wacky1980

weighed in on sunday. thought i finally broke 200. turns out it was just dehydration from drinking on saturday. back up to 201 today. does it count? i want to say it still counts but ...

just th box from forrest gump. that shit hit hard when i was 14.

you're allowed to say it. you've seen kids. you know how they can be.

kids are dumb tho

you're obviously not a dude.

my mom called it goulash, but it was chili with noodles. that pic is ... something else. maybe that's actual goulash? i was almost willing to overlook the celery as a chili ingredient, but there's some weird shit going on in that pot. i'll still add noodles if there's any chili left a few days later. but then it also gets a pile of cheddar cheese, and that's called chili mac. and it's damn good.

that's a ... nice pot of chili, packard. is that ketchup?

my chili has beans. but at the request of family coming over, i made a pot without beans for the first time ever over the weekend. took a bit of re-working to get the flavor profile back into my happy zone, but it turned out pretty good. might try it again next time too.

can vouch for this. it's a northern thing. but iirc, the noodles are added after the fact, like as a leftover addition. something something, subsistence diet.

on top of a filled bowl, sure. on the ingredient list? absofuckinglutely not.

fire won't hurt cement. can't speak for the selves and their contents, but these are minor details. ~~~ i was supposed to be prepping the hop garden all day yesterday for today's opening, since we got shut down for indoor service for the next month+ due to state mitigations. well, rather than work outside in the garden, i spent all afternoon and evening trying to clear a clogged sewer main at the house. i didn't want to spend a small fortune on getting a plumber on a sunday, so i thought it would be a good idea to spend that money on my own drain auger at harbor freight. $250 later, i'm cranking away inside that clean-out, and i just can't get that cheap flimsy auger to cut thru whatever is plugging up the main. then it grabbed hard and that cable flipped inside the drum and coiled back on itself, and knotted right the fuck up. ended up calling in a plumber anyways. long story short, 8 hours and $400 into this project, i have a clean main again. and this morning the truck battery was dead. still haven't got shit done in the garden, so i get to work on all of that tonight while we're supposed to be open. that'll be fun. at least it will be warmer than last night, and i won't be covered in sewer sludge and liquid shit and mangled lady time plugs.

But which one is Tyler Durden and which is the narrator?

Got one of these in the mail today

Shit, ya got me. I'm a little concerned that you have so many pics of dd.

That's not me. This is me.

Halloween costume pic w/ the wife.

branding is stressful. i still don't have a name picked out for the brewery, but we've kicked around candidates for over a year.

not at all. look at like you're preparing early to deal with a mid-life crisis in 10 years. if funding is the biggest hurdle, there are always investors who can be wooed with the prospect of an endless supply of their favorite mead...

i'm definitely not trying to deter you, but there's a big reality check in store for people who want to explore entering the market. the most successful startups build their own cult following well before they open their doors. they do it by brewing a_lot in their spare time, and giving it away to friends/family, whoring it around at homebrew competitions, and working industry contacts to get their products into the hands of as many buyers and beer influencers as possible. and/or bringing in someone at the ground level with industry cred to build hype. if you time everything right and have a product people like enough that they'll buy it over the other guy, at the same time that you get your meadery built out and through all the federal / state certification and licensing hoops, you can launch a meadery and be relatively successful (as in: not profusely bleeding capital) from day 1. sounds easy enough right? obv, many places don't open with that kind of instant success, and it takes them several years to build their brand and customer base. i've been dabbling on this timeline for the last maybe 3 years, and i'm still only about 15% of the way there. granted, it's not ever been our main focus, but it's on the 5 and 10 year plans. this year really fucked that timeline, but we're still moving forward. the outdoor venue will transition to a beer garden for the brewhouse/taproom once it launches. we're waiting for an adjacent property to hit the market, and so far none are officially for sale, but a couple viable spaces are potentially moving into the market soon. we have to amp up the brewing schedule again, and the electric brewhouse i've been working on in my spare time for almost a year is finally starting to come together. if everything went just right, if covid ended in the winter/spring, and i left the bank in the next year to do this full-time, we could have a brewery/taproom running as early as maybe 3 years out. possibly less, with the right enthusiasm and funding. and i could probably pull all of that off with $200k of funding...probably. but i'm in a good position of already having several years of industry experience, two successful establishments to help push out my products, and a complete absence of competition within 40 miles. if your market is already somewhat mature, it could be tough to break in. again, not trying to deter you. it's definitely a challenge...but it's not impossible.

in all honesty, trying to sell your illegal booze on any scale is a very bad idea. if there's anything the gov't takes seriously, it's the regulation of heavily-taxed products. i can't say you'd be better off investing $100-250k into your own meadery right now, because that hole is a tough one to climb out of. if you're still making mead in 5 years, and have saved up a down payment on a commercial space, maybe then.

if the lawman gets an opinion, nothing 😒 commercially-produced mead ranges from average craft beer prices ($1-2/bottle) to well upwards of $10/bottle for premium craft. price can go way up from there as well, but this is a common range. selling your homebrew is generally looked down upon, but if someone offers you cash for your mead, i don't see the harm in taking whatever they offer. you might have a better time trading bottle-for-bottle with other homebrewers in your area.

you keep adding cranberry, all you're gonna be left with is diluted cranberry drink. it's good now. enjoy it as-is! my brewing comrade cracked a bottle of our black ipa tonight. he says it's drinkable, even with the astringency. i really hope aging it in the fridge for a couple weeks draws that flavor down, because we might have a good one on our hands. v.2 of that recipe is ready for the brewhouse. might try to brew it again in the next week or so.

they're trying to jam my ATM!! 😱

i need halp. i ordered some parts to fix an ATM PC a couple weeks ago, and just received the box with the RAM in the mail. when i opened it, it had some extra goodies in there. one of the damn things was even opened! so my question is: where inside the PC does the sauce packet go?

the state required we install video surveillance in the bar when we signed up for their video gaming platform back in 2013. we complied. a couple months ago, they decided they needed to have their own cameras installed in our business to monitor gameplay. i said "hell no" and that was the last i heard of it...until i noticed on saturday that a new camera was installed above the machines. pointing right out at the bar. are you fucking serious?? so i got on the phone and complained to our gaming manager. he says they're a requirement, that the cameras aren't transmitting back to the state and are only storing recordings locally, blah blah blah. i never agreed to let them go up and i have no idea when they were installed (no bartenders recall the work being done, it's like magic or some shit). i'm almost ready to have them pull it all out and just run without games going forward, but that chunk of cash is pretty handy right now while sales are down (thanks, covid). i talked them into moving the camera so it's pointing at the games only, not out at the bar and not into the customer seating area. but i'm still going to block them the next chance i get. we'll see how long before they throw a fit that their "un-monitored" surveillance cameras can't see anything. and that's when the lawsuits start.