The reaction to getting a printed letter published in your favourite ‘newspaper’ always reminds me of Freddie (played by John Candy) in the 1984 film Splash with Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks:

[Excitedly waving a Penthouse magazine]

Well, the Elf went home, the weather warms, and all good brewing seasons must come to an end. We managed to squeeze in a final batch. This time it was a porter, although my nephew Sean points out, strictly, they should always be a porter. At 6.8%, it packed a punch, fermented on coffee and barrel-matured on cocoa with a touch of cinnamon and ginger. After 10 days of fermentation and a month in the barrel we cracked it last night (anzapfenned it as we say in our household).

Our family is full of amateur linguists.  Dotted round we have fluent Italian, German, French, Dutch, and Japanese speakers.  Some family members dabble in Chinese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  A few even claim English proficiency.  Many of us enjoy Duolingo, with Luis van Ahn’s great Guatemalan back story.  Some of us even pay for it.

Since September, our lovely niece, my German goddaughter, has been stuck with Aunty and Uncle here in London. As she is a fan of Harry Potter and cooped up in the spare room ‘under the stairs’ (well, more accurately ‘beside’ them), she was rapidly dubbed our ‘house elf’ by those of us of the Scooby Doo era. Upon learning that she was untutored in the ways of beer (and German?!, have my in-laws some peculiar form of non-home-schooling???), naturally I resolved to educate her. Digging deep down at the back of our fifth floor garden shed (sic) I pulled out the old beer-making kit which had tutored my own children in the ways of fermentation and spoilage. Thus, in a spirit of cooped-up covid-19 entrepreneurship, a new business has been born…