wacky1980

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.

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.