There is an instruction leaflet inside the hydrometer tube, wrapped around the hydrometer. This article is designed to supplement that leaflet, as it contains more detail about using a hydrometer and takes into account the questions we've received from customers over the years about general hydrometer use. We have also written in the past about how to use a hydrometer to work out how much sugar to add.
Important point if you are a new hydrometer user: if you want to know the alcohol content of your cider, wine, beer or mead, you need to use your hydrometer at the start of the brewing process. We get emails from customers saying that they've made their wine and now want to know its alcohol content. Unfortunately at that stage it is too late to find out. You will need two readings from your hydrometer. One taken at the very start of the brewing process, and one at the end. The difference between the readings is what tells you the % alcohol content. So if you didn't take a reading at the start of the process, unfortunately it's too late to work out your alcohol content at the end. Our best advice at this point is to put it down to experience and remember to take a reading next time.
So now we've covered that, let's talk a bit more about your hydrometer.
Made by hydrometer production market-leader Stevenson-Reeves, this easy-to-read triple scale hydrometer is 23 cm long and has 3 scales for measurement.
It is made of glass and is therefore fragile. The slender stem is particularly easy to break. It goes without saying therefore that we recommend you handle your glass hydrometer with care. Do not put it in boiling liquid. If you do that, the glass will shatter.
The 3 scales for measurement are:
The coloured bands on the hydrometer indicate where to start and finish wines and beers, plus there is an indication for sweet/medium/dry finished wines. The hydrometer comes packed in a strong clear plastic tube along with an instruction leaflet.
The tube in which the hydrometer is packed doubles as a trial jar, which is what most of our customers use it for, as well as storing the glass hydrometer safely away after use.
Some customers have told us they prefer a glass trial jar. We no longer sell them, simply because they tend to be extremely fragile. They either don't survive being posted, or get broken very quickly in use. We have at least one customer who bought multiple glass trial jars from us and at some stage we worked out this wasn't a viable option for us as a predominantly online business.
Glass trial jars are, of course, widely available like this trial jar.
Whilst a glass hydrometer bears a resemblance to a thermometer, it contains no liquid and nothing moves. It is a strange concept in a way, and we understand when customers think the hydrometer is broken because nothing is moving when they put it in their homebrew. But a hydrometer is not designed to work in the same way as a thermometer does.
It is designed to sit in liquid and, where the scale meets the liquid, that is your reading.
If you are using a hydrometer to measure the alcohol content of your brew, you will follow the following process twice. Once at the beginning with your mix of fruit juice, flowers, whatever you are using, before it has fermented. Then once again at the end when everything has finished fermenting.
1. Make sure the hydrometer and trial jar are clean. We would normally sterilise them in a cleaner/steriliser such as VWP. Even if you do that, some brewers don't recommend putting the trial liquid back into the bucket or demijohn afterwards. It is up to you.
2. Place the trial jar on a level surface so that the hydrometer will float straight. Place a sample of the liquid to be tested into the tube. Use enough liquid so that the hydrometer will float, then lower the hydrometer carefully into the jar. The best way to get your sample is to use a pipette or 'wine thief' so that you don't disturb the sediment in the bottom of the fermenting vessel.
3. Spin the hydrometer to remove clinging bubbles. Make sure the hydrometer is floating straight and that the stem is not touching the sides. When the hydrometer is steady, read at the bottom surface of the liquid as shown in this diagram.
The reading shown in this example is 1.000, not 0.998.
4. Record the gravity reading.
5. Adjust the gravity reading for temperature. This is because hydrometers are calibrated to different temperatures. This one is calibrated for use at 20°C (68°F).
|
Add the corrections above to the specific gravity reading if the liquid you've tested is not at that temperature.
When you repeat the above process at the end of brewing, you will have two readings. One when you started, when you effectively measured how much sugar was in your liquid before the yeast started working. Then another at the end, when a percentage of the original sugar has been converted into alcohol.
You will use the scales in the table below to calculate your alcohol content. To do this, find the alcohol calculation values that correspond to your initial and final readings. Subtract the final reading from the first reading to get your % alcohol content.
Specific Gravity at 20°C (68°F) |
°Brix/Balling/Plato % sugar by weight |
Dissolved Sugar (grams per litre) |
Dissolved Sugar (oz per UK gallon) |
% Alcohol Calculation |
0.980 |
|
|
|
-2.6 |
0.985 |
|
|
|
-1.9 |
0.990 |
|
|
|
-1.3 |
0.995 |
|
|
|
-0.6 |
1.000 |
0.0 |
0 |
0 |
0.0 |
1.005 |
1.3 |
13 |
2 |
0.6 |
1.010 |
2.6 |
26 |
4 |
1.3 |
1.015 |
3.8 |
39 |
6 |
1.9 |
1.020 |
5.1 |
52 |
8 |
2.6 |
1.025 |
6.3 |
64 |
10 |
3.3 |
1.030 |
7.6 |
78 |
13 |
3.9 |
1.035 |
8.8 |
91 |
15 |
4.6 |
1.040 |
10.0 |
104 |
17 |
5.3 |
1.045 |
11.2 |
117 |
19 |
5.9 |
1.050 |
12.4 |
130 |
21 |
6.6 |
1.055 |
13.6 |
143 |
23 |
7.3 |
1.060 |
14.8 |
157 |
25 |
8.0 |
1.065 |
15.9 |
169 |
27 |
8.7 |
1.070 |
17.1 |
183 |
29 |
9.3 |
1.075 |
18.2 |
195 |
31 |
10.0 |
1.080 |
19.4 |
209 |
34 |
10.7 |
1.085 |
20.5 |
222 |
36 |
11.4 |
1.090 |
21.6 |
235 |
38 |
12.1 |
1.095 |
22.7 |
248 |
40 |
12.8 |
1.100 |
23.8 |
261 |
42 |
13.6 |
1.105 |
24.9 |
275 |
44 |
14.3 |
1.110 |
26.0 |
288 |
46 |
15.0 |
1.115 |
27.0 |
301 |
48 |
15.7 |
1.120 |
28.1 |
314 |
50 |
16.4 |
Question: My hydrometer isn't doing anything. Is it broken?
Answer: Your hydrometer isn't designed to do anything, as such. It simply sits in the liquid you are measuring, and you take a reading where the liquid sits against the hydrometer scale. It is not like a thermometer, there is no mercury to move or any moving parts at all.
Question: My hydrometer is sinking to the bottom of the liquid. Is it broken?
Answer: Add more liquid to the trial jar. If there isn't enough of a sample in there, the hydrometer won't float.
Question: I forgot to take a reading when I started making the wine, I now want to know the alcohol content now the process is finished.
Answer: Unfortunately it's too late to calculate the alcohol content of this batch of wine. The calculation is a substraction of one reading from another so, if you are missing one of the readings, you can't work it out. We can only suggest you make another batch of the same wine and take a reading at the beginning next time. Assuming you are using the same kit and/or exactly the same ingredients, the chances are the alcohol content of both wine batches will be similar.
A hydrometer is a useful tool for measuring alcohol content. It can also be used to check the progress of your fermentation, as your final reading will fall as your sugar is turning to alcohol. If all fermenting activity seems to have finished, you can find out for sure whether it has. Take a hydrometer reading 3 days in a row. If the reading doesn't change, it is highly likely that fermentation has finished and you are ready to bottle.
Using a hydrometer to work out how much sugar to add
Making Wine from Garden Grapes
Is it ok to use Expired Yeast?
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
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Having discussed how cool the evenings were only last week, we're now experiencing a heatwave in the UK. So suddenly there are elderflowers everywhere for Elderflower Cordial and Elderflower Champagne and my personal favourite which is Elderflower Lemon Curd. Plus there are wild roses all over the place, perfect for this Rose Petal Cordial Recipe.
At the weekend, on a whim, we drove over to Newhaven to visit Denton Church in which my Great Grandparents were married.
On the way I had a quick look at my family tree on my phone, and noticed my Great Grandparents were married yesterday, albeit 104 years previously. I had absolutely no idea. In the past such a realisation would have shocked me, now I just smile and keep going because such coincidences happen all the time when I decide to do these things. It is as though those our ancestors call us to them. Or something.
Anyway we went to Denton Church which was unfortunately closed, but we were able to see inside through the windows to view the Denton Church War Memorial on which my Great Grand Uncle is mentioned. He sadly died at sea in WW1 and his body was never recovered.
We then went over to Denton Island. Now an industrial estate, it was where the Denton Islanders lived back in the day, including my Great Grandmother, her siblings and my Great Grandparents. We looked at the map and worked out we were standing close to where their homes in The Huts and Sefton Road once stood.
This image is of Sefton Terrace, Denton Island, Newhaven, East Sussex. My Great Great Grandparents lived here. Image courtesy of OurNewhaven.co.uk, a website project run by volunteers.
Close to where we were standing were bushes of elderflowers and a hedge smothered in dog roses. So we just had to.
You will find Dog Roses a-plenty in May and June around the English countryside, and in the South of England in particular. It was 30 degrees on Saturday, so we picked the petals and put them in a cool bag with a couple of cold bricks (the blue bits you can just about see). That worked brilliantly as they stayed fresh as the moment they were picked until the evening when I got around to starting the Rose Petal Cordial.
We were careful to pick the pinkest petals so the cordial would be pink, and to leave plenty of roses to turn to rosehips later in the year. So there will be flowers left for the insects to feast upon. It also means we can go back in September/October in the hope of finding ripe Rosehips for Denton Island Rosehip Syrup.
At some point in all of this we also popped into Chris Lewis' Ceramics Studio in South Heighton and acquired two handmade mugs to remind us of our visit. They are nothing short of stunning and, I can confirm, a handmade mug makes every drink taste better.
So all in all, a great afternoon. I hope Great Grandma Flossie is pleased, though I think she might be a bit shocked to discover her ancestral home is now an industrial estate !
This stuff is delicious! Drizzle it over ice cream, stir it into yogurt. Add it to prosecco and cocktails. Simply dilute it with sparkling water with ice for the most delicious and refreshing drink. Or swig it out of the bottle and be proud that you made something so gorgeous and perfect. (Did I say that out loud?)
Approximately 1-1.5 cups of tightly packed, freshly picked Rose Petals
240ml water
1 Unwaxed Lemon, washed
200g Granulated Sugar
A large saucepan in which to make the sugar syrup.
A food grade bucket plus a lid or tea towel to cover the cordial for 24 hours.
Cheesecloth or butter muslin plus wooden pegs to attach the cloth to the bucket for straining.
A potato peeler and sharp knife to prepare the lemon.
Cordial bottles, ideally sterilised (see above).
A funnel for bottling your cordial.
If any rose petals are still attached to a green part of the plant, remove them. Discard anything that isn't petals, along with any damaged petals. Ensure no insects are left on the petals.
Peel the zest off the lemon in strips with the potato peeler, then cut the lemon up into thin slices.
Heat the water in the saucepan - it doesn't have to be boiling. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
Turn off the heat.
Add citric acid to the syrup and stir.
Put the rose petals, lemon zest and lemon slices into the bucket.
When the sugar syrup is cool enough not to melt the bucket, pour it over the rose petals and lemon zest and slices. Stir.
Cover loosely with a lid or clean tea towel and leave for 24 hours.
Peg the cloth to the bucket and strain the cordial through it.
Bottle in sterile bottles to prolong the life and enjoy!
Keeps in the fridge for around 3 weeks.
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
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The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide, Small Changes that Make a Big Difference - Jen Gale
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Bill Gates
Ideas on Growing Your Business Sustainably - Wayne Toppen
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
Solar Panels, Electric Cars and Heat Pumps - Achieving Net Zero
Solar Panels, Battery Storage and a Heat Pump - how they work together
Beginner's Guide to Making Mead
One of my favourite Chinese Proverbs is: When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. When is the second best time to plant a tree? Now.
This logic applies perfectly to installing solar technology in your property. Our solar panels are 10 years old. We probably paid more in 2013 for what is a relatively small installation, 3.32 KW, than we would today. But it had paid for itself in under 8 years. Meanwhile those panels are guaranteed for 25 years, so we have 15 more to go. Had we not started with the panels, we may never have started at all.
As always, big thanks to Ohm Energy who have worked patiently with us designing and developing this installation over the past 10 years. We couldn't have done it without them. If you're in shouting distance of Eastbourne where they are based, we would recommend them without hesitation.
So if you're contemplating getting started with solar technology, then our best advice is to just start with something. And with the well publicised and ever-increasing energy costs, that time is now.
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For example, as an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Find our disclosure policy here.
The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide, Small Changes that Make a Big Difference - Jen Gale
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Bill Gates
Ideas on Growing Your Business Sustainably - Wayne Toppen
Solar Panels, Electric Cars and Heat Pumps - achieving net zero by 2030
Making Sloe Gin with Dried Sloes
Small Batch Dandelion Mead Recipe
If you've never made wine before, the vast array of recipes and jargon online can seem a bit daunting. This elegant journal contains all the information you need, even if you are new to homebrewing. It also has plenty of room to record your own notes as you become more experienced.
Our Hedgerow Wine Making Journal includes:
The five recipes are followed by over 100 lined journal pages. This will allow you to keep your hedgerow wine recipes in one place, log your progress and record your making and tasting notes.
If you're new to my blog, I'm a homebrewing enthusiast. As well as making our own wine, beer, cider, mead and cheese, we grow their own food, keep bees and chickens, and are enthusiastic foragers and fermenters. Basically we are always looking for ways to create a simpler, greener, more sustainable way of living, and to share what they have learned along the way.
I have answered many of the questions I've been asked about hedgerow wine making over the years in this book, which includes all my hints and top tips.
This is the second in a series of Almost Off Grid Journals, the first one being our Mead Making Journal. Each book in the series contains basic information in the front to get started, room in the margins for notes, and lined pages so you can add your own information and clippings as you build your knowledge. They allow you to create the perfect reference series just for you, covering a range of subjects related to traditional crafts and sustainable living.
This journal series came about when I realised I have books on all sorts of subjects, yet many of them sit on the shelf largely unused. When you buy a book on a topic that interests you, such as wine recipes, you tend not to revisit all of it. Some parts of the book appeal, some don't, and then the book can be forgotten. Almost Off Grid Journals cover a range of subjects related to traditional crafts and sustainable living, enabling you to create your own reference library for ongoing use.
This soft back journal measures 17.0 x 24.3cm and has 150 pages in total, with book industry perfect binding and a glossy cover designed to easily wipe clean. It is printed on high quality white paper which minimises ink bleed-through and is suitable for pen or pencil.
The Almost Off Grid Hedgerow Wine Making Journal is an essential tool for any budding homebrewer who wants to make wine from hedgerow fruits and flowers. It is the ideal gift for all homemade wine enthusiasts.
Homemade Creamy Ricotta Cheese
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For example, as an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Find our disclosure policy here.
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People in the UK have been quietly monitoring their own air quality for years. In 2017 the environmental charity Friends of the Earth believed 70 local groups were using testing kits and monitoring outdoor air quality in their communities. There will be doubtless be many more groups by now, including our very own "TN21 environment aware" who organised Horam's first air quality monitor back in 2019.
The statistics about the impact of polluted air on communities speak for themselves. It is estimated that around 36,000 premature deaths a year in the UK can be linked to air pollution [source]. 5 years ago it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of children were being exposed to illegal levels of damaging air pollution from diesel vehicles at schools and nurseries across England and Wales, via a joint investigation by the Guardian newspaper and Greenpeace [source].
Given there has been a 2,600% increase in electric cars on the road over the past 4 years [source] we have to hope that the air pollution situation has been improved somewhat by petrol diesel cars being replaced with electric ones across the UK.
I am acutely aware that we are very lucky to live where we do, particularly given events unfolding around the world as I write this. Compared with living in a war zone, for example. However anything we can do here to monitor air quality with a view to improving it has to be a positive thing. So when we were approached to have Horam's third sensor on our building which is located on a busy road, we were more than happy to get involved.
Friends of the Earth conducted a ground breaking air pollution experiment involving thousands of people across the UK back in 2017, including in Eastbourne which is just down the road from us. People started testing the quality of the air where they lived, and the results suggested that dirty air was a problem in more places than the government had outlined in its draft Air Quality Plan at that time. This included 13 areas which were not identified as having any pollution problem at that stage, by either their local authority or the national government. Eastbourne was one of those areas.
A Community Project was then set up. Clean Air Eastbourne is a citizen science project that builds low cost air pollution monitors which help to map the quality of the town's air in real time. The air pollution monitors being built and installed are part of the Sensor Community (formerly Luftdaten) network, helping to monitor air quality around the world. A small community group in our village of Horam decided to start monitoring outdoor air quality here too.
We installed our air quality sensor this morning. It is called the Enviro+.
Enviro+ is an affordable alternative to environmental monitoring stations that can cost tens of thousands of pounds. The unit will enable us to contribute our air quality data to https://sensor.community/en/ (the open data project formerly known as Luftdaten) in Germany.
Manufactured by Pimoroni, the sensors need to be situated outdoors within 5 metres of a power supply, and to be in range of Wifi. They then measure particulates in the air (PM10 and PM2.5), temperature, atmospheric pressure and humidity and submit their readings via the internet.
At time of writing, there are over 14,000 air quality monitoring sensors worldwide, in 71 countries. The screenshot above shows them all around the UK as at this morning. The greener the hexagon, the cleaner the air. We have been very lucky with our monitor, because the "TN21 environment aware" team have done everything for us. All we needed to do was fit the unit to our building this morning.
Want to know if there are any air quality sensors in your area? Simply visit https://sensor.community/en/ and enter the name of your town in the search box. If there are air sensors in your area, you will see a hexagon representing each unit. When you click on a hexagon you can see its readings, which are recorded.
There is no Planet B - A Handbook for the Make or Break Years by Mike Berners-Lee
The Fully Charged Guide to Electric Vehicles and Clean Energy
Solar Panels, Electric Cars and Heat Pumps - achieving NetZero by 2030
Making Wine from Garden Grapes - a Beginner's Guide
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
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We have had an allotment and grown our own vegetables for years. We run our shop too, plus we have two sons at school and college. So whilst we don't perhaps buy as many vegetables in summer and autumn as non-growers do, we are nowhere near self-sufficient. Our allotment is a joy and it is big. It is therefore a big task to cultivate every bit of it (much as we aim to), and the reality is we cannot spend as much time up there as we would like.
This means we do find ourselves buying vegetables at different stages in the year. Just before the big supermarkets closed on Christmas Eve, they started massively discounting perishable food as they always do. Presumably they do this because they know they're going to be closed for a couple of days, and expect deliveries of fresh supplies immediately after Christmas. In light of all that: everything must go.
Tempting as it is to fill our fridge with discounted goods in situations like this, there's a limit to what we can realistically store. And the last thing I want to do is take things we will never realistically eat, thereby depriving someone else of it, only for it to end up in the bin. So imagine my (ahem) delight when Andy came home with rather a lot of carrots, parsnips and baking potatoes on Christmas Eve. To be precise: 11.5kg of carrots, 6.5kg of parsnips and 40 large baking potatoes. For a family of four who have already bought all their Christmas veg and/or grown it, that's a lot of veg.
What are we going to do with all this, says I? "It cost pennies! And they had so much left, this wasn't even half of what I could have bought! But don't worry" says Andy. "I have a plan." Well then. I'm all ears.
Andy had seen all this produce reduced in previous years and had wondered how long it would last if you attempted to store it. As the supermarket was virtually giving it away, this was his opportunity to find out. We don't have a root store, much as I'd love one, or a root cellar, or similar (if you're wondering what they even are, check out this guide to root cellars from Mother Earth News). We have a freezer but it is usually pretty full, as it was last December. We have a cellar, but we don't keep anything down there that might get eaten by a passing rodent - all food is either tinned or in sealed containers plus, of course, our home brewed wine, cider and mead. And there isn't a huge amount of time to start processing vegetables in jars at Christmas time.
What we do have is an unheated porch. And some heavy duty potato sacks made from paper.
So we transferred the vegetables to the sacks, one kind of vegetable in each. We folded the bag over and stored it in the unheated porch which is extremely cold in January. Where possible, we raised the bags above the floor slightly (on bricks, pieces of wood, whatever you have) to keep the air circulating around them.
And here we are over 2 months later, still eating our way through them. All three vegetables are still perfectly firm, they haven't gone limp like carrots have a tendency to do. No green potatoes. The carrots and parsnips have started growing a bit, and the carrots are probably the vegetable that looks like it will give up the earliest. The outsides of them are discolouring now though, when you peel them, they're still perfect and firm on the inside. The thing is, because we didn't grow them, we have no idea how old they were when we bought them. But however old they are, they're still perfect for making carrot soup.
This carrot, coconut and cardamom soup is a particular favourite.
We had tried storing vegetables in traditional hessian storage sacks in the past without a great deal of success. But if I'm honest, I'm not convinced we stored them in a cool, dry place. So I think we will try these again too.
(Appealing... geddit? Sorry.)
There are a number of reasons we're delighted to have realised something that people before us have known for hundreds of years: storing root vegetables in the right way means they last ages. And there are a number of reasons to do it:
* reduced food waste. As I've mentioned before, we're on the IKEA Live LAGOM Programme which is inspiring people to live more sustainably. One of the early modules we covered was food waste. Now I don't know whether some of those carrots, parsnips and potatoes reduced at the supermarket would have gone to waste if Andy hadn't bought them. But these kinds of foods are wasted up and down the country every day. These will not be. I was given a tip once: imagine those vegetables being grown. The seed being planted, watered, the seed germinating, the plant growing and the vegetables forming and growing. Then think of the machine or person picking the vegetables, and the journey they have to take to arrive in the supermarket, and then to your house. Surely we owe that lowly carrot, having been through all that, not to simply end up in the food waste bin because we forgot it was in the fridge?
* convenience. I always know I've got carrots, parsnips and baking potatoes without having to shop for them (I hate shopping so that's a very big win for me). I'll let you know how that works out in May when I no longer have my stash, mind you.
* reduced number of shopping trips (see above)
* money saved. The vegetables cost pennies to buy, plus we don't have to keep travelling to the shop to buy more of them. Yes we bought the bags, but they can be reused at least once more. And if we can crack the hessian bags, they can be washed. Those vegetables that cost pennies on 24 December are going to have lasted about 3 months by the time we've finished them.
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
Saving Water at Home using these free devices
Making Wine from Garden Grapes - A Beginner's Guide
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As the new year progresses, we will often stumble upon a new foraging opportunity somewhere on a walk - a wild plum tree, a sloe bush, a patch of meadowsweet. It might be that we don't have a bag with us, or have the time to pick them. Or it might be that we identified an elder bush, but the elderberries are not yet ready. We used to think we would remember where that bush was. We never did.
Enter What3words.
Whilst on the subject of seasons, sometimes you'll want to make a wine with a combination of fruits that are not in season together, or fruits that are not currently available. You may even know where all the trees and bushes are that will bear fruit, because you saved their locations last year. Having a freezer helps enormously. Simply bag up your blackberries when you pick them, for example, and freeze them until the sloes are in season. Freezing fruit in this way can help to break down the fibres in the fruit, which is an added bonus. It means you will be able to get more juice from your fruit. In fact some recipes specifically advise you to freeze the fruit before you make wine with it for this very reason. We use a vacuum sealer to freeze fruits and flowers, which saves a huge amount of space in the freezer in high season when we always seem to be finding something to pick. Anyway, back to What3words.
What3words is a system that gives every 3 metre square location on earth a unique three-word address which is easy to say, and easy to share. And it is free to use.
Prior to last year, we only used What3words to communicate our shop's exact location to new click and collect customers who use the app. The what3words location which brings customers directly to our shop door is: cactus.walked.bats. and this is more helpful and accurate than simply giving customers our address, if they use a Sat Nav. Not least of all because our post code leads them to the residential care home car park located behind our property, rather than to our shop.
What3words is used by many emergency services in the UK to identify a location with a much greater degree of accuracy than using a postal address, or giving directions. What3words is also just brilliant when you're trying to find the exact location you've been to before. And whilst being able to find these damsons again next year doesn't really constitute an emergency, the app is proving incredibly useful for foraging.
Sometimes we are in the perfect situation where we stumble upon some fruit or flowers, we have a foraging bag with us and we have enough time to pick what we need to brew wine or mead. However as the years pass, you become more familiar with the fruits and flowers in your area, and find yourself thinking about what you'd like to make next year. You might even have a seasonal wine making plan.
These annual rituals are such a blessing, and really keep you tuned in to the seasons. We always plan, for example, to make Elderflower Champagne. This is an awful lot easier if you know where the elderflowers are going to be because you have seen them, rather than having to start searching for a tree or bush when the mood takes you. And if that tree is in the middle of a field, a postcode isn't much use really.
So these days, we use What3words to return to the local elderflowers each year. And when we find a new Sloe Bush, we make a note of our exact location for future reference in the what3words app. So if has already fruited, we can find it again next year.
And if it hasn't fruited yet, we know to return to it later in the year. And if it goes on to bear fruit then happy days, for sloe gin here we come.
Download the What3Words app and record where you are, and what you have found. What3words will then lead you back to that exact spot whenever you like.
This also works perfectly when you're walking in the spring and identify, say, the flowers on a blackthorn bush. When you return in the autumn, with any luck it will be a bush covered in sloe berries. #toptip
The app is ideal for anything you gather in the countryside. So you can, for example, keep a note of where you find wild garlic as it will grow back in the same place every year. It's also great in mushroom season, as many mushrooms will also re-appear in the same place.
No phone signal, no data, or both? No problem. Without phone signal, the app functions the same way as when you have no data connection: you can view the location of any what3words address you enter. You can also navigate to it.
More about using the app offline from what3words' CEO Chris Sheldrick here.
What you can't do in that situation is text the what3words location of this amazing bush covered in juicy sloes to all your friends (if you're feeling incredibly generous). You will need signal and data for that :)
The Forager's Calendar by John Wright
Foraging with Kids: 52 wild and free edibles to enjoy with your children by Adele Nozedar
The Forager's Cookbook by James Wood
This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
Medicinal Mushrooms: Turkey Tail and Birch Polypore
Fresh Elderflower Cordial Recipe
Sloe Port Recipe using left over berries from Sloe Gin
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In July 2019, the UK became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050. The UK's target is to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
You may have heard the term Net Zero. It refers to the balance between the amount of greenhouse gas we produce, and the amount we remove from the atmosphere. So we reach 'net zero' when the amount of greenhouse gas we add to the atmosphere is no more than the amount we take away.
We have been taking steps to reduce our carbon emissions for some years now. So it was the obvious next step for us to make a commitment to:
1. Halve our greenhouse gas emissions before 2030
2. Achieve net zero emissions before 2050
3. Disclose our progress every year.
Achieving Net Zero before 2030 is ahead of the year laid down in UK law. In fact, we would hope to achieve it for our business much sooner than that. But that won't only depend on us, because the actions of our suppliers will also impact how quickly we reach our target. It isn't just about what we do in isolation. So this may mean some of our suppliers need to make changes, and/or it could mean we need to change our suppliers to achieve our goal. This just the beginning of a long road ahead.
We made this commitment via the SME Climate Hub website, which was set up to help small businesses like ours deliver on their climate goals.
As well as signing up to the commitment, obviously the next step is to take action. Our business occupies the same premises as our family home, which was built as a shop and home well over 100 years ago.
New buildings can be designed with energy efficiencies built-in, but retrofitting an old property to be more energy efficient can be an expensive process. Our shop was purpose built as a grocer's shop and appears in the 1911 Kelly's Directory as the General Store of William Delves. This building is a lot of things, but it could not remotely be described as modern.
We're always looking for the small, incremental changes we can make to reduce our carbon footprint, such as changing our shop packing tape to fully biodegradable kraft paper tape.
We also signed up this year to Ikea's Live LAGOM programme which explores how the power of community, with support, can inspire people to live more sustainably. But major changes to a building as old as this take more planning, and sometimes significant financial investment. So we have taken the big steps in stages over the past 9 years, as finances have allowed. And we continue to do that.
We had Solar Panels fitted on the roof in January 2013. Sadly my Nan passed away in 2012 and we decided to use some of the money she kindly left to me for a Solar PV Installation.
Between savings on our electricity consumption and the feed-in tariffs we have received over 9 years or so, those panels have already paid for themselves. They were our first step at reducing our carbon footprint though at the time, quite honestly, that was not our major motivation. We knew we planned to live and work in this property for a very long time, and were more focused on long term energy savings for our house and our business than saving the planet. As time went on, we realised we liked being less dependent on the national grid and seeing how, in practical terms, we could harness natural energy to power our home and workplace.
Those solar panels are still pumping out power as well as the they did when Ohm Energy installed them back in 2013. But because some of our roof is entirely in shade, and because we live in England, these panels don't generate energy all year round. The more cloudy and shorter days of late Autumn, Winter and early Spring mean than we generate a lot less power in those periods than we do during the rest of the year. In the depths of winter, we can have days where we generate nothing at all.
As we were producing our own electricity, an electric car was the obvious next step for us. In 2017 we test drove a second hand EV and fell in love. Our first Nissan Leaf was the next step in reducing the carbon footprint of our home and business. It has allowed us to reduce our carbon emissions as a family. And from a business perspective, we could now make zero emission local deliveries plus we can use the car for local collections rather than having things sent to us. This has encouraged us to find local suppliers who are happy to offer click and collect. Such as Tidmas Townsend, another Sussex family business down the road from us who supplies most of our packaging materials.
Again we didn't switch to an EV for primarily environmental reasons originally, they were economic ones. Running an electric vehicle costs a fraction of what it costs to run a petrol vehicle, and currently EVs incur no road tax either.
We've had electric cars for approaching 5 years now. Whilst the infrastructure has improved enormously in that time, we still have to plan long journeys carefully to ensure we leave enough time for charging, along with having a Plan B in case the first choice charger is unavailable. We quickly got used to approaching long journeys in a more structured way, because it was important to us. Plus once the family had experienced the peaceful, fume-free EV, they didn't want to travel in our old petrol VW Van anymore. So we had to make it work! And we have since upgraded our Leaf for one with a larger battery range, giving us more flexibility.
I think the old property quite enjoys modelling the modern pod point car charger.
Electric vehicles are not the obvious choice for everyone. But for us in our circumstances, the benefits completely outweigh any inconvenience issues. Plus those issues reduce with every year that goes by, as the infrastructure improves.
Heat pumps have been the topic of conversation around here for a very long time. But the installation costs have historically been prohibitively high. Whilst we are very much committed to environmental change, the reality is we run a business and the financial implications of any major project are also very important to us. We couldn't see a payback for years, perhaps ever, based on pricing structures in recent times and all the changes we would need to make to our property.
In 2020/21 there was a Green Homes Grant initiative from the Government for which we would have been eligible, enabling us to retrofit our old house and shop with a heat pump, and get a large part of it paid for with a grant. But the grant application process was a bit of a nightmare for all concerned, and it became apparent that it wasn't going to happen for a lot of households as was first hoped. Including ours, unfortunately.
Enter Ohm Energy to save us again. They made us aware of the OVO Energy Zero Carbon Heating Trial, designed to test out pioneering energy-efficient systems with willing households. We applied, were accepted and Ohm installed our Heat Pump in 2021.
Once we realised the Heat Pump installation was likely to go ahead, we switched our gas cooker for an electric one. And so it was that the gas supply was capped off, and the heating and hot water for our business and home became run entirely on electricity.
It was a pretty major installation. We already had a secondary heat source which is recommended in old houses, a wood burning stove. And we'd had our old windows replaced with energy efficient ones which, again, is recommended. But even with all that already done, retrofitting in an old property makes things more complicated than in a new-build. We had to have a survey ahead of time and, as we suspected, some of our radiators were not big enough and so they needed replacing. We had a combi gas boiler which didn't need a water tank, so now we needed a water tank. But the project went smoothly and now here we are with a heat pump. It is early days for us, and we are monitoring our electricity consumption and how well the property is heated over the winter months. We are also completing regular interviews and surveys with Ovo as part of the trial.
Incidentally, Ovo hosts a great forum where people discuss green energy and sustainable living, you'll find the forum here and you don't need to be an Ovo customer to participate.
Becoming a gas-free property should reduce our carbon footprint enormously, plus we had been signed up to electricity from renewables since 2018. However our net zero mission continues, as we find ways to maximise the electricity this property can generate to keep the costs down, and to work more smartly to ensure we minimise energy waste.
In terms of our next major change, we are considering options for a battery to store our excess solar energy, which we currently export to the National Grid. If we can source a battery which is cost effective for us, we could potentially be off the grid completely for 6-7 months of the year. The added bonus for our business if we are able to do this is that when there is a power cut (unfortunately Horam can be quite prone to these), our business can keep operating from our own battery supply until the power comes back on. Watch this space!
But our main focus now is on the smaller wins to get us to our net zero target. And potentially there are so many of those.
When aiming to achieve a goal, you generally need to know your starting point. Once we'd made the Net Zero commitment, there was masses of information and guidance on the SME Climate Hub website. So much, in fact, that I was struggling to find the time to work my way through it. The needs of a relatively tiny business like ours are entirely different to the many amazing, medium sized businesses who have made the same commitment. A lot of the information available simply doesn't apply to us, and it is taking me a while to work through it all in-between the day-to-day running of the shop.
Then I met Adam Bastock of Small99 by chance, when I was trying to work out which steps to take next towards our Net Zero target. Adam worked out that 96% of the UK economy has less than 9 employees and, like us, they lack the resources and support to achieve Net Zero. Yet we are a huge part of the solution to the climate crisis. Adam founded Small99 to break down the journey to Net Zero into manageable steps for small businesses who don't want the additional costs of consultants to get where they want to go.
That sounded good to me, so I signed up for the Small 99 Community where we are sharing knowledge and Adam is setting fortnightly 30 minute tasks and challenges to get us all one step closer to Net Zero.
Yet another carbon-busting possibility on the horizon for us is Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) technology, which could enable us to run our business using our electric car as a battery pack. The technology already exists in the UK and is being tested even as I write this.
Exciting times ahead!
The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide, Small Changes that Make a Big Difference - Jen Gale
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Bill Gates
Ideas on Growing Your Business Sustainably - Wayne Toppen
IKEA Live LAGOM - our first step!
Beginner's Guide to Making Mead
What we've Learned about Sustainable Beekeeping
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
]]>From the Elder (Sambucus Nigra) tree, Elderberries appear in autumn after the summer elderflowers are finished. They are glossy and black when ripe, and hang in sprays.
The elder tree is steeped in folklore. Elders were believed to be inhabited by witches who had transformed themselves into a tree to avoid capture. So be sure to ask permission from elder before you take flowers or berries to avoid trouble!
Elderberries are one of the best hedgerow fruits for wine making. Sometimes referred to as the Englishman's grape, the berries have a dark purple juice. They are astringent so your elderberry wine will need a long time to mature but it will be well worth the wait for a rich, full-bodied wine.
Plus elderberries make a great syrup.
A gentle reminder: always forage responsibly. Only harvest what you plan to use, leave behind more than you take, avoid disturbing the root structure of anything you pick, ensure you adhere to the Code of Conduct for the Conservation and Enjoyment of Wild Plants and, most importantly, never, ever pick any wild plant unless you are 100% certain that you have correctly identified it. For the avoidance of doubt, this blog post is not intended to help you identify elderberries without using any other resource. You need a good guide (preferably a human one, especially if you're new to foraging) to do that.
If you are using fresh elderberries, wash them well and strip them from the stalks. If you have picked them and are not yet ready to make syrup, you'll find they don't like hanging around in the fridge or at room temperature and will spoil quickly. So pop them in the freezer until you're ready. Some people do this anyway to break down the elderberries a little more, as you usually get more juice from fruit when it has been frozen.
Just as I use a fork to remove elderflowers from their stems for elderflower wine and elderflower champagne, I also use a fork to remove berries from the stems. It is important to remove them, not only because the stems are bitter but also because elder leaves, bark and roots are poisonous.
If you're using dried elderberries, as I am here, simply pick through them to remove dried stems and leaves, then give them a quick rinse under the tap.
In ancient times, it was believed that Elder was cure for everything. During the first UK COVID 19 lockdown of 2020, we suddenly realised we were constantly selling out of dried elderberries in our Almost Off Grid Shop. Then it occurred to us. Elderberry is renowned for boosting the immune system, as well as helping with the symptoms of cold and flu. It seems that a lot of people decided to make elderberry syrup, in the hope that it would help their immune systems during the pandemic.
No single remedy will strengthen your immune system overnight. Whilst the scientific evidence for the claims made about elderberry syrup is a bit patchy, many people swear by it in their winter self care rituals. I add some other ingredients in to my syrup, like fresh ginger and turmeric, plus raw honey from our bees. My recipe being of the 'throw everything at it' variety.
Incidentally, the peppercorns add a nice punch to the syrup but, more importantly, the piperine in black pepper encourages turmeric absorption in the body. And raw honey is added right at the end when the syrup has cooled to almost room temperature, to avoid applying heat to the raw honey's active ingredients.
So here is my recipe, and it's a handy one to have in your winter armoury. This elderberry syrup lasts for about 3 weeks in the fridge. If you don't think you'll use it all in that time, you could freeze half of it before you add the honey, then defrost that half when the first batch runs out before mixing with the honey. I take a spoonful a day to keep the colds away, a bit more if I can feel something coming on, and mixed with a little hot water and ginger wine if a hot toddy is needed.
I like to store it in glass bottles with a swing top.
Makes around 250ml.
The Hedgerow Apothercary - Recipes, Remedies and Rituals by Christine Iverson
The Forager's Calendar - A Seasonal Guide to Nature's Wild Harvests by John Wright
The Art of Herbal Healing - Herbalism for Beginners by Ava Green
Making Wine from Garden Grapes
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
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For at least five millenia, mushrooms have been picked for their medicinal and nutritional value. Since the 1970s, the focus of research has largely been on cancer treatments.
There are many claims made for the medicinal value of mushrooms. Some are backed with research and evidence, though many of the claims might be regarded more as folklore than rooted in scientific fact.
I am only going to talk about 2 mushrooms which are considered medicinal here, and they are Turkey Tail and Birch Polypore. There are two reasons for that:
- these are the two medicinal mushrooms with which we are familiar
- these are very easy to identify.
Dried mushroom supplements are widely available and can be very expensive. Given these two reputedly health-promoting mushrooms are widely available and easy to spot, we prefer to gather and dry them for our own use.
I will say firstly what we always say: always forage responsibly. Only harvest what you plan to use, leave behind more than you take, ensure you adhere to the Code of Conduct for the Conservation and Enjoyment of Wild Plants and, most importantly, never, ever pick any wild plant or fungi unless you are 100% certain that you have correctly identified it. For the avoidance of doubt, this blog post is not intended to help you identify the mushrooms without using any other resource, you need a good mushroom guide (preferably a human one, especially if you're new to fungi identifying) to do that. If you're in the Sussex area, or can plan to be, Fergus the Forager runs some terrific courses on mushroom identification.
Turkey Tail mushrooms, whilst technically inedible, are believed to be of medicinal value. They are known by 3 latin names: Trametes versicolor, Coriolus versicolor, and Polyporus versicolor. All three names apply to the same common medicinal mushroom. They got their name because they bear more than a passing resemblance to a turkey's tail.
These beautiful mushrooms contain polysaccharide peptide (PSP) and polysaccharide krestin (PSK) which are believed to help the immune system respond to infection and minor illnesses like the common cold. Many therefore believe it can help patients who are receiving chemotherapy, and turkey tail mushrooms are considered valuable in the treatment of cancers (source). For example, a chemical derived from turkeytail fungus is used to treat gastric cancer in China and Japan.
Turkey tails grow all year round, in most parts of the world. They are incredibly pretty to look at with contrasting coloured stripes on the top, and a creamy white or white underneath with small pores. The colours on the top range from light brown and dark brown and even reddish-brown to light grey, dark grey and almost black. They present as multiple overlapping tiers of thin, tough, leathery, multicoloured brackets in woodland, usually on dead wood.
Turkey tails are pretty easy to identify. The key is the contrasting stripes on the top (as opposed to thin, overlapping mushrooms which are mostly one colour) together with the pores on the underside. If there are no pores and the mushroom is completely smooth on the underside instead, it's not a turkeytail. If you're identifying turkeytails for the first time, I would use more than this blog post. Get yourself a detailed identification book (see links below). The good news is they have no poisonous lookalikes, but there are similar mushrooms out there which are not turkey tails which are not said to have the same medicinal benefits.
Turkey Tail mushrooms are not pleasant to eat. You need to boil them or dry them to make a tea, tincture or a powdered supplement.
We dry ours on a windowsill above the radiator, on kitchen towel.
Then if the oven has been on and I remember, I pop them in to the warm oven to finish them off in the residual heat. You can also dry them in a dehydrator. However you dry them, ensure they are totally dry before you store them.
Once dried, grind them to a powder in a pestle and mortar or a coffee grinder. Then you can add a teaspoon of mushroom powder to boiling water to make a tea. On its own it's pretty 'earthy', so you can add other things to that to make it a bit more palatable (fresh ginger, turmeric, honey...). Or add it to another drink, like homemade golden milk.
I don't tend to boil them in water because it takes about an hour to extract the goodies from the mushrooms. But if you have lots of fresh turkey tails and don't want to dry them all, you can also produce a tea that way.
Birch Polypore Fomitopsis betulina is also technically inedible. It has a long history of being regarded as medicinal in similar ways to the turkey tail. Birch Polypore is much bigger, they can be anything from 5 to 30cm wide and are kidney or rough shell-shaped.
You will find Birch Polypore exclusively on dead or dying birch trees from around August to November. You may well see them outside of these months, but do check them. Once they get old they can start to rot - a maggot in your tea is not the best.
Birch Polypore tends to be smooth and light brown on the top. It has a white porous underneath, almost like polystyrene, which turns more brown as it matures. It has no look-alikes and you can identify it pretty easily, not least of all because you'll only find it on birch trees. Again, it is assumed that you are not relying on this blog post to identify your birch polypore - make sure you are certain you have found it with the use of a good guide, preferably a human one.
Birch Polypore also staunches bleeding. When it's very fresh, you can use a knife to remove the surface of the white underneath and stick it to your flesh as a natural plaster. It's also known as razorstrop fungus, and was traditionally used to sharpen knife blades.
Birch Polypore was found on Oetzi the Iceman, the man whose 5300 year old body was discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. Which is very cool.
This mushroom contains a compound called piptamine, which is considered to be an antibiotic. It is anti viral, anti inflammatory and has been used to treat stomach complaints. If eaten in large quantities it can act as a laxative, but it is so bitter and inedible that you might struggle to consume enough to cause a problem. And Birch Polypore also has alleged benefits to cancer patients which are the subject of research (source).
The easiest way to get the benefits of birch polypore is, once again, in a tea. You can dehydrate them very easily by slicing up and laying on a windowsill or a rack.
Once it's completely dry you can store the slices in jars. Take a piece, pour over boiling water and leave for a few minutes for your tea. Again if the taste isn't doing it for you, add some spices or other flavouring of your choice. Turmeric, ginger and birch polypore is a lovely anti-inflammatory combination, infused together in a teapot.
Edible Mushrooms - a Forager's Guide to the Wild Fungi of Britain, Ireland and Europe - Geoff Dann
An Initial Guide to the Identification of Mushrooms and Toadstools - Paul Nichol
Mycellium Running - How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World - Paul Stamets
Making Sloe Gin with Dried Sloes
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
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A Bio Link is the part of your profile (in this case, on Instagram) that contains a link to your website. This is designed to help your followers to find out more about an image you've posted.
Sharing a direct link to blog posts and products on Facebook and LinkedIn is straightforward, you just share the link in your update. Instagram is different. It is primarily a photograph and video platform which doesn't allow links in posts. If you've noticed 'swipe up' posts which allow readers to click on a link, they can work really well. But you need a lot of followers to access that functionality. For small accounts, the only link you can have is a link in the 'bio' part of your profile which describes who you are.
A simple bio link to your shop or website is fine, until people want to find the post you've talked about, the recipe you mention or the product in your image. A simple link to your website means they have to then search all over your website to find 'the thing' they just saw in their Instagram feed. A handful of dedicated followers may do that, most don't. They just take a quick look around and give up.
This means not only did the person not find what they were looking for, but lots of people visiting your site briefly and leaving quickly is bad news for your bounce rate. Your bounce rate tells you (and Google) the percentage of people who arrive on your website and then leave without visiting any other pages. You can find your bounce rate data in your Google Analytics account, which I won't go into here. But in short: the higher the bounce rate, the worse news it is. For example, if you have an average bounce rate of 80%, this means 80% of the people who visit your website leave having only viewed the page they landed on. If you say 'link in bio' in your Instagram posts but only have a link to your homepage, you may have a lot of people clicking on that link then leaving immediately, because they don't have time or can't be bothered to find what they were looking for. To Google, high bounce rates means you're not giving your customers what they're looking for, and/or your web pages are of a low quality. You will be marked down by Google accordingly which isn't good for your site's Google rank.
What you really need is a link to a page containing the links you're talking about, so the reader can just click on the relevant link and be taken straight to where they want to go. There are a few of these, the best known being Linktree.
Linktree is fab, I used it for years. But my Linktree was getting a bit crowded with lots and lots of links, and I wanted something that looked more interesting and, frankly, prettier. I did have in mind to work out how to create such a thing in Linktree, I'm guessing it's absolutely possible. I also contemplated making a bespoke landing page on our website so I could design what I wanted in my head. I vaguely thought about these things for months but never got around to sorting anything out. Then, by chance, I discovered a different option. Lnk.bio.
Lnk.bio is an alternative way to create a link in your bio which gives more information than just taking the visitor to your home page. I was able to create what was in my head in my bio, and I did it in about 15 minutes flat in Lnk.bio's grid layout which mirrors the Instagram look and feel. It looks beautiful on a phone and on a pc, slightly different in each case. This is what my profile looks like today:
On a phone
and on a pc
Absolutely we are noticing a difference in the amount of traffic to our blog posts on the website. I know I am attracted more to an image than a simple link, it seems I'm not alone! If you have a paid account, you can see your stats and how many people have clicked through on your links.
You can have a free lnk.bio profile with unlimited links, but that wouldn't have allowed me to create this look with all the images. The minimum for a paid account is $0.99 per month. I signed up to lifetime access which, at the time of writing this, was $25.99 for access to everything. There is a lower-priced life option too which didn't have all the functionality that I wanted.
Lnk.bio also provide a QR code to my profile which we can put on the bottom of emails and in the shop window. Customers simply hold their phone camera over the QR code and then click on the link to take them to our page showing tempting images of our blog posts and a link to our shop.
So there you go. All about my new, very favourite thing to help drive visitors to our webshop and our blog posts. Do you use this tool, or do you use something else which you would recommend to other shop owners and/or blog writers?
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
The Almost Off Grid Mead Making Journal is here
Homemade Mascarpone Cheese and Pizza Express Caffe Reale Dessert
Homemade Pizza Base in the Breadmaker
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Live LAGOM explores how the power of community, with support, can inspire people to live more sustainably. The project was created by IKEA, in partnership with Hubbub, an environmental charity which creates campaigns encouraging people to make healthier, greener lifestyle choices. The project’s research partner is the University of Surrey’s Centre for Environmental Strategy. Following three years of experimentation, Live LAGOM has now become part of everyday business at IKEA and we are involved in the seventh year it has run.
LAGOM is a simple Swedish philosophy for everyday living. The full phrase "Lagom är bast" means "just the right amount is best." Enough is as good as a feast. So not denying yourself the things you love, but not taking more than you need.
Each year IKEA invites customers to apply to be part of the Live LAGOM project. As you may know, we live 'above the shop', so our business and our home are in the same building. This means whatever we do in our shop to improve our environmental footprint will automatically impact our home, and vice versa. For this and many other reasons: we were keen to be involved.
Our nearest shop is Croydon, and Andy attended the Live LAGOM Induction there this week. The participants shared what they wanted to get out of the programme, from reducing their energy bills to wasting less food. Andy was amazed to hear that, on average, previous participants reduced their food bills by more than £1,000 a year.
As well as reducing their food bills, ‘Lagomers’ who have taken part in the project so far say they have saved hundreds of pounds on all their bills, and feel happier and more in control of their lives. The actions many of them have taken include switching to LED lights, reducing their tumble drying, washing their clothes at lower temperatures, cutting their food waste and learning new skills like upcycling, sewing, growing their food and fermenting.
The idea is that we share what we learn with our friends and family to spread these ways of sustainable living to create a ripple effect across the world.
Around 40% of houses in the UK were built prior to 1946, before central heating was a thing. Our house and shop building is over 100 years old and our kitchen, whilst beautifully large, can be very chilly in the depths of winter. We have laminate flooring so we can easily clean food and drink spillages, but that means cold floors. We had never considered a rug because we would spend our lives getting it cleaned. A rug can give you a little more insulation but, most importantly for us, it is warmer underfoot than laminate flooring without needing to turn on the heating.
At the induction, Andy learned about the Ikea ranges which are sustainable. All such products in an Ikea shop are marked with a green circle so you know they are sustainably and responsibly sourced and manufactured.
Andy found a large rug along with underlay in this range, and brought them home. The Tiphede is made from recycled cotton and Stopp Filt is an underlay made from 100% recycled polyester. The underlay stops the rug moving around, plus it adds another layer of insulation. And our age old problem of getting the rug cleaned won't be a problem: because it's washable. Hooray!
And Nero the shop cat approves. Which is essential. Obviously :)
There will be 6 further workshops over the next few months running through until June 2022, to explore different ways to live more sustainably.
You don't have to participate directly in the programme to get involved. IKEA’s Live Lagom page on Facebook is open to everyone, with tips and advice on how you can make changes to improve your home's carbon footprint and live more sustainably. You can also read all about the programme and the changes previous participants have made.
We will continue to pass on what we learn on the programme and are delighted to be part of it.
Growing Thai Basil from Supermarket Cuttings
Almost Off Grid Mead Making Journal
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
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Do you know your Bullaces from your Damsons from your Sloes? We have become familiar with all three over the years and can spot them easily now in the hedgrow now, but it can be tricky when you first come across them.
I created this image to help a little.
Bullaces are small, wild plums. They're quite round compared with damsons which are more oval. They're a bit bigger than sloes, and they certainly taste better raw than sloes do. Incidentally, hopefully it goes without saying but it's always worth remembering that you should never pick any fruit in the hedgerow unless you are absolutely certain you know what it is.
When raw and ripe, bullaces taste just like plums. However catching them in their ripe state can be a challenge. Wild plum trees are very much in demand. Between humans and the wildlife watching and waiting, you will usually have competition when trying to pick them in a perfect state of ripeness.
The bullaces we picked were mostly ripe, but not all. We had spotted the fruits a few days before and left them to ripen on the tree. By the time we returned, a lot had gone. We didn't dare leave them any longer. What's interesting is that, although some of them were on the sharp side and the flesh was quite green in colour, they turned the gin pink almost immediately.
Well worth the effort to find these gorgeous plums. And the Wild Plum Gin Liqueur they make is not only gorgeous, but simple to make.
If you're not ready to make your liqueur when you pick the plums, they will quite happily sit in your freezer until you're ready. The added bonus of doing this is more juice tends to be released from the fruit more quickly.
500g Wild Plums
350g Granulated sugar
Half a litre of Gin (any gin will do, we go for the value stuff when we're soaking fruit and adding sugar to it)
2 teaspoons of glycerol
Plus
A jar in which to make your liqueur, a tag, plus a sieve, funnel, bottles and steriliser for bottling later.
1. Wash and destalk the plums, rejecting any that are cracked/squidgy. You can then choose to freeze the plums at this stage if you wish (see above).
2. Put the plums into the jar, with a layer of sugar on top of each layer of plums until the jar is full.
3. Slide the vanilla pod down the side of the plums.
4. Pour gin over everything until the jar is full and the plums are completely submerged.
5. Fit the lid and then shake the jar to start to dissolve the sugar.
6. Put the jar on a surface where you will remember to shake it once a day, until all the sugar is dissolved.
7. Put the jar in a dark cupboard and leave it to do its thing for at least 3 months (tends to be more like 6 months in our house, often because I forget).
8. Strain through a sieve to separate the plums from the liquid. If you have left the plums a long time, or your fruit was very ripe when you made your liqueur, you may need to use butter muslin inside the sieve to ensure you catch all the bits.
9. Add the glycerol to the liqueur.
10. Bottle in sterilised bottles and leave for at least 3 months.
Glass Demijohns and Where to Find Them
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
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Homemade soup is such a joy. Full of (in this case) vegetable goodness, easy to knock up in no time flat and very cheap to make. And I love love love the warming taste of Cardamom. Carrot and Coriander soup is the one everyone talks about, Carrot and Cardamom soup is better. Well it is if you love Cardamom. And did I mention: I love Cardamom.
Stick blenders are an essential piece of kit for homemade soup, I love my Kenwood Hand Blender. And if I remove the cutting end and wash it immediately after I use it, nothing sticks. Which means there's just one pan to wash up. Joy.
Often my soups are full of butter and milk, but I think coconut is a wonderful match with cardamom. Thus this soup is also vegan friendly.
Serves 2
Half a pound of carrots, peeled and sliced
1 small sweet potato, peeled and sliced
Half a leek, sliced
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
3 green cardamom pods, crushed in a pestle and mortar
Half a can of coconut milk, preferably organic (rather than the ones with guar gum and all that nonsense added)
A little Alpro Coconut "milk" to thin at the end - or water works fine if you haven't got any
Coconut yogurt to dollop on top at the end, if you have some.
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Put the chopped carrots and sweet potato on a baking tray.
3. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with a little coconut or olive oil.
3. Roast for 20 minutes.
4. Add the leek and roast for another 20 minutes. The leek will char a little - this is good.
5. Discard the pods from the crushed the cardamom, leaving only the seeds behind.
6. Fry the crushed cardamom seeds in a dry saucepan for 30 seconds or so.
7. Add a little coconut oil to the saucepan, then the onion and garlic.
8. Cook on a medium heat for a couple of minutes until the onion is starting to soften.
9. Add all the roasted veg and the coconut milk.
10. Cook for about 10 minutes to allow the flavours to blend.
11. Liquidise with a stick blender, adding a little Alpro coconut until the soup is thinned to your liking.
12. Serve with a little more Coconut milk or yogurt stirred through.
Yum.
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
Beer Quick Bread with a Buttery Top
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Mead is a fermented drink, traditionally made from honey, water, and yeast. If you want to start making your own mead at home, this elegant journal contains all the information you need, even if you are new to homebrewing. It also has plenty of room to record your own notes as you become more experienced.
Our Mead Making Journal includes:
The five recipes are followed by over 100 lined journal pages. This will allow you to keep your mead recipes in one place, log your progress and record your making and tasting notes.
Creating my first journal has been such an exciting thing to do and it's been so well received already. I'm keen to get everyone revisiting the wonderful ancient craft of mead making!
If you're new to my blog, I'm a homebrewing enthusiast and I brew mead at home with honey from our bees. As well as making our own wine, beer, cider, mead and cheese, we grow their own food, keep bees and chickens, and are enthusiastic foragers and fermenters. Basically we are always looking for ways to create a simpler, greener, more sustainable way of living, and to share what they have learned along the way.
I have answered many of the questions I've been asked about mead making over the years in this book, which includes all my hints and top tips.
This is the first in a series of Almost Off Grid Journals. They all contain basic information in the front to get started, room in the margins for notes, and lined pages so you can add your own information and clippings as you build your knowledge. They allow you to create the perfect reference series just for you, covering a range of subjects related to traditional crafts and sustainable living.
This journal series came about when I realised she have books on all sorts of subjects, yet many of them sit on the shelf largely unused. When you buy a book on a topic that interests you, such as wine recipes, you tend not to revisit all of it. Some of the book appeals, some doesn't, and then the book can be forgotten. Almost Off Grid Journals will cover a range of subjects related to traditional crafts and sustainable living, enabling you to create your own reference library for ongoing use.
This soft back journal measures 17.0 x 24.3cm and has 150 pages in total, with book industry perfect binding and a glossy cover designed to easily wipe clean. It is printed on high quality white paper which minimises ink bleed-through and is suitable for pen or pencil.
The Almost Off Grid Mead Making Journal is an essential tool for any mead maker and the ideal gift for all homemade wine enthusiasts.
Homemade Creamy Ricotta Cheese
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For example, as an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Find our disclosure policy here.
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One of the reasons some people start making wine, me included, is because we want to know what's in it. And we want to keep things as 'natural' as possible. However we need to keep in mind that our lives are full of chemicals. They are not always the enemy, by any means. Without cleaning/sterilising chemicals, for example, we could end up with unwanted bacteria in our wine which would spoil the whole brew.
Additives tend to be included in most wine recipes. Some are there to fix a problem, some to stop a problem happening in the first place. Yeast is an obvious one. Finings are another. Finings are an efficient way to clear your wine, and there's every chance that your wine cleared with finings will end up crystal clear. Whereas mine, which has been left for 12 months or more to clear without finings, may never end up as clear as yours. I still prefer not to use finings when I can use time to clear my wine. But the reality is: if I don't add pectin enzyme early on in the (for example) parsnip winemaking process, my parsnip wine may never clear.
Meanwhile acids can serve a number of purposes in home brewing. They can inhibit unwanted bacteria, help fermentation, improve taste and speed up and/or improve maturation. If there are not enough natural acids in your fruit, you can add acid from a tub.
We are often asked about sulphites, specifically whether it is ok to leave them out of homemade wine. Sulphites are widely used in a lot of the products we eat and drink, from preserves to fruit squash. If you check your kitchen cupboard labels you may spot Sulphites, Sodium Metabisulphite, Potassium Metabisulphite or Sulphur Dioxide. These are all examples of sulphites which help to preserve our food and drink.
Used widely in winemaking for all the right reasons, the most well known sulphites act as a preservative and slow down/prevent oxidisation, so your wine stays fresh for longer.
Metabisulphites are also used widely in commercial wine production, which is why wine labels usually state that the wine contains sulphites. The quantities used in home winemaking are often smaller than you find in other products in your kitchen.
Even if you don't add sulphites to your wine, no wine is entirely sulphite-free because they are naturally created by the wine making process. However if you are intolerant to them, you can choose not to add more as your winemaking skills develop. And if you are making a wine kit, you can leave out the sulphites at the end, as we usually do. You just need to be aware that your kit wine will need to be drunk fairly quickly, as it won't last as long without this widely-used preservative. And if it's a homemade wine which needs a long time to mature, like elderberry, then sulphites will be the difference between it having time to mature and going off before it gets the chance. Again, it is down to personal choice.
The most common way to buy sulphites for wine making is in the form of Campden tablets, which are covered in this list.
Acid Blend is a mixture of Citric, Malic and Tartaric Acid. A recipe may call for one or more of these acids to be added separately. But when it asks for Acid Blend, this is what the recipe is asking for. The characteristics of each of the three acids are explained below.
Bentonite is a natural clay used for clarifying and stabilising wine. Bentonite attaches to yeast and particles and falls with them to the bottom of the fermenting vessel to form a sediment. This helps to clear your wine, and is suitable for vegetarian and vegan wine making unlike other clearing products (see Finings later).
Campden Tablets. Usually made from potassium or sodium metabisulphite, Campden Tablets have a number of uses, both in the making of the wine and the sterilising of equipment. Campden Tablets can be used:
- to sterilise the 'must' (the ingredients you start with when they are mixed together). Mix the Campden Tablets into the must and then leave for 24 hours before you add your chosen yeast. This is important as Campden Tablets kill off all bacteria, including good yeast bacteria, so it can kill your yeast if you don't leave a 24 hour gap after using Campden Tablets and before adding yeast.
- to help stop fermentation. Adding Campden Tablets to your must once fermentation seems to have stopped inhibits yeast reproduction and so helps avoid exploding bottles. It also encourages the dead yeast and any pulp stuck to it to sink to the bottom, to help clear your wine. However fermentation can still restart if you only use Campden Tablets to stop it. Adding Fermentation Stopper in combination with Campden Tablets is the ideal way to stop fermentation using additives - see more about Fermentation Stopper later.
- when racking off. Some people add a Campden Tablet to their wine every time they syphon the wine off the sediment. This is to prevent the wine oxidising which can spoil the taste.
- to sterilise equipment. Campden is the only steriliser that can safely be used in the wine itself as well as for sterilising equipment. This is different to a cleaner/steriliser product like VWP, which can be used on equipment but not in the wine itself.
Calcium Sulphate aka Gypsum. Calcium Sulphate is used to improve water in home brewing by lowering its pH. Gypsum does come up occasionally in wine recipes, bu it is used more often in beer making.
Citric Acid is the main acid in winemaking fruits such as currants, elderberries and strawberries as well as citrus fruits. Citric acid is added to wine for flavour, and also helps to promote fermentation.
Fermentation Stopper aka Potassium Sorbate. Potassium Sorbate is a yeast inhibitor. It stops bacteria dividing and producing new cells, so is designed to stop fermentation before bottling. It is usually advised that you add Campden Tablets as well as Fermentation Stopper to maximise the likelihood that your fermentation has definitely stopped. As well as this,Young's advise that when using Potassium Sorbate you should use Campden Tablets at the same time to avoid a duranium (metallic) smell in your wine.
Finings. Many wine recipes include a fining/clarifying step. This involves adding a fining agent to the wine which is later filtered out. Finings gather proteins and sediment then sink to the bottom, helping the wine to clear more quickly than waiting for this to happen naturally. Finings are often animal based, which is why many commercial wines cannot be labelled as vegetarian/vegan. For example gelatine is usually derived from animal body parts, isinglass from fish bladders, and albumen is derived from egg whites. Bentonite clay is a non-animal based alternative which can also be used to clear wine.
The alternative to using any finings at all is the use of time instead. If you want to avoid adding them, then you need to be prepared to wait for your wine to clear naturally. Once you have removed the cleared wine from the sediment, another non-additive way to ensure the wine is clear is by filtering it. This is why commercial wine producers use finings, because the alternative can be a slow, labour intensive process.
Malic Acid is the main acid in apples, rhubarb and blackberries. Malic Acid helps with the fermentation and maturing of the wine.
Pectic Enzyme. When making jam, pectin in the fruit helps your jam to set which is usually what you want. When making wine, pectin creates a haze which you don't want. Pectic enzyme decomposes the pectin in your fruit or vegetables in the early stages of the wine making process, to help speed up the clearing of your wine later on.
Precipitated Chalk aka Calcium Carbonate is used to reduce the acidity in country wines, particularly when using highly acidic fruits like rhubarb, red currants and apples. Precipitated chalk is usually added at the start of the wine making process.
Sodium Metabisulphite - see Campden Tablets above.
Super Wine Yeast Compound. Another blend, this is one of our best selling wine additives. Containing Bentonite, Wine Yeast, Yeast Nutrient, Vitamins and Minerals, it is used for making high alcohol wines, and to speed up fermentation and clearing. As Super Wine Yeast Compound contains wine yeast and nutrients, no additional yeast needs to be added.
Tannin. Tannin occurs naturally in fruit skins, more so in red than white fruits. One of the main functions of tannin in wine is to give it astringency. This is especially important in red wines which need it for depth. Tannin also combines with proteins in the wine making process to help to clear it. Tannin is the reason that red wines take longer to mature, and can taste harsh if drunk too young. Wine tannin is usually made from grape skins. Prior to commercial tannin being available, wine makers used to use strong black tea to add the tannin element to their wines.
Tartaric Acid is found in grapes and fruits derived from grapes, like raisins. Tartaric Acid imparts flavour to the wine.
Yeast. There are two types of yeast available to the winemaker. One is the ambient yeast which exists naturally on the fruit. An example of this is the apples in cider making. We make cider using cider yeast, but we also make 'wild' cider by leaving the cider to ferment naturally, using the wild yeasts present in the juice. You can also make elderflower champagne using the yeasts naturally present in the flowers, in the same way.
The other type of yeast is far more commonly used and we sell it in our shop: cultured Wine Yeast. Using cultured yeast usually involves sterilising the fruit juice to kill off all the natural yeast, then replacing them with the cultured yeast from a packet.
The main reason for doing this is predictability. Naturally produced yeast is unpredictable. Even if it works really well in one batch of wine, it can be virtually impossible to produce the same results twice. Worse, if you have undesirable bacteria in your fruit or flowers that you can't see, they can spoil a batch and you may end up pouring the whole lot down the sink. That is why cultured yeasts became popular. If you always follow the same process, the yeast usually gives the same result. So if you liked it the first time, you can keep producing it again and again.
Yeast Nutrient. Yeast nutrient is often included in homemade wine recipes. It is not yeast, but rather it is food for the yeast. Yeast nutrient feeds yeast from the start, to ensure fermentation starts quickly and a vigorous fermentation is maintained.
This list contains 15 additives you will find in winemaking recipes, and there are more as well as these. As you make more homemade wine and get to know the ingredients, some additives you will choose to use, and some you may not. It is entirely personal choice.
First Steps in Winemaking by C J J Berry
130 new Winemaking Recipes by C J J Berry and Rex Royle
The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garey
It's early June as I write this, and usually the hedgerows would be awash with elderflowers by now. However 2021 has been a strange year so far. The cold temperatures in April/early May and lack of rain in April seems to have combined to make everything about 3-4 weeks' behind where they would usually be.
There were only a few elderflower heads ready, so we picked what we could and decided to make a small batch. I really like making small batch wines, they are ideal for foraged flower wines when you can't quite find enough for a standard demijohn (which would make 6 bottles). We had our first half size, food grade buckets delivered a couple of weeks ago and it was a good opportunity to try them out.
The recipe below is for the standard demijohn/bucket volume to make 6 bottles of elderflower wine. If you want to make a small batch like I have, simply halve all the ingredients.
Never made wine before? Check out our Starter Kits containing the equipment you need to get going, which can be re-used time and time again.
This recipe makes 4.5 litres (6 bottles) of Elderflower Wine. If you wish to make a small batch, simply halve the ingredients.
600ml/1 pint of elderflowers. This is the quantity you need once the stems are removed which I find, in practice, to be around 25-30 heads.
3 Lemons
4.5 Litres/1 gallon of cold water (we usually used bottled water. If you know your water doesn't have lots of chlorine in it which could affect the yeast, you can use tap. Not sure? Boil your tap water and let it cool to room temperature).
1-2 Campden tablets
1.1kg/2.5lbs granulated sugar - the standard sugar in your kitchen is fine for this
Up to half a sachet of White Wine Yeast (a whole sachet typically treats 25 litres of wine, hence you don't need it all)
1 teaspoon Yeast Nutrient
5ml/1 tsp Wine Tannin
1. Ensure all your equipment is sterilised using your steriliser of choice (or that included in your starter kit), following the instructions on the label.
2. Having removed as many of the green stems as you can from the elderflowers, put the flowers in a 5 litre bucket.
2. Wash the lemons and peel off the rind from them into the bucket with the flowers (I find it easiest to use a potato peeler for this).
3. Boil the water and pour it over the flowers and lemon in the bucket.
4. Cover loosely with a lid or clean tea towel and leave to cool.
5. Crush a campden tablet and add it to the mix. Leave to infuse for 2-3 days, stirring daily.
6. Strain off the liquid through muslin or a straining bag into a second clean, sterilised, 5 litre bucket.
7. Add the juice of the lemons and the sugar. Stir well until the sugar has dissolved.
8. Add the yeast, yeast nutrient and tannin. Stir well.
9. Cover loosely with the lid or clean tea towel and leave to ferment initially for 4-5 days.
10. Strain the liquid again through muslin or a straining bag back into the first bucket which has been cleaned and sterilised, or a clean, sterile demijohn if you prefer.
11. Fit an airlock half filled with water and allow the wine to ferment out completely.
12. If the wine looks completely clear and fermentation has stopped, you can choose to add another crushed campden tablet at this stage to be certain no further fermentation happens. We choose to leave the wine for a few weeks after fermentation has stopped and the wine is clear rather than add the campden. It is down to personal choice, but make sure fermentation has totally stopped to avoid exploding bottles.
13. Syphon into sterile wine bottles, leaving any sediment behind. To do this, place your bucket/demijohn higher than the bottles. Use the Syphon to transfer the wine, taking care not to disturb the sediment and try to avoid transferring any debris. The less sediment you pick up, the clearer the end result will be.
13. Leave to mature for 6-9 months before drinking.
[This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.]
First Steps in Winemaking - CJJ Berry (a classic!)
130 New Wine Making Recipes - CJJ Berry and Rex Royle
Beginner's Guide to Making Wine from Fruit and Flowers
Blackberry Wine (Mock Claret) Recipe
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This recipe is an adaptation of JAO. We've developed it over time not only because it's a great basic mead recipe, but because it's an ideal base to which we add other fruits and herbs. The purists would say that once you start adding things to the mead, that turns it into something else. I tend to refer to any fermented honey-based wine as mead, but in fact there are a number of names for the many mead variations. Here are some of them.
Melomel - a mead which contains fruit.
Metheglin - a mead containing spices and/or herbs.
Cyser - honey and apple juice fermented together. In its heyday, cyser was mostly made in abbeys and monasteries.
Pyment - a grape based mead. A sort of wine made with honey or, alternatively, a mead made with grapes.
Hippocras - a grape based mead with herbs added.
Morat - mead with mulberries added.
Braggot - mead with hops and malt. You might say a cross between a beer and a mead.
So as you see, once you start making Mead then a whole new world of exciting variations opens up to you. Technically, this basic mead recipe for beginners is a sort of mead/melomel/metheglin. Whatever you want to call it (and I call it mead): it's delicious.
You don't need a lot of equipment to get going. Check out our Mead Making Kits and Ingredients.
Makes 1 gallon (4.5 litres, 6 standard wine bottles)
This recipe assumes you already have wine/mead making equipment, find all our starter kits here.
1. Sterilise all equipment.
2. Scrub the orange and lemon clean under cold, running water.
3. Heat about 2 litres of water in a saucepan until warm, then dissolve the honey in the water.
4. Whilst allowing the water to cool, slice the orange and lemon into 8 pieces.
5. Once the honey water is virtually at room temperature, pour it into the bucket/demijohn and add all the fruit, plus the cinnamon stick and the cold tea.
6. Top up the vessel to about 3 inches from the top with water.
7. Put the lid on the bucket/bung in the demijohn, put your (clean) finger over the hole and swirl everything around.
8. Add the yeast* to the bucket/demijohn, replace the lid/bung and swirl again until it is well mixed.
9. Fit the lid/bung and airlock. Leave on a surface in a reasonably warm place until fermentation starts. You will be able to tell it has begun, because the bubbler airlock will start bubbling.
10. Once you are sure fermentation has started, put the vessel away somewhere at room temperature for 2-3 months and allow it to ferment out. A dark cupboard works well. Check on it occasionally to ensure things are warm enough (too low a temperature is the most common reason why fermentation won't start, or starts and then stops - more about that here).
11. When you are confident fermentation has stopped, you are ready to bottle. We always wait until the fruit falls to the bottom of the vessel which is our sign that everything is completely finished. If you don't want to wait that long but are concerned about the risk of exploding bottles, you can add a crushed campden tablet to the mead before bottling. I prefer to wait rather than adding anything to my mead; this is entirely personal choice.
12. Syphon the mead off into sterilised bottles, leaving the sediment behind.
13. Some people drink the mead straight away. We think it benefits enormously from being left for at least 3 months before drinking. In just about every case: the longer you leave it, the smoother it gets.
*most yeast sachets contain more than enough yeast to treat a one gallon vessel. Mangrove Jack's Mead Yeast M05, which is the yeast we recommend, will treat 6 times this volume. If you know you are going to make more mead soon, then re-seal the pack as best you can and leave it in the fridge until you make the next batch. But do test it before embarking upon another batch to ensure it's still ok - read about how you test yeast to see if it's still alive here.
Making Mead by Bryan Acton and Peter Duncan
Making Mead Like a Viking by Jereme Zimmerman
The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm
and our very own Mead Making Journal by Bev Toogood
Beginner's Guide to Making Mead
Elderflower and Lemon Mead Recipe
10 Reasons Your Fermentation Won't Start
This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
So initially we went about this in the way we always go about things. Me reading everything I could possibly find about podcasting, contemplating courses, attending virtual presentations and workshops, agonising over tech we would use, reading every ebook in the world. Andy meanwhile just wandered into the kitchen at some point and said “shall we just buy a microphone and get going?”
And that’s what we did.
There is an awful lot of information online about starting a podcast, and some rather expensive courses. I’m quite sure that, had we paid money to learn this stuff, our podcasts could have been of better quality right from the start – for we definitely learned as we went along. However I am the sort of person that could have spent 6 months making sure everything was absolutely perfect before I was ready to launch.
Meanwhile the country was in a national lockdown, and we knew there were shop owners who might be helped by what we had to say. About selling on third party platforms so that, even though your shop was forced to close, you could still sell your stock online. About how multiple income streams are the answer to cashflow hell. About how there are only 3 ways to grow your business. About how, if you weren't online yet, you really needed to choose an Ecommerce platform and get going. How we all had to stay positive and focused, and that COVID 19 wasn’t the end of our businesses. Even though, for some, it may have felt like it.
It seemed like this was our time. And done is better than perfect, as they say. So we didn’t learn from courses. We just did it.
Because I’d read so much conflicting advice, I felt a bit bamboozled when it came to choosing the tech. We ended up choosing a Blue Yeti Microphone Nano Premium which, I have to say, is utterly brilliant. I’m a little bit in love with it actually. The sound is fantastic and, when I speak into it I feel like a rock star.
We now use this mic when we do our Lives in The Small Retailer Lounge too. The idea being that, if we had decided to repurpose any of them into a podcast, the sound quality would have been good enough to do that. That said, I’m not sure our podcast listeners would have wanted to listen to us chatting away about what zoom cheese tasting we’re doing tonight and what we’re all were up to this weekend. Or rather, we weren't up to, because this was during a national lockdown.
You might be wondering about the egg boxes. Well, this really was a case of ‘don’t overcomplicate it’. We could have invested in a microphone sound shield to block unwanted sounds from our mic, such as the boys gaming upstairs and Nero the Shop Cat having one of her howling sessions. But as the average podcast only lasts for 7 episodes, we didn’t want a house full of equipment we may not use very much. Hence Andy built the egg box version with cardboard and fragile tape from the shop. I grew rather fond of it.
When we recorded a podcast, we simply connected the mic to a laptop we already had. So in terms of equipment… that’s it.
We started out using Online Voice Recorder which did exactly what we needed it to do. Andy then took the recordings and used mp3cut to cut bits out, audio-joiner to join bits together and auphonic to level the sound out and remove any cat howls that may have snuck in. All this software is available online for free.
Some people don’t bother with intros and outros in their podcasts, but our lovely friend Nicky Griffiths is a wonderful voice over artist and we knew she would do a fantastic job for us. So we went for it… and we were so glad we did!
But in short, other than having a wonderful voice over artist help us, we did everything else on the cheap.
We decided to go with Buzzsprout to host our podcasts. We chose Buzzsprout simply because it seemed to be the easiest way to get going. Their interface is clear and simple to understand. Your podcasts are hosted there for the first 90 days completely free. Buzzsprout provides a podcasting platform, promotional tools, and lots of lovely stats. It also offers loads of free training. At one point, I noticed we'd had hundreds of downloads of our podcast. This all went to my head a bit, it was all terribly exciting.
Hopefully this brief overview will help you to get started. If you’ve had the urge to start a podcast, there really has never been a better time. I thought the market might be saturated. However when I started sharing our podcast I discovered that, for some people, ours was literally the first podcast they had ever listened to. So lots of room out there yet!
Plus the biggest bonus of all: start a podcast tomorrow and then, when you search your name in Spotify, there you will be. Rock star indeed.
You're reading this and waiting for me to plug our podcast. And wondering why I haven't. So here comes the full disclosure part: we produced podcasts for a few months and then we stopped after 19 episodes. We thought we'd done 20, but I seem to have lost the last one unfortunately.
Why, I hear you cry?
It was all about resources. Or rather, lack of them. I bang on all the time about having no staff, it being just the two of us. Producing a podcast well takes time, and you owe it to your listeners to put the effort in. During lockdown somehow it felt like we had time (despite being busier in the shop than we ever imagined we would be). Within a few months, it didn't feel like we had any time at all. Plus we signed up to become a Net Zero Business and Home by 2030, and had a long, hard look at our list of suppliers and the things we were spending our energy on. I'm afraid the podcast simply didn't make the cut.
However we know at least one person who followed the guidance in this article and set up their own podcast successfully. And we are still asked about it. Which is why I share it here. And who knows, we may pick it up again one day.
The irony of course is we produced a podcast about growing shop sales, and then grew our shop sales so much that we didn't have time to produce a podcast.
This post contains links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Find our disclosure policy here.
]]>Are you tired of hearing about passive income yet? It has been the subject of many an email in my inbox for the past 2 years and much of what is said, I'm sorry to say, is misleading nonsense. However some of it is real. I have blog posts I wrote literally years ago, with Amazon affiliate links in them. They still generate a small commission when readers click through on my link and then choose to make a purchase on Amazon. That, to me, is true passive income. I did the work upfront once, and it continues to work for me, months and years later.
Amazon Associates is the biggest affiliate network in the product affiliate market. And the "product" affiliate market, as opposed to other affiliate markets, is an important distinction to make. All those millionaire affiliate marketers laying on beaches reading this around the world: I know you didn't make all that money from Amazon Associates.
You may however, have made it from affiliate revenue from the marketing of digital products. If you have an enormous audience online, you could promote a digital product with a very high ticket and high affiliate income attached to it. So think 3000 pounds at 50% commission because yes, that does happen in the digital product market. If you are involved in that industry, you can make an awful lot of money from affiliate income.
However, when you're talking about Amazon Associates, you're talking about lots of itty bitty bits of commission rates on bazillions of products.
It was set up at the time Amazon itself was set up, in 1995. I found that quite interesting, that Amazon Associates has been part of the Amazon stable forever. So when Jeff set up Amazon, he knew he needed an army of salesmen out there sending people Amazon's way. It might be difficult to imagine now, but back in 1995 you probably had never heard of Amazon. These days, I think you'd struggle to find anyone in the western world that hasn't heard of it. Indeed, most people have not only heard of Amazon, they also have an Amazon account.
However, in 1995, the world was a very different place. And the best way to get people to send their friends to this new site called Amazon was by giving them a little bit of commission every time their friends bought a book on the website. Whilst the commission rates Amazon were paying in those days were dramatically higher than they are now, the process remains broadly the same. And it works.
More about the programme from Amazon Associates in this video:
Amazon Associates is an affiliate programme where you can earn income from products links, and it is the biggest of its kind. With upwards of 12 million products in Amazon's catalogue, and closer to 350 million products when you include marketplace sellers, the sheer scale of products to choose from is mind blowing. It’s completely free to join and simple to use. And in case you didn't know, affiliates are also paid for items the customer adds to their cart within 24 hours of clicking on your link, and purchased before the cart expires.
Yes, that's what I said. If your reader clicks through and takes a look at the product you recommend and then goes on to add other things and checks out within 24 hours of that click on your link, you receive a commission on everything in their basket.
Regardless of that however, Amazon Associates is not a "get rich quick" scheme. You will read claims of thousands of pounds in affiliate income a month. That is not the affiliate income I'm talking about. It is is definitely possible to have a nice little income from Amazon Associates, I'm living proof of that. You just won't be retiring on it.
The best way I can explain it is my describing what we do. I have blog posts on the Almost Off Grid website about the products we stock. In case you weren't aware, we sell homebrew kits for making beer, wine, cider and mead. We also stock products to help ferment vegetables, kefir and kombucha, and to make cheese.
All these subjects have a lot of potential content associated with them. That's because our site visitors are looking for guidance on (for example) making wine from garden grapes. Or perhaps they're looking for a beginner's guide to making mead. And so on. Since we sell the products to make these things, it makes obvious sense for us to blog about how to make them. And I would argue that it does for you too.
There will be an subject linked to what you sell in your shop that your customers would like you to blog about. Think about all the questions your customers ask you repeatedly. Yes you can answer them face to face and on the phone, but wouldn't it be great to be able to send them to an article you've written which explains everything? And you can put links in those blog posts which may earn you a commission whilst, at the same time, helping your customers to find what they need. Plus you could suggest other articles they could read on your website related to the subject and further reading, in books that ideally you have read yourself and have found helpful. It really is that simple.
And you may be thinking: why would I do that? Why wouldn't I want to keep traffic on my own website, why on earth would I choose to send them somewhere else? And yes, in some cases you would indeed keep the traffic on your website. Sometimes that's the right thing to do. But if we are genuinely going to help the reader find what they need, sometimes we just don't have that thing to offer them. In those instances we send readers to Amazon, and elsewhere too.
In our case, the reason we do that is because we're a small shop. So if I'm writing an article about a beer kit, I may only take delivery of three of them every time we place an order because our shop is small with limited storage. We simply don't have the space for hundreds of lumpy beer kits. But between Amazon and all the marketplace sellers on Amazon, there will be many of those kits available. So if I'm talking about a product I am not confident I can keep in stock all the time, then I send the reader to Amazon. If it's a product that we always have in stock, like our mead kits that we created ourselves, then I send the reader to our website. So you make a decision depending on what makes sense for your customer. I choose carefully, a product that has a good rating, ideally one I've tried myself, ideally from a seller with good reviews. To keep my customer's onward journey from our blog a happy and positive one.
There is no point trying to keep the reader on your website knowing you are likely not to have enough stock, or you don't stock the product at all. All that does is irritate people and make them unlikely to want to read more of your content. In 2019, a Mintel study confirmed that almost 90% of UK shoppers used Amazon, regardless of what they might be saying publicly on Facebook. We've had two national lockdowns since then when, as a retailer, it was very clear that shoppers trusted Amazon and many were buying very frequently on their site. So if you don't have the stock, potentially your reader will go to Amazon anyway to look for it. You may as well make life easier for them by sending them to a site which can be relied upon, and receive a commission if your reader buys when they get there.
Before you can participate in the Amazon Associates Program, you need to be a member. This means you have to apply, and there are some things that you need to bear in mind before you submit your application.
There's no point in applying if you don't have a website set yet. Or you have a site, but very little quality content there. I would advise you to apply only when you have at least 15 pages of decent quality content. Amazon will ask you about your social media accounts when you apply, because they want to know you have an audience which you can potentially bring to their platform. But you don't lead with your social media accounts when you apply to Amazon, because having thousands of followers on Instagram isn't as appealing to them as having a lot of traffic to your website.
These applications are read by real people, not bots. So they will go through and have a look at your application. If you have a massive social media following but you don't have very much going on on your website, I would do a bit of work beforehand, writing quality blog posts and ensuring you make clear where you're going with this. It isn't a problem if you're just starting out, we all started somewhere and they know that. It's just giving your application the best chance of success first time around.
Amazon will ask you for your bank details so commission can be paid into your account. I strongly recommend ensuring that the name on your application and the name on your bank account match. It's a bit like when you're applying for a seller's account on Amazon, or when you're applying for a Kindle Publishing Account. As you've probably noticed when you apply for all sorts of accounts now, from bank accounts to affiliate accounts, fraud is very much a thing. Names matching everywhere is fundamental usually. When I applied back in the day, it didn't matter. But it does now.
So if you have an Amazon business account, and the name matches that on your bank account, then be logged into your Amazon business account when you apply. If you have a personal Amazon account and the name matches that on your bank account, then be logged in to your personal Amazon account when you apply.
Obviously the commission is all taxable. So picking and choosing which account the monies get paid into isn't a way to get out of declaring the money, it's just about ensuring your chances of approval first time are the best they can be.
You can apply here. If you have an Amazon business as well as personal account, remember to be logged into the account which matches the name on your bank account for commission payments before you start!
https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/
If you're turned down the first time you apply, it is not the end of the world. It isn't like applying for a seller's account where, if you're turned down, it can be difficult to re-apply. Amazon Associates will tell you what the issue is, probably something like you need a bigger audience, you need a bigger following, or something like that. Go off, do the work based on their feedback and reapply. Eventually you will be approved if you do as they ask you to do.
I am not a blogger. I am a shop owner who happens to blog. Amazon affiliate income is one of the many revenue streams that trickle into our shop bank account, month in month out, helping to keep the cash flowing. Which enables us to buy more stock.
So the numbers may not be big, but all the small amounts add up. That's why I consider Amazon Associates to be an important part of our business.
Free Checklist to help you maximise Amazon Affiliate Income
Are you already an Amazon Affiliate? Would you like our checklist: 21 tips to maximise your Amazon Affiliate Revenue? Use it when writing your blog posts, to ensure you maximise your affiliate income in every piece of content you produce. You can get it here.
Committing our Business to Net Zero by 2030
The Three Ways to Grow your Shop Sales
Creating a Beautiful Bio Link for Instagram
Small Giants - Companies who choose to be great instead of big by Bo Burlingham
Omnichannel Retail - How to build winning stores in a digital world by Tim Mason
Reengineering Retail - The future of selling in a post digital world by Doug Stephens
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The season for Wild Garlic, or Ramsons as they are also known, is quite short - March until late June in these parts. The leaves start appearing in late winter/early Spring. When young and the plants haven't yet flowered, the leaves are at their best for eating raw, or lightly cooked. As the leaves start getting bigger, we still use them chopped up in scones, Wild Garlic Focaccia Bread and pesto. The pretty white flowers are also lovely in salads. And you can even eat the buds, just before the flowers burst out. They are delicious pickled. Finally, you can even pickle the seed pods at the end of the Wild Garlic season - known as Wild Garlic Capers.
The buds are ready for picking in the South of England right now, which is the third week in April. If you look at a patch of Wild Garlic which hasn't gone into flower yet, you may not spot the buds. However if your timing is right and you run your hands through the leaves, there they are.
We have huge patches of wild garlic around where we live. We also have a patch of our own at our allotment - you too might be interested in growing your own Wild Garlic.
Each Wild Garlic plant could have as many as 8-10 buds each. So if you're lucky enough to find an enormous patch of it, it will take you no time at all to pick enough for a jar of Pickled Wild Garlic Buds.
The buds are teardrop shaped and, when they're fat and about to pop, you'll spy the flowers inside. Some people remove the flowers from the green pod to pickle them, which is another option. We like ours whole, dotted in salads and added to stir frys. Yum. It also makes Pickled Wild Garlic Buds an easy and quick recipe. We collected ours last night and they were in the jar in their gorgeous sweet and sour pickling juice within a couple of hours of being picked.
Enough to make one full jam jar.
100g freshly picked Wild Garlic Buds
150ml white wine vinegar
30g sugar - I like Golden Granulated Sugar as it's a little less processed than pure white, but any sugar will do
50ml water
1 teaspoon pink peppercorns
1 pinch sea salt
1 teaspoon dried ginger powder
Half a teaspoon of coriander seeds
You will also need:
A standard 380ml jam jar with non-corrosive lid, suitable for pickles
A small stainless steel saucepan (it needs to be stainless steel because of the corrosive nature of the vinegar)
A sieve
Trim the stalks from the buds as, like many flower stems, they can be a bit woody to eat.
Put the prepared buds into a sieve and wash them under cold running water.
Put the sieve over a pan or bowl for a while to let as much water drain from them as possible.
Meanwhile sterilise your clean jar in the oven and the lid in a pan of boiling water using the sterilising method we recommend, or whichever is your preferred way.
Put the vinegar, water and spices into a small saucepan and heat to the boil.
Pack the buds tightly into your sterilised jar leaving 1cm or so at the top.
Pour the pickling liquid over the buds.
Press the pods down with a spoon and give the jar a couple of taps on the side to remove any air bubbles.
Put the lid on.
Put aside for 2 weeks to a month.
Open and enjoy in salads, stir frys or straight out of the jar!
Once you open them, your pickled wild garlic buds will last around 6 months in the fridge.
Wild Food: A Complete Guide for Foragers by Roger Phillips
The Forager's Calendar: A Seasonal Guide to Nature's Wild Harvests by John Wright
Preserves: River Cottage Handbook No 2 by Pam Corbin
Growing Thai Basil from Supermarket Cuttings
My posts contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For example, as an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Find our disclosure policy here.
]]>Dried Sloes are pretty widely available all year round. We sell them in the Almost Off Grid Shop, in fact. So why make Sloe Gin with Dried Sloes?
These jewel-like berries are usually found in UK hedgerows between September and November every year, though we have found some later than that and even into the following year.
We've talked before how the taste of Sloe Gin improves dramatically over time. Dried Sloes are ideal if you want to get a head start making your Christmas presents, for example. Or for some other special date, and you don't have any fresh sloes.
You can pick and use Sloes right away, or you can freeze them. You may recall in my original Sloe Gin Recipe we talked about freezing them to replicate the first frost, but you could just leave them in your freezer so you can make them at any time of year.
However much as I love sloe gin, I'm not inclined to take up precious freezer space with sloes for too long. Dried are a great alternative when you don't have fresh sloes.
I mentioned in my original Sloe Gin Recipe about having sloes in the hedgerow in our allotment, and sadly I spoke too soon. A couple of years after I wrote that, that hedgerow was cut back and a housing estate was built... no more sloes opposite our allotment. Which is very sad indeed. Fortunately we know where to find others. If your source of sloes disappears and you can't find more in your area, you can use dried sloes instead.
We've talked before about how to identify sloes. Prunus spinosa are the fruit of the blackthorn bush, not to be confused with damsons and bullaces which are slightly larger (though they make good gin too). Large thorns on the bush are an indicator that you have sloes rather than other forms of wild plum, and the berries have a stone in the middle.
Blackthorn bushes were used in days gone by to mark boundaries, and there are a lot of them around the UK despite sometimes being cut down to build housing estates as in our case. However if you're not confident about picking yours fresh, using dried sloes to make sloe gin solves that problem.
Many people say sterilising jars and bottles for Sloe Gin isn't necessary because of the alcohol content of the gin. That level of alcohol pretty much kills anything. In fact I think a long time ago I use to make Sloe Gin without sterilising. However these days I do sterilise my jars and bottles for this, only because we do a lot of homebrewing so I always have VWP or similar around. If something goes wrong that's an expensive mistake, and it only takes a few minutes, hence I do it. It is entirely your choice whether you sterilise, or whether you just make sure your jars and (later) bottles are scrupulously clean.
Having made them both, I can honestly say I cannot tell the difference between Sloe gin made with fresh sloes and Sloe Gin made with dried sloes.
300ml Warm Water
250g Granulated Sugar
70cl Bottle of Gin
plus you'll need:
A sieve for rinsing your sloes
A bowl in which to rehydrate your sloes
A large, wide-necked jar, very clean or sterilised jar. I usually use Clip Top Jars. On the day I made this batch I didn't have one free, so I used a pickled onion jar from my local fish and chip shop instead.
Then (much) later when the Gin is ready to bottle you'll need:
Bottles, either sterilised or scrupulously clean as above. I like these clip top bottles.
Your sieve lined with butter muslin
A large jug which the sieve fits over
1. Give the dried sloes a thorough rinse multiple times, until the water runs clear.
2. Put the washed sloes in a bowl and pour over the warm water.
3. Cover and leave the sloes to rehydrate overnight. I stir them a couple of times to try to ensure the berries on top get rehydrated too.
4. Around 24 hours later, put the berries with the liquid into the jar.
5. Add the sugar.
6. Pour the gin over everything and give it a good mix by swirling the jar.
7. Keep the jar out of sunlight for a week or so, giving it a swirl every day to ensure the sugar is completely dissolved.
8. Put the jar away somewhere out of the light and leave it for at least 3 months, ideally more like 6 months, and leave the Sloe Gin Magic to happen.
9. When your Sloe Gin tastes ready, strain it through butter muslin and a sieve and bottle in very clean/sterile bottles.
Whilst reconstituted berries do not hold their shape in the jar over time as well as fresh berries, the gin-soaked fruit still works very well to make Sloe Port.
Sloe Gin made all year round. What could be better?
Beginner's Guide to Making Mead
Sloe Port Recipe using left-over Berries from Sloe Gin
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For example, as an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Find our disclosure policy here.
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Yes they are different, and they do look and taste different. Thai Basil has slender leaves with purple stems and its flowers are purple. Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum), which is more well-known, has more delicate leaves and pale green stems. It tends to be associated with Italian cuisine. Thai basil (basilicum var. thyrsiflora) is a varietal of Sweet Basil and it tastes quite different. More associated with Vietnamese cooker, Thai Basil has a slightly spicy flavour which is reminiscent of liquorice, which may be why it's sometimes known as liquorice or anise basil.
In reality I do both. However the first year I did this, it was because I'd forgotten to sow my seeds in Spring. So I bought a pack of Thai Basil from the supermarket and stuck it in water. How much quicker this is! The stems start to root within a couple of weeks usually. So if you do this at the beginning of Spring you start with a larger plants at the beginning of the season rather than tiny seedlings.
It is always cheaper to grow herbs from seed and Thai Basil Seeds are widely available. Growing both ways means you have lots of Thai Basil to enjoy. Growing from seed also means that you know the variety of basil you are growing, like Siam Queen or Horapha Nanum, whereas when you buy cut Thai Basil you're guessing which particular variety it is. If you do grow from seed, make sure you start the seeds in a quality seedling mix to avoid rotting seeds and other problems.
Growing from a bunch of supermarket Thai Basil is still cheaper than buying the plants. In a typical bunch of basil you'd expect to get at least 12 stems which could potentially turn into 12 new plants.
There are a few things you can do to ensure your propagation is successful. If you are buying Thai Basil in the supermarket, it will have a 'best before' date on it. Buy the freshest you can. I have successfully grown it from an outdated pack reduced to 10p, however the success rate of the stems was far lower than with a fresh pack.
When you get the stems home, pinch out the flowers and take off the lower leaves, just leaving the top ones. If any of the stems look a bit wilted and sad, I take those out too. This is all lovely in a salad later, so nothing is wasted.
1. Bring home your fresh Thai Basil. As soon as you get it home, pinch out the flowers, remove the lower leaves, discard any that don't look good at this stage and pop the rest in a jar of water.
2. Put the jar in a light place, like a windowsill.
3. Change the water each day. If you notice some stems that are obviously not going to make it in the coming days, remove them so they don't start rotting in the water.
4. Within a week to 10 days you should start seeing tiny roots appearing on the stems.
5. When the roots are large enough to plant, maybe 3 weeks from when you originally put the stems in water or maybe longer, remove them from the water.
6. You now have 2 choices. You can either grow them on by popping them directly into a pot with potting soil, or you can carry on growing them in water hydroponically. If you do the latter, I pop some Clay Pebbles into the pot to protect the roots and encourage them to develop, then feed them with a Hydronic Nutrients Solution.
7. Within a few more days you will start to see small leaves developing. Then you simply grow on more until they're big enough to harvest. Fabulous!
Growing Salad Leaves in Rain Guttering
How to Build a Brick Herb Spiral
My posts usually contain links to our webshop and/or affiliate links to other shops. If you click on them, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. For example, as an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases. Find our disclosure policy here.
]]>One of the issues that come up a lot in the forums I read is Ecommerce websites for small shops, and how to choose a platform and developer. Shop owners frequently ask what website they should have. They may already have a site with which they’re not happy, or a site that is not ecommerce enabled.
As a new website can be a large financial investment which can be difficult to recoup, you want to be sure that you are choosing the right platform for your Ecommerce Website at the right price.
We think people ask us about ECommerce Websites because they know we have been through many iterations of websites in the 16 years we’ve had our shop. So we must know what we’re talking about, right?
Well, not necessarily. We know what’s been right for us, and what has been wrong for us. And that’s the thing. Whilst an ecommerce website is a universal concept, we all tend to have a different idea of what ours will be, how it will look, what it will do for us, what we need. But if we don’t know what is possible, we don’t ask for the technology which would help us to grow our business, thereby recouping the financial investment more quickly. And if the developer we’re working with doesn’t know either, they won’t offer that technology to us.
If you have been hanging out with us for a while, you will know we talk about 2 things a lot. One: there are only 3 ways to grow your shop sales. By growing your customers, increasing the amount they spend and increasing the frequency with which they shop with you. Two: selling on multiple platforms at once, as well as your own website. The priority for you at this point should not a pretty website, lovely as that is to have. Your website should enable both of those things to happen. If it’s pretty too then that’s an added bonus.
We have had websites of many kinds since 2004. In the early days, Andy built them. As we got busier and had a bit more cash/less time and/or the technology became more complex, we employed developers. If you work hand-in-hand with a good developer, as we did, they will make you aware of technology which will improve your business and drive your sales. The irony is we only found our best developer by chance, when we needed someone to speed up our incredibly slow site. They were forward thinking and at the cutting edge of ecommerce website functionality (and note I say ecommerce websites, not just websites). At one point we had a website which enabled us to have multiple front end sites, plus be selling on Amazon and Ebay as well as our own sites at the same time. That’s not particularly out-of-the-ordinary now, but it was revolutionary then.
Had it not been for that developer, we would never have known such technology existed. We meet shop owners now who don’t realise it exists, over 12 years later. The ability to sell on multiple sites at once whilst ensuring our overall stock count is still correct, with Amazon FBA on top, have been fundamental to being able to turn over hundreds of thousands of pounds in sales, just the two of us, without employing additional people.
Today we use Shopify as our ECommerce Website for our Almost Off Grid shop, and Linnworks to enable us to sell on Ebay, Amazon, Etsy and OnBuy as well as on our own site and in our bricks and mortar shop. These two things combined help us to grow our customers, drive the amount they spend with us, and increase the frequency with which they shop with us. Plus most systems integrate beautiful with cloud based accounting systems. If you are still working with itty bitty bits of paper every month, we would strongly advise you to look into modern accounting systems. They can change your world. And you should still be having a site built which will integrate with your accounting system later even if you don’t have one yet.
We were lucky that Andy was able to build our first websites. If you know you cannot do that, you need to choose a platform first (there are many like Shopify on the market such as Squarespace, Wix, Big Commerce and this is by no means an exhaustive list). I am not going to attempt to compare their features here simply because I haven’t had enough experience of all of them. But if you Google Shopify v Wix (for example) then you can invariably find some kind person has done that comparison for you.
Then find a developer that is an ECommerce specialist, able to work with your chosen platform. That way you are asking them to develop a website on an existing system using templates, which is a vastly less expensive exercise than asking someone to build you a website completely from scratch. And hopefully you will the have a fighting chance of making your money back.
Ask the developer about integration with marketplace platforms like Ebay and Amazon, with accounting systems like Xero, with inventory management systems like Linnworks. If they have no idea what you are talking about, move on until you find at least 3 who DO know what you’re talking about. Then go ahead and get three quotes. And bear in mind as you’re going through this exercise: you are aiming to recoup the investment in this website as quickly as possible. So avoid bells, whistles and sexy features unless they enable the things we talk about above, and potentially recoup your investment more quickly. But ideally choose something at this stage that could be enhanced later.
We have never found a website solution that meets every need we had. Over the years we have used Woocommerce, OSCommerce and Shopify, plus we have considered and tested others. Some offer benefits others don’t have, some charge for those benefits, some don’t. So it totally depends on what you need for your business as to which one you choose. All you can do is create your ‘in an ideal world’ list and try to get as close to that as possible for the lowest price you can.
I mentioned above that we use Shopify ‘today’ because it is important to remember: a website is not forever. It is just for now. The technology changes so quickly, that website you spend thousands of £s of your hard earned cash on may not have had chance to recoup the money you spent on it before it needs replacing. So the less you can spend to set it up at this stage, the better.
When we say ‘try to keep the costs down’ we don’t mean getting any Tom, Dick or Harry to build it. We come across this all the time. Your mate built you a free-standing website that doesn’t integrate with anything, but it didn’t cost you very much so it was a start. But you still have to upload all the stock to that website, and get traffic to it. An inexpensive website is not a ‘deal’ if you have no traffic, that site offers no functionality to grow your business and/or it doesn’t integrate with anything else.
So whilst it is tempting to go down that road: unless your mate is an ECommerce expert, it will pay you to find a specialist for this. Ironically a ‘cheap’ website may never pay for itself, a slightly more expensive one could be the better investment in the long run.
We talk about these things, and lots of other key issues for small retailers, in our Small Retailer Lounge. Join us!
It’s January as I write this, which is a notoriously quiet time of year in retail. Our pet theory is that everyone receives their January credit card statements after Christmas and realise they’ve spent too much, so decide to reign in their spending. January is an ideal time to focus on Amazon FBA. If you own a small shop and you don’t know about Amazon FBA, it’s time you did!
There are different ways for us as retailers to sell on Amazon. The most well known is as an Amazon Marketplace seller, where you receive the order from Amazon and send the order off to the customer yourself. You are responsible for everything including ensuring the correct item is received by the customer, handling any issues and any refunds. So it is not unlike Ebay, in that it is a traditional marketplace way of selling.
There is also Seller Fulfilled Prime where, again, you do everything as the retailer. Seller Fulfilled Prime is by invitation only at time of writing. Amazon may invite you to join the programme when they are confident you have the stock you say you have, and will get it to the customer the next day – as Amazon Prime customers expect. You are responsible for the on-time delivery of your product. We are enrolled in this programme and I can tell you things can get a bit fraught. That is because the delivery process is of course out of your hands once you handle it over to Royal Mail or your preferred carrier, but you are liable if it goes wrong.
In addition, there is the Amazon Small and Light Programme which is a specific subset of Amazon FBA, allowing you to send small, light products and pay less for them to be sold by Amazon. We will cover this another time.
The programme we are focusing on in this article is standard Amazon FBA.
We participate in some Amazon programmes on and off depending on the time of year, but we sell via Amazon FBA all the time. It is a fantastic way for us small shops to increase our turnover and grow our businesses without growing our costs.
FBA stands for Fulfilment by Amazon. If you search for articles about Amazon FBA, you’ll see a lot of articles about importing from China. Thereby potentially becoming a millionaire overnight. That is not the FBA we are talking about. I’m quite sure some have done that, we haven’t and neither has anyone else we know who has FBA as part of their small shop toolkit.
The FBA we’re talking about enables small shops in the UK to source stock they could sell themselves, then choosing to send it to Amazon to sell it for them instead. More sales, without more staff.
The way that FBA works for us, and it really is very simple, is as follows. We buy product, it arrives in our shop and we prepare it to go to an Amazon Fulfulment Centre around the UK. Sometimes we have to barcode it for Amazon like this, sometimes we don’t.
We prepare the shipment in Amazon’s software, they tell us where it needs to go, we label it and it is collected. It is then checked in to Amazon’s warehouse, at which point we start to benefit from their 24/7 operation.
Whilst we sleep, our inventory arrives, is checked in and made available for sale. This is when we see ‘cloning ourselves’ in action. We love our customers, but even we would never be working between 1 and 2 in the morning ! This is a screenshot of my inbox last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.
The stock sells, Amazon pick, pack and ship it for you. They handle all the customer service. If anything goes wrong, replacements need to be sent, refunds need to be issued… Amazon handle everything.
Payment goes into your account, less the Amazon fees. You draw done the money into your bank account, and Amazon provide reporting on all the sales, fees and VAT. And that’s it.
We have had a shop for 16 years. Our 10 Commandments are the things which have enabled us to grow through a global pandemic, and economic recession and whatever else life has thrown at our little shop.
FBA can represent many things for a small shop. When we send stock to Amazon that we also sell in our shop we are, in effect, cloning ourselves. When we send stock that we wouldn’t otherwise sell in our own shop, we have a true additional revenue stream into our business.
FBA allows us to provide the level of service that Amazon is known for, next day delivery and no-quibble returns and replacements.
And most importantly, FBA enables us to be where our customers are. Whilst some people are quite vocal about not buying from Amazon, the reality is: that is where many of our customers have been hanging out for the past 12 months.
Many customers stopped shopping with independent shop websites during recent nationwide lockdowns due to the global pandemic. If you were paying for Google ads over the past 12 months to drive traffic to your website, potentially you were throwing money down the drain. Because customers switched their buying patterns and went to marketplaces, in their droves. Shoppers were four times more likely to shop on a marketplace platform during 2020 than on small, independent websites. They perceived Amazon as a safe way to shop during lockdown because, if it went wrong, they knew Amazon would fix it. And quickly.
FBA enables us be where our customers are, rather than hoping that somehow things are going to go back to ‘normal’ and waiting for customers to come to us. Amazon FBA is a way we can all take action to get our product in front of customers, regardless of what is happening with COVID, Brexit or whatever.
We bang on about the Rapid Growth Formula a lot here. For, as you know, there really are only 3 ways to grow your Shop Sales.
It is important to note that the customers who buy your FBA products are not your customers, they are Amazon’s customers. But FBA allows you to get your product in front of more customers and sell it, so it still drives the customer metric in the formula. It can also drive customer frequency, if they are a die hard Amazon customer who buys a product that only you sell with the Prime Badge. Which means that, in reality, you benefit from the increased frequency metric too.
And as we know, if we increase the Customer Metric and the Spend Metric and the Frequency Metric all at the same time, we grow much more quickly as a business.
Yes, that’s why I said. If you choose the stock to send wisely, the fulfilment fee can work out less than it would have cost you to sell it yourself. And the margin can be higher. There are lots of reasons for this which we will cover another time, but it is absolutely the case.
If you want to know more about Amazon FBA and how you can make it work in your small shop, check out our Masterclass below.
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]]>True Ricotta has more steps than this recipe. Traditional ricotta is made using whey left over from other cheesemaking. Whilst this is a wonderful way to use up whey which would normally be thrown away, most of us don't have left-over whey on a regular basis. This Ricotta Cheese recipe is based on the original but is simpler and creamier.
Ricotta isn't an expensive cheese to buy and is pretty widely available. When you make your own, you will find the flavour more delicate than shop-bought Ricotta. Making it at home allows you to make your cheese to the consistency you prefer. Part of the process you will be familiar with if you've made halloumi cheese is to separate the whey from the curds. If you strain the curds briefly, you get a more wet cheese. If you strain it overnight, you get a more dry ricotta. So you can make this cheese to your preferred consistency, and then flavour it however you like. And, of course, you can make exactly the amount you need so there is no waste.
You will find a variety of ricotta cheese recipes online. Some are made simply with milk, some add cream. Hence calling this Creamy Ricotta Cheese.
Milk-only ricotta cheese is lighter and more closely replicates a real Italian ricotta (which is more complex to make than typical homemade recipes). When you add cream to the ricotta, it takes it to another 'dip the spoon in one more time' level. I make both kinds but adding cream does make it super decadent! Very similar to a cream cheese in fact.
Adding any of these to milk makes the milk solids separate and coagulate. You can use any of them. We tend to use lemon juice, just because it adds a slightly fresh taste to the cheese. Sometimes people say they use lemon juice when they're going to use the ricotta in a sweet recipe, and white vinegar when they're going to use it in a savoury dish. You can use whichever you prefer.
Ricotta is of course fabulous in pasta sauces with the traditional spinach included. Because this version is so creamy, we use it like a homemade cream cheese. In a homemade bagel with homemade butter and smoked salmon it is absolutely fabulous! Just add a little lemon juice to the salmon for extra zing.
1 litre of homogenised, full fat milk (ie milk that doesn't have the cream floating on the top, it will say 'homogenised' somewhere on the label)
250ml double cream
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Half a teaspoon of sea salt (or to taste)
You will also need
1. Put the milk and cream in a pan with the salt.
2. Bring to the boil, being careful not to scorch.
3. R emove from the heat, add the lemon juice and stir. Curdling will start immediately.
4. Leave the pan undisturbed for a couple of minutes.
5. Line the sieve with the cheesecloth and place over a large bowl.
6. Transfer the ricotta curds to the sieve with the slotted spoon and allow the whey to drain away.
7. If you like your ricotta soft, you can transfer the curds to a container with a lid and keep in the fridge after 30 minutes. If you like it firmer, you can leave it for a few hours (even overnight draining in the fridge if you like it really dry).
8. This Ricotta will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days.
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The hawthorn tree is one of my absolute favourites. Its scientific name is crataegus monogyna and Hawthorn leaves, flowers and berries are safe to eat and drink.
Hawthorn is often found in hedgerows in the UK, which is how it got its common name 'Haw' (derived from the old English Haeg which means hedge). Which is why sometimes you will see Hawthorn Ketchup referred to as Haw Ketchup.
The hawthorn tree is in full flower in May, sometimes earlier. They are such pretty flowers, often tinged with pink. I enjoy fresh hawthorn flowers in teas up the allotment in the Spring/early Summer.
Simply pop the kettle on, then pick a couple of mint leaves, hawthorn flowers and add a couple of fresh nettle tops (for there are always nettles somewhere at the allotment !). When the kettle has boiled, let the water cool to slightly less than boiling before pouring the water directly over the mint, hawthorn flowers and nettle tops in the cup. Absolutely delicious.
I don't bother straining it. Just as I get to the bottom of the mug, I throw the last little bit plus the leaves and flowers on the compost heap. Hard to imagine those days will be here soon as I look out on a cool, damp January morning... but they will.
Hawthorn leaves and flowers can be added to salads. The flowers add beauty and a few leaves (picked young) can be nice when mixed with other leaves. The older leaves tend to go chewy and woody. It is generally recommended to pick Hawthorn flowers early in the season, and the berries late when they have had time to ripen fully.
Hawthorn berries arrive much later in the year, and then it's time to make Ketchup. If you've never eaten this ketchup before, it has an unusual, sweet and sour-like taste. It is fairly runny, so you can bottle it as an alternative to putting it in a jar. Bright and cheery, it's lovely with sausages, drizzled on a sandwich or as an accompaniment to cheese. We try to make sure we have some at Christmas to go with cold Christmas meats on Boxing Day.
Hawthorn berries are round and bright red/crimson. They tend to go a darker shade of red as they ripen and the season goes on. We are still picking them in the South of England in January (just), and have been since September. Though this is quite late, you typically would expect them to have finished by now so we feel very lucky to have picked another half bagful this week.
When ripe they feel soft to the touch and when you squeeze them in your palm the red skin breaks to show the seed inside and the creamy flesh. Whilst you are unlikely to be skipping through the hedgerow picking and eating them as you would blackberries, raw Hawthorn berries have a not-unpleasant apple-like taste.
Incidentally, Hawthorn berries tend to hang around at the same time of year as rosehips. Rosehips are easy to differentiate from Hawthorn berries as they are more oval in shape. If you stumble across them and are not in a position to make ketchup straight away, simply pop the berries in the freezer until you're ready to use them.
As always, you should get the landowner's permission before foraging. And, of course, only collect and eat berries that you are 100% sure you have identified correctly. If in any doubt as to what you're picking... don't pick them.
Makes 250-300ml
500g Hawthorn Berries
300ml cider vinegar
300ml water
170g white granulated sugar
half teaspoon salt
A grind of black pepper
1. Sterilise the bottle or jar you plan to use.
2. Remove the stalks from the berries, either by pulling them off or, if easier, cut them off with scissors.
3. Wash the berries in cold water.
4. Put the berries in a large pan with the vinegar and water.
5. Simmer for about 30 minutes. The skins will split, and the bright red will start to darken.
6. Remove pan from the heat, and pass the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds and skins.
7. Wash out the pan and return the liquid to it.
8. Add the sugar and heat, stirring continuously, until the sugar is dissolved.
9. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes.
10. Add the salt and pepper.
11. Pour the ketchup into the sterilised bottle or jar and seal.
12. Use your haw ketchup within 12 months.
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As I write this, it is less than 10 days until Christmas. So you may be wondering why on earth we think now is a good time to be rearranging stock and your website to drive sales.
That is because it’s really always a good time to rearrange products. Because moving product drives sales! And this is true both in our bricks and mortar and online shops.
Moving stock around drives customer spend and frequency of customer spend, which are 2 of the 3 ways to grow your shop sales.
We call it moving stuff around, basically. You may know it more by the rather more sophisticated industry terms: Merchandising, Relaying, or something else. Particularly if you come from a retail background in a large organisation. Whatever you call it, this happens routinely in most large retail stores and is regarded as an essential tool for success. In fact, many of the big brands employ people who focus on merchandising and nothing else.
If you are the sort of person who gets irritated when they walk into their usuall supermarket only to find everything has moved around [raises hand]: you’ll know it happens. And logic says, supermarkets aren’t doing it because they have nothing better to do. They do it because it drives sales.
That kind of merchandising can be pretty sophisticated. When you have a small shop, things need not be that complex. However it is still true that where products are located in your shop really does matter. And keeping your target customer in mind when rearranging stock is important. In fact, your target customer should be the driving force for most of the things you do to have the best chance of attracting them, and keeping them.
Moving products around fairly regularly can deliver a number of benefits, resulting in extra sales.
When customers visit your shop, whether that be online or bricks and mortar, you want them to be tempted to buy something. So if they’re a regular customer, moving your stock around means they see different things than they did the last time they came. In an online shop, that could be creating a new category specific to the season. Like a Christmas category, Easter, Halloween. You get the idea.
Of course we all know all the stock that is in our shops. We have lovingly chosen all the things, had them delivered, unpacked them, found the perfect place and displayed them, listed them all on the website. Your customers don’t see anything like all your stock when they visit, not even close. If they come in for one specific thing, they may barely look elsewhere once they’ve found what they came for. Again, this applies to online shops also.
I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had a product in our shop for ages that hasn’t sold. We’ve then moved it and bingo. It sells the very next day, often to someone who came in quite recently. I like to think of it as a law of the universe: you focus on something and then it sells. Though to be fair, it’s probably more about regular customers noticing things when you move them to a new place.
Whatever the reason, moving an item very often makes it sell.
If you’ve had a good run-up to a national holiday like Christmas or Easter, your stocks could look a bit wiped out. Or even if you haven’t had a busy time of it lately, you may be struggling to get new stock from your suppliers. We are almost at the Christmas break now and many of our suppliers close between Christmas and New Year. When they return, they will have a backlog of orders. This means we may not any receive our future orders for 2 weeks or more. We have been ordering in anticipation of this, but the shop may still not feel ‘full’ after a busy shopping period.
Rearranging your shop can make it feel to customers like you’ve had a load of new stock delivered, even if you haven’t. Your customers can’t possibly know everything you have in there, no matter how many times they visit. You can introduce them to new products simply by moving them, thereby making customers aware of them.
Set it and forget it doesn’t work in shops. Customers become bored and stop coming when they aren’t inspired to do so. When you re-arrange your stock regularly, you are giving your customers a reason to come back over and over again.
Depending on your shop and the ranges you sell, there will be times when you want to promote particular products. If you are in the midst of a very cold snap, it makes sense to promote winter coats. If it’s a heatwave, it makes sense to display air cooling devices.
Moving product to the ‘hot spot’ in your shop or home page of your website means customers are more likely to find what they’re looking for quickly. Or if they didn’t know you sold just what they need (even when they hadn’t realised they needed it), now they do.
Big retail chains often run promotions on shelf ends. That space is paid for by the brands. They buy space in those shops to sell more product, and they will have targets with the shop that they are expected to meet. If they don’t, their space will be reduced. And the brands know that if the stock they want to sell is not in the right place, it won’t sell in the volumes they need it to.
Which tells you all you need to know about the importance of putting stock in the right place in a retail space.
Large retailers often run promotions for particular lines, to drive traffic and/or to move excess stock. It is a technique we can adopt in our own shops too.
If some of your stock isn’t moving, it may simply be because your customers aren’t seeing it. The items are in a cold spot in your shop, where stock often hangs around. Or hidden somewhere on your website. If you move the old stock around so it is displayed more effectively, you’ll be amazed at what can happen.
If you have a lot of old stock, it may be that you simply aren’t moving stock around frequently enough. Plan to do it regularly, with the seasons, like the big shops do. They do it because it works. And plan to move lines logically, not just for the sake of moving. So throw in a few upsells (the plants next to the plant pots, the beer kits next to the beer making equipment). Have a flow to it all. It sound so obvious, some of you may be wondering why on earth I feel the need to mention it. I’m saying it because we all forget. We all see our shops every day and don’t see what customers see. Especially not what new customers see. And if they don’t like what they see, they may never return.
And when it comes to your website, key an eye on those ‘promoted products’ on your homepage, if you have them. The mere fact that you’re promoting them means they should sell more quickly. It doesn’t look great if a customer arrives at your online shop and your promoted products are all sold out. It took a lot of time, effort (and potentially cost) to get them to our shopfront for the first time. Let’s not fall at the first hurdle!
It can be hugely valuable to get a trusted friend to come in and look around your shop, give you some honest feedback, a fresh pair of eyes.
And the final great reason for moving stock around in your shop? It makes you feel so much better. Following a particularly busy or slow period, freshening up your shop space will benefit you as well as your customers. They say a change is as good as a rest, and moving your shop around can make you feel different too. And when you feel better and more positive, somehow the sales just start flowing again. If you think that sounds a bit woo, well maybe it is. But it’s also true, you’ll see 🙂
So once Christmas has past, we will be going back into our shop and website and rearranging things so that our customers get a fresh experience when they come back to us in the New Year, even if none of the stock is new. To give ourselves a fantastic, fresh start to the New Year.
Keeping the shop looking and feeling fresh with stock frequently rotated, whether that be online or in the physical shop, is on our ‘3 ways to grow your shop business’ rapid growth roadmap. That’s because it drives customer frequency (more likely to come back often) and customer spend (more likely to spend a little more than they otherwise would have). Find out more in 3 Ways to Grow your Shop Sales.