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First taste, new bitter. This started off as @pilgrimhudd 's recipe, but became a bit of a Trigger's Broom. 🙂 Very early days (17 days in bottle), I usually allow at least three weeks before first taste, but because this was something new, I was curious. Well, it says something when you've...

The US has vast areas of wasteland were nobody lives. That, and the right geology, means fracking has some purpose in the US. Neither apply here. The boss of Cuadilla said the other day he doesn't think it's worth it in the UK, and he should know. And,more relevantly, even if it fulfilled some...

Anyway, bigger supplies of gas (even if proven, unlikely) is not we need, in the long-term anyway. We're supposed to be weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, remember? We need to separate short-term emergency measures from long-term policy. Also, we are not short of gas right now. We are selling...

Some people do it all the time, others never bother with it. I tend to the latter camp. I've made one or two attempts, but the results haven't encouraged me to persist. However, clearly many experienced brewers get very good resulta doing it. What I would say is, get some experience under your...

The chances of fracking happening on any appreciable scale in the UK is about as great as the chances of any asylum-seekers actually ending up in Rwanda.

The weird think for me is now that the Tories look set to unearth this dead cat of a policy, here's the boss of Cuadilla the fracking company saying he doesn't think it's worth it anyway. Odd that, considering they were so bullish a few years back. :confused.: The truth surely is that on our...

I dry-hop my parsnip stout (funnily enough, I don't usuallt bother with 'proper' beers). Anyway, I dangle a thin muslin bag of hops into the demi-john, the bag clamped in position by the air-lock bung. Typically I do this when fermentation has about finished, and gravity is about 1009-1010...

I'm drinking my latest batch of weiss. I split the batch into three; coriander, tangerine, and coriander + tangerine. All were decent, but rather to my surprise, c +t came out just on top, I think that's the route I would go down again.

That murky pic proves little 🙂 , but the beer on the right is @Alastair70 's Amber Ale. I managed to find an old bottle of my effort, from some months back, on the left. Not dissimilar colours, but mine is a little more tawny and Alastair's a little more ruby. I remarked at the time I brewed...

Order collected: many thanks, guys!

I use ordinary beer bottles. I don't care about the weight, but I want the deep-collar type of ease of capping. And as I've remarked before, if yu want clear bottles, most, altough not all, are not deep-collar. Brains SA (Lidl) is one that is, though. I have never, ever, had a bottle actually...

Orrell would be great, ta!

I've been keeping an eye open for a heads-up on this too. Just about out of base malt.

Does not make them bad yeasts, I assume you mean, CC?

Yeah, I've made a couple of batches of (very simple) weiss using M20 and in both cases <checks notes> gravity went from 1044 to 1010, for a modest ABV of around 4.4%, which I prefer. But if you whack up the OG that much, you surely can't expect it to finish at the same point.

The reason energy prices are going up much less in Germany than here, is not because Germany is somehow better placed in the energy market than we are; in fact they are arguably in a worse position with their reliance on Russia. It's because a) the German govt is not going to throw its citizens...

On past form, building, and getting a nuclear power station up and running, seems to take literally decades. I don't think that's a solution. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/31/who-will-fund-sizewell-c-nuclear-plant-when-will-it-be-built-explainer From the above link: The...

Further batch of oatmeal stout. I was very pleased with the last batch I made, and this has only the slightest tweak in the recipe by comparison with it.

Short answer is, I used to consider the electricity cost negligible, but the way the prices are going, you can't say that now. But as noted, compared to ingredients costs (which are also increasing in tandem), perhaps not a deal-breaker. But speaking as someone whose two principal pastimes are...

I don't do a lot of sparging. usually only 2 litres of water. Typically, taking my last brew, 14 litre target batch, grain bill 3.3 kg. I start with 19 litres of water, plus the 2 litres of sparging but I also 'lauter' (not sure that's the right term) it by re-ciriculating 4 litres of te wort...