wacky1980

keeping them still, or carbonating?

no more grandparents, and no great-grandparents for almost 40 years now. my parents live in what was once my dad's grandfather's house. and my parents own my dad's 4-generation family farm, where his parents lived for 50 years and his grandparents before that. my mom's sisters bought their mother's house when she died last year. i haven't been back up there in almost a year now (thanks covid) so that's how long it's been since i've been to any of those places.

those things are never gonna stop bubbling if you keep adding sugar. my black ipa went into bottles last night. it was a week later than planned, but it picked up a weird astringency so i left it in secondary for an extra week with some gelatin to try pulling some of that flavor out. it improved a little, but it's not really back to where it needs to be yet. hopefully after a couple weeks of bottle conditioning and a month in the fridge, it will find its way back. i tracked the problem back to the new grain mill. when you mill the grain, you're supposed to crack the hull open to expose the kernel, but not actually break the hull into pieces. i think the width on the rollers was set a little too small, and it actually crushed the hulls instead of just breaking them open. that released too much tannin into the mash, and the astringency off-flavor blossomed during fermentation. it's correctable, to an extent. i can taste a good beer underneath that flavor, so hopefully it continues to fade in the cooler. we'll try a bottle on halloween and maybe every couple weeks after that until it's good to go.

6' even most days. down to 203 this morning. it's probably been a year since i've been <200. i had to go shopping for pork rinds and summer sausage because this no-good-food bullshit was killing me.

pics man. preferably ones with his face in them. and his name on there somewhere too.

been letting the weight get a little out of control for the last few months. stress, less adventuring, boredom, whatever. i'm normally in the 190-205 range, which i feel isn't out of line. well, i broke 215 for the first time on sunday and felt pretty disgusted with myself over the whole thing. so i started doing a kind of dirty keto routine on monday. spent the last 48 hours hating myself and life in general because i really enjoy carbs, and i don't think i can sustain this kind of lifestyle. i was down to 207 this morning which is great, but i mean that's what straight starvation will do to a person. ugh...i only need to get thru friday. that's my goal right now. see where we are saturday morning, and decide if life is still worth living. at least scotch has 0 carbs. it's no imperial stout, but the destination is still the same.

are you still seeing active fermentation? that's some baller yeast.

when are you unleashing this beast on the world? ready by halloween?

you can buy a control panel new from that site, starting at $2300 (up to $2900 for the 50-gallon version). or you can buy the kit for $1500. or you can source your own parts for probably around $700. i ain't skeered to do it myself, and that's a big difference in price, so why not. the inside of the panel is a little intimidating though, ngl.

so i'm back on the task of building out the electric brewery. spent a couple evenings this week sourcing parts for the control panel. allllmost done with that phase. if all goes well, i'll be finishing the build on the panel by winter. it's modeled on this beast from theelectricbrewery.com and it's gonna be glorious. i already have most of the parts for the brewing vessels. that will consist of three 16-gallon tanks with electric heating elements, pumps and hoses, a re-circulation system, and filtration. it's basically a nano-brewery that runs on a 220v oven plug. we'll be able to turn out 10 gallons of beer in a 4-hour brew session. only thing left after that is proper fermentation control, and we're all set.

vendor and infosec risk assessments need to be completed, reviewed, and submitted by 3pm today, in accordance with the requirements of the state IT exam that started two days ago. i've spent the last two years building these programs, and the last few weeks kicking my own ass trying to get them ready (i dropped the ball bigtime when 'rona moved in and my workload exploded as a result). my head hurts from the stress. and as of about five minutes ago, i'm fucking done. not finished, mind you. but i'm done working on them. the state examiners can pick them apart and critique them and tell me how inadequate they are. and then i get to go back and make all the necessary updates, which will probably kick in around the start of november. but for the next week, i only have to sit back and wait for them to ask questions. and that's a god damn delightful change to my workload. then i'm supposed to be going on vacation to the alabama coast the following week. but that trip got cancelled because of damage to the grounds during hurricane sally. plus, covid travel restrictions are popping up in that region, and i don't wanna have to quarantine when we get back, so we didn't try to re-book another location. sadfaise.

happy birthday, you slightly less-old/handsome version of me.

it turned out pretty good, but there's no way in hell i'm spending that much time to make a half gallon of the shit in the future. double the recipe, at least.

1 smart feller. He felt smart. 2 smart fellers. They both smelt fart. Yep.

Happy scoobday!

Wife says too much clove flavor. She hates cloves, so idk. Tastes pretty good to me.

Never done this before and I'm not sure why. This house smells goooooooood. So here's what I'm doing: 1 bag gala apples 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 an orange 5 cinnamon sticks 1 tsp whole cloves 1 whole nutmeg 1 tsp allspice Cut up apples and 1/2 orange. Add all ingredients to big pot with 10 cups water. Boil, reduce and simmer covered for 2 hrs. Pull oranges out, peel+mash apples in the pot, simmer 1 more hr. Strain and squeeze juice from pulp. Makes approx 1/2 gallon. If you want to add booze to make it more fun, add 1-2 cups spiced rum depending on strength preference. Bring heat back up to ~160⁰ (don't bring to a boil or the alcohol will boil off first). Enjoy.

paying all of my property tax bills today. but this is illinois, so i'm sure all $6500 is going to a good home. ttly worth it.

no, thank you.

I got fucking attacked by chiggers when we took the boys to the state park over the weekend. I'm almost willing to amputate at the knee right now. Nothing can take this itch away! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

this is similar to a build i did last year, with the only major difference being an nvme drive instead of ssd for the os. i've been pretty happy with it so far, for gaming and video editing.

brewed a batch of a black ipa last night. it's still one of my favorite styles, even though it fell out of popularity a few years back. i say it's making a comeback, just you wait and see... anyways, we took the whole process another couple steps closer to viable commercial brewing. i picked up a grain mill and some water treatment chemicals. the mill means we can buy malted barley from anywhere, and process it right before we mash in, rather than having to buy it already milled. opens the door to cheaper/more variety of grains. the chemicals can be used to correct water imbalances to create the most favorable environment for the enzymes to do their starch conversion during the mash. and i have everyone else on board with helping me build out my HERMS brewhouse this winter. feels good to be back at it, after nearly 2 years of backing off for various reasons.

a toilet keeps running and needs new tank parts installed. someone cracked a drain line on the kitchen sink and it needs replaced. still have to clean up the yard from the tree removal a couple weeks ago. neighbor's dog chewed a hole thru the fence and that needs fixed. cleaning, laundry, organization, the whole bit. and i finally have an afternoon off today, after 2 weeks of pretty much no free time, to get shit caught up. wife just texted me, says she wants to take the afternoon off (...?) so we can take the boys on an adventure to a nearby state park. always going, yet rarely getting anything done. such is life, i guess.

this was my process for the ps5 too. but spread it over 5 hours, a couple scotches, and a little bit of tired cussing at the screen at 1am.