Been a long time.. here's some updates.

Sheesh, been a long time since I've posted here. Here's some stuff that's transpired in the past week and change. That wort pump box I built? MAGIC! Worked like a charm. Jody came over and we whipped up a basic pale ale (well... maybe not stone cold basic. We did end up tossing in a bit of crushed black pepper! Nick is gonna love this thing.. ) using the pump and it was like, well.. like we weren't working. 

I really liked the no lifting of buckets of hot water, the complete and total annihilation of the recirculation aspect, and the hands off self-swirling wort chilling part. Those are my top three fav's. Simply awesome.

In other news, the garden is really coming along nice. Few things happend lately.. I picked up a horseradish plant that Sarah so thoughtfully brought home from a scouting mission she was on. That got planted in the herb garden area. Check it:

It's not much to look at, nope. Sort of depressing, actually. Let's hope it looks up from here..

The regular garden beds are cooler, though. Check these out:

The far bed has tomatoes on the left, beans in the middle and red lettuce followed by a couple rows of green lettuce on the right. The near-er bed has some crap The Boss put in on the left side, and then two rows of three (six total) of my habaneros in the middle, followed by two rows of three Jalapeno's on the right. Down the middle of the Japaleno's are some other nasty vegetable that Sarah put in underneath as well.. not sure what that is either. The peppers are what we'll be focusing on mostly in my personal blog here, and maybe to some extent a minor mention of the lettuce, depending on how delicious it is in a lunchtime salad for me. 

In case you were wondering:

Sorta hard to see here, but the Cascades have wrapped themselves around the lower part of the trellis a few times already, and are starting to work their way upwards now. It's been just the past week where I've gotten any real growth out of them.. it's been so cold, they hate life. They're a couple feet taller now though. 

In the line of duty, there was a casualty.. 

Brett 'C' Chocolate Rye Stout, just killed moments ago. A keg of the Big Brew Brown I made up with Dan Tavelli is now in it's place... gona check on that tomorrow when it's cold and see what's up there. Dan says his bottled version is already up and running, so we hope to get together for a side-by-side comparo of the two pretty soon. Fingers crossed...

 Oh snap, rewind a sec.. forgot a cool side project science project thingy. Look at this weird invention:

This is called an Earthbox. It says so on the side, that's how I know.  Sarah got it somewhere last year and put some tomatoes in it up on the deck, thinking that if they were close by, she'd take care of them and not forget to water the things and maybe they wouldn't die. Well, Barbie came in a couple days later and kicked the royal crap out of the box by digging it up and eating the tops off the plants. Jerk! The Boss proceded to put a few rotten ol' strawberries and a few carrots in there afterwards in desperation, but the berries got eaten too, I believe, and the carrots came out all mutated and only an inch long or something. Game over, and she gave up. It's been sitting on the deck ever since. Can't believe it didn't break from being full of water all winter long. She said I could take it over, and since I had a few more habaneros I wanted to plant that I didn't have room for in the garden, I figured I'd put 'em in here. Anyway, the idea is, you put the dirt in here on top of the mesh flooring (sorta like a mashtun!) and the roots grow down and drink all the water they want. You fill it through the tube thingy in the upper left corner here in this pic, because the top get's covered by plastic stuff and only the plants poke out the top, like this:

Supposedly, this keeps out all the weeds and makes like, an everlasting cycle of water movement inside there. In addition, there's a huge amount of fertilizer in here too, right on top, that sorta get's evenly mixed in as the season progresses. This thing claims to increase your yield by two times or more. Oh, we'll see. 

Wort pump & Southern Hemisphere Harvest..

OK, so here's phase one of my electric brewery build up.. getting my wort pump back in action. Check this out.. the whole idea is based on some others I've seen online, where there's a small toolbox built up to support a wort pump and switches and outlets. The only thin I really didn't like about this arrangement is that there was an extra extension cord laying around.. I already have an extension cord, why do I want another? I consulted a friend of mine (electrical genius Dave Ellis!) for some guidance, and came up with this idea:

Standard March 809 wort pump (food grade pump) mounted in a small tool box..

Then, wire up the switch (upper left hand corner of this picture..) and the recessed male plug connector (the ingenious part, in the lower center of this photo.. stand by or more)..

The outside front view of this puppy, with the installed ON/OFF switch located just under the front cover of this top box flap thingy, the extension cord plug whoosey in the front and the pump connections located just to the right of the box.

And a shot of the plumbing here on the pump side.

The beauty of this is, there's no extension cord hanging about. You use it and then store it. You don't need to go out and buy one specifically for your pump box here. The toolbox also gives the pump a much more stable platform from which to do it's thing.. which is why I broke it so long ago to begin with, cause I flipped it over and snapped off one of the outlets. Now, I've got a stable base to work with so hopefully all should be well.

The next thing is this:

What you're looking at there is a 3500 watt heater element in my right hand and a 1" NPT locknut in my left. The locknut and element merge well together, straight thread and NPT threads notwithstanding, and will enable me to get said heater element mounted into the side of my HLT so I can electrify it for superior heat via 240 volt current. Yeah, we got that here.


In other news, I drank this up last night:

Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest. F'ing great beer! Taking notes on my iPod.. err.. I just found out the notes I took on my iPod were just totally wiped out. Huh? Ok, going from memory.. I recall a really wicked hop attack that followed a really nice, pleasant malt sweetness and mild.. err .. something. There was something there alongside the malt, I remember that much. The hops pretty much decimated the malty-ness a few seconds after you got a taste of it.. but I wasn't complaining. The hops were some kinda citrusy and something else I can't recall. That's pretty insightful, I know. Like I said, my notes were destroyed. Drats. All in all, I gave this bombshell a double thumbs up, despite it's huge blast of hops that was totally out of whack. I mean, that's why you're buying this beer. It's huge! It was easily as big as any of the West Coast IPA's I drank when I was in CA a little while ago.. but really well done, and arguably better than most of not all of those previously mentioned beers. Really well done. Go get one or seven of these right now. You'll thank me later. 


I have some more I'd like to write, but I'll have to handle it another time.. things to do, places to go. Stay tuned..

More electric thoughts...

Still pondering electric brewing.. I think I have the element in the kettle part sorted out now, but I keep coming back to the pump I have and hw I'm going to incorporate that. I came across a new idea today in that you mount the pump inside a small toolbox with just the pump head and valves exiting the box.. keeps the electric part shielded from any stray water and gives the pump itself a safe footing from which to do it's thing. Which is how I broke it in the first place.. not having a stable mount to put it on. There's also a switch mounted on the box, for on and off action, and I think I'll use a male-sided reverse plug on the box, so I can keep the extension cord I have in one piece and not have a big long cord attached to the box running into the thing for power. Less pieces to buy as well, right?

I figure, if I go with the toolbox idea, I can easily use it low (on the floor) or high (on a bench) in the brewery, plus still keep it portable if I wanna take it somewhere to use at someone else's house. The downside is, it's one more thing to move around that's not permanently fixed to the stand. I guess cleaning would be easier, though, since I could bring the pump inside to clean and not have to drag chemicals out there to the stand to get it done.

Now, if only I weren't so skittish around electrical work, this would all be so much better...

Some thoughts on electric brewing...

You guys are totally ripped off today. Only picture you're gonna get is this lousy one of a barely out of the ground chile plant:

Clearly, of the Jalapeno variety. The peat pot says so. This little guy, and one other friend of the six total I planted, came out of the ground like three days ago. Two out of six. Not as good as I'd hoped.. but I guess there's still time. I've also got my bakup plan in place, which is also till moving along just fine.. stand by for more on that.

In other news, I was talking with a friend last night, Jeremiah B. from way down south, about breweries. He's building a new one up from scratch and he had called to pick my brain about measurements and gadgets and whatnot that I had attached to mine. Wanted to know how I'd done it, what I liked, and what I'd change if I could. Told him a bunch of stuff.. but most interesting is we talked about HLT's and their fabrication. Knowing what I know now, I'm interested in going to at least part electric heating. The HLT, in particular, is perfectly suited to being electrically heated.. this stuff has been known for a while now, as there's several people online documenting their builds. But the bug to upgrade to that has started to bite me again.. since Jer is building his as we speak, I gave him some ideas to bounce around in his head on stuff to do.. and we'll see how he makes out. Depending on what he comes up with and his particular equipment build, we'll base my next upgrade off of that. I also shot him an idea for my newest sight glass idea.. so, stand by for some more on that later as well.

Calibratin' and graduatin'.. and a darned big egg!

Not a groundbreaker here, but figured I'd update on the mod's I'm making to the brew rig. Figured I'd do something today that I've been putting off for a really long time, just cause it's so boring.. and that's measurements. Boring. But it's important stuff, really. What I mean is, I'm marking graduations on the sides of  my boil kettle so can finally get an accurate measurement of how much wort I have in the kettle pre-boil. This measurement, plus a reading of wort gravity prior to boil, will allow me to do the math to figure out what I'm going to end up with, or *how* to end up with a kettle full of wort of the strength I actually desire, or planned for, with my software. It's just boring as hell to do. Plus, I'm measuring boil off rate now as well.. you know, it's only been like, 8 years now and I haven't done it yet. Figured I'd do it since I had a kettle full of hot water anyway, right? So, the clock started about 15 minutes ago and we'll see where we end up in an hour. Check the pics:

Here's a shot of the new graduations on the kettle:

As you can see there, I'm simply using the transfer hose run up the side of the kettle as a sight-glass, instead of building a new sight glass (which I could fairly easily do...). Not having a built in sight glass leaves one less thing to get crap all boiled and hardened into. That's the primary reason I don't have a permanent one on there.. but this idea works the same way and is just as accurate. Sweet.

Here's a pic of my por hops. Darned things got blown over couple days ago in the wind.. drats.

Here's a new bread I just took out f the oven, a couple hours ago. Standard sourdough boule, with a touch of spelt powder dusted over the top just before slashing to leave a bit of a design on the top:

And finally, a huge egg! This thing measures 98 grams... 3.45 ounces. A monster! the equivalent of two full size large eggs. It's so huge, the lid on the egg box won't close. Sheesh!

That's all for now, kids.. carry on.

Big Brew 2010 update.. more pics!

Just a quick update here with some new pics I scored from Frank. Thanks Frank!

With that said, here's some import stuff being discussed here... clearly. That handy quick reference guide on the back of Rob's shirt came in handy more than once, I can say!

Jody and Alex here, up to no good. 

Mash mixing.. they like to do this manually.

Somebody's wort run off, and almost over.. believe this is Frank and Rob's.. 

The Lab:

Sa and Will discussing the finer points of IPA's..

This photo speaks for itself!

And, last but not least.. an overview of the chaos in the garage. And, Timmay! (he did show up afterall!)

Dismissed...

Krausen Commando's...

Oh yeah! And most importantly, I forgot to mention this: Yesterday at the Big Brew, we formed an actual, legitimate, fully certifiable (yeah, he said 'certifiable'..) homebrew club. The Krausen Commando's! Tricky.

Check it. We even have a domain name and .com now..

http://www.krausencommandos.com/

Ain't nuthin' there just yet.. but give it some time. We voted on some initial peep's into office as well, including Timmay P. for Prez, Geoff D. for Vice and Will S. threw his junk in the ring with a hard fought battle for Secretary/Trezurer. Yeah, I spelled that right. That's how hard core this group is. As I heard, Geoff already fired up the club on the American Homebrewers Association site to get us super-legit.. fame and fortune is just around the corner, rest assured.

That is all for now, dismissed...

Commando Mike