Only about two weeks later and I pulled my first pint from the barrel.
Generally at this stage I find the beer virtually undrinkable, so was pleasantly surprised to find it was pretty damn amazing. So far I’ve drunk about four pints over the course of the week and undeniably it’s a good brew.
I look forward to moving into freshly hopped brews going forward, even if it’s a little more expensive (about 64p a pint)
I’ll admit all of my brews have been from kits. Today however following my return from Egypt I’d been crushed in on an Easyjet flight and twisted one of my vertebra and caught it on my pelvis, or some such. This meant I visited my osteopath in Westcliff.
Very close by is a brew shop. My last visit was 5 years ago, so high time I popped in.
My first move was to walk straight into his stock room. This used to be where he had his “beers of the world” selection of imports. No longer!
I did however walk out slightly poorer and proud owner of a couple of cans of malt extract, hops and yeast. Yes, no generic kit for me… One more step to proper brewing.
And adding hops… Look like a drug dealer…
A little while ago at pizza express if eaten one of their etna pizzas. It was very nice and had a mild, sweet chilli pepper on it. I found peppadew peppers in my local supermarket stuffed with cheese and the same sweet chilli flavour came through.
I set about wondering where I could get some seeds from, but it turns out its very difficult because they are apparently copyrighted. Not something I often come upon when growing fruit and veg.
It got me thinking and doing a bit of searching came across several people wanting to do the same thing.
A few searches on eBay and I’d found a supplier of “peppERdew” peppers. They claim to be so similar (could even come from the same plant… ) that you’d never tell the difference…
Whether they are actually from the same wild African shrub that’s been copyrighted or not, I couldn’t possibly say. All I can say is they’re similar!
Only just noticed by looking through my archives… If you look at:
http://www.waark.com/2008/02/sheds/
And
http://www.waark.com/2011/11/chicken-shed/
You’ll see my poor ol’ friend Ben being mugged into not only once putting up the same shed, but twice. But I have realised the shed is 3 years old… not bad for something that only cost £99, has been broken into, torn down and rebuilt.
A key bit of the work yesterday was painting fencing ready to slot in. I also replaced the old drainage on the back of my neighbours shed as it was previously draining onto my fence panels.
Today I finished the roof and got the guttering on with the help of both my friends Gary & Ben. But it wouldn’t be a proper finished job if we didn’t get the still wet panels into place. Gary, with the aid of my nice new water butt stand and me on some steps managed to easily slide in the first panel.
The 2nd panel almost killed the both of us and our silent observer Ben (didn’t want to get painted). 6ft x 6ft panels, even with no wind are a bit of a problem to fit.
The back of the boat (damaged by me accidentally throwing an oar through it) was repaired by Gary…
… and we finished off by painting it!
The fencing was finished today – well obviously the panels aren’t yet in but that’s because we want to paint them first.
Our workman has done a good job maximising the loss of our garden (it seems our neighbours may have encroached a little onto our land with sheds and greenhouses if you compare fence lines) so the fences are in places a little bit angled but it all looks fine from the back door – its only if you’re looking for it you’d notice.
He’s done an excellent job removing stumps and levelling the ground – its just up to me now to get the fence panels painted and in. We’re going to use the old fencing posts as the foundations for the shed to keep it off the ground – a good bit of reuse!
Ecosac recently contacted me in regards to my post about the co-ops new degradable bags. Similar in feel and texture they assure me they will rot down completely in your home compost bin.
What was more “shocking” to me was the composting bin they sent with it – the “bio.box”. It’s a new design on me – rather than the solid design given out by the council, this one resembles a milk crate being relatively full of holes. The theory is that by letting it breathe, the condensation evaporates and you don’t get the little black fruit flies.
I was very skeptical – after all, we have open bins at work and we’re currently infested with fruit flies.
So far however so good. We’re emptying the bin about once a week and we put a lot of meat scraps in which is primarily from cat food (most of that seems to be soy as it only contains 4% meat making the cats more vegetarian than me…)
I have no idea of cost etc, the primary reason on choosing coop bags was that it transports my produce home and I can reuse them as caddy liners cheaper than I could buy liners – otherwise I was generally using old copies of papers picked off the train to line my caddy for free…
But the bin at least gets my vote – and with only using non modified corn starch you’ll have less chemicals than standard newspaper print AND a non smelly bin.
It is however november. We’ll carry on using it until next summer and if anything changes I’ll let you know, but they look good.
The workshop is now equipped with a nice tool rack, all ready for some proper projects next weekend!
Some people are waking up to the fact they can have free solar panels installed on their house – people like me can’t, I just don’t have the surface area and I’m a few degrees out for optimal use.
Costs are falling though… http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/02/low-cost-solar-panels-fuel-uk-boom?intcmp=122 but it raises an interesting question.
Who cleans the panels? I’m assuming that the householder is responsible. The company gets FIT payments, but the householder gets free electricity. They may just not be aware that a dirty panel will reduce the generation of power very quickly… judging by the amount I wash my car (barely ever), if they wash their panels as infrequently they will hardly ever see optimum power generation.
So people, wash your panels!
(if you know anything about this, leave a comment)
I'm Tim, a 28yr old ex-Allotmenteer. My wife and I used to have a small 5 rod plot in South Essex where we grew all manner of veg. I'm also involved in brewing the odd keg of beer.
Recently we bought a house with a 65ftx30ft garden, which we're converting into a mini orchard and veg beds. The entire transformation is happening at the moment and being chronicled by a timelapse camera.
The hope is to introduce chickens next year into the orchard to allow them free range.
If you want to contact me, you can do so here
