Score! Brewery Mod..

Went to the dump the other day and found a set of kegs off to the side, that apparently had been owned by a homebrewer before me, because they had the tops cut out already and one of them even had a ball valve and, get this, a stainless steel false bottom installed in it. What the! I grabbed that thing in about 3 seconds flat and it was in my car, paid for, and we were out of there in no time. When I got home, this is what I had:

Bargain!

After that, it was a matter of taking apart my existing mash/lauter tun and reconfiguring mine to essentially be just like this one, but with this SS false bottom installed in my kettle. Why not just use this kettle? This one has a weldless ball valve installed and it was a 3/8ths size, whereas I use 1/2 stuff throughout. The conversion was easy enough though.. here's a pictorial of the conversion:

Parts needed. Total $2.45

Gut the old setup..

Dip tube construction..

Add a collar to stop the false bottom from floating up.. 

Stopper demonstrated

Finished install!

Now, I just need to brew with the thing.. direct fire RIMS system achieved!

Quick update.. big change!

Made a big change to the operation today. My Jalapeno's are coming up all leggy, stretching for the lamps.. knew I had to get 'em higher up to the lamps quick, but with the other big plants under there, something had to go. So, with that in mind.. I went out and found the ol' chicken heat lamp setup in the garage and figured I'd give that a whirl. I hooked up this lamp to the same timer as the T5's so they'll all go on and off at the same time, and now I've got this:

The whole propagator got moved up to the lamps again like its supposed to be, and the big jalapeno's and basil got moved off to the left side there, under the chicken lamp, which now has a 23w florescent light bulb in it. Like this:

Once I had the propagator up there, I left it alone for a while to see how things would go.. I just went to check on it a sec ago after a couple hours in its new location and saw the leaves of the peppers starting to curl back, so I figured I'm too close.. so I just dropped 'em back down a couple inches and we'll see how that goes now.

In other news, here's the back yard as it stands.. still thawing:

Garden update: trouble with transplants!

So here's the overall view of the stuff so far. Still all peppers so far.. hot peppers, that is. I'll be putting some bell peppers in a propagator later today, but they're not in here yet.  You can maybe see I still didn't have the heart to toss those Jalapenos, and in fact potted them up into HUGE pots (well, comparably..) they're like, 5 inch diameter pots, I think they call 'em 1 gallons.. not sure though. I had to prop up the whole propagator setup on a few 2x4's to get 'em even close to the lamps. No sign still from the Habaneros, and the Fatalii's are still sleeping as well. I have had mucho success with the new batch of Jalapenos so far with 17 of the 18 planted seeds germinating just fine, and I think 80% of the Hot Cherries have also popped up as well.

Overall of the curent setup..

Here's a closeup of the Hot Cherry peppers that I pulled out of the paper towel germination cup setup that i had going on. I was using that method that I'd heard good things about to test germination rates and just get a feel for how that operation worked. I learned a couple of things. One, it's super easy to set that whole thing up and running, literally wet a small piece of paper town and put some seeds on it, then cover it up so the stuff doesn't dry out and you're done. Like yeah, that fast and easy. I also learned that stuff germinates super fast when you can see the rootlet popping from the seed casing after just a few days.. I would say, if you don't have a fancy self watering propagation setup like mine, or the APS units I've seen on the 'net in various places that are so popular, I'd say the paper towel idea is a good bet, because it keeps the seeds evenly moist and then you can tell for sure which ones are going to pop out and then you can transplant some known good seedlings. The downside that I found was that pulling the tiny little delicate buggers off the paper towel was a bit of a pain in the neck, and then getting them situated in the new seed starting media in the six-pack style containers was also a chore. I did it with these five plants just fine, but there was a bit of swearing and carrying on involved. I'll say it was a *lot* easier just pricking out the other seedlings from my dirt propagator setup from the Super 7 and transplanting those guys. That was seriously no brainer work. I also have some to the conclusion that if they won't pop up in the Super 7, they're just not going to pop at all. I thought maybe the original Hab's in there were unhappy in the machine there, so I tried the paper towel method with 10 seeds.. I have yet to have one open up. Clearly, my Habanero seeds are shot this year.. which, come to think of it, are really last years seeds. So, yeah.. I lucked out with one good one, but that looks like all the habanero's I'm gonna get this time unless I go buy some started plants. Then again, who really needs more than one habanero plant.. sheesh!

Hot Cherry transplants

And finally, here's a glimpse of the huge (heh.. yeah) pots I put the Jalapeno's into in the back left corner here, and you can just catch a view of the little Habanero in the lower right corner. Still looking good right there! There's actually pods forming on the Jalapenos now.. and I'm not sure that's a good thing for them to be doing at this early stage of the game. I think they got stressed out along the way and they're making a break for it with seeds now. I guess I screwed those guys up a bit.. well, that was the whole point of this experiment in January anyway, right? To learn a thing or two for the real event..

Big Jalapeno's back there.. tiny Habanero up front on the left.

Epic fail? Habaneros are stubborn..

I am seeing a total ammount of nothing from the Habanero seeds I put into the propagator back on the 14th of February.. I know these can take some time, and of the six I put in of the first batch, I got only one.. but really, I put like eighteen seeds in this prop, and I got nothing showing right now. That's sorta sad. On the bright side, I have half of the Hot Cherries sprouting now in a cup with a damp paper towel under the lights, so I figured I'd toss the rest of my Habanero seeds into the same situation because it's looking pretty bleak otherwise. Nothing going on in the newly seeded props, but those are really brand new so far, so I'm not stressed about those yet.. check a pic of the germination cups right now though:

Hot Cherry Pepper seedlings

The fluffy stuff is rootlets, I believe..

In other news, I just took my digital thermo outside and put it on the edge of the hoop house, on the outside of the house. Here's a pic of that and the temp outside right now:

And a few hours later, I took a pick of the same thermo, that I had put inside the hoop house propped up on a cup to keep it up off the snow. Check it out:

And there it is, 55 degrees. Considerably warmer in the house than it is outside.. I'm surprised the snow isn't melting faster, for sure, though.

Oh, also found out.. the Jalapeno's I have are the Early variety, supposedly ready to roll in like 75-85 days. I've already took a chunk of that up already.. two months they've been in here!

Otherwise.. everything else is status quo. Stand by for further info..

The Brutal Truth: Savvas's Northern English Brown

This is the competitor:

Hard to tell from the photo alone, but that's a Northern English Brown, so says Savvas.. let's see about that.  ;)

Appearance: Initial appearance shows a dark brown liquid that canot be seen through at normal room lighting conditions. When jacklighted with my trusty maglight, it shows a crystal clear mahogany color thats awesome to see. Style guide wants to see dark amber to red/brown, so I'll give him that. Dinged only for no real head appearance on this beer. 2/3

Aroma: I'm getting an initial sweet caramel thing here, but in the background a high pitched sorta hoppy thing comes through. It's fleeting and get's squashed by the sweetness pretty quick, but its there. That's pretty much the definition of the NEB, so.. hey, good for you. On second glance, I'm sensing almost a microscopic roast note in here, too.. appealing. However, for style, I think it's a little heavy on the caramel and esters are readily apparent, where for style they are allowed, but should be restrained. But still, it's darned tasty..  8/12

Flavor: says hops. Mild, but apparent. A bit of a tangy flavor in here.. from the hops, nothing bad. Beer is a bit too cold right now, gotta rest this a bit and let it warm up.. I'll come back in a sec. After a sec: ah, yes! Quite fine. Nice beer. Seems to hit a lot of the right notes for this style.. I'm liking it. 16/20

Mouthfeel: I'll go medium body for this beer. It's pretty smack in the middle of 'just right'. I'm thinking it's a bit on the light side of carbonation, but I was warned about that ahead of time. Still, nothing wrong with where it's at.. could just stand a pinch more is all. Maybe that's just the high carbed American in me talking, though.. and holy crap, but am I sensing diacetyl here, or is that just me?? 3/5

Overall Impression: They say 'nutty' is the characteristic you're looking for in this beer.. I still get a more deep sweet, caramel thing here than nutty. It's still quite fine, but the nutty party is missing.. which is saying a lot, considering how nutty the brewer is. Oh snap! Still, I'll go so far as to give an 7/10 here.

That's only a 36 out of a possible 50 points, but man.. the whole seems greater than the sum of the components. I really wanna go back and re-figure the numbers to push this a bit higher, but I'm not sure that's the right thing to do. I wanna see this beer a bit less caramel-ly and a scosche more nutty, whatever that means. For a brown ale, I'm thinking it should have a bit more brown in it, rather than Red beer, you know what I'm sayin'? But I'm not an Englishman, and I guess my score will hve to stand, although I feel it should be more of a 38 than a 36. What a bastard!

Put some stuff in the props for *real*, yo..

Got some peppers in the propagators now for real.. no fooling around this time! My original test subject Jalapenos are geting way too big to fit under the lights now, along with the rest of the tiny baby plants. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those buggers.. except my sole habanero.. that's still growing, but very slowly. Here's a pic of the setup now:

Today, I put in some extra Hot Cherry peppers, because I have so many of them and the ones on te paper towel experiment haven't done anything yet.. I also put in the *real* Jalapenos that I'll be putting out this year, the flat of Habaneros haven't popped yet, but I remember the other ones I tested on took almost 20 days to sprout, and so far isn't only been like 13 days for these ones.. and, most exciting, I put in the Fatalii seeds (well, six..) that I got with Jody at the Garden show in Hartford the other day.

I think I failed to mention that.. me and Commando Jody hit up the Hartford Gaden and Flower show the other day at the big civic center place.. it was mostly garbage and flea market crap, but there were some cool things. I forgot to bring my camera, but had I remembered, I would have taken some pics of this totally awesome self temperature regulating greenhouse thing that was on sale there. $4,200 if I remember right.. so, not cheap, but damn, it was cool. Otherwise, the only thing we walked out with was a single pack of 25 Fatalii pepper seeds that we split up between us. Fatalii's are supposed to be slightly less hot than Habaneros, but not by much. They're supposed to also have a fairly nice fruity, citrus flavor to them too, just before they knock your teeth out with heat.

Otherwise, I got nothing else. So get out of here..

Hoop house back in action..

Just a quick pic of the hoop house that I recovered today... figured I'd throw some plastic on it and set 'er back out on the bed and see what kind of heating action I could get out of the thing. I'd like to see some snow melt-age out there and start to dry up the soil a bit so I can get some early plants into the ground.. but gotta get through that 2 feet of snow stuck to the things.. bummer. Here's a shot of it:

Far..

Close

I tried something new this time and used a standard technique that a normal greenhouse assembler would have used, unlike my attempts last year.. in that I used furring strips around the edge to hold the plastic down, and hopefully this time it won't all tear up and get stupid on me. But heck, this time I'm using real MAN SIZED plastic, nto flimsy painters plastic.. this is good, think material. There's also two layers of it, cause I couldn't *quite* get one piece to entirely cover the whole house, so the plastic overlaps about 4/5ths of the other piece of plastic. That piece of red tape is where the upper-most piece of plastic ends, and I just taped it up to keep it from flapping around in the breeze. We'll see.

The whole unit was just buried under some snow and ice, and it took quite an effort to get it unstuck. I'll have to see if next year I have the foresight to not leave the damn thing out there all winter.. that was like work.

Additionally, I scored a pack of Neseed branded Hot Cherry Peppers this morning while getting some dog food.. nice! I am trying something different with these guys.. instead of just putting these straight into the propagator, I'm putting these little guys into a small plastic tupperware container on top of a damp piece of paper towel.. and whatever decides to germinate will get popped into a propagator tray afterwards. I think it's going to be more work this way than it would have been otherwise, but I wanna try this method out, as I think it will be more useful with iffy seeds that I'll plant in the future.. you know, to check viability of things and all without wondering what's going on under the dirt that you can't see.