Seedling test update..

 Just a couple pics to document progress.. not sure what I'm doing with these guys still, but still just nursing them along as space under the lights in and in the propagator allows.  The only seeds in there really truly destined for the big garden are the un-sprouted Habaneros in the propagator up front. And, probably that Hab in the clay pot there. That's become a pet now..

The whole shebang right now.. 

Had to pinch the top off of one of the basil this morning, as it was getting much taller than the other five plants. Trying to keep these going until it's warm enough to put 'em outside.

Basil

This tomato that got ejected from the game is clearly unhappy at being out of the lights and up on a tiny windowsill, but I'll be darned.. it's still alive and kicking. We'll nurse it along as best we can up there, but I really didn't have the room to keep it going under the lights. It was just way bigger than everybody else that was growing..

Roma, so sad.

Here's that tiny Habanero.. the only one of the bunch I initially planted so long ago that popped up. Goofy bugger..

Habanero

And these guys.. I might keep these after all, if they don't too big too fast before I can get them outside. It almost looks like they're staring to put out flower buds, which I don't believe it s a good sign this early in the game. Usually means they're stressed out and trying to get some seeds into the world before they croak out, but we'll keep an eye on 'em and watch what happens. 

Jalapeno's

A couple of geeky brewing graphs..

So, Jody came up the other day and we brewed up a Porter in the garage. Inspired by James Spencer and the current science experiment he's got going on over on Basic Brewing Radio (podcast..) we decided to measure a few things while doing up our brew. First, we measured the specific gravity in Brix at several points during the mash, to see how the O.G. went up, down or stayed the same. Of course we figured it would go up, sure. but I was sorta surprised by how much this went up. Here's the graph:

So, again, measurements for the mash sugars were measured in Brix for sake of simplicity, repeatability and not having to screw with the extra layer of temperature correction, since we measured on my ATC refractometer. If you do the math (ok, I'll do it for you.. ) you can see we started off at something around 23.6 Brix when we finally got the temp stabilized at the 153 degrees F we wanted. We used the pump to recirculate the mash fully before each reading, and then we just ran off some wort into a pyrex jar and took our sample from there. Then we measured at various points along the way until an hours time had passed.. and strangely, the curve still hadn't flattened, meaning that either it was just going to keep going for a bit more or maybe just take a steep nose dive in it's climb and flatten out. Who knows? An hours mash time is plenty for this kid any day of the week. The difference in the original reading and the end of the house reading is 0.014 Original Gravity points, for those of you not into the Brix/Plato thing. That's not insignificant. It loks like from the moment of mash in, to about the half hour mark, you get the most bang for the buck (time) spent.. but if you need another point or point and a quarter, spend the extra half hour in the mashtun and then start running off. It looks like only about a point and change was gained after the 30 minute mark, which translates to 0.004 O.G. points or so.. it's something to consider, I guess.

An interesting thing happened here during this brew. Now, normally, I calculate for 82% brewhouse efficiency here at Second Shift Brewing.. but I normally only do a half hour long mash, then start my sparge. The results I get are good, and I base this half hour mash time off the new info that's getting kicked around which seems to indicate the vast majority of the starches are converted by around the 20 minute mark. So, I round that off to half an hour and call it OK. The interesting thing was that we had calculated this thing for a 1.058 O.G. beer.. but in the end, we came out with 1.063 O.G. I was puzzled at first by this, because I rarely miss my mark by that much.. but apparently, this hour long mash increased my brewhouse efficiency so much, it skewed the numbers right up and off the chart for this beer. So, Jody.. that's gotta be the reason why that happened. This occurred to me in the car ride this morning after I dropped off the kids. :)

Here's another chart for you:

This one is the readings we took on the wort that was draining from the mashtun into the boil kettle. We took readings on the wort as the kettle filled up, so the Galons of Water Sparged on the left side is the amount of wort that was in the kettle when we pulled a sample from the hose as it was flowing into the kettle, and the bottom line there is the poins in Brix (labeled incorrectly as Plato.. rats!). As you can see, the tun was originally running out at nearly 25 Brix at first, but as the sparge continued, we measured about 4.8 Brix at the 10 gallon filled level.. and we finished out at 2.5 Brix when we actually had our entire pre boil volume of 13.6 gallons. This info would be useful to know if, say, you wanted to do two beers from one batch of grain.. and you could gather the first 3.0 gallons or so of super high gravity wort, add a bit of plain water for evaporation losses, and boil and add hops to that on the stove top, while grabbing the rest of the wort of lower gravity stuff and doing up a regular strength beer from that in a normal sized boil kettle. I'd do this and fill my mini keg up with barley wine for the winter and be happy with that, since I could ferment it in a standard 5 gallon glass fermenter and probably not have any overflow issues. FYI, this was a 24lb grain bill that this came from.

Wow, I'm spent! Too much long head stuff there.. good job Jody, couldn't have gathered this data without you! Speaking of Jody (the head brewer over at Blue Label Brewing) I believe he said they were offering a free beer sampler over there with your purchase of enough gas to get to his tasting room, and no more strings attached. Drop in and tell him I said hello!

NYC, sneak attack & fryathon..

So, me and the Boss headed off to NYC for a concert. Went out to see Chromeo at Terminal 5. Heck of a show, and had a great time there. This is the only decent pic I got of them, as the light show was driving the camera nuts, making it had to get a shot.. most came out black.

We also visited the USS Intrepid while there, and saw a few neat things.

This is gonna be the new controller for my automated brewery..

And this is the new kettle setup for the 40 gallon brewery.

We also hit up Grumpy's coffee and some blah place called Starbucks while walking around the next morning (we stayed the overnight at Ink48 again.. nice place!). Right after we left this Brooklyn Industries store is when we found the parking ticket on our window. Drats.. 

After we got home, we decided to celebrate with a massive fried food extravaganza with my new deep frier.. we had all sorts of things, like this bunch of onion rings, fried Hot Cherry Popper poppers and some fried dough. The poppers made me pay for everything I took from them them the next morning.

And lastly, Barbie the dog was brutally attacked and beaten up by this baby over the weekend as well. I was rooting for the baby..

Monday rolled around soon enough and Geoff and Mike came over to brew. We worked up a sweet pale ale (shocking!) after a few hours and we hope to have that on top here in the next few weeks or so. Stay tuned for that.. 

Seedling test update.. again!

Decided today, one month exactly since I planted the stuff in the little pots downstairs, was the day to do some pruning of the garden.. I seriously meant to chuck them all out the window and clean everything up for the real deal starting at the end of this month.. but I didn't have the heart to do them all in. I know the tomatos aren't going to do me any good now, cause they're getting so big so fast, but.. you know, I had this slightly bigger 3x3 pot that was doing nothing, so I pulled one of the stronger Roma's up and repotted it into that 3x3 and we'll see where that goes for the time being. The tiny basil plants I left alone. They're so small they don't take up any room anyway.. the Habanero is still standing, but doesn't seem to e either growing or dying. Hmm. The Jalapenos, three, that I have left are also still hanging tight for the meantime as well.. so, all I ll, I guess I just chucked out five Roma's and called it a day. Slacker! Here's the lineup as it stands now:

7-9" tall Roma Tomato's.. one month!

Root system on tomato

Another pic of roots from 6 pak cell..

The lineup as it stands now.. 

The repotted Roma. Last one standing!

The real deal starts near the end of this month.. then we'll start planting whole flats of peppers to get the best ones out there and into my garden later on. I'm lookin' forward to this..

And lastly.. a pic of the front yard in the midst of the Snowpocalypse. Check it..

You can't see it from here, but my car is parked just to the left of this pile near Barbie.. and my car could easily fit under this thing. That pile is over 6 feet high now.

Brewin' with Savvas..

Did some brewing with Savvas and Geoff down and Savvas' parents place.. had to go there so we had some shelter from the cold in their garage. Heck, we froze up one hose during the brew session as it was.. a bit chilly, yep. Turns out it was Sav's first 'solo' all grain brew day.. I had no idea until he said so after the beer was all finished up and in the fermentor. He looked like a champ out there. ;) Here's some shots of the event..

Running off the second half of the batch sparge..

Geoff, looking large and keepin' an eye out..

Skimming the crap off the top of the just boiling wort.

So, all in all, the day went well. He got 1.057 on a recipe that called for 1.053, but he also got about 1/2 a gallon less volume than he had planned for.. he's gonna be topping up with some boiled and cooled water on return to the homestead and things should be right on track for this Northern English Brown. We'll see how this thing tuned out in a few weeks or so.. stay tuned!

Great strides in seed starting...

Making out quite well with seedlings these days.. I think this test is about to come to a close now though. The whole point was to see if I could improve upon last years 100% FAILURE rate and come up with some living, breathing, surviving seedlings that would be suitable to transplant into my spring garden, and I think I've done that. This is day #24 of the test.. check out these pics of the survivors:

Overall view of the setup on the 27th of January.. 

Jalapeno's

Basil

Habanero

 That Habanero there.. such a problem child! You can see the one in the photo, just barely.. but there is a tiny seed that just poked it's head up right behind and to the left of this one. There are some true leaves starting to form on this little guy, and I'm torn on if I want to repot it and try to keep it alive or not. Part of me says to leave it be and chuck it out the door, because it must be a weakling.. but the other part of me sas to pot the sucker up and give it a chance.

Roma Tomato

More Roma's, showing height compared to my hand.. :)

So there you have it. Those Roma's are monsters now. They grow 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch a day it seems. They're about 4-5" tall now. I think the challenge with these guys is to get everything else that needs to get a head start going first so the Roma's don't make me push the grow lights up too far and away from the rest of the plants. Tricky buggers..

Yesterday I started working on the garden plan.. I drew out some maps of the two beds I'll be working with again, and starting placing things in different spots.. I've left a few open for last minute changes as well, but it looks like I'll have plenty of room. Deviated a bit from prior musings in that I'll put a cherry tomato out there in the lower bed I think, and surround it with low growing things like onions and marigolds and such..

Speaking of marigolds, while at the feed store yesterday, I saw some seed packs that I just couldn't pass up.. ended up grabbing the marigolds I mentioned, for pest control.. I've heard they repel certain pests and bugs because of how they smell, but also pull in good things like bees. I also grabbed some sunflowers, big ones, and some Zinnias too, like those fantastic big guys I had inadvertently planted in a terrible spot last year in the front bed. This year, I will take my Zinnias more seriously and treat them better. They gave my house and flower vases here a lot more usefulness than they usually get.

Ah well, i'm off to revamp my garden calendar.. I've decided to use the info on the seed packets themselves for starting times, rather than use the generic info in the square foot gardening book.. meaning I'm scrapping all the work I did before in hopes of more accurate info from the seed people leading to better stuff as a result. I'm outta here!

Chuckin' out the poor and pottin' up the good stuff..

Did some house cleaning today. Removed the Roma seedlings that were still in the propagator, as they were looking downright sad today.. they were turning a pretty good purple color due to lack of nutrient's in the soil-less mix.. so, that part of the experiment is over with. Here's a pic of them just before I pulled them out of service:

Sad Roma seedlings that didn't make the cut..

Those guys are gona get flung over the deck when it stops raining out I think.. Now, we're just gonna concentrate on the good ones. Speaking of which, check out how well the good test subjects are doing:

The biggest of the bunch

Clearly there's some disparity in the sizes of these little guys. You can see in the photo just above that the biggest seedling is parked in the six pak right next to the smallest seedling and there's just a huge difference in size between the two of them. I guess that's the key with this project.. grow lots of them, because then you can pick out the biggest, strongest little guys from the bunch and not have all sorts of differences in the sizes between them when trying to keep 'em under lights indoors. 

In related news, the Basil seedlings also got moved into their own six pak yesterday:

Basil

And then this morning, I was looking at the Jalapeno seedlings and see that they're really not doing anything anymore. No improvement, but nothing bad either.. just stagnant as far as growth goes. So, I figured maybe they were just out of food and needed to be potted up to a larger area to grow.. even though I really don't see much in the way of second leaves on them. Just a little sprout of green in between the seed leaves is all. But hey, an experiment is an experiment, so into a six pak they went. Here they are:

That flashed out tag says 'Jalapeno'..

Closeup of the Jalapeno's. Still looks like just
seed leaves to me.. 

Interestingly, when I started pulling them up with my trusty letter opener, out from the propagator, several of them had really huge amounts of super long rootlets.. so I'm wondering now if I should have moved them a few days ago. Those roots gotta be searching out for something they're not getting readily if they're getting that long. Hopefully, they'll do much better now. 

Speaking of peppers, the Habanero's are all still failing, on the surface anyway. I looked at the propagator again and see absolutely nothing sprouting. Today is the 15th day, and the last day, according to the packaging, that these guys are supposed to take to sprout. Irritated, I started to dig around in the propagator to find where the seeds were and what they were doing. First one, dead.. nothing going on at all. Second one, also waterlogged and shot. Found the third in the middle of the propagator and saw that a tiny rootlet had in fact jumped out and was reaching for soil.. so I covered it back up and let 'er go. I did not dig up the other three in there, so they're still a mystery, but if I can get one of these guys to start up, the Habanero's are the plants I have now that I'm most interested in keeping going if any.. I would like to keep a nice Hab in a pot next to my desk or something. After I found out these things are perennials and not annuals like the other pepper plants, I thought it might be fun to keep one of those around.. plus, it'll fire right back up and start fruiting again in the summer a lot faster than the others if I can keep it alive over the winter. 

Lastly, a pic of the light setup as it stands right now. I think I might be able to pull out the propagator pretty soon, because the six paks are much easier to keep watered than the tiny propagators, and I think these plants don't need quite as much water as they're getting from the self watering tray right now.. I pulled them off the watering tray just a few minutes ago and I'm gonna let 'em dry out a bit so I dot get 'em all fungus'd up or something. Check 'em out..

That's it.. I'll give an update in a few days or so. Heck, I just took a look at the gardening calendar I made up and it's telling me Broccoli get's seeded in the propagator in just 3 weeks from now. Yikes! A month and a week or two from now, it'll be time for the real deal of pepper plants.. this experiment might be over just in time to start the main event!