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Hoop’-la Department.
This is the small print where I deny everything and refuse to take any responsibility for anything. Any opinions given should not be taken as facts, and any facts given should not be taken as opinions.
E. & O. E.
Copyright www.petespintpot.co.uk 2008. First published 17 October 2008, last updated 7 Mar. 2010.
Pete’s Pint Pot is dedicated to the home production & sensible drinking of beer, wine, cider & meads plus a little bit of china painting & a few bits of photograph tampering.
If you are affected by any of the articles on this site or any of the issues raised in them, I truly feel sorry for you.
Finally the sanity clause: As Chico Marx famously said to Groucho, “Everybody knows there ain't no Sanity Clause!”
WARNING:- Some pages may contain music!
Do not enter this site if you are allergic to nuts!
Real Ale is Cool ... Keg beer is just cold -CAMRA
On the 16th October 2008 CAMRA handed a 23,361 name petition in to No. 10 Downing Street asking for short measures of beer to be banned. CAMRA’s figures state that over a quarter of the beers sold in pubs etc. are over 5% short. In practice this means we can loose 12.5 pence worth for a £2.50 pint that is 5% short, costing us over £480 MILLION a year, how many Honours could you (we) buy for that! It could almost certainly help out a few bankers in their great time of need.
The “Government” (for the want of a better word) taxes our alcoholic beverages
twice twice, firstly excise duties which vary with the different categories of
alcoholic drink, for a 5% ABV beer this is 38p in the £, and VAT, a uniform rate
currently set at 17.5% (for alcohol). Excise duties are normally reviewed
(a political euphemism for increased) at least once annually by the Chancellor
of the exchequer in his Budget. This means that Laurel & Hardy, who take over
80p in tax from our pint, are profiting even further by more than 4p a pint from
our misfortune. The “Landlords” & brewers share the rest of the loot.
If a pint of beer is 5% short then the actual cost is about 5.3% higher.
Example
If a pint of beer costs £2.50 & is 5% short then the actual cost of a pint is:
£2.50 / 0.95 = £2.63 a pint (approx.)
A pint 10% short costs £2.78 a pint, that’s 28p or 11% extra.
Just for interest, a 70cl bottle of 40% ABV spirit carries an excise duty of £5.50
& for a 75cl bottle of still wine (11.5%) it is £1.25 & £1.65 for sparkling wine.
I’ve no idea why sparkling wine is taxed £0.40 more than the still wine, neither do I know if the VAT covers the excise duties as well, but, knowing this shower it probably is.
By ensuring one of the highest alcohol taxes in Europe the Government ensures smuggling is a rapidly expanding industry. A British success story at last!
It was during the 1997 General Election that Labour promised us a full pint if we voted for them, it looks like we, the electorate were short-changed again!
More information on the CAMRA “Take It To The Top” campaign can be found on page www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=287732
Bee-latedly, in January 2009, the British Government, via Hilary Benn & the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs,
has decided to spend a little bit of cash on protecting our bees & researching why they are dying out. About 30% of our bees died last year from the Varroa parasite. Speaking of parasites, the amount of £4.3 million is about five times the annual pension awarded the biggest bank robber in the history of the U.K. He stung us all here in the UK & should have been told to “Buzz off!” or even to “B***** off!”
You may have seen this “frog test” doing the e-mail rounds. Take no notice of the crud about it being part of a test etc., highly improbable (to me) & how can people spend over a week solving a problem that is supposed to be completed in 2 mins? (See site.) Perhaps they have a month to do the complete test! It is however quite an addictive little problem that you may wish to try.
"Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten us into."
Made using Serif PhotoPlus
Sam & Andy Sadler have been running Colchester Home Supplies since February 2009. The shop is shared with their sister company Astra Despatch Ltd. From the pictures below you can see it is a right little Aladdin’s cave of homebrew treasures.
Colchester Homebrew Supplies
C4, The Seedbed Centre
Wyncolls Road
Colchester
Essex
CO4 9HT
Telephone: 01206 854457
Fax: 01206 854457
Vincent Vincent plus flowers
A couple of unusual Flowers
Vincent Twice, our vegetarian Venus Fly Trap, which I DID NOT BUY, in flower.
Does this insect eating plant rely on insects for pollination?
I thought I’d also slip in a photo’ of me Mum’s Rhubarb which flowered this summer, note that it is good practice to remove these flowers as they take goodness away from the stalks.
Magners are now trying to woo the spotty sweet-toothed under-aged ASBO’d kiddywinkies off alcopops & on to their “Pear Cider” which apparently made from 100% pear, not 100% fermented pear juice but 100% pear so it should include all the skin, flesh & pips! It will be nice to try a drink that has no added sugars, sweeteners, preservatives, colour or flavourings.
If they had done their research, this company, well known for their cider-style products, would have known that pear cider is made by fermenting a mixture of apple & pear juices.
Fermented pear juice is called “Perry”.
Fermented apple juice is called “cider”. (Actually, to be pedantic, fermented apple juice is called “cyder”, cider is produced when sugar is fermented with the apple juice.)
Is that too hard to understand? If you are an Ad man (sorry, executive) then the answer is a resounding YES & if the price was raised to £20 for a tiny bottle you’d even love it!
P. S. Fermented fruit juices & sugar with added colouring, artificial sweeteners, flavourings & other assorted chemicals is called
**** or ***** depending on your locality.
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Container shown actual size.
PETE’S PINT POT PIN-UP OF THE YEAR
During 2008 the German Anita Schwarz tried to return the “Most beer steins carried over 40 metres”
record to Germany but failed the first time after doing 19 beer steins! Luckily, the Guinness World Records Management team then decided that her merit of carrying an amazing 19 beer steins was impressive enough to award her the record based on a new category “Most beer steins carried over 40 metres - Female”.
The judges dismissed an appeal by a runner-up who claimed she had forgotten the packet of Schweinefleisch scratchings.
British WINEMAKERS may find this link of some slight interest,
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/drinks/article6912542.ece
Just copy & paste the above line into your browser. It also gives a link to
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/drinks/article6912544.ece
I like this quote best:-
“Do keep it clean when bottling. If you don’t want to come down in the morning and find that your demijohns have exploded all over the kitchen, painstaking sterilisation is a must.”
The first sentence makes sense to me but the second one? Perhaps they bottle their wines in demijohns & seal with a really tight cap! Perhaps they mean “painstaking sterilisation is a must” refers to them! Seems like a very good idea to me! Is the use of “must” an intended pun?
(“Must” is a term that describes un-fermented wine - the stuff you shove in a demijohn.)
IMPORTANT APPEAL
Will the persons who have pointed out to me that some of the adverts appearing here are not genuine, please let me know which ones are dodgy so that I can investigate &, if they are found to be untrue, remove them.
I’LL HAVE NOTHING FUNNY ON MY SITE!