Home brewing

A bit quiet over the past week or so, as we've been working in the garden, clearing areas for planting and planting out the young plants that still look to be doing well. Some kind of yellow bug attempted to infest our aubergines, so we're keeping an eye on that. The tomatoes all look to be doing well and are putting out flowers, as is the large loganberry which grows up a wall. Today we noticed lots of tiny little plums starting to grow as well. It's a way off yet, but plum chutney and German-style plum cake beckons for the future. Our herbs that have been living in pots for the last 4 years or so are going to be finally able to stretch their legs (hopefully without taking over!) as we clear spaces for a herb garden. We'll put some pictures up soon.

The big adventure since the weekend is our first proper attempt at brewing beer. We're following the instructions and one of the recipes from a Camra book (now out of print) by Graham Wheeler and Roger Protz - 'Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home'. As it's May and May is Camra's 'Mild Month', we've gone for one of the simpler mild ale recipes - and with a fair wind we should end up with some 4 and a bit % beer to drink in about a month's time. Too late to drink in May of course!

We've ordered our equipment and ingredients from a couple of online stockists, both of which were excellent in terms of despatching the goods quickly and responding to queries with the order. Hopshop (http://www.hopshopuk.com/) provided yeast and hops. The yeast we got was a 'smack pack' produced by Wyeast - as you can see from the picture of the early stages of fermenting, it's worked really well. There are lots of places on the web (as well as the Wheeler book) that give instructions on how to make a yeast starter and this seems to have been a really successful way of getting it all going.

The bulk of our equipment we got from Art Of Brewing (http://www.art-of-brewing.co.uk/). Again very speedy. The first thermometer they sent broke in the post and they responded really quickly to an email about this and sent a replacement the next day. Excellent service. We made quite an investment in equipment up front, which means that our first brew won't be particularly economical, but over time we should start to see a financial benefit. Hopefully! As well as all the little stuff like the thermometer, hydrometer, siphon tube, paddle and so on, we started with this kit:

• A large (27 litre) Burco-type boiler - quite pricey, but good value models available at Catering Equipment Online (http://www.ceonline.co.uk/). Again very quick delivery from them.
• 4 fermentation bins - two with taps fitted. Two of these (one with a tap & one without) go to making the combined mash tun and hopback. We followed Wheeler's instructions and slid one inside the other, having drilled a matrix of 3mm holes in the bottom.
• 1 pressure barrel. Again this is quite a pricey bit of equipment and in order to keep up a continuous supply, brewing enough to make it nice and economical I think you need two.

It's quite nerve-wracking. We've been careful to sterilise everything properly and so far it's gone pretty well. It took a whole day to do the brewing. I started at about 9.30am and ended up pitching the yeast at 8.30pm. It's now been fermenting a day and a bit. Wheeler recommends 'dropping' the beer (siphoning it from the current bin into a new one) half-way through, so that'll be the next thing. Then a couple more days of fermenting before it gets siphoned into a barrel. The thing that is most worrying is the possibility of messing up the next stage! And then having to wait a month before we find out whether we've created something monstrous or something drinkable.

Great fun though! Fingers crossed for the maiden brew of Brampton Mild..