In my last blog I discussed how to blow-dry a chicken. I’m sure all of you have been practising and are now experts, so this week we’re moving on to stage two: How To Pamper A Chicken.

Our subject is still Beebop. She’s now around 5 years old, quite elderly for a ‘rescue’ chicken, and is the sole survivor of our second batch of ‘ex-batt’ hens. We started by rescuing eight birds, and welcomed our second batch when only two of those were left.

As they’re rescue animals our purpose is not to ‘farm’ them, but to give them a place of refuge for the remainder of their lives. While eggs are most people’s reason for getting chickens in the first place, it wasn’t for us. Eggs were more of a side effect. I can’t eat them at all (not an allergy but an intolerance) and Linda isn’t too bothered, so many other people got to eat our chicken eggs instead. Eventually, as birds became older the egg count dwindled, eventually becoming…no eggs at all.

Of course, many people kill and eat their birds when egg-laying falls below a certain level. Rather than pass any kind of judgement on that I’d just like to say that as a Buddhist monk this is not an option that I would ever consider.

The problem is, chickens are social creatures. Once Beebop was on her own she started coming up onto the deck and sitting for hours just outside the sliding doors to our living room. Linda put some straw down for her to make it a bit more comfortable while we decided what to do. The weather here won’t allow unprotected straw to stay dry for very long, so clearly a shelter would be better. But what to use…

Beebop, a very social chicken, wanted to be part of the family

We discussed the merits of a trug and then hit on the perfect solution. An old compost maker that we don’t really need (we’ve got several compost spots in the garden already) was roped to two heavy concrete ‘breeze’ blocks (how they got that name is beyond me) on our deck.

Beebop in her second home – the Deck House

It took Beebop all of ten minutes of examination before she took the plunge and stepped inside, and the Deck House, as we call it, has been her second home ever since. She clearly loves it (she’s in there as I write) and heads towards it after breakfast every morning. Here she can sit in comfort on a nice bed of (dry!) straw and peer into our living room to see what’s going on. The door faces away from incoming weather, so she stays dry even on very wet days.

The view out of the living room

Bean (our dog) has her bed on the floor on the other side of the sliding door. She lies on her bed and goes to sleep, facing the garden. Beebop sits in her straw and goes to sleep, facing Bean. And thus are many happy hours passed.

Bean and Beebop know each other well by now and often wander around the garden together

Late in the day we put the door on the Deck House in hopes that Beebop will return to sleep in her usual spot in the chicken coop. Sometimes she does, and sometimes she just nods off standing by the window and has to be carried home. Her coop is more secure in case we’re visited by foxes overnight.

As I said, Beebop is quite elderly for an ‘ex-batt’. This can’t, and won’t, last for ever. But while it does, and for as long this extremely personable chicken is able to enjoy her retirement, we’ll help.

Beebop on the deck by her new home

Every day in the UK, 2.5 million chickens are slaughtered. In the USA it’s 23 million. Worldwide, per year, it’s over 50 billion – and that’s just the female birds. A similar number of male chicks are born, almost of which are thrown alive into dumpsters where they die of starvation or thirst. KFC, anyone?

How to pamper a chicken is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

I know – trying to blow-dry a chicken is not something I’d attempt, either. But that would never discourage my wife Linda if she thinks it’s going to help.

Basically, the problem was…chicken poo. Our one remaining chicken, Beebop – now of great age, for a chicken, and way beyond egg-laying – seemed to be having a slight, well, feather problem around the poo zone. Specifically, not all the feathers were avoiding the poo. To put it another way, not all the poo was avoiding the feathers. So Linda decided to 1) bathe Beebop, and 2) blow-dry her, as it’s still pretty cold here.

Please note: DO NOT blow dry chickens, or any other animal, on a high-heat setting. Use a COOL setting ONLY. Anything else, and it’s cruelty to animals – or birds. That’s really important. As you can see from the pictures, Beebop was completely calm throughout the whole thing. If she’d been at all uncomfortable, she has ways of letting us know!

The pictures, below, speak the thousand words. All I did was stand by with the camera, suitably amazed. I’ve never, ever seen a chicken blow-dried before, and I doubt if I ever will again.

Beebop loved it, incidentally.

1) Place bird in trug, preferably a blue one. Add cool, but not cold, water as needed.

2) Commence rinsing the needful. Gently.

3) Remove bird from trug and place on absorbent surface.

4) Begin to gently blow-dry affected wet bits.

5) Keep going until bird is completely dry.

6) A final check of those difficult-to-reach feathers

7) And done.

How to blow-dry a chicken is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

We all know about the benefits of solar power, and many of us have already taken advantage of the FIT payments by having our own PV array installed. If so, here’s another way in which you can benefit – something you may not have thought of before.

The obvious benefits of a PV array are FIT payments four times a year and the chance to use as much of the generated power as you want. In addition to the free energy, an additional – though small – benefit of the solar array is selling unused power by feeding it back into the grid.

As few of us are on ‘smart’ meters, which separate the amount of power drawn from the grid and the amount fed back into it, the FIT agreement is that half of all power generated is assumed to be being sold back. One day, we’re told, the power company will get around to installing a new ‘smart’ meter, and from that point on all the grid payments will be accurately measured.

So, how about if you could use ALL the power, and still get paid for feeding half of it back into the grid? For example, wouldn’t it be great if you could use divert what you don’t or can’t use to your immersion heater instead? That would mean almost all the power generated by your solar panels was actually being used – by you.

On the left, an example of current power usage. On the right, what you could be using.

The silly thing is, until the power company gets round to fitting you with a ‘smart’ meter, the FIT agreement will continue to assume that half of all the energy produced by the panels is being fed back into the grid, and will continue to pay you accordingly.

Good, innit?

You’d think that the power companies were under a lot of pressure to come up with ‘smart’ meters for all of us – but this isn’t the case. These meters cost money, both for the hardware and the installation, so they’re in no hurry. If they actually had to come up with the FIT payments themselves, we’d all be on a smart meter already – but they don’t. So there isn’t really any incentive at all for them to upgrade us. It’s quite possible that you’ll still have your current ‘old’ meter at the end of the 25-year agreement period.

The company offering this new twist claims that the £500 cost of installation will be offset in between three and five years.

If you haven’t heard about this from your PV installer, give them a call – and if they don’t have any information, contact FarmInMyPocket instead. We’ll try to point you in the right direction.

Disclaimer: at the time of writing, FarmInMyPocket derives no income from the sale of solar panels or associated products.

Solar power – a new way to benefit is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Hot beds are an ancient growing technique which uses the heat provided by decomposing manure to keep an enclosed growing space warm. They can be used instead of a greenhouse or polytunnel, or used inside them to push the boundaries of what you can grow even further.

Hot Beds by Jack First (Green Books 2013) is the first book in many years dedicated to the construction and use of this ingenious growing system. Hot beds were famously used by gardeners in large Victorian estates to grow vegetables for the Master’s table out of season. But they had practical, mass market uses too. Up until the First World War, acres of hot beds in Paris were used to send thousands of crates of fresh produce to Covent Garden each week. Lettuces, radishes, carrots, asparagus, celeriac and turnips were exported… between Christmas and March!

In Hot Beds, veteran grower Jack First recounts his re-invention of the hot bed as a practical twenty-first century growing technique. Used outside or under cover, the hot bedding system allows vegetable growing many weeks before it would be possible outside. The author has used the system to produce crops as early as March in his native Yorkshire – quite an accomplishment.
I’d describe this book as ground-breaking, except that there’s no actual digging involved.

A hot bed is made up of an outer frame to hold the manure (similar to a regular raised bed), which is then topped by a slightly smaller ‘growing frame’ partly filled with a growing medium – typically a mix of topsoil and good compost. This is angled slightly to catch as much light as possible, and topped with transparent covers or ‘lights’.

Hot Beds is well thought out and clearly presented, with chapters on constructing both the frames and the hot beds themselves. There is a vital section on how to plan out your year’s sowing and cropping, but it is here that Jack First’s considerable growing experience could be a little daunting for novice gardeners. Growing in hot beds is defined by its differences to outdoor growing, so a fair degree of experience on the part of the reader is assumed. Thankfully, there’s also a ‘hot beds calendar’ featuring a range of sowing dates which should be really valuable for less confident growers, as will the comprehensive section on individual crops.

Manure – and plenty of it – is the mainstay of hot bed growing, so it’s a system that can hardly become mainstream. But as anyone who has grown using hot beds will tell you, the results speak for themselves. With fertility building year on year and the ‘gentle heat’ of a properly managed bed, conditions are far better for plants than even the most mollycoddled electrically heated propagator. What better reason to get friendly with your local stables?

Review: Hot Beds is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Just because the government’s FIT payments are lower than they were doesn’t mean solar power has become a bad idea. While you won’t get as much money back from the energy companies, you’ll still come out ahead – and there’s another place you’ll save loads: your own electricity bill.

A year ago last November we installed an array of solar panels and got them online just before the government’s proposed cut in the Fit payments. Of course, those were declared illegal and didn’t actually happen until early 2012, but nobody could be sure of that at the time.

We now have two electricity meters. One records our use and generates bills, and the other records power output from the PV panels and generates income. We send in the readings, quarterly.

Solar Power generated…

When the array was installed, two of our neighbours said ‘Oh, you’ll never make back the money. It’s well known that it’s all a scam.’

Aside from the figment of any scam, this is Wales. While we have seen the sun once or twice in the 6 years we’ve been here, it doesn’t appear often. And it sure rains a lot. So installing PV panels here isn’t quite as profitable as it might be in some other areas of the UK.

Nevertheless, our FIT agreement generated £1470.51 for us over the past year. Straight into the bank, tax free and index-linked to inflation – and it keeps coming for the next 25 years. Not bad.

…vs. Electricity billed:

Yesterday we received our electricity bill. It was estimated, and based on our previous years use. It seemed high, so I went out to read the meter.

Incidentally, every so often we get a letter from the company hired to do the readings saying that they’ve been unable to contact us and therefore, yet again, our meter hasn’t been read. Since it’s on an outside wall and easily accessible I’m at a loss to see how they’re earning their money. Oh well.

The difference:

The power company’s estimate meant they’d billed us for using almost 5000 kWh for the year, taking our money out every month through direct debit. Our actual use for the year was roughly 500 kWh. Around a tenth of what they had billed.

Result!

Needless to say, with a big grin on my face I called our supplier. We’re now looking forward to a hefty (considerably over £500) check in the mail.

Our monthly direct-debit payments have also been reduced. Apparently, if it had been dropped any further they couldn’t have sent us a full refund. I pointed out that this means we would still be paying for far more than we were actually using, and was told to call back in 6 months time with a second reading, at which point it could be decreased further.

We don’t have gas, we don’t use the woodstove as often as we probably should (still waiting for the willow to grow) and everything in the house is powered by electricity. Our annual bill for the whole lot just fell to around £80, and a chunk of that is the ‘daily use’ fee.

While the FIT payments have dropped (currently 15.44p per kWh, plus 4.5p per kWh exported to the grid), so has the cost of panels and installation. You can now get a 4kWh array put in place for around £6000, roughly half what it was just over a year ago.

The amount exported to the grid is estimated at half of the total power generated, because until they come and change your meter an estimate is the best they can do.

One of the better questions on our FIT application form was ‘do you ever see your meter running backwards?’, which means your PV panels are feeding power into the grid. I’ve seen our meter running backwards. It’s a lovely sight. I could sit and watch it for hours.

The hidden benefits:

The thing is, whatever the FIT payments, if you install PV panels your household bills will plummet – and this is the hidden benefit. While it was mentioned, nobody talked this up very much during our own research. The focus was all on the FIT payments.

Only now have the financial benefits of PV panels become clear to us, and I haven’t even mentioned the long-term environmental benefits. Despite the reduced FIT payments, it’s still well worth installing PV.

And for anyone interested, our array was installed by Navitron. They were helpful, polite, on-time, and they came out and did a proper survey to make sure the roof could take it. And they used top-of-the-line materials. Very, very good people.

Solar Power – one year after installing PV cells is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Floodlights are a tremendously popular way of lighting outside areas, but shouldn’t be used this way when they are intended as security lighting. When it comes to security, lighting is much more effective if it illuminates the walls of a building, rather than the area around it.

Security lighting for you?

To deter intruders, security lights should point down, not out

Because floodlights provide good illumination over a wide area, they can allow to you to continue working for a while after natural light has failed. They can also let you set things up for the day if you have to leave before the sun comes up, without the need to carry a torch. For this kind of task the lights are naturally mounted so that their light is cast over as wide an area as possible, i.e. pointing away from the building they are mounted on.

People tend to think that linking this kind of lighting to PIRs (motion detectors) makes their property more secure, but in reality it just makes things easier for intruders.  Thieves need light just as much as anyone else, and carrying a torch makes life more difficult for them, keeping one hand full and leaving them at greater risk of being seen.

Security lighting for intruders!

Andy says… “When a neighbour’s alarm went off recently, I was reluctant to investigate because the security lights were dazzling me. I couldn’t even tell if the front door was open!”

If someone who shouldn’t be there is approaching your property at night, they will probably have watched the place to make sure that you’re away, or asleep. So the real risk for them isn’t that you will see them – it’s that they’ll be seen from nearby roadways or buildings.

To make intruders stand out like a sore thumb, don’t light the area around buildings. Instead, light the walls themselves using narrow-angle floods and a much lower wattage: 50W is plenty. This leaves intruders silhouetted against the property and highly visible from nearby, without giving them much useful illumination to work by. Doesn’t seem right? Check out this Campaign for Dark Skies page for more advice, and an interactive demonstration of how outward-facing floodlights render intruders near a building invisible.

Security lighting cannot in itself protect your property from intruders. For the best protection consider whether a dog or burglar alarm might be appropriate, take a good look at access points and general security measures, and make sure that your property has adequate insurance through a reputable firm such as Aviva.

How to use security lighting correctly is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Almost every vegetable gardener in the UK grows beans, and ‘French’ bush and climbing beans are to be found in gardens everywhere. And, best of all, seed saving from them is really simple.

Seed saving from beans is easy!

Incidentally, runners and broad beans do cross. Thus, they’re not in the ‘easy’ category and will be dealt with in a future article. ‘French’ beans – and I’ve no idea why they should be called that – whether bush or climbers, are self pollinating, and this means that by the time the flower opens, the pollinating has already been done and there’s virtually no chance of varieties crossing. All you need is a bit of patience, and you’ll soon be rewarded with a wonderful and much-anticipated addition to your meals – the beans.

As saving bean seeds is so easy, it’s worth doing. After all, if you find a bean you particularly like – and there are dozens of varieties to choose from, so there’s one to suit every palate and every gardening plot – why go to the expense and extra work to buy them every year? If you save your own, you can keep the very best. If you buy them, you’re getting beans from plants that didn’t do so well, were a little bit crowded, flowered late, and so on.

Take control of your food! It makes perfect sense. And, saving bean seeds is a great place to start.

Just make sure you avoid the ‘F1’ varieties, as they won’t breed true. The ‘seed saving’ process for beans is exactly the same as when saving seeds from peas, although the timing can vary.

1) Plant some beans

The first step is, obviously enough, to plant them. We have a great article on how to grow beans here.

2) Decide which ones to save seed from

If you want the earliest beans next year, mark the first plants to flower. A bag tie looped around the stem (don’t make it tight!) works fine. Seeds from these plants will tend to be as early, or maybe even slightly earlier, next year. A couple of growing seasons down the road, all your bean seeds will be from early plants – and you’ll be eating the results before anyone else!

It’s really important to not pick from the plants you’re marking for seed saving. Producing seeds is the main event for a plant, and if you start picking from it, it will need to somehow find the energy to do it all over again.

3) Only keep the healthiest plants

Make sure you remove any weak or diseased plants from the patch as soon as they’re noticed. It’s vitally important that you don’t accidentally save seeds from these.

4) Harvest the seeds

Don’t pick the seed beans while they’re still green. Wait until they’ve thoroughly dried out on the plant. Even in extended periods of damp weather, the pods will dry out as the plant cuts off their water supply from the inside. Bean pods are basically waterproof, and a bit of rain won’t bother them. However, it will help mould to grow, so don’t touch the plants when they’re wet or you could spread mould spores all over the place.

Once the pods are brown and hard to the touch, begin checking every few days to see if the beans inside them are mature enough to pick. If in doubt, just leave it for another week and try again. As soon as they’re ready, clip off the pods and bring them inside. I usually leave them laid out on newspaper so that all traces of moisture from the garden have gone before shelling them.

5) Make sure the seeds are completely dry

If you store seeds while they are still even slightly damp, you’ll lose the whole lot. Once you can see mould in a jar, it’s already infected the entire contents. You just can’t see it yet, as the mycelium strands are so tiny. So, once shelled, leave the beans somewhere cool but dry to finish off. Don’t put them over any artificial heat source such as a radiator, as this might kill them.

6) Store the beans

When you’re sure they’re dry enough to store, put them either into a plastic bag or jar, label it, them pit it somewhere cool, dark and dry.

Then, next year you can start at 1) again! You’ll never need to buy bean seeds again, and your plants will be healthy and strong – and early!

Seed saving for beginners – saving French bean seeds is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Home made wine can be filtered to improve its clarity, but not to remove cloudiness or hazes. Filtration is fine for early-drinking wines, but best avoided for long-maturing wines like elderberry because it can interfere with how their body develops over time. Kit wines don’t usually need to be filtered.

Filtration is an issue that has divided home wine makers for years. On one side you have the purists, insisting that the single ingredient that clears wines best is patience. On the other side, you have the pragmatists – people who aren’t interested in complex or long-maturing wines, and simply want to produce an attractive, drinkable wine in as little time as possible.

While this argument has been going on, filter manufacturers have been quietly working away to improve their products. Modern filters are simple to use and there is very little risk of damaging the wine. But despite what the makers say, there’s probably no need to filter wine as a matter of routine. At the heart of the matter there is this simple truth: filtration is a tool for polishing a wine that is already clear – not for clearing a cloudy or hazy wine.

Vinbrite filter kit from Home Brew Online

pros and cons of filtering home made wine

Appearance

There’s absolutely no doubt that filtering wine improves its appearance. We’re talking here about the difference between wine being ‘clear’ (i.e. not visibly cloudy) and being ‘brilliant’. ‘Brilliant’ wines have no suspended particles, so they really catch the light and show off their colour. We’re well used to mass-produced wines being ‘brilliant’ because they are filtered to improve their storage qualities.

It’s worth mentioning again that you can’t filter cloudy wine, because cloudy wine still has lots of junk floating around in it. This will block the filter in no time, meaning you have to dismantle everything and risk ruining the wine. Don’t do it. Filtration is done after your wine has already cleared – or nearly so – and been treated with suitable finings.

Stability

Filtering wine makes it store better because it removes most live yeast cells and proteins. This means that the wine is less likely to undergo a secondary fermentation which can cause cloudiness and burst bottles. It also means that it should not throw hazes or sediments while you store it, which can spoil its appearance.

Flavour

Filtering wine doesn’t improve its flavour, but provided you choose a filtration kit that excludes as much air as possible (such as the Vinbrite, pictured) it shouldn’t damage it either. There are, however, a couple of BUTs.

Secondary fermentation (see stability, above) isn’t always a bad thing. A wine that is given time to clear naturally can sometimes undergo a ‘malo-lactic fermentation’ (where ‘sharp’ malic acid breaks down to ‘buttery’ lactic acid). This can transform a wine into something you really want to let your friends try – although you might insist they only get a tiny glassful!

Removing dissolved protein isn’t always a good thing, either. In full-bodied wines that traditionally take a long time to mature, a lot of complex chemistry is still going on after fermentation is complete. In other words, the processes that eventually lead to sediment formation are part of what makes these wines ‘mature’. Filtering them out early can mean that the wine doesn’t mature properly, and instead stays flat and uninteresting.

How to filter wine

1. Always treat wines that you intend to filter with pectolytic enzyme when you pulp the fruit, or when you add the yeast. You can add the enzyme later if needs be, provided the wine is kept at room temperature for a few days for the enzyme to act.
2. Allow the wine to ferment out properly, and to clear from the top down. You mustn’t rush this process, as wines which haven’t been given enough time at this stage are FAR more likely to start fermenting again after filtration.
3. Once the wine is clear, rack it off the sediment and degas it. Degassing will improve the filter kit’s filtration rate, saving you a long wait!
4. Add finings – your filter manufacturer may recommend a particular finings type. Leave the fined wine to settle out as per the instructions included with the finings.
5. Put the filter assembly together as per the kit instructions, remembering to run water through it if instructed. Then it’s simply a matter of running the wine from one container to another, just as you do when racking, except that the filter kit sits between the two containers. Make sure that the whole assembly is well supported and can be left without you holding it. Vinbrite filter pads can cope with 5 gallons of well-cleared and fined wine, but it should take about an hour for the whole lot to run through.

wine making: how to filter wine is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Seed saving from many vegetable and fruit varieties is incredibly easy, and tomatoes are a great place to start. This is because the flower pollinates itself as it opens, so crosses are rare. Not impossible, however, and it’s always best to err on the side of caution any time you want to be sure that the variety will breed true.

Lots of the tomato seeds that can be puchased at your local garden centre are ‘F1’ varieties, meaning they’re a ‘filial’ cross between two different parent plants. Avoid saving seeds from these, as they will not breed true – and if you’re saving seeds in order to preserve particular characteristics that you like, it’s a waste of time.

Decide which plants you’ll be seed saving from

First, and fairly obviously, make sure you’re saving seeds from your favourite varieties! The plants should be disease-free, and the fruits themselves slightly over-ripe. The actual method for saving tomato seeds varies according to who you ask. There are basically two methods, fermentation (which can save loads of seeds at a time) and the more straightforward drying, which is fine if you want to save just a few seeds.

Fermentation

There is a gelatinous coating on the seeds that contains chemicals which slow or even prevent germination. It can also harbour harmful bacteria which will then affect the seedling. This can be removed by fermentation.

To do this, slice a tomato around its equator and scoop the seeds out into a water-filled jar. Leave them there for at least a day. Some say you should leave the mix for 5 or 6 days, until a mouldy scum has developed on the surface, then pour it off, rinse the seeds, and dry them. Others say this is far too long and may result in diseases (canker, for one) spreading to the seeds themselves. In fact, a single day is enough to soften the grip of the coating, and a firm rinse in a fine sieve will then remove it altogether.

Don’t bother to hang on to any seeds which are still floating, as they won’t germinate. Pour them off with the excess water.

However long you leave the seeds to ferment, rinse them several times to ensure all remnants of the coating have been removed. Then spread them out onto a paper towel or plate until they’re completely dry.

Spread seeds out on a paper towl to dry

Drying

This method is much less work than the above, and in just a few minutes you can save enough seeds to fill next year’s garden with tomato plants.

Cut the fruit open, as described above, and scoop a few seeds out onto a paper towel. Squeeze a seed firmly in the towel, and the coating…pops right off. The seed can then be laid out on another towel, or paper plate, as when using the fermentation method.

Some people may worry that this method, while removing the coating, won’t remove the harmful bacteria. In fact this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Seed lifespan

Tomato seeds remain viable for 2 to 3 years if stored properly, which means completely dry in a cool, dark place. If you have a favourite open pollinated tomato, and especially if it’s an heirloom type which may be difficult or impossible to find again, do yourself a favour and save some seeds. Then you’ll be able to enjoy them every year!

Seed saving for beginners – saving tomato seeds is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Home brew beer kits are ideal for beginners, because all the hard work has been done for you. All the ingredients have been mixed together in the can, so all you need to do is mix the thing up with hot water, add the yeast sachet, and let nature take its course. Then bottle, leave for a couple of weeks… and hey presto, you’re a home brewer! Kit brews are the easiest way to get started in home brewing. Once you gain in confidence, you can decide if you want to take things further and branch out into more creative recipes.

Which home brew beer kit should I buy?

In the UK, the choice of home brew beer kits is impressive – even bewildering. Don’t panic! Your choice of kit comes down to three basic choices.

Woodforde’s Wherry, my personal favourite premium kit

Wet vs. dry beer kits

Some manufacturers produce kits featuring ‘dry’ ingredients, such as this York Brewery Terrier Bitter. Although they can give excellent results, they are a step up in difficulty from ‘wet’ kits (as you can see in our introduction to home beer making). If you’re just starting out, wet kits are far easier and will give you more reliable results.

One-can vs. two-can beer kits

Or, to put it another way, budget kits vs. premium kits.

One-can kits contain 1.5kg of malt extract, and you add sugar to them to bring the ABV (alcohol by volume) up to ordinary beer levels. Incidentally, this is exactly the same trick used to make budget beers commercially. If you’re brewing to save money first and foremost, these kits are definitely the way to go. They may not impress real ale buffs, but they’re still far better than supermarket budget beers. One-can (budget) kits are an excellent way to get started and develop your basic brewing skills.

Two-can kits typically contain 3.0kg of malt extract, so there’s no need to add sugar (except to prime the bottles). Unsurprisingly, two-can kits cost twice as much as one-can kits, but the extra malt makes a huge difference to the flavour and body of the brew.

Which brand and style of beer kit

The UK home brew market is lively and competitive so, depending on the type of beer you drink, you may find that you’re spoilt for choice. Bitter drinkers, for example, will find more than fifty different kits at Home Brew Online, our partnered supplier. So what to do? Over the years I’ve brewed all sorts. Wet kits, dry kits, budget kits, premium kits – and even from scratch – my advice is this:

Buy your basic equipment and a budget (one-can) beer kit to start with. Brewing kit beer is easy, but if you’ve not brewed before you’re learning a few new skills; sterilising, fermentation, and bottling. So keep the stakes low!

Once your first successful brew is under your belt, try a few different brands or styles of beer to get a feel for what works for you, and what doesn’t. You may feel that this is as far as you need to go. After all, a repertoire of a few home brewed beers that taste better than the stuff the supermarkets sell is quite an achievement!

But if you’d like to take things further, invest in a couple of premium two-can kits and taste the difference. You might go on to try dry kits or brewing from scratch, or you might not; it’s an individual thing. Personally I’ll climb in and out of hedges and turn the kitchen into a battleground for my country wines, but when it comes to beer making I’m a sucker for the convenience of wet kits.

What equipment do I need?

If you’re an absolute novice, Home Brew Online provides starter kits which contain everything you need to knock out a successful first brew. If you’d prefer to do a bit more homework and customize your kit, our home brewing equipment article will help. Try not to go mad to start with – there’s plenty of scope for gadgets later!

How long does home brewed beer last?

After bottling, try to leave your beer in the bottles for at least a month, despite what it might say in the kit instructions. Remember that home brewed beers have a relatively short shelf life – usually no more than six months. If you detect that your beer is passing its best, don’t hang about – invite some friends round for a BBQ and finish it up.

Home Brew How To: Beer kits for beginners is a post from: Farm In My Pocket