Fäviken:Magnus Nilsson

After a week of relaxing at my place in Bulgaria with Rhonda, I now sit back in my chair at work staring at my computer again... It also stares back at me.

It feels more abnormal by the day, especially after my week away and baking in a wood oven, eating veg freshly plucked from the garden, killing and skinning rabbits and enjoying the odd shooting star late at night in the very clear sky. Its times like this that I feel sad, but also excited about where Im going and my next chapter and what helps is when I read about people who have done it. I recently purchased a book on Magnus Nilsson and his restaurant Fäviken. Its another inspiring story of somebody who has a great passion for the outdoors, understanding true nature and ways of old when it comes to food preparation and preservation. Now all my homebrew stuff is in the loft I'm now going to start looking at fermented vegetables alongside preserving and canning. This is an area I have always found fascinating so I feel its a natural progression from what I have been doing over the past few years. I feel very excited about this although i must say when I mentioned fermented vegetables to Rosy and Josh they gave a look of concern.. I guess that's natural though

Haines & Brown

Its been a pretty interesting time for me on the Ale front.

Over the years of brewing I have often thought how great it would be to sell to the public, its been a kind of pipe dream but you read so much about councils destroying the dreams of many artisan's. There is a great deal of red tape but over the months I've battled through it, invested money and now finally have my Ale in my local The Scolt Head. The most memorable part was going down the cellar with Lewis, my partners father and watching them tap it. Id only ever seen this on youtube let alone my own beer actually in a real pub cellar being tapped. It was very surreal seeing it pulled through into the bar and looking around at the public all paying for my Ale. The first brew wasn't great, I was far from happy but it seemed to go well, in fact the 30c sunny days have helped get rid of 3 firkins in 3 days, good timing I say.

This has been a huge jump towards the farm, I feel more confident and although I need to improve my Ale, I know I'm in the right ballpark. I'm close to cracking it after many books, many video tutorials, many infected Ales, many spillages, many arguments, many bank notes and many hours sat in bed wondering and contemplating. Rhonda has been very patient, brewing beer not only takes over the house, it takes over relationships at times.

Its been a good week..