I was reading this story about Phorm on the Guardian site, when I started reading the comments… One of which points out Phorm’s address…
Phorm UK Inc, Liberty House! Now that’s just brilliant, was that just the only available office space or did they think it was fitting?
What a great excuse to pull up the ‘weeds’ (it’s only a weed if you don’t want it there!) and make some wine!
Now, this was my first attempt ever at making wine, I did try to make beer once and well it was a disaster, it tasted a bit like shandy which had been made with vinegar instead of lemonade! so my track record isn’t the greatest at this brewing malarky.
Anyway I’ve got a couple of books, the one with the most detail is C.J.J. Berry’s First Steps in Wine Making so I started out using that, but again there were some bits that perhaps weren’t fully explained for the novice, so I did a google search too and there are loads of recipies, mine ended up as a bit of a mish mash, but there were sooo many recipies and they were all so similar.
Basically:
1.5 kilos of sugar
4.5 litres of water (1 gallon)
4 citrus fruits (Oranges or lemons, seem to be able to use whatever you have to hand, I used Oranges)
2-3 Litres Dandelion Flowers (I used 2)
Yeast (as per packet for the quantity your doing)
yeast nutrient.
First off pick the flower heads (St Georges Day in full sun so the flowers are open is the recommended time), no stalks or leaves but mine still had the green bits from around the bottom of the flowers. I was surprised at how many you need, but that it doesn’t take too long to get them, I avoided getting them from too close to the road or path! (yeah okay so most of them were from the garden).
Put all the flower heads into a bucket, and pour over your boiling water, cover it (I used a tea towel tied over the top of a bucket) for 2 days (this varies from 2-3 days depending on the recipie I did 2 days).
After that reboil the mixture (You need a big pan! I got a 10 litre ’365′ one from Ikea) with the peel of your chosen citrus fruits. (recipies vary here from 10 – 20 minutes, I did 10 minutes).
Clean out the bucket you used to step the flower heads and put the sugar in it.
Strain the hot dandelion mixture into the bucket.
When the liquid has cooled ( to room temp.) add the yeast (some recipies also add the citrus juices at this point too I think it’s either the juice or the nutrient… I used the yeast nutrient).
Fill up your fermentation vessel and leave it to ferment.
When it’s done fermenting let it clear in a cool place and bottle.
All the recipies say it’s best left for a while!
The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Wow! I would strongly recommend reading this, it will change the way you think and especially the way you look at data (especially predications/forecasts) which people give you.
The basic concept is that the future is complicated and uncertain yet we try (by looking at past events) make sense of it and create future predications based on our past assumptions. Think a turkey everything is going well until Christmas/Thanks giving, but as it has no idea it can never predict what happens next. There is a lot more to it than that obviously, and he even predicts the banking crash and its effects in an aside!
My main problem with the book was that the style of writing didn’t suit me and whilst I was very interested in the topics and the concepts I found it a very difficult book to read. The style is sort of a mix of egotistical (I’m rich and clever you must want to know that because you’re reading my book), academic (a lot of depth in backing up the arguements) , patronising (if this is too complicated for you skip to the end of the chapter), and a few other styles dropped in. Not easy to follow, but please persist, the concepts are great. I’m sure one day there will a concise ‘business’ version going over the main points without having to wade through the rest. (There is an overview on wikipedia which covers the main points.)
As I was reading this I also came across these sites which seemed to fit in with the theme.
Wrong tomorrow – a great site where you can add predictions made by pundits and politicians and the date at which they can be checked, to see how often they are actually right! and this page on the BBC new site How can a graph be so wrong.
We haven’t got any chickens yet but we’re planning on getting some rescue chickens.
We have an old kennel (well, it’s practically a shed!) left by the previous owners of the house, I’ve given it a lick of paint (a couple of weeks ago now) and raised it off the ground to dry out a bit (it’s been sitting in a puddle!).
So this weekend while my sister was over we had a go at moving the shed! Now as I said it is quite large but we still thought we’d go for lifting it (well there were 5 of us!)! bad idea! then we tried pushing it… hmmm still not going anywhere, time for a cuppa!
Well after a short brew stop we decided to use some stakes (round) we had in the shed (I think we were supposed to put those in when we did the apple trees! ooops!) as rollers… hurray, it didn’t matter much that the rollers were different sizes as the garden isn’t exactly a bowling green!
After a bit of pushing and shoving and some careful direction we finally got the shed in place…
We thought we were done! but oh no, still to go… but that’s for another day, just moving the shed was enough effort for today! remember to think about the positioning and perhaps don’t go for the furthest point away from where the shed is now!
I feel a bit guilty putting this under the ‘food related’ heading…. we’re going to eat the eggs!