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My aim has always been to create British style beers similar to those served by the best ‘Real Ale’ pubs, if you will pardon the expression. They should be cool, not cold, clear not cloudy, and with just enough carbonation to give a nice tingle in the mouth, not gassy. It is only possible to...

Did you leave a thin strip at the back unpainted so you could still see how much beer was left?

A 50/50 mix of Dartmoor ‘Jail Ale’ (4.8%) and Fullers ‘Golden Pride’ (8.5%!) slips down a treat on a lovely evening.

There is something strange going on, a Postman just delivered two packets to us. Not only is it Sunday, but its Bank Holiday as well. When asked why he was here, he replied ‘We have to keep up with the opposition’. Wonders never cease.

This last brew holds the record for my slowest ever fermentation, so I am not at all impressed with US 05 Safale yeast, Even after keeping the temperature up to 21C instead of my normal 18/19, it took from 6pm on Monday to 8am this morning to come down to a gravity of 12.4, about 3 days longer...

Thanks. If you want to go on a Brewery Tour see my thread titled ‘C.D.’s Brewery’, which for some reason you can only find by searching for the words ‘impulse purchase’.

Brewed Gyle 310 yesterday, counting from my first all grain brew. 34 ½ gallons of Premium Bitter with an OG of 46, which I am calling ‘Double Celebration’, as it is my son and daughter-in-law’s Silver Wedding Anniversary and her 60th Birthday today. Only difference with this one is 204 gms...

I had to change the gearbox on a narrowboat at Burton on Trent years ago. I explored the Brewery Museum whilst I was there, and was appalled to see the Burton Union system laying around in a yard, having recently been ripped out.

Simple. Fill the Pressure Barrel up with water plus 150cc Antiformin. Leave for12 hours or more, give it a good rinse, job done. If you collect the Antiformin solution in a suitable open topped vessel, like a plastic fermentor, you can submerge your bottles in it. It isn’t a no-rinse cleaner...

Perhaps I should point out that just seeing a Celebrity does not automatically count as a Claim to Fame, there must be some other factor. For example ‘I once saw Harold Wilson standing in a queue outside the paper shop in the Isles of Scilly’ would not qualify, whereas ‘I know that Harold...

No, because they are too scratchy.

If I had another Claim to Fame it would be that World Champion Racing Driver Mike Hawthorn once bought me a half pint of bitter, but it doesn’t really count as he also paid for everyone in the room’s drink as well!

What an impressive first day’s haul, and what interesting lives home-brewers do lead. Who said Reminiscing isn’t as good as it used to be!

Make sure the brewer knows what you intend to ‘scrub the hell out of’ it with beforehand, as scratching stainless steel encourages beerscale growth in the future. Nylon seems ok, but avoid the green scourers.

Claims to Fame. For those who don’t know, this was a running gag on ‘Wake Up to Wogan’, where people with strange names like Mick Sturbs, Norma Stitts, or Rudolph Hart, wrote in with their ‘Claim to Fame’ – like they once had their foot trodden on by Henry Cooper, or had once stood in the next...

This is what nice lacing should look like, and the beer was poured the simplest way possible – by gravity straight from the tap of a basic pressure barrel. It has also been at precisely atmospheric pressure for a week, which is how it will stay for as long as it takes me to finish it. It is...

As others have said, some wheat in the mash and no trace of detergent on the glass produces the best 'lacing'. One that has just been in a dishwasher isn't good in my experience. 'Claims to Fame' should probably have a different thread in The Snug. Mine is that I once bought Acker Bilk a Gin...

I wouldn’t bother brewing if I didn’t have some yeast recently cropped off a commercial brewery’s fermenting vessel, and with so many small breweries around these days, I am surprised more people don’t do the same. I have had to change my source over the years as breweries came and went, and in...

Brilliant!

Trying to save time by taking a gravity reading by floating a fragile laboratory hydrometer directly in my tall 36 gallon capacity cylindriconical FV instead of in a sample jar. The fermentation had progressed faster than I expected, so to my horror I and watching it sink out of sight, where it...