Fortunately I've had a reasonable backlog of beer stashed away so I've not been missing out on the drinking side 
A week ago I made a new threshold for the beer shack doorway and fitted a new door, so I decided it was about time to get back in and brew. Got down here yesterday and evicted most of the spiders, cleaned up and then kicked off the mash this morning. My son and I chose this specific beer as I've not made it before and he can take a few bottles back to Lancaster when he returns to uni next month to compare with the beer actually served at the Pendle Witch pub.
I've also been experimenting with "small beer" this year which is all largely guesswork because I've been unable to find any solid information on how it was done. For my first couple of tries I continued sparging after the main brew was in the boiler, drawing off enough for a second boil and hopped that second boil at the same rate as the first. After tasting the finished product we decided that the hops overpowered the reduced flavour of the small beer (perhaps unsurprisingly), so for this one I'm going to try hopping at three quarters of the rate suggested for the main batch. If that's still too much then I'll drop it down to 50%.
Overall though I've been quite pleased with the small beers, especially when slightly chilled. They've been great lunchtime thirst-quenchers when I needed a decent drink but didn't want the alcohol (generally I reckon they work out at around 1% ABV at the most).
James
