ten green bottles....

That's a slight exaggeration. I have just nine demijohns fizzing on a big tray thing in the back bedroom.

Although the marmite brews were undoubtedly alcoholic, and in small doses, actually quite tasty (Bren liked it, and described it as a liquour) I found that where I'd used quite a lot of marmite (the second and third demijohns I got on the go) the taste was rather overpowering.

I'd tried using frozen raspberries and blackberries from the allottment. This demijohn has now stopped bubbling, so I suppose I should bottle the contents, and put the bottles somewhere to mature.

What happens with all this is that yeast and sugar and water react to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol. Everything else is flavouring really. So I thought I'd try using fruit juices.

Did the usual thing of dumping a load of sugar into a demijohn, then I added yeast, and 2 litres of various juices into 3 demijohns. And waited.

And nothing happened.

I thought about the situation and decided it might be to do with the acidity of the must. Fruit juices are quite acidic, and 2 litres of juice per demijohn seemed to be quite a lot.

So I bought some more demijohns, and some more sugar, and decanted half the contents of the fruit juice demijohns into the new demijohns, and topped both up with water.

Result! I now have 6 fruit juicy demijohns bubbling nicely. I also have the last of the original marmite demijohns, and the frozen real fruit demijohn that's ready for bottling. That's 8.

The 9th is an experiment that I started this morning. It contains 2kg of sugar, 8 pints of water, and a teaspoonful of yeast. That's all. I wonder how they will all turn out? 

driving lessons in Wirral?