Seeds and pics..

Still no camera card reader.. .. where did that damn thing go? As a result, no pics to show ya'.. 

On the 3rd of this month, I lost control of myself and pulled out the Super 7 seedling propagator thingy I got last fall and set it up with some Roma tomato, Jalapeno, Habanero and Sweet Basil seeds in it.. I know, it's too early.. but I just wanna see if the damn things works as advertised... if I fail now, I at least have a chance to rectify the problem before it becomes a problem when it's time to *really* start the seeds I'm gonna need for this coming gardening season. If I succeed, and these things stat to take off, I'll just have to put 'em under the Mr. Light Grow Light Pro that Gramma got me for christmas. Whoooee! Who's better than me?! Here's a pic of the ad version of this thing..

So my plan is to stick the Suer 7 under these lights till I get 'em up to repotting size.. then, I'll set them up in 6 packs when I re-pot them.. I should be able to get done what I need to.. and hopefully a bit more so I can spread the love to my friends. We'll see how that goes.. I'm not sure I can grow anything but lettuce from seeds so far. :)

Here's some pics from the New Years Eve "Ghetto Hot Tub" we made in the garage..

The tub, e-HLT, pump and chiller in the tub..

The white basket is to keep the heat
 from the recirculating boiling water in the e-HLT from
melting the floor of the tub..

Here's a pic of the thing in action, with some people in it's 110 degree awesomeness!

Rumor has it that's Will, Jeremiah and perhaps others in there.. 

And, just for fun, a picture of some weirdo doing the Robot Dance..

Heh..

During the course of this party, we only dented half of one of the kegs I brewed up for it.. too much other beer floating around to kill 'em both, apparently. Lame-O's! Maybe next year..

Where's my card reader? Dutch oven baking..

Man, the card reader got lost somewhere along the way a couple weeks ago, as I think I've remarked before.. and it's just downright sad that I can't post pictures now. Unless I take 'em with the iSight cam in the Mac, I'm out of luck. Take this as the best I can do:

That is the best tasting loaf of bread I've ever made, and this picture won't do it justice! I finally got around to trying a trick from the web that I've been pondering for a while now, but have just been putting off. I sure wish I had tried this earlier! It requires the use of a Dutch Oven (DO), which we just happen to have, thanks to our pal Crystal, who scored one for us a while back. There's nothing different between the bread dough itself, it's just the method of baking that's the key. All you do is preheat the DO in the oven while your dough proofs, and when it's time, lower the dough into the DO using the parchment paper as a type of sling, then stick the cover back on the DO and bake it up.. I baked at 450 because the phenolic knob of our DO is only rated to 450, and I wish I could have done 500 degrees, but I'll have to wait to try that when I get a metal knob. Anyway, I baked the standard sourdough loaf at 450 for 20 minutes, and then popped the DO cover off and baked the loaf for another 10 minutes.. when I first pulled the lid off after the 20 minute mark, the loaf was seriously pale colored and had risen quite a lot. I was very excited about that.. after the ten additional minutes of baking, I checked the loaf again and found it was still too pale, so continued for another few minutes, checking it as we went along.. I think I baked this thing for a total of 34-35 minutes, which is about 10 minutes or so longer than my standard loaf in the oven solo goes for.

The thing that's going on here is multifaceted.. the DO keeps the moisture in the kettle and there's no need for spritzing with water in this method. I also got a really nice 'curl' to the slashes that I've never gotten before, which you can just barely see in the terrible photo above. The loaf seemed to rise a bit more than usual, and the crumb was definitely more open, but also more even inside than ever before. Additionally, and most encouraging to me, was that my sourdough actually was slightly SOUR, which totally blew me away. I was really excited to get that flavor, finally, and we've already eaten most of this loaf in just a few days now. The next best thing about this method is, my crust is about half as thick, and way crispier and more pleasing to eat. Whereas before I had a really thick, dark crust that was a bit chewy, this one is light, crispy, and very full of flavor.. reminiscent of Amy's bread loaves. *very* encouraging stuff here.

It makes sense to me to preheat the DO for this method, since you're trying to get the loaf to really 'pop' and then bake, but there are people online who claim there's just really no difference between using a pre-heated DO and a non-preheated DO.. they put the dough in the DO and let it do it's final proof inside there, and then stick that whole thing in the oven to bake.. I can't imagine how that works nearly as well since the DO is now shielding and absorbing the initial temp jump from the oven and you'd think this would totally inhibit the oven spring effect, but a lot of people are saying no, it doesn't. I'll be trying this for sure.. but now, the chance of getting a loaf of bread of less quality than this one just breaks my heart. But I'll try it.. in the name of science. ;)

The Brutal Truth: Jody's Octoberfest.. sorta.

This was, of course, going to be a Brutal Truth on Jody's Octoberfest, as stated above.. but this bottle was presented to me in a plastic bottle with a carbonator cap attached to the top.. and when I poured it into the glass I have in fornt of me, it was mostly flat. There's a couple of bubbles in here, but not much. It's not really a fair game like this.. so, I'll give it a quick run through, but don't judge this beer on tap at his house on what I'm saying in here.

Aroma: A really faint Nor'Easter style aroma resents itself here, except like, 1/4 of what that beers nose is like. I get a microscopic note of some esters in here, with a bit of a sweet note as well. It's damn close, but these aromas are so faint with no carbonation to lift them. I'll go 8/12 here, because what there is is awesome.. but it must be hampered by the carbonation thing.

Appearance: I can read text on the screen through this wicked ruby colored beer. Gorgeous color, for sure. No foam whatsoever, though. Because of the clarity and fabulous color.. I'm torn on this.. but it's just ham-stringed with no bubbles or foam. 1/3

Flavor: Moderate hop bitterness, fabulous maltiness.. finishes relatively dry, which is surprising for the flavor you get here, with it's sorta not sweet-but Munich'y flavor. Tricky, that. Well done, still.. 15/20, hurt by it's lack of 'lift' from the bubbles.

Mouthfeel: Medium body still, with no carbs, but of course it's flat in the long run. Fabulous finish.. Again, well done here too. A bit of a slickness in the finish.. not a diacetyl thing, though.  2/5

Overall Impression: Ah, my kingdom for carbonation! This beer would have scored huge, if not for that one glaring defect. This is a great beer, that aside. Not my favorite style, but I can appreciate it on occasion.  All in all, 7/10, because of an huge amount of greatness bruised up by one huge aspect of blah.

In the end, a 33/50 isn't something to be taken lightly. Cold and flat, this beer still kicks the crap out of a lot of commercial beers on the market in this same segment. If properly carbonated, this thing would easily have been a 40+ brew. It's that good. One mans opinion, of course..

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!

Add caption

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.