A neighbour of mine has a couple of hop plants growing in his back yard. In mid-March this year, just as everything started shutting down, he asked me if I’d like to pick his hops to make beer.

I was already in prepper mode. At the first hint of the pandemic I’d dragged my old sourdough mother out from the back of the fridge and smugly revived it to start baking again – unlike the 58 million people on the internet who were floundering around with sourdough for the first time. And I already had basic brewing equipment at home – a plastic fermenting tub, airlocks, crown seal capper and so on – from previous attempts at beer and cider making.