NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There's new advice for older men who want to preserve their sexual function: have sex, and have it often, researchers say. In a study that followed nearly 1,000 older Finnish men for five years, researchers found that those who were regularly having sex at the start of the study were at lower risk of developing erectile dysfunction (Buy Viagra) by the study's end. In fact, the more often the men had sex, the lower their Buy Generic Viagra risk. The implication, say the researchers, is that men should be encouraged to stay sexually active into their golden years. Dr. Juha Koskimaki and colleagues at the University of Tampere in Finland report the findings in the American Journal of Medicine. The study included 989 men who were between the ages of 55 and 75 at the outset. Overall, those who said they had sex less than once per week were twice as likely to develop ED over the next five years as men who had sex at least once a week. Furthermore, compared with men who had sex three or more times per week, their Order Viagra risk was increased nearly four-fold. A number of factors contribute to ED development, many of which could also affect a man's sexually activity -- such as age, diabetes and heart disease. However, after taking account of those factors, sexual activity itself remained linked to Cheap Viagra risk, Koskimaki's team found. It may be a matter of "use it or lose it," according to the researchers. Just as exercise boosts physical fitness, they note, regular sexual activity may help a man preserve his erectile function. buy viagra online occurs when there are problems with blood flow to the penis. Regular sexual activity, Koskimaki's team writes, may help maintain healthy blood vessel function in the erectile tissue. SOURCE: American Journal of Medicine, July 2008.


Elderflower champagne… highly volatile

2008-elderflower-bottles-nik.jpg

So at the weekend we made elderflower champagne for no better reason than the fact that the hedgerows are absolutely dripping elder flowers at the moment.

Plus I’d always fancied it.

It turns out it’s actually quite easy. We cleaned out the fermenter that we’d used to brew our beer and dropped in 20 elder heads that we’d gathered from the alley down by the allotments. To this we added the squeezed juice and chipped skins of six lemons, 4.5lb of sugar (whatever that is in kilos), a tablespoon of yeast and 12 litres of water, most of which was cold, but some of which was hot. You can read about how we did it here.

They say the results taste about as close to a good bottle of sparkling white wine as you can ever hope to achieve at home (unless you live in the middle of a vineyard and have plenty of willing feet for grape pressing, of course), but the smell last night as I bottled the fizzy results was like a light, feint hot cross bun. Yummy.

We got 15 bottles-worth, plus all the sticky mess that caked itself to the kitchen floor, the drawer fronts, the worktops and my hands and arms. I mopped it all down before bed but even this morning it needed a second going over.

That could in part be to do with the fact that the last bottle to be filled, which must have got the lion’s share of the undistributed yeast and is cloudier than the rest, is proving to be highly volatile. It had blown its cork in the middle of the night and spurted out some of its contents.

I put in a fresh cork and thought nothing of it until I got back from work tonight to find it had done the very same thing, this time spitting a quarter of its contents along the outhouse corridor. Thankfully I’d had the foresight to put them out there rather than storing them beside the cat’s bowls where we’d brewed the beer.

So now I have an outhouse that smells of easter, too.

But at least the cat still smells of cat.

If you liked that post, then try these...

Happy, healthy, H2O on January 29th, 2007

Tomato chutney on September 13th, 2007

It’s not only smokers… on January 17th, 2007

Wild autumn food on September 10th, 2006

Quince Jelly and Marmalade on September 23rd, 2007


6 Responses to “Elderflower champagne… highly volatile”

  1. alex Says:

    They’re brilliant Nik! even if you never drink them, you can be happy knowing they look beautiful!

  2. Rachel Says:

    Hi Nik,

    I wonder if you might be able to pass on some advice. I made a batch of Elderflower champagne two weeks ago and bottled it in plastic fizzy drinks bottles. Yesterday evening there was a huge explosion and both bottles had exploded all over the kitchen! The biggest shame is that the champagne smelt amazing but was splatted all over the ktichen floor! Any advice on what I can use to bottle the champange? Is glass any better than plastic or will it do the same?

    Cheers!

  3. Nik Says:

    I’m not entirely surprised that your champagne managed to rupture a plastic bottle. I have now had six corks come out of my glass bottles, so it’s certainly very strong. I may have to start securing them with caps and cuffs as well as corks.

    I deliberately avoided plastic on this account, and bought 15 clear glass wine bottles from a local brewing store, plus 30 corks and a corking gun. The total cost was £25, but most of that was for the corker, which can of course be re-used whenever we make wine, so it’s more of an investment than an expense.

    I’m now collecting empty wine bottles from friends and family for the next batch.

  4. james Says:

    Nik, I have your blog on a Google reader feed. Do you know if I can get comments on RSS?

  5. Caspar Says:

    James, down in the footer is a link to a comments feed, http://www.nik.co.uk/comments/feed/

  6. privatehire Says:

    watch out when opening the bottles………last night i opened the “Grolsh” type bottle and the pressure was so great that it took the lid off and cut my forehead……after a mop up of blood, still drank the stuff…. :)

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