Selfsufficientish.com

Definitely not bald, although I was after my last haircut. Possibly a bit young to fall in with the hippies, but yeah, the hair is long enough.

Our loganberry seems to be doing quite similar to other years. The chillis seem to be a bit behind where I'd like them to be, and haven't flowered as much as expected.

I can definitely think of better things to do with my time rather than pluck my eyebrows. Then again, the last time I had my hair cut was a few years back.

I loved my fennel for the seeds, but then I love the taste of anise. Hmm, maybe one to put back in the garden next year

I've been growing it for 6 years now, harvested it once. It grows very happily in my herb garden, perhaps a little too happily, I've had to pull up shoots of it a few times. I don't give it any special treatment, just leave it to it and cut back any dead growth. Looking forward to harvesting it agai...

The apple sherry and the damson chianti are from a book called "brewing wines like those you buy". Most the recipes are a bit intense for home brewing, as they often want large amounts of fruit that have different seasons. The sherry isn't fortified, it's fermented up to something like 18% by lookin...

My uncle co-owns a bit of land which has a bunch of stuff growing on it. Went down yesterday and collected 27 kilos of apples, 6 kilos of rhubarb and 1.5 kilos of damsons. After spending most of yesterday and all of today chopping, pressing and otherwise messing, I am at capacity in my fvs and wonde...

As long as you sterilize the other two jars and don't leave the damson gin out for too long there shouldn't be any problem. Or split your apple mix between two kilners. (Although part of me wonders if you can have too many kilners)

Yeah, the aim was to brew a gruit, hence the particular choice of herbs, I just thought "hopless" was as good a descriptive title anyway (plus the happy accident with hopeless). The low figures for the herbs comes from the lowest used in the various recipes using any of the ingredients. I would pref...

How many gallons is this to brew? 2kg sugar along with the sultanas and grape juice seems a lot of sugar. Water should work fine GA, especially with the sultanas in there. I'd be tempted to add some pectolase and some over brewed tea (tannin). The pectolase and a bit longer aging should stop the nee...

I've made nettle wine just from nettles and really enjoyed it. Not at all what you'd expect. It's an almost spicy taste. One I'll definitely do again.

I've seen recipes for yarrow ale, not tried making any yet. I've only just been happy enough with my reckoning to harvest it.
Spreymalt is just dried malt extract

Yeah, it's perfectly legal to sell alcohol of any strength in the UK, just not always that easy to come by.

After planning this for several years, I'm finally going to have a blast at brewing a hopless ale. Because it's a bit of a stab in the dark I'm going to try it as a 1gal extract brew and sup and see from there. The current plan is 500g medium spreymalt 3g yarrow (dried) 1g rosemary (dried) 1g wormwo...

I've had mixed results in making infused spirits (with and without sugar), and have come to the conclusion taste and see. For example I found a recipe for black pepper schnapps that called for the alcohol (95% abv spiritus from the local Polish shop) to be left on the pepper for over a month. It end...