Recent content by Spinningwoman

I’ve found it annoyingly good. I had been brewing all grain until a house move meant I was in danger of running out of beer so I decided to to a kit and went for this one as a lot of people seemed to like it. It’s so good I’ve made it twice and I keep forgetting it’s ‘only’ a kit.

I found the instructions, but there is no way to disable auto-off that I can see. It apparently kicks in after a minute if the weight is stable, which is a bit quick maybe if you are trying to tilt a fermenter with your non-existent third hand while also preventing beer from spraying round the...

would that involve me having read the instructions? Whoops! However, I’d expect the auto-off to work when they are not used for x minutes, not when the weight on them is changing. Can the auto-off be disabled do you know?

I’ve got those - I use them for filling 5l minikegs as it’s a bit tricky to see the level mounting. But they regularly give up in mid task for some reason - I’ll do a couple of kegs just fine and then half way through the next they just switch off and are a pain to switch back on. It may just be...

I’ll eat anything really, but tripe is on the ‘wouldn’t intentionally order it’ list - which didn’t stop me eating it a few times when I walked the Camino through Spain because I kept forgetting the word. Another ‘nope’ from that experience would be ‘a heaped plateful of lightly cooked octopus...

Just anecdotally, though, I have had three separate sets of friends living in cities whose cats have died unexpectedly for no apparent reason in the last few weeks.

I’ve done two California Classic red wine kits - a Merlot and a Rojo - and just bought two more. They made very drinkable wine-box style wine. (Which is what we would be drinking most of the time otherwise.). I’ve bottled some to see how it ages, but that’s not really what I’m making it for - if...

JK Rowling shared a video she found helpful that a young Doctor made for his mum of breathing exercises to increase lung function - part of that is lying on your front for ten minutes. Lying on your back for long periods restricts some areas of your lungs.

Nothing worked until my husband had a heart attack, survived, and changed his lifestyle completely - lost about three stone on the 5:2 diet and took up long walks every day. Now he still snortles a bit (he has a wonky septum and according to his mother has always been a noisy sleeper) but the...

I've lost my sense of smell - it happened quite suddenly when I was cooking. added soy sauce to a stir fry and suddenly there was nothing wafting from the pan. I checked the bottle thinking I'd picked up the wrong thing or it was out of date! No other symptoms so far - was that the first...

the clip where Boris very carefully doesn’t say ”I think we should do the herd immunity thing‘ but says ‘well, one idea that’s out there is that we should do the herd immunity thing’ was so clearly him testing the waters for that idea - waiting to see what the reaction was while being able to...

I'm in

I tried wax earplugs one time and woke up to find my hair all gummed you with wax. The best ones I’ve found are the 3m yellow classic ones, which are cheap if you buy a big box of 50 or 100 but about £3:99 for one pair if you buy them from boots.

Also, don’t laugh at your wife if you snore. At one point I think I went almost insane at the sound of my husband’s snoring, and that’s not using the word in any exaggerated sense. It was like we would be normal people all day and then I’d be plunged into a nightmare world at night. Wherever I...

It’s not a gift if it is part of a paid for event. Sorry, but that’s just how it works - otherwise every village hall would be going down the route of ‘giving away’ glasses of wine at social events and claiming that the ticket price was only the food and they didn’t need a licence. It’s such a...