Plenty of snatch

As I said, on Thursday I bottled the Stale, and if it never carbonates I will just end up with a few musty bottles of old sour beer that I can mix with fresh beer, put in bread or marinade the Sunday joint in.

Tonight I tried a pint of the turbo cider I put on last week. It's pretty nice. The last turbo cider I tried was with bread yeast -- not a success. It was thin and sour. This one was started with beer yeast from the same starter that I used to make the batch of KK which is currently fermenting.

Ah, the KK. I drew off a sample (I don't think I'll ever go back now to fermenting in a bucket without a tap), ostensibly to check the gravity (down to 1020 since Monday), and wow. Who would have thought that 10g of gypsum could make such a difference? It actually tastes like a proper bitter. All the hop bitterness is accentuated, just like it says in the books. The only thing is that I absolutely have to bottle this on Monday night because I'm off to Germany on Tuesday -- so it would be good if the gravity had dropped a bit more by then.

It seems I have to go to the home brew shop again

I seem to be the only person in the world who actually likes a bit of sulphur in their beer. Everything I read has people cringing at the very thought of it, but it's frequently found in two of my favourite kinds of beer – English bitter and Franconian Lagerbier.

I was delighted on one visit to find a good whack of sulphur in the Clockwork Brewery's lager, but on subsequent tastings I was disappointed. Clearly the brewer regarded it as a defect and had successfully eliminated it from later batches.

Since I have soft water, it appears I need to go and buy some calcium sulphate.