At Christmas, I gave Magnus a copy of my homebrew bible, Graham Wheeler’s Brew Your Own British Real Ale. It is an excellent primer and provides a range of recipes that is still fuelling my beer-making experiments. However, it would be fair to say that, while you could probably make beer following Wheeler’s instructions, what I actually do is a little bit different.

Therefore, for Magnus (who is planning to get his first grain-based brew going this weekend) and anyone else who is interested, I am planning to sketch out my current process over the next three days, covering brewing, fermenting and bottling. Illegible, scribbled diagrams have been created so all I need to do now is translate them into something a bit more descriptive and helpful.