Month: January 2011

Rebuilt Keg, Force Carbonation Test

Published January 17, 2011

When I purchased my beer kegging supplies the keg came used, complete with some flavor of Canada Dry residual liquid sloshing around inside. It’s common to buy used kegs for home brewing, and I knew that before I used it I’d have to rebuild it and replace all the o-rings to ensure no off flavors contaminate the beer.

This evening I pulled the keg apart, scrubbed all parts with a sodium percarbonate solution, then reassembled it with food-safe grease and new seals. After assembly and pressure testing I filled it with filtered tap water and set it up as seen above. This 15psi supply of CO₂ should force carbonate the water to 2.5 volumes (or so) of CO₂, depending on how cold the water actually ends up. After proving out that this method works I’ll then try it on one of the future batches of beer, carbonating it either in the garage or a kegerator, if I assemble one.

For more information on force carbonating, take a look at this article.

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XC Skiing on MLK Day

Published January 17, 2011

Being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I headed out to Stony Creek to do some XC skiing. While the trails weren’t groomed, there was enough of a track worn in that skiing was still fun. (Photo) I ended up skiing lots of two track, likely totaling somewhere around 8 miles.

Before leaving the house I fitted this year’s joint Metroparks / Oakland County Parks. Despite costing $48, this pass is an excellent buy for anyone who regularly goes to both organization’s parks, particularly someone like me who doesn’t live in Oakland County. While the normal price for an annual Metroparks pass is only $25, the non-resident Oakland County Parks pass is a whopping $45. Thus, by purchasing the joint pass (also known Parks Perks Pass) it’s $22 cheaper for me to get access to all the parks than it would be if I’d bought the passes separately.

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Lazy Stout!

Published January 17, 2011

One week after brewing the Area 51 IPA kit I decided to use up some other beer ingredients from around the house and threw together this quick stout. I’d had a four pound can of Mountmellick “Famous Irish Style Stout” Hopped Malt Extract, so on the recommendation of the local brewing supply store I added a 3.3 pound can of Thomas Coopers’ dark liquid malt extract and set it to ferment with a leftover packet of Safale US-05 (PDF) yeast. I’d considered adding more hops, but I was told that hopped extracts are usually aggressively flavored and thus it’s probably not necessary.

With 6.5 gallons of water + extract in the pot I set to boiling it. Danielle and I took turns near the kettle so I could run in the house and fetch supplies. After an hour of boiling I was able to cool the wort and set exactly five gallons to ferment, and here it is. While this isn’t a complicated recipe, I hope it’ll result in something quick and easy that Danielle and I both enjoy the taste of. There isn’t much krausen on the beer now but it does seem to be producing enough CO₂ to be coming along well.

This should come out to about 5.25%, but we’ll see once the numbers are done in a week or so:

OG: 1.053
FG: 1.021
ABV: 4.2%

I think that next I’ll try and make some manner of Ginger Beer. I’m not sure if it’ll simply be a carbonated soda or something fermented, but ginger does sound tasty.

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PA

Published January 11, 2011

Last night neither Danielle nor I slept well, tossing and turning and frequently waking each other up. Just before 6am Danielle decided that she’d sleep downstairs, but after being unable to find a sufficient warm blanket I told her that I wasn’t sleepy, would just get up, and that she could have the bed. No more than a minute later my phone rang with my mom calling to tell me that PA (my grandpa on my mom’s side) had died in his sleep.

Recently he hadn’t been doing well so this was not unexpected news but such things are always a bit of a shock. Still, I can’t help but marvel at the timing. Life is strange and it’s weird how things like this happen.

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Area 51 IPA Kit

Published January 9, 2011

After a ~3 year hiatus from brewing beer, I woke this morning and decided that today would be the day I brew a batch. Not wanting to take the time to put together a recipe I decided to use an off the shelf kit, and off to Cap n’ Cork I went. $48 later I had the Area 51 IPA kit seen above and a packet of Wyeast 1272 American Ale II yeast. This partial mash kit should make about five gallons of 5.6% American IPA, perfect for filling my newly acquired corney keg setup.

As he’s been wanting to try it brewing himself and curious about the process Nick came by just as I was beginning the partial mash. Everything was going great, until it came time to boil the wort and I found that the burner on the outdoor stove (burner from a turkey fryer) wouldn’t light. Troubleshooting pointed to a bad regulator, so we set off to Home Depot where I purchased a new regulator and some brass fitting to connect it all. Despite it all connecting nicely, the new regulator didn’t let through enough gas and the burner petered along barely heating the wort.

Nick then remembered that he has a turkey fryer burner available and that Marty would soon be passing through the area and would be able to drop it by. She did, and this replacement burner provided a proper amount of heat, taking the wort from the a tepid 160°F to boiling in less than 15 minutes. Then, an hour later, it was ready to cool, rack to a fermenter, and pitch the yeast.

Now it all sits in a bathtub in a warm interior room waiting for fermentation to begin. If everything goes according to schedule primary fermentation a week from Monday (or so), I’ll then rack it to secondary and dry hop it, then a month or so later I’ll keg and carbonate it. After sitting for another month or so beyond that it should be ready to drink. In the mean time I can contemplate dispensing possibilities, including maybe fashioning some manner of kegerator.

OG for this batch is 1.053, which is just 0.002 shy of the target OG of 1.055. Hopefully the rest of the batch will go as planned and it’ll come out great.

UPDATE: Racked to secondary on 16-Jan-2010 with 1oz of Cascade hops. Gravity (at this point, after degassing) was 1.012 making for 5.38% ABV. Will allow to condition for another 2 weeks to 2 months before transferring to a keg.

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Salty microSD Card

Published January 9, 2011

On Friday while out at lunch I found a microSD reader and card in the parking lot of a local Biggby Coffee. While it had been run over, was caked in salt, and appeared to have a cracked microSD card, I decided that I should try and see if it’ll work anyway. Unfortunately, after washing it in water and alcohol and drying it I found that the crack damaged the chip inside. Thus, when placed in a microSD reader, the card wasn’t detected and no data could be read.

Comparing the image above to this one (from Bunnie Huang‘s excellent article On MicroSD Problems) shows that the crack ran through the area where silicon lies. This photo, where I finished breaking open the card after failing to read it shows a thin silver line which I believe to be the chip itself.

If you’d like to see more photos of the microSD card that I found and my attempt at recovering data from it, check them out here: Salty microSD Card.

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Roomba is Not So Smart

Published January 5, 2011

Upon arriving home today I found this. Danielle’s Roomba had driven away from next to its dock, leaving telltale tire marks the whole way, and died. Before leaving for work I set the Roomba up with a virtual wall so that it’d run in a small part of my living room and the kitchen, all of which is within sight of the dock and no more than 20′ long. Once again the Roomba died before it found its way back to the dock.

I’m starting to think the battery is going dead. Thus far it hadn’t docked successfully except for the few times that I placed it in front of the dock and commanded it to charge itself.

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First Ride of the New Year

Published January 4, 2011

With the recent thaw and freeze the deep snow of the last two weeks has been replaced with pleasantly hard ground and a light dusting of snow over ice; perfect conditions for winter riding with studded tires. The new single track at River Bends was like pavement with trivial bits of ice and far, far more fun than the last time I attempted to ride it.

Tonight’s ride netted just under 16 miles, which is not bad for the first ride of the year, only one day later than last year’s first ride of the year. It was pretty uneventful, save for some weird car traffic in a local neighborhood. First I had someone pass me then pull in front of me while turning into a driveway, but this wasn’t close enough to be properly threatening. Then, a few seconds later, someone turned right in front of me, realized that they’d just pulled in front of someone and pulled over, then almost rear-ended a parked car while doing so. It’s really silly, especially considering that I’m essentially wearing a car headlight on my head and with a multiple-mile-visible blinky red light on the back of my bike. I guess it’s better than daytime riding when people just don’t see you at all.

Tonight I finally also tried out the Pearl Izumi Barrier GTX shoes that a friend of mine is trying to sell. While my toes were numb after 1.5 hours of riding they were just fine for the first hour, and they seem to be quite a bit better than my Sidis with neoprene shoe covers. They also come with toe studs, and it won’t be possible to get snow inside of them like I can my shoe covers, which makes my feet rather wet. The whole shoe is insulated, they fit reasonably well (perhaps a little loose), and were quite comfortable when coupled with long tights and tall wool socks. I think I’ll purchase these from him.

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