[zawker]

If however your pails are old and badly scratched, you should consider buying now ones.

Good point. The pails I use are 10 years old and have seen a number of batches. Time to buy extra pails anyway I think.

There's a lot of good information about brewing beer at www.howtobrew.com .

Looks useful. I have bookmarked the site and will give it a good read later tonight.

Thanks