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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.

Hi Robin welcome to the forum. A couple of thoughts. If you are using a plastic pressure barrel I'm afraid you are not going to get lager levels of carbonation. You need to use bottles for this as they hold greater pressure. Plastic pressure barrels will give carbonation equivalent to pub real...

Interesting post NB. Not sure anyone here is claiming nationalisation is a panacea. But all else being equal, is it really worth renewing train contracts when they come up for renewal and paying towards company profits through our fairs and taxes?

Thanks for your reply Baron. I don't disagree that things were not great under BR in the past (as I said, partly because of under-investment). But I'm not convinced by the argument things have improved under a private model. Incredibly expensive and unreliable. Privatised rail is the worst of...

If you don't mind me asking Baron, how much do you use the railways?

Up until a few years ago I used rail on a daily basis to get to work in the South and I can tell you it was absolutely grim + incredibly expensive. I won't bore you with endless tails of woe, but it really can't have been much worse. Some of my colleagues had to get rail replacement buses for...

The idea that nationalisation will increase wages in the long term is far from clear. After privatisation wages in the rail industry went up because it created competition between the rail companies for staff whereas before there was national pay bargaining. The industry is already so regulated...

I've had two cheap plastic bottling sticks (I think they were made by Young's) - never had problem. Maybe you were just unlucky with the one you got? Not sure why being stainless steel would prevent leaks

Equivalent beer today would probably be about 30p Welcome to the forum Rob

Useful to have a second fridge at Christmas (just don't butcher it!). Welcome to Jsmid. Temp control fridge was the best brewing investment I made

Wow, that's impressive list! I don't think I have all that many records that are valuable (except a couple of early Beatles records I inherited from my mum), partly because the stuff I had in my youth - some which might be worth something - is in less than pristine condition. That said, I am...