There have been several occasions when John Wright our foraging expert and I have been set a challenge by Hugh to find ingredients for a meal, where we have to think about what is in season and then see if we can find them. This time, though, our challenge was to make something palatable without initially knowing what our ingredients were.

We were asked to go and collect our mystery ingredients from the Canteen kitchen in Axminster and when we got there were presented with a bucket of carrot peelings. I thought we had been given the wrong bucket, but John quickly got into gear with a couple of suggestions and, as ever, his thoughts moved swiftly to alcohol.

We were allowed to supplement our ‘leftover brew’ with a few foraged additions – plus anything that can be used in the normal brewing process. Hops weren’t in season but John had heard that spruce tips were often used in brewing beer, particularly in Canada. We managed to track down someone locally who farms spruce trees for the Christmas market and we set about adding to our haul of rather tired and still dirty carrot peelings. We chose to pick the young spruce tips from the bottom of the trees so as not to hinder any growth and eventually had enough to add a bit of freshness to ingredients thus far.

I think that, on reflection, John could make alcohol out of a pair of Hugh’s old slippers, so my initial concern was soon forgotten. When eventually it came to tasting the beer my heart sank a little because it looked like muddy water but it did have quite a nice ‘heady’ bouquet. The first sips brought a pleasant surprise and, although I wouldn’t drink pints of it in my local, it was certainly drinkable.

I wouldn’t say Hugh was a fan but both he and Tim (head chef at the Canteen) were interested in it enough to allow it to be served to our guests. However, you may notice that we chose to serve it in green recycled glasses which helped hide the rather dull colour of the beer.

The brew went down well on the night, but I don’t think the breweries will lose any sleep – although I would encourage anyone to have a go at home brewing and if that means using up ingredients that would normally be thrown away, then all the better.

Try the carrot beer recipe for yourself.

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Last weekend I spent an eye watering £80 at the dentist on damage control for my sweet tooth. Just two days later I’m whisking sugar into a steaming pot of ale and hoping my fillings don’t melt.

I heated some beer in a pan over a medium heat till it bubbled. Then I took it off the heat, added the egg, sugar and nutmeg mixture, put it back on a low heat and stirred for a couple of minutes until it went the colour of strong tea meets cloudy apple juice. By this point the kitchen smelled of mulled wine which was a more pleasant odour than you’d expect from a pot of warm eggy beer. I whisked in a little butter and the brew was complete.

Rich, caramelly and super-sweet. There’s a reason Heston serves it in tiny glasses. The dentists round Hogwarts must be raking it in.

Recipe for butterbeer

Ingredients
500ml ale
Yolks from 2 medium eggs, whisked
60g sugar
Dash of nutmeg
15g unsalted butter

Method: How to make butterbeer
Pour the ale into a warm pan on a medium heat. When the beer begins to come to the boil take off the heat and add the whisked egg yolks, sugar and nutmeg.

Return the pot to a low heat (to stop the eggs from scrambling) and stir for 2 minutes. Take off the heat and whisk in the butter. Decant into your finest flagon and chug.

Read more on Heston’s Tudor Feast

Big supermarket deals, first brews and shiny barbecues were all on the agenda for Neil Morrissey and Richard Fox in the last episode of Risky Business last night. And the securing of a major distribution deal with Tesco must still have the boys hugging themselves as their money troubles seem solved.

But, as great as all that is, there was one aspect of the show that I really admired last night – but many of you may well have blinked and missed it so I’d like to highlight it for a couple of reasons…

The first reason is that there has been quite widespread criticism across the trade and in web forums of Morrissey’s comment in the first episode branding licensees who have gone out of business as ‘dumb’ – and I would imagine that, now he’s gone through the process of opening his own pub, seeing what a money pit it can be and also seeing how contrary customers can be about change, that he’s probably re-thought that by now.

But, ill-conceived comments aside, there’s absolutely no doubting the passionate commitment both these guys have to their ale; and the bit that really caught my eye was when Morrissey shoved a pint under a woman’s nose at the bar and said ‘smell that, it’s lychees and pears’ – with a big soppy grin on his face.

You see, having chatted with the pair of them, I know they are genuinely passionate about getting all walks of life, and most especially women, into beer – not just for profit either – and, frankly, we really, really, really need champions like this right now. I’ve had a peek into the future of beer marketing recently and it’s ugly…

I’m extremely worried that, instead of embarking on the kind of intelligent sampling campaigns the boys did with one of their initial brews to encourage more people to drink quality ales, major brewers are going to throw a whole load of advertising behind ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ beer brands, more akin to alcopops than the all-natural product with great provenance that we’ve seen being created on the show.

Good beer is an all-natural artisan product that takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to produce – so next time you’re in the pub, rather than reaching for the usual, why not ask for a taster from the handpull – after all, it’s free, so you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Catch up on all episodes of Risky Business

Last night when the voiceover announced: ‘Neil Morrisey and Richard Fox are running out of money, time and patience’, all I could think was ‘welcome to the world of pubs and brewing boys!’.

You see, the whole of the brewing industry and the pub trade is designed to part you from your money as quickly as possible and chocolate box country inns are often the downfall of many an experienced pub entrepreneur, let alone those not so experienced.

Sadly, these fabulous-looking historic pubs are a bit like those sexy Eastern block stunners that male spies always fall for in big blockbusters – they nearly always turn out to be a honey trap.

And, just like those languid lovelies, 16th century coaching inns, like the Ye Olde Punch Bowl, will turn on you in a heartbeat – and what you thought was a unique beauty will turn out to be an avaricious, treacherous bitch that’ll try and take you for everything you’ve got.

And the perils of the great adventure that is opening a brewpub don’t end with being taken in by a pretty face, either. You’ll have the Dr Evil-esque environmental health officers who want to turn down a micro brewery planning application on the grounds of ’smell’…

There is nothing finer than the fragrance of brewing! The rich, biscuity aroma of mashing in, the honeyed smell of wort running off and the spicy scent of the hop boil create a fragrance that Calvin Klein and Chanel combined couldn’t come up with on their best day.

But at least, on the side of good, Tim Ashton has come on board with the boys to try and help them navigate through the world of brands marketing – setting up photoshoots with epically talented Rankin and creating a cover story for the lads.

He kind of reminds me of a Q-type character crossed with the cynical partner-style role in this tale; you know the sort, can hack into every computer/satellite/mobile phone in the world – and who is constantly in our hero’s earpiece saying things like: ‘You’ve got 20 seconds to get out before it blows’ or, as the spy is seduced by the hottie: ‘I dunno, I just don’t trust her’.

But whilst he might know about quantum marketing and brand creation, there’s something he can never recognise – that the honey trap actually can be wooed. You just have to be very forgiving of treacherous behaviour and have very deep pockets to get the very best out of her.

Next week we’ll find out if the boys have been utterly betrayed by Ye Olde Punch Bowl or have a new love for life…

Catch up on the first episode and second episode of Neil Morrissey’s Risky Business.

There’s a bit of me which feels that, as a female beer writer and passionate ale fan, two men in a bath full of bubbling brews should definitely fuel a few naughty thoughts.

But, as it turns out, when one of them is a fellow beer scribe you’ve known for a few years and the other is an actor whose uber-laddish persona leaves you with the strong suspicion he’s going to fart in the tub, it’s sadly a lot less appealing.

However, that slightly disturbing personal disappointment aside, Neil Morrisey’s Risky Business was an entertaining, and refreshing watch last night, because it provides the perfect antidote to all the doom and gloom about the state of our beer nation.

Observing the lads kick off their homebrewing process late in the evening, only to get frustrated with its lack of progress, was not only amusing but genuinely highlighted the fact that the pair weren’t lying when they said they had never brewed before – because if they had, they’d know that most brew days start at 8am for a reason!

And it was great to see the looks of excitement and anticipation on their faces as they took their very first sip of home brew – and it was also incredibly gratifying to see the people of Harrogate from all walks of life embracing real ale; albeit under some Morrisey-induced pressure.

If you were sitting on your sofa, relating to this loveable yet slightly hapless duo and contemplating giving this lark a go yourself, may I suggest that you also get a Tim Ashton on your side. As top dog at London agency, Antidote, Ashton’s despairing expressions and severe reality checks for this pair of over-excited puppies were insightfully brilliant and, rightly, kept their paws somewhere near the ground some of the time.

And whilst he was so wonderfully, and brutally, correct about how much they were in danger of getting ahead of themselves in terms of sorting out the pub and actually building their micro-brewery before going to the world and announcing that they were brewers, he was so tremendously and stupendously wrong in all his perceptions about current demand in the beer market!

You see, the micro-brewery sector is the only part of our domestic brewing business to have shown consistent growth over the past few years as people tire of commodity brands, become more attuned to regional cuisine and look more locally for their liquid pleasure – and rightly so.

And having sampled the cask version of Morrisey Fox Blonde Ale, (or MoFo as it shall now forever be known), I can tell you that this is the kind of citrusy, refreshing and flavoursome beer that the public is increasingly turning to, and do you know why? Because British beer drinkers are increasingly attuned to what beer behaving badly tastes like – and it comes in cut-price supermarket multipacks, not out of a cask.

Catch up on the first episode of Risky Business