Puppykicker

The ginger beer is now in bottles:

1 x 2l bottle

10 x 1l bottles

16 x 500ml bottles

I'd normally use at least litre bottles, or two litre bottles for preference (to get the drink off the sediment) but you use what you can get. It'll take a few weeks for the pressure to build up and for the drink to carbonate: so sadly not ready for this weekend's Greenbelt ops meeting.

I'll take some of the mystery drink with me instead.

Things you find in the cupboard

While looking for Something Else recently, I discovered two demijohns in the cupboard. This is not, in itself unusual (there are usually demijohns in there) but I usually remember what I put in them. Two others are there: one is an experimental ginger beer that I'm afraid of going back to, and the other is a red wine in "long term maturation".

These two, however, were unknown. They contained a liquid that was a deep golden colour, a bit like a Balvenie whisky. The nose was pleasant, and in taste, it was surprisingly similar to a dry sherry.

The odd thing is, I have never made any sherry kits. Still, it goes down very well. Shame I can't get any more.

What's new in homebrew?

I paid a visit to Peter and Mark at the Brewshop in Edgeley on the Bank Holiday weekend to see what was available and blow me if they hadn't been keeping a set of Limited Editions back for me.

"Shall I help you load up the car?" says Mark.

I explain about the whole not-owning-a-car-anymore thing, so he says that he'll deliver them during the week. Four shiny boxes of wine kit.

I've just started the first of them: the Australian Riesling. Now, on the whole, I'm not keen on Riesling. However, that's mostly to do with the acidity-sweetness of the mass-market stuff: I should be able to dry this one out a bit and get more of the innate flavour. It worked OK with last year's gerwurstraminer...

I've also started this year's Puppykicker. It's going to be ginger beer again, since that seems to go down well, with the minimum amount of "becareful of Rob's lethal homebrew" comments.