Monthly Archives: June 2012
Grow your own ginger beer plant, and you’ll never need to buy a bottle again
When I was small, bottles of home-made ginger beer lined the pantry shelves – and the thirst quenching pleasure of its peppery ginger notes still lingers on. Today, the supermarket shelves are loaded with various styles and brands of ginger beer, but nothing gets close to the satisfaction of making your own from a ginger beer plant. Read more
The rum way to do it!
Sugar producers throughout the world provide many useful and lucrative by-products that realise revenues that far exceed what they get paid for their bags of sugar. Read more
How do you like your white wine – with or without oak?
Most of today’s winemakers have realised that British white wine drinkers don’t really like the overt tannic and often bitter taste of oak. Now, if used, it’s done with a reserved elegance, especially when compared to yesterday’s producers. Read more
Tea, our national drink is a national disgrace
Over the last forty years shoppers have seen a massive improvement in the quality of the food and drink products that sit on our supermarket shelves. But tea, our national drink is still a national disgrace. Read more
How to confuse a whisky hack?
Few years back, I poured a whisky hack a dram of Islay’s Ardbeg, special bottling from Gordon & MacPhail, Elgin, Speyside, and challenged him to name the region and distillery. He considered. “I’m not sure of the distillery,” he admitted, “but it’s definitely Speyside.” And I respected his instinct, because he was more than half right. This was an Ardbeg that had been matured and bottled, not at the distillery on the Hebridean Island of Islay, but on the mainland in the Speyside region of The Highlands. Whisky, you understand, gathers somewhere between 60-95% of its flavour from the barrel and its surrounding atmosphere. Read more
Big Improvement for Nearly Neat and G&T Drinkers
Own branded Gin has improved big time since the nineties. Long gone are the days where cheap Gins were made from cheap molasses and tasted of treacle, rather than the clean cereal flavours of the ones that were produced from the more expensive grains. Then the priority was simply hitting the required price point rather than competing with the quality brands like Beefeater, Bombay Sapphire and Plymouth. Read more
Trolley Trundle Food Price Check – June 2012
Are you annoyed that the cost of your trolley trundle keeps going up when the supermarkets are advertising that they are bringing the price down? Most shoppers are!
Street Easy Party Cocktails
Fed up of partying on wine and beer? Want street-easy party cocktails that are simple to create and will make your Queen’s Jubilee celebrations go with a real swing? Don’t want to spend your bank holiday weekend searching for the ingredients either. End of. Read more