Zone control and eHLT..

I think I pretty much failed to capture any of it in photos, but me and Jeremiah took the eHLT for a spin last Friday and brewed up a batch of stout with the new eHLT in action. It performed flawlessly and I love the conversion. I am, so far, highly recommending this procedure. The new stout uses 12% roast barley, up 2% from the last batch, and I dropped the chocolate malt 1% as well.. we'll see hw this works out. Unfortunately, when I got home I found the Breiss Roast barley is only 300L instead of the normal 500L of most other brands.. but the SRM numbers came up into Stout territory, so we'll just have to check that color when it's in the glass. That beer is still in the fermenter, and the Amber is up next on deck.. so it'll be a few weeks before it's test time. Stand by for that..

Otherwise, I had a bit of a run in with this thing a couple of days ago:

That's a zone control power head motor you're looking at there in the top picture, and the housing it normally is bolted to in the lower picture. The motor itself failed, the housing was fine. In my particular heating setup, with a hot water boiler, a circulator pump and a couple of zone control valves, this things job is to either open or close the appropriate zone valve to let hot water through into the correct baseboard heater. If you failure, like I did here in the upper lever of my house, you might get a valve stuck in the OPEN position.. which results in unbearable heat all the time, unstoppable, unless you turn off the boiler and kill the heat. Since this broken condition was discovered at midnight when I got home, I had *all night* to think about it, and no idea what was actually wrong with the thing. Long story short, the next morning I got up, packed the kids off to school and sent the momma to work.. and then broke out the internet and became an expert on hot water heating systems in about two hours. After I got my education, I started diagnosing the issues from the thermostat to the boiler.. and eventually found this thing to be the culprit. A quick trip to T-town and $37.37 later, I ha the new part installed and it's been working fine ever since.

Who's the man?

Tis' all for now.. tomorrow, I have that Salsa making class to go to and then the Commando party in the evening after the kids concert. Maybe get some pics from the party to post up.. then, I'm gonna cut down all the lettuce and arugula in the hoop house and call that project finished. I just noticed I had a couple of lettuce plants keel over and die, so I think about mid to late November is about all I can really expect from a hoop house for keeping things alive. Time to get the rest of the nutrients into that lower bed and get some manure in there to do it's thing over the winter. Good times!

Oh yeah, also got my new sourdough starter fired up and I'm trying to get my first firm starter to do it's thing as I type this. We'll see how that goes..

Amaryllis blooming..

The Amaryllis has, partly, bloomed..

Neat!

Garden update

Quick note to indicate the status of the garden.. just documenting how long a kitchen type garden can be kept going this year, and wanna keep the pics going as long as I can, tedious though it is on some days, so I can look back next year and actually *see* and not just think.. "well, I think it was OK tup to November-ish.." you know what I mean? So, bear with me.. we've gotta be in the home stretch now.. this thing can't hold together *that* much longer, right? So, on with the documentation:

Just an overview of the beds.. chickens in sight!

Too much empty space. Should have planned further ahead!

These are the lettuce transplants from the planter box from earlier..

Arugula and Spinach in sight. Barely...

The peas, however, are hit!

Like I said, just an update.. I see the Amaryllis is doing awesome over there on the windowsill, however. I'll have to take some pics of that tomorrow and get those up and online. Looks like three big flowers just popped up overnight. Not opened yet, but emerging.. stay tuned!

Amaryllis and eHLT..

The Amaryllis is coming along pretty well.. on the verge of popping out and actually looking like a flower any day now. Check it out:

It's about 2' tall now..

Otherwise, here's some pics of the grounding ring idea I came up with, with a bit of help from my engineering team ;), to ground the electric element to the keg and thus the ground. Also, a pic or two of the JB Weld attachment of the electrical extension box to the side of the keg. This stuff is *way* stronger than I had any idea it would be. To take this off now would require a hammer and some finish work with a grinder to get the JB Weld off. It's serious stuff!

Simple. A metal flat plate with a big hole in it for the element to pass through and ground on.. 

Assembled.. 

And bottom view, with gasket on there.. 

I put a bit of JB Weld on the outside of the box, but..

..most of it is on the inside. 

Next, I did a little electrical work on the inside of the box, including fabricating up all the wires and jumpers and putting the box all together. Check out the mostly finished project:

Not so complicated after all.. 

All buttoned up. ON is UP!

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Haven't run a powered on test yet, because I discovered a small leak around the gasket yesterday when I filled it up with water.. seems there's some seepage around the main gasket that wasn't there before I installed the grounding ring thing. I may have to rethink that a bit.. I'll report back with a solution later.

Horseradish..

Pulled up the horseradish yesterday.. this is what I got:

Sort of an ugly bugger. I thought it was gonna be more like carrots, with each root sorta more carrot shaped with a tuber going straight down.. but it's more hop rhizome like than that, with just a big tangled mass of roots all over the place. There's also going to be no problem with next years crop, because this thing pretty much infested the side herb garden area with little rootlets. Awesome. Now I just gotta go get some more llama manure and make that soil area more hospitable. It's really sandy and terrible stuff for growing, really.

Anyway, a little more hosing of off this tangled mass found this stuff underneath..

That's the biggest single chunk of root that I found in there. about the same size as that piece my dad brought me from his friend somewhere in America that time.. so I remembered how to process this stuff into the horseradish sauce that we all know and love (well, those of us with taste, I should say..). Easy stuff.. just dice it up into chunks about an inch long or so after you peel the outside layer of rough skin off the thing, and then zing it for a few seconds or so in your food processor until it's almost a paste. Then, give it the sniff test and keep an eye on it for about 30 seconds or less till the stuff has reached the level of pungency you want, and then douse it with vinegar and stir, to cancel the reaction and lock the flavor into place. The trick with vinegar is, once you dice and shred the root into small bits, the exposure to the air is what activates the enzymes inside to break down this stuff inside the root called 'sinigrin'. When this happens, the byproduct of the breakdown process is isothiocyanate, which is an harsh and mean as the name implies. The longer you leave the shredded bits exposed to the air, the more powerful the stuff becomes. By adding vinegar, a mild acid, you quench the process and stop it in it's tracks right where it is.. so, home made horseradish is very flexible stuff.. as it can be as mild or mean as you want it to be. Frickin' awesome!

When I was all done, speeded up in part to my horseradish processing associate Jody, we ended up with this:

Two jars of heaven. Again, awesome! Next year, I hope to have much more. There is really nothing on earth easier than horseradish, I think.. great stuff and easy to do. Just don't plant it anywhere near your regular garden.. it get's everywhere.

Chicken moltin'...

Got me a chicken that's a moltin'.. there's feathers all over the yard. One of the Barred Rocks, the bigger one, is sheddin' all over the place and she really looks like hell now. The kids think it's kinda funny though, and they're collectin' the big feathers from around the yard and keepin' them in a jar.. presumably to re-create the whole bird eventually? I can't imagine why else they'd do that. Check it out.. snapped a few pics this morning of the poor, fashion-less bird:

Yeah. Gonna get chilly, I suspect..

Big Brew at Don's Dad's house...

Just wanted to share a few pics of the Big Brew we had at Don's Dad's place, sponsored of course, by Don's Dad & Mom as well as Don himself. Great time was had by all. This event also marked the debut of two brand spankin' new brewing rigs, Don and Geoff's metallic monster and Jeremiah's half electric, half propane Frankenbrewery. Here's a few pics of the event and attendees to document the fact that the damn thing happened on Saturday, November 6th, 2010...

Jeremiah with his newest brewery creation.. eHLT!

Timmay and Eric, spargin'.. 

Geoff and Don's new single spine gravity tree..

Launch controler..

Mike Hill, doing something mysterious..

Will and Alex, goofing around.

Jody, rockin' the Top Tier. Classy..

The fruits of Jer's and my brew day.. 5 gallons each of Am. Amber. The newest revision..

Jer took home all of the brewer spent grain that day to feed to some local cows. Damn, we're green!

So, yeah. Resounding success. And I think we may have even inspired some other non-brewers to maybe look into the process. Seems everyone had a pretty good time..