Recent content by Bitter_Dave

I'm not even sure young people know about home-brewing as a hobby these days. In the past you could not avoid it. Closure of Wilkinson isn't going to help as it was probably an entry into the hobby.

I started brewing in the mid-2000s and it seemed like a pretty marginal hobby back then - nobody I knew did it, I went to a homebrew club a couple of times and and there were a few of us there. Boots had stopped their homebrew stuff by then I think. I stopped brewing for a decade when I had...

The National Service stuff is just absolutely nuts. Trying to win back some votes from Reform, but creating headlines that horrify far more voters. So the solution to the problems of a divided country (that they themselves presided over) in the year 2024 is National Service??? Really? It's like...

I think the point being made is that to the financial problems inherited in 2010 were due to the global financial crisis, which affected every country in the world. Gordon Brown deserves some credit for preventing the whole world economy collapsing. Since 2010 Conservative austerity has held...

I am tribally labour and will be voting Labour in my safe labour seat. But I have tactically voted lib dem once to try and oust a Tory MP before, which was painful because it was a while after the coalition government.

With beer kits I would always add more DME rather than sugar. It will give it more body. If you shop around you can find a kilo of DME for as little as £6. Medium works well in a bitter. If you are paying £5 for 500gms of DME you are paying too much.

You could try making a milk stout by adding 500gms of lactose, which does not ferment out and leaves some more body. It would still taste thin though (although it would taste thin if you added a kilo of sugar). If you were prepared to go a bit higher with abv add 500gms of DME would prob make a...

... And their 'pubs' are **** too! Completely without any charm

I agree with your sentiment entirely about their beer. I went on a Brewdog beer tasting many years ago (a friend was given tickets) and the guy leading it implied there was no good beer before they came along, which I found a bit rich because (a) Punk IPA is, at best, seriously overrated (and on...

I used to boil the sugar in a small amount of water and add this. But to be honest you can just add it dry (that's what I do when I bottle nowadays). The point about sediment was that it may naturally fall the bottom of the barrel, below the tap. If you are racking from a fermenter using a tap...

"Mr Watt will be replaced by James Arrow, who was hired as chief operating officer last September as forward planning for Mr Watt's replacement. He was previously managing director of Boots Opticians. Before this, he spent a decade at Dixons Carphone, where he held senior roles across...

Erm, if I understand correctly, you were shaking the barrel? If so, as clint said, the sediment probably went into solution. You don't need to shake the barrel. When I used to use barrels I would often add priming sugar at the end and never had a problem.

I think the law changed a few years back. No more pretending you are making perfume!

To be honest, the sorts of beers you like are never going to be carbonated to right levels in a pressure barrel. They are not designed to take that much pressure. If you like real ales and drink quickly pressure barrels are great (assuming you can get them to hold pressure, but there is a knack...

In a pressure barrel a C02 cartridge is only going to push the beer out the barrel, not carbonate it. If you have to use a lot of C02 cartridges to get the beer out it is not holding pressure properly.