pottering around doing bits and pieces around the site but not really accomplishing much.

There is so much to do, but I just can't do it at the moment. The Hops need relocating but I can't do that until the plants die back, the canes need taking down where the climbing beans are and the whole bed needs a weed and a dig over, but I am collecting seed so thats on hold. I'm splitting another bed into two parts for next year but I can't do that until the beetroot is up.

I did plant my Elephant Garlic cloves that I grew last year, so hopefully FREE garlic for next year. 18 cloves planted with still loads left to cook with here at home. I can't remember when I planted the Elephant Garlic last year, it was sometime around now I think. The internet says it's planted in the Autumn so they are in. Along side the Elephant Garlic I have also planted 27 cloves of Marco Garlic (Softneck) £2.99 for two bulbs at the Garden Center. I still have room for another type of Garlic in that bed and as we use it quite a bit and it stores so well I might invest in another garlic as it becomes available in the garden centres to fill the bed right up.

I'm still picking Chillies and Sweet peppers from the Greenhouse, with so much more to come that are still unripe. Had another bumper harvest I'm running out of things to do with the Hot Peppers.



There are a few more things still growing and that I am able to harvest, the Autumn fruiting raspberries are now fruiting well and I have now collected a good half of a icecream tub that are in the freezer. Which for their 1st year in the ground I don't think thats to bad so far, I have made a wine with them already and we have also had a load in a trifle so half a tub saved so far is doing good . The courgettes and patti pan's are still coming, but a lot slower now. Chard is doing well, and the Kale is nearly at a point that we can start to eat it.

The Kale has been a lot slower this year but I think thats due to it being the wrong side of the polytunnel and it's not getting quite enough sunshine with it there.



I had to pick 2 of my three Invincible Pumpkins today as the plants had died right back to the stalks of the fruit. I still have one going strong which I hope will get to full size as the packet says 5kg each fruit, but my ones I had to pick are only just over 1.5kg each. Should still make a good Pumpkin Beer though.

Got a couple of butternut squashes doing okay, they seem to grow so slowly though.

Well I think that's it for today. Next time I'm down the 'Lottie I need to have a good look on my cabbages, and see how the Savoy's are getting on/eaten

Fermenting/Dry Hop : Fat Rabbit IPA

The Fat Rabbit IPA sat in the No-Chill Cube on the 25g of mixed Challenger/Redsell's Eastwell Goldings hops for 2 days until a got the fermentation fridge sorted out ready for this brew to ferment with Safale S04. I dry pitched the yeast right on top of the sweet wort. Really should have made a starter or something as after I pitched the yeast, I noticed it was nearly a year after it's use by date. Got away with it though as it started fermenting by the next morning.

I set the fridge to 22'C as the Temperature Range for this yeast is  15-24'C. This was left to ferment undisturbed for 7 days before I checked the gravity, it dropped down to 1020 SG from 1058 SG. So Happy days.

Sample tasted very good, and it's a great colour at the moment. A pale gold.

Due to the fact that this beer is using home grown Hops and I have plenty to spare I am having my first go at Dry Hopping a beer.

I spent a day in town trying to hunt down a nylon or muslin bag to use to dry hop this brew in the Primary fermentor (I don't have a second 25litre bucket) ended up finding one of these.

So in went a Jack Daniels glass and I StarSan'ed the bag and glass, added a massive load of Hops (50g) and dropped it into the fermenting bucket in the fridge. Dropped the temperature in the fridge to 20'C and the bag and Hops will now stay there for a few days to extract the aromas.

I expect I'll be bottling this by the end of the month and hopefully it will turn out a good brew, as I'm hoping this will be the basic recipe for my House IPA

Brewday: Mead (Honey Wine) with @AlexharwoodUk

Alex (@AlexharwoodUk ) from Twitter came over today with 3 jars of Rowse Honey, just over 2kg of lovely honey to make a Mead as well a 5 liters of Spring Water, a orange and a lemon.


Mead is a simple Honey Wine, and we wanted to keep it just that, Simple.

So we just warmed up the Honey pots to help the honey escape the Jars and poured it into my Jam Pan, topped the Pan up with Spring Water to 5 litres and brought the Honey and water mix to a gentle simmer, skimming off any foam.

Then transferred the soon to be Mead liquid into one of my 5 litre fermenting buckets and let it cool down. By early evening it was cool enough to add the lemon and orange juice, along with the yeast and yeast nutrient and it is now slowly bubbling away turning all that natural sugar into alcohol.

I actually checked the SG of the Must this time and if it ferments right out it should come in at 17% ABV

Bottled: Turbo Cider & Blackberry

Forgot about this one, it was sat behind the other wines in the demijohns, quite happy. I made this way back on the 17/07/14 so it's now not really a turbo cider any more.

It was made up the standard way for a turbo cider, 4 litres of Tesco Value Apple juice dumped right into the demijohn, and then added some Youngs Cider Yeast.

Did a little twist to this one, once the Turbo Cider had stopped fermenting I added 200ml of home made blackberry cordial to the demijohn, then just forgot about it until now.

Bottled it all up today into 550ml beer bottles and primed with a 1/2 tsp of sugar to give it a little sparkle.Ended up with Seven 550ml bottles to add to my stock in the Cabin Brewery.

Had a sneaky taste on bottling, as you do, and it's pretty good Cider, with the light purple colour and the aroma from the blackberries coming through quite well.

With the slight carbonation from the sugar in the bottles I think it will be a nice drink.

Brewday : Fat Rabbit IPA

Made up a beer today, due to the fact I have over a kilo of mixed Challenger/Redsell's Eastwell Goldings hops all bagged up I decided to do a big hopped IPA hence the name Fat Rabbit (Big Hopped)

At the same time I thought I would give the BeerSmith software a trial as version 2 now supports BIAB. I started out doing a SmAsH beer (Single Malt & Single Hop), but I wanted a bit more colour to the beer so added a little black and crystal malt bringing the EBC value to around 20.

The BeerSmith software is quite easy to used so I banged in the grain bill to make up a IPA at around 6% ABV, added the hops in pretty much a hap hazard way to give me quite a high bitterness value and ended up with the recipe you see below apart from where it just says Challenger it is in fact my Challenger/Goldings mix.

Fat Rabbit IPA

English IPA (14 A)

Created with BeerSmith

Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 23.00 l
Boil Size: 34.49 l
Boil Time: 90 min
End of Boil Vol: 27.23 l
Final Bottling Vol: 21.60 l
Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage

Date: 16 Sep 2014
Brewer:  Simon
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: Electric Urn (10 Gal/40 L) - BIAB
Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 79.7 %
Taste Rating: 30.0

Taste Notes:

Ingredients

Amt	Name	Type	#	%/IBU
6.90 kg	Pale Ale (Crisp) (7.9 EBC)	Grain	1	98.6 %
0.07 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC)	Grain	2	1.0 %
0.03 kg	Black (Patent) Malt (985.0 EBC)	Grain	3	0.4 %
50.00 g	Challenger [7.50 %] - First Wort 90.0 min	Hop	4	42.2 IBUs
10.00 g	Challenger [7.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	5	7.2 IBUs
10.00 g	Challenger [7.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min	Hop	6	5.5 IBUs
1 Items	Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)	Fining	7	-
25.00 g	Challenger [7.50 %] - Cube Hop	Hop	8	3.3 IBUs

Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color

Est Original Gravity: 1.067 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.020 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.2 %
Bitterness: 58.1 IBUs
Est Color: 19.1 EBC

Measured Original Gravity: 1.058 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 6.3 %

Calories: 543.1 kcal/l

Mash Profile

Mash Name: BIAB, Full Body
Sparge Water: -0.00 l
Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE

Total Grain Weight: 7.00 kg
Grain Temperature: 18.0 C
Tun Temperature: 22.2 C
Mash PH: 5.20

Mash Steps

Name	Description	Step Temperature	Step Time
Saccharification	Add 34.77 l of water at 73.5 C	68.9 C	90 min
Mash Out	Heat to 75.6 C over 7 min	75.6 C	10 min

Mash Notes: Brew in a bag method where the full boil volume is mashed within the boil vessel and then the grains are withdrawn at the end of the mash. No active sparging is required. This is a full body beer profile.

 

My Notes

The BeerSmith software was bang on with the volumes of water I needed for the Mash, it suggested I needed 34.771 litres of water in the Boiler before I added the grains, I added 35 litres just for ease of measuring. It left me with hardly any dead-space after the grains where rained into the hot water for the Mash.

Did my usual 90 min Mash with a stir at the 45 min stage with a quick reheat to get the temperature back to 66'C as it had dropped to 65'C at that point.

After lifting the grain bag at the end of the Mash, BeerSmith said I needed to add water to make the Pre-Boil volume 34.49 litres so I did pretty much as I was told and added 3 litres of water which the brought my Pre-Boil volume back up to 35 litres.

I checked my Pre-Boil SG and it was bang on what BeerSmith said it would be 1.051. So far so good.

Chucked in my FWH (50g) and got on with the boil. After the boil was done and the Hops all added , turned off the heat and whirlpooled and let the Wort settle for 10 min then drained the Wort from the boiler onto 25g of hops in the No-Chill cube.

This is where I don't understand the BeerSmith figures, as BeerSmith says that I should of had a Post Boil Vol of 27.23 litres and a SG of 1.067 ? Well 1.067 would give me a a AVB of around 7.5% but my measured SG post-boil was 1.058 which is pretty much where it should be to hit a 6% ABV beer so I'm not quite sure where BeerSmith got those figures from as on the Design Tab it reads at 6.2% ABV.

Yet the Post-Boil volume was quite close, 27.23 litres was the BeerSmith value, and when I transferred the Hot Wort into the No-Chill cube it came up to the 25 litre mark, so 2.23 litres different. Well I added a bit more water post-boil, to that bring the discrepancy down to  about 1.7 litres and with the 70g of Hops soaking up a fair bit I reckon it's pretty much bang on.

I'll have to do some research into the post-boil SG's and Pre-Boil SG's in BeerSmith.

Right now the Sweet Wort is sat in the No-Chill cube ready for when I get a chance to ferment it into Beer

Hot Stuff!!!

 

Had a bounty of a chilli harvest again this year, this lot is about 1/2 of what I have picked so far, and there are so many more to come.

I've only grown a couple of varieties this year, Habanero and Medina (Turbo Chilli) for the hot peppers, and Yummy and Britney for the sweet peppers. I've already had to put some in the freezer, made a few hot sauces, and I still have a tonne left to do something with.  I think I'll dry a load and hang them up in the Cabin Brewery, as well as for cooking later on in the year. Might smoke a few as well.

The Humulus lupulus (Hops) are all in

The last of the hops have now been picked, unfortunately the Challenger & Redsell's Eastwell Goldings have grown into one another, so that means I'll have a mixed bag of hops on this batch. Good job the Challenger hop is a duel purpose hop.

After six hours of picking the hops from the bines in the sunshine, I ended up with a rather large harvest of my mixed hops, in fact it came in at 6.5kg in four large carrier bags.

When I got all the hops home they where starting to sweat a bit in  the bags so to prevent them going bad I dumped the lot onto the floor of the Cabin Brewery to air them out. Then into the dehydrator to dry them out before storing them in vac-packed bags. To do the 6.5kg of mixed hops took a total of 4 days with the dehydrator and that gave me 1.481kg of hops in total.

So the end result of the 2014 hop harvest was 329g of Target, 269g of Fuggle, and 1481g of Challenger & Goldings Mixed. Giving me just over 2kg of dried hops to make beer with. That equates to around about 20 forty pint brewdays or about 800 pints.

With dried hops going for around £5 per 100g that is a bounty of around £70 as long as it makes a good beer. So it'll soon be time to test them out with a mega hopped IPA

The Hop Harvest 2014 (Challenger & Redsell's Eastwell) Part 3

The last of the hops have now been picked, unfortunately the Challenger & Redsell's Eastwell Goldings have grown into one another, so that means I'll have a mixed bag of hops on this batch. Good job the Challenger hop is a duel purpose hop.

After six hours of picking the hops from the bines in the sunshine, I ended up with a rather large harvest of my mixed hops, in fact it came in at 6.5kg in four large carrier bags.

When I got all the hops home they where starting to sweat a bit in  the bags so to prevent them going bad I dumped the lot onto the floor of the Cabin Brewery to air them out. Then into the dehydrator to dry them out before storing them in vac-packed bags. To do the 6.5kg of mixed hops took a total of 4 days with the dehydrator and that gave me 1.481kg of hops in total.

So the end result of the 2014 hop harvest was 329g of Target, 269g of Fuggle, and 1481g of Challenger & Goldings Mixed. Giving me just over 2kg of dried hops to make beer with. That equates to around about 20 forty pint brewdays or about 800 pints.

With dried hops going for around £5 per 100g that is a bounty of around £70 as long as it makes a good beer. So it'll soon be time to test them out with a mega hopped IPA

The Hop Harvest 2014 (Fuggles & Target) Part 2

The dehydrator has done it's stuff lovely with the 1.4kg of Fuggles Hops, and they are all packaged up in 50g zip lock bags, ended up with a total of 269 grams of dried Fuggle Hops.

The Target hops have also been picked from the bines as well now, 1.5kg of cones in total, these have also been dried now, 329 grams ready for brewing, again packed in 50g ziplocks.

The dehydrator was set at 50'C and the hops dried for around 11-12 hours. They lost around 80% of their weight in drying which I think is about right.

So it's just the Golding (Redsell's Eastwell) and the Challenger hops that still need to be picked, however these two plants are all wrapped up in each other so I may end up with a Golding/Challenger mix all in one bag, I'll soon see when it comes to picking time maybe this sunday.

The Hop Harvest 2014 (Fuggles) Part 1

A nice warm September day so walked down to the Allotment ready to harvest the hops. Decided to start with the Fuggles as it was the one that seemed to have the less hops on it. It was also the easiest of the four plants to get at.

So I slowly starting picking the cones from the Fuggles Hop into a carrier bag, after lowering the bines down on the string.

The bag soon filled up with lovely fuggle hop cones. In fact 1.4kg in total (green). In fact I had to call it a day with just the Fuggles as I ran out of room in my bag.

Looks like the poor old dehydrator is going to running flat out for a while and I better get a few brews going.

The dehydrator is now running at a recommended  temp of 50'C, it's pretty well packed so tomorrow morning I'll have to rotate the trays a bit to get an even dry.

At a guess when all this lot it dry I will have around about 500-600g of dried Fuggle hops to brew with.

Family Moved in & Harvesting Continues

We have a new family who have moved into one of our compost bins, Mr and Mrs Slow worm.  Hopefully lots of babies to come.  Saw one slow worm in the compost bin earlier on in the year so he obviously decided to make it his new love nest.  Lovely to have creatures setting up home on the plot, often see little lizards in and around the raised beds too.



 



The beans are starting to come to an end now, apart from the runners which we keep producing for a few more weeks yet.  Picked the last few Hunters and Cobras today and only a few flowers left on the dwarf beans.  Been a good year though and the freezer is full.   The hops are getting close to harvest time, that will certainly be a full days work



The sunflowers are certainly brightening up the allotment now that the calendulas and poppies are almost done.  Sunflowers of all shapes and sizes, some about 10 foot tall, some as short as 10 inches.  Had to bring some home today to brighten up the kitchen, look lovely with a bit of fennel.



Todays haul - more beans, some chilli peppers, courgettes and tomatoberries.  Also the largest pattypan squash we have grown.  Also pickled 5 jars of beetroot today, still have loads more to dig up!

The Ultimate Allotment Sandwich!!

On the trip to the 'Lottie today I went prepared with couple of slices of bread, some cheese and a bit of salad dressing to make up a fresh lunch.

The contents of the sandwich ended up with this (everything in blue was grown and picked from the allotment):

• Cheese (not from the Allotment)


• 2 very small red Habanero chillies (finely chopped)


• 1 small Medina chilli (finely chopped)


• 3 radishes, 2 white one red (finely sliced)


• A sliced tomatoberry


• a Sliced Crystal Lemon Cucumber


• Little Gem Lettuce


• Lola Rossa Lettuce


• And a good dollop of Honey & Mustard dressing.

You just can't get a fresher sandwich than that, all washed with rain water, and the chillies and radish certainly gave it a kick.

Oh and I did some work weeding and stuff, and picked a load of veg again :)

Brewday : Elderberry Wine

Every year I go out foraging for Elderberries, I really like this wine and have made it now almost every year since I started brewing.

This batch, which I intend to make several, is a early batch of elderberry wine, as the berries on the trees are just coming into fruit.

I got my required 1.5kg of berries (stripped from the stalks), but there are quite a few unripe ones in there, so I hope this won't effect the flavour of the finished wine.

The berries are then put in the bucket and crushed with a potato masher, then I top up the bucket to the 5 litre mark with boiling water.

This is then allowed to cool and then it is fermented on the fruit for a week, no sugar is added yet, this is done a bit later on and I'll blog it then.

I'm making this wine the same way as I always do, more details on this page.

Brewday: Apricot Wine

 I was given a nice bag of little Apricots from a mate at work, (thanks Les)  They are only little tiny ones but I had a taste and they are very nice.

 After Cutting and stoning all of them, which took forever, I ended up with 1.048kg of fruit

Put all the fruit into my fermentation bucket added 1kg of sugar then poured boiling water over the top to the 5 litre mark on the bucket, stirred it all up until  the sugar was dissolved.

Let this cool over night then added the yeast in the morning. I'll leave this now to ferment on the fruit for a while then transfer it to a demijohn to finish.

Hop Growing 2014 season (Part 4)

Got a good picture of the hops this weekend.

From left to right, Fuggles, Target, Challenger and Goldings all mixed up together.

The Hops are now starting to form on the bines now so that's great. I just hope that in the latest high winds that the poles stay up and the main stems don't break.

The Goldings (REDSELL'S EASTWELL GOLDING) and the Challenger are all wrapped up in each other so it's going to be a right pain to sort them out come harvest time. Might just harvest the lot as one and make a beer up using the mixed hops, it's a good job that one is a duel purpose hop.

Hoppyness, Hoppyness, the greatest gift that I possess

Apologies to Ken Dodd for the title first of all.  The hops are indeed doing very well, despite the tail of end of Hurricane Bertha giving them a bit of a bashing today.  Not very much rain with it, just some strong gusts of wind that were testing the poles integrity.  The hops are flowering and hopefully will produce much hoppy goodness for Simons brewing.







Really pleased with the produce that is coming back from the plots, all of it down to Simons hard work really, I just go down and pick beans really, do a bit of weeding and generally stand back and admire all Simons dedication.   Brought back another big bag of beans and crystal lemon cucumbers today, and some peppers and swiss chard.  Freezer is full of beans so having to eat them.  Lots.  And lots.



Simon checking things out in his wonderful pepper greenhouse.  All looking good in there.  He munched on a Habenero today.  Ouch.



One of our Invincible pumpkins, have a few coming along nicely now.  Should go black on the outside and be bright orange on the inside.  Headed towards a spot of beer making I reckon.



Our one and only marrow, earmarked for homemade marrow and ginger jam which is my all time favourite.  Will let this grow for quite some time yet I think.





The jungle, AKA the polytunnel.  Somewhere in there are multiple cucumbers, both 'normal' and crystal apples, and a melon.  Its looking good but couldnt get close enough to photograph due to the prickly cucumbers.  Oodles of tomato berries too, mostly green at the moment.



Simons lettuce bed.  Not sure why the funny babbits are leaving this alone, would have thought it would suit Peter Rabbit to a tee.  However they remain perfect and un-nibbled.

And finally, Simon with our tallest sunflower so far, the bank of sunflowers is looking lovely but they are all facing the wrong way due to the suns direction!