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Apparently, Dave, 55 degrees north is your latitude limit. As that goes through Newcastle (the on Tyne one), you should be OK.

... Still on a 12-year-old Optiplex 745 (scrapper from work) Very good point, Dave - thanks for that. Just in case anyone is wondering what on Earth we're going on about, a Linux installation can bring a very old machine back into useful life. I use an ancient (early 90's) IBM Thinkpad armed with a...

It's a fascinating process, but I have noticed one thing - apparently no yeast is introduced, so it appears to be a completely natural fermentation and therefore comes with all the usual warnings (ie success may come down to where you live).

How many vines did you plant originally?

I'd never heard of it, so thanks for the article, GA. I'd be very interested as to how it turns out, Dave, although I can't see myself being that patient with a cider.

I spoke too soon. Still - it's very pretty.

We got a light covering this morning which had gone an hour later. It's just tried again and got nowhere. Situation normal, then. I've been here for nearly 16 years and we've had settled snow only once, I think.

I'm actually looking forward to this. We (it seems) have an EXTREMELY localised climate pattern (halve all extremes then halve again in winter) and, apart from occasional breakthroughs, that seems to be the norm.
I shouldn't have said that, should I?

Oh - not a half ton, then?

Om nom. Om nom nom nom.
It's enough to make me get some chillis from the freezer right now. Thanks muchly.

I use the Met. Office ever since I discovered that you can fine-tune it to narrow it down to a local weather station. It's now wrong only on rare occasions - certainly it's good enough to make plans.

My six penn'orth ... I use a fair bit of yeast in a slightly different application, but mine's a specific strain designed to do a different job. It's still Saccharomyces cerevisiae, though. However, it's a few years ago that I read about adding a small amount of vit. B1 to a wine must - and I have t...

Very good clarity for its age. Nice one, Bernard. As for taste, I'll join the queue behind GA. I'm sure you'll let us know. I'm also sure that you know that it's worth tasting at a very early stage to establish the benchmark for improvement over time. It promises to be interesting.

This is getting my curiosity going again. I'm beginning to wonder what a sweet chilli wine would be like (not a sweet chilli, you understand but a sweet wine). Off the top of my head, I think it would have to be a white. I may try it with rhubarb. On the other hand, I may not. I wonder ... ... ... ....

I don't mind our mice - they keep themselves to themselves and don't attempt to invade no-go areas (there are many, many other warm and dry bits they can set up home in). As for rats, I have an aerodynamically-shaped half-housebrick as a special greeting for them. I haven't had to use it too often, ...