Recent content by Sandimas

Last year was interesting and probably the worst year so far for me: the Styrian Goldings & Challenger had a nice early growth spurt but the dry spell in late Spring made them all shrivel up. They recovered to a degree, but the Cascade had a more linear growth and was the best in 2023...

No sign of my Cascade yet which is a bit worrying, although they do grow at different rates : my Challenger is about 2ft high but the clear winner so far is these Styrian Goldings, they look about 5ft high, could reach the top of the support by the end of the month. Edit: just found the...

I'm not far from you, sad to hear that Pops is calling it a day, he started me off home brewing 13 years ago: my first brew was his made-up kit Golden Citrus Blast. With Wilko going too, there is nothing locally. The Malt Miller is down at Swindon is you don't mind a bit of a drive. Other than...

I prefer to bottle my stouts, in fact I'll be doing one this weekend if it's finished fermenting.

Was going to suggest Cacao Nibs (available from Tesco etc), which I've just added to my stout, but see you've gone with cocoa.....let us know how it turns out.

My cousin's first car was a Viva he customised, got some bits off a Viva GT in the scrapyard (inc bonnet with scoops), fitted sidepipes, jacked it up with Range Rover springs and painted it gold underneath. Was a bit of a beast but came to an untimely end: it was jacked up so much that when he...

Same here. I had the coupe just like this one, loved that car but it disintegrated into a pile of rust very quickly. This was my 2nd car, first was a Mk.1 Ford Escort which also rusted to bits. After that I bought new, a Ford XR2.....which also rusted to bits!

Tin Miners is great, Spring Beer is a bit meh to my taste. Great book, I've made many of the recipes, London Bitter and Irish Red are two of my favourites.

That mirrors our 2023 summer here in the UK, both my hops and chillies were poor. In fact, I've been growing chillis for almost 20 years and there was just no heat in any of them last summer, I guess it was the lack of sunlight: was warm enough, just cloudy nearly every day. 2024 seems to be...

Really hard to pin down. I've been brewing 13 years and still get the odd one. When were they brewed? I tend to get more gushers with brews made in mid-late summer. Probably wild yeast. Just started making Sourdough, am amazed how much wild yeast is in the air in the house, left the containers...

Well, here it is after 10 weeks in the bottle: nicely clear and a good head. Taste-wise, it's OK, the sweetness has gone and it's a nice malty brew....just not on a par with my AG brews. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but when I started brewing this was the best canned kit I brewed and I...

Not sure what effect cutting them back this late will have, always cut mine back at the start of winter after picking the hops, late Sept / early Oct. You should have new shoots appearing now.

I live on a bit of road when the kids like to race around, we get a few cars in the hedge every year, occasionally one of top of the hedge, and recently one car managed to hit the speed sign and launch his car completely over the hedge and land in the nearby field. I always go out to see if...

You can still buy Gervin Ale Yeast, just not from Wilko - I've seen it in my LHBS and a quick Google shows many homebrew suppliers stock it. Like you it was my go-to yeast for ales.

In a word, no, I've not experienced anything like this in over 200 AG brews. I got a 3% efficiency increase when I changed grain suppliers, and then a 1% drop when I changed again, but 15% is huge. And it sounds like you know your kit and your process, so it can't be that. I'd go with the above...