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I've experimented with loads of different juices, you can water down but too much and you loose body and acidity. Orange juice is the most "interesting" and some of the more fancy juices work a treat. The darker juices I think work better, but apple yep great cheats cider.

Alexanders are known to be invasive and in places in Bristol where they have settled they have gone like wildfire. The spots I used to pick 10 years ago were once sparse and are now huge and plentiful.

They look like alexanders seeds to me too.

Just been out and found some water lilly seed pods. I seem to recall that the seed pods are edible and you can even make a sort of pop corn with them? Before I tuck in, any idea if there are any dangers I need to be aware of, are some water lillies poisonous for eg?

Only just seen this Cheers Mike and good luck to you and everyone involved in the future of the site. Treat her well, have fun and hope you stay on top of all those spammers!

Nope, I bought a bag of malted grain and used that.

Made a slight modification on your advice and used a bin intead of a cool box, kept the silicone pipe and it seems to work the bin is cool to the touch and plenty of smoke being generated. So I guess it is a cool smoker. Pumps seems a little to high tech for me on this first attempt! Should have som...

Thinking of having a go at making a smoker to smoke some malt. I'm thinking using the equipment I have is the best bet; I have... 1. Cool box 2. an old disposable barbeque 3. A large cake tin 4. a piece of silicone tubing Drill a hole in the tin and the cool box, attach the silcone tubing to join th...

Black Isle come close, they grow and send it 10 or so miles down the road!

I've made beer using fresh hops and will do so again this year. I used about double what I would have dried. Dunc is right about calculating IBU's and all that and what you can do is have a cup of hop tea and compare it to hop with known and higher AA's and keep diluting by 50% until you get a match...

HAve you bottled yet? I'd suggest keeping it going until the hydrometer reads 1.010 or so. The real key is to have consistant readings over 3 days so in other words it might read 1.015 but if it does that over three days then you should be fine. Unless its gotten cold then I'd also suggest moving to...

I made a list of all the homebrew shops in the UK which might help. I get mine locally. The trouble with online is that you have to pay postage, but I guess you could team up with a group and bulk buy to bring costs down.

The green bit of dandelion will impart a bitter flavour to the wine, so yep just the leaves. I've also made dandelion coffee in a filter but you don't even have to be that prescise I've made by just pouring hot water over cut up bits of the root.

I've got a blog! http://theotherandyhamilton.com/

Nope, I love getting up early and nipping out at that time. I've a garden now rather than an allotment so its easier, but when I had the allotment I used to get there at 5am and come back at 8.30 watching everyone go off to work. There is a stillness you don't get at any other time.

Perhaps there will be a mention of barley growing ;)