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Category: making things

Free Coroplast!

Published April 6, 2011

Coroplast, or corrugated plastic, is a very handy material, but it’s often hard to find small pieces whenever one needs them. After purchasing a new hand saw via Amazon a few nights back I realized I’d need to build a cover for the blade to make carrying it easy and thought that Coroplast would do the trick. So, I stopped by the best source of free Coroplast: a busy intersection.

In this area (and I presume many other parts of the country where cars are the preferred method of conveyance) companies will often place signs on the corners of intersections and leave them until they are taken or they blow away. These typically sit just below line of sight for car drivers and do little but serve as visual clutter. In the past if walking by them I’ve taken them down and thrown them away, but this time I took a couple for reuse.

So, thanks Kennedy & Ide Complete Home Remodeling and Crown Moldings ‘N More for the free Coroplast. Just like the unsold condo dealers, pyramid schemers, and personal ad sites before you I’m sure you’ll continue to do your best to ensure that our neighborhoods are littered with your advertisements. While taking them down and throwing them away is somewhat satisfying, reusing them is even better. Still, it’d be even better if you’d refrain from the suburban equivalent of flyposting.

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Tripel Starter

Published March 31, 2011

Here is a one quart yeast starter made from one cup of light DME (dried malt extract), 1/2 teaspoon of yeast nutrient, and one Activator pouch of Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast. After this grows for a few days I hope to use it to make a somewhat-clone of Dragonmead’s Final Absolution (BeerAdvocate review), a top-quality Tripel that’s won it’s fair share of awards. With any luck the batch I brew will be equally good, but I probably won’t know until autumn as it’s supposed to age for six months before consumption.

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Repaired Carboy Neck

Published March 26, 2011

After snapping the neck off of my carboy I thought I was going to have to buy a new one, but as it appeared to be a clean break I decided to try fixing it instead. A bit of wet filing and sanding (while wearing heavy clothing, respirator, and safety glasses) has smoothed the neck back out and I think it’ll be just fine to use. Later today I’ll swing by Cap N Cork and pick up a larger stopper so that it can be airtight and then it’ll be ready to go, whenever the next batch of beer is due to be brewed. This also saves ~$45 and having to deal with throwing out a torso-sized broken piece of glass.

(I’m currently on track to have three kegs of beer in the kegged beer cooler in three weeks with one more carboy aging and ready to replace whatever runs out first. Long-term I hope to keep three kegs available at all times with one aging. This should allow for sufficient choice and also enough beer if there’s an unexpected party or gathering here. Of course, this presumes that all batches made are good…

(Here is a photo of the broken neck before smoothing.)

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Broken Carboy Neck

Published March 20, 2011

This evening I noticed that my latest batch of beer, a vanilla stout, was just barely starting to blow krausen out in to the airlock. To fit a blowoff hose (picture from a previous batch) I began pulling on the stopper in the carboy, and when I did so the whole neck of the carboy tore off. This left me holding what you see above; an airlock stuck into a stopper, along with the neck of a carboy.

I’ve fit the stopper back in along with some foil so it should remain air tight and thus this batch should be fine, but it’s disappointing that I’ll now have to buy another one at ~$40. I’ll also have to be extra-careful when moving the carboy; so much so that I’ll probably just transfer it to secondary right in the bathtub where it’s sitting fermenting.

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Updated River Bends Map

Published March 13, 2011

After a bike ride this afternoon I decided to (finally) update the River Bends trail map so that it’s more usable. Besides adding more asphalt and a better key I cleaned some things up, added the park’s address, and changed the trail lines to dashed pieces. These dashed lines should make the map more readable when printed in black and white, and the addition of the river, railroad tracks, and more road should make it easier to tell where one is when riding along.

In the future I’m going to consider adding in the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal and maybe tweaking the route a bit. Maybe there will even be some more single track to add by that next time, too…

Click the image above or here for a PDF of the map: River_Bends_13-Mar-2011.pdf

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Scalded Wort

Published March 12, 2011

The thinner new pot and super-hot turkey burner flame resulted in a little bit of scalding on the bottom of the boil kettle from beer-making yesterday. However, it’s just a little bit, and I don’t see it causing any issues. The larger kettle with a bigger opening made boiling a lot easier. Foam-ups during hop addition cleared themselves automatically, there was practically no risk of boil-over, and I could keep the heat nicely high (and thus a harder boil) during the whole process.

After boiling and cooling the wort I also did something to save a bit of money on yeast: racking the wort right on to the trub from the previous batch of beer. Since I was making a darker and hoppier (but otherwise similar style) beer this won’t affect the flavor of it, and the extremely large quantity of yeast meant that the batch was fermenting strongly within four hours. Normally the amount of activity seen just a few hours later would take 24-36 hours to occur when pitching (pouring into the wort) the quantity of yeast in a Wyeast Activator pack. Not only did this decrease lag time while the yeast started growing, it also saves roughly $8 on yeast, the time spent cleaning out the fermenter, and is simply less wasteful overall.

As this beer (a dark IPA) is recommended to have two months of aging I’ll probably do another short-aging-time beer after this with the goal of having three full kegs of beer in the kegged beer cooler. If I can constantly keep three different (tasty) beers in there with one aging, I’ll be pretty set for variety, having friends over, and saving money overall.

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Gas Distribution Manifold and Dessicant

Published March 6, 2011

This afternoon I added a bit of a luxury to the Kegged Beer Cooler, a three-way gas manifold. While not necessary, this will allow me to easily shut off gas to different connectors if I’m needing to play with different pressures for force carbonating beer, soda, fruit, etc.

Since I was drilling from the inside of the cabinet outward without using a guide the external screw heads aren’t quite lined up (picture). This is disappointing because it doesn’t look as nice as it could, but I guess I’ll just have to leave it. To be sure that I didn’t hit any gas lines I first cut small holes in the aluminum liner with a pointed razor blade, tore back the metal with needle nose pliers, then poked carefully through the foam with a plastic tool until I reached the steel outer wall. The foam was then cleared out using a drill bit in my fingers, and then I completed drilling through the outside.

A few days ago I received some desiccant bags purchased from eBay (picture) and those are now in place as well, so the kegged beer cooler project is pretty much finished. I may eventually add external taps, but for now using picnic-style taps inside of the unit should suffice.

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Inconvenienced by Safety

Published March 5, 2011

A few weeks back I ordered this turkey fryer setup from Cabela’s to replace the burner/regulator that I had problems with a few weeks back. Today when setting it up for use I found that there is an electronic interlock on the gas line which will cut off the gas flow after the last time it was manually reset.

I attempted to remove this, but as can be seen here there is a laquer-like thread locker on the fitting between the regulator and the interlock. While this likely won’t be a huge issue, I’d really prefer to simply concentrate on brewing beer and not pressing a button to keep things running.

UPDATE: In practice this wasn’t that much of a hinderance. The large red button which starts the gas flowing and resets the electronic timer serves as a quick turn-on, and the black button is a good emergency-off in case of a boil-over. A green light illuminates when the gas is flowing and it starts blinking before the gas shuts off, giving one ample time to press the red button and keep gas flowing. While it would be nice to not have this safety in place, it’s not as difficult to deal with as I’d expected.

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Kegged Beer Cooler: Complete

Published March 3, 2011

The kegged beer cooler is complete, sitting in the basement, and is actively cooling what remains of two kegs of beer. Tonight I ran the gas lines, fitted everything into place, and set it up against one wall of the basement. It’s currently set to start cooling at 40°F and shut off at 35°F ambient temperature in the unit, which I expect to keep the beer at somewhere in that range. It may be necessary to narrow the band to something a bit narrower, but I’ll be able to determine that after putting a full keg of beer in the freezer and monitoring it.

I’ve been considering fitting the fridge with taps, but for the time being I think I’ll just stay with using picnic-style taps inside the unit. Actual beer faucets are around $100/each after considering all mounting hardware, and I don’t think they’ll provide enough benefit to justify doubling the cost of the unit.

Here’s some more notable photos of the unit throughout its progress:

· Completed chest freezer to beer keg conversion.
· Looking inside at two corney kegs, party tap-style dispensing lines, gas lines, temperature sensor, etc.
· Gas line transition from the compressor compartment into the body of the freezer. It is held in place with twist-type reusable cable ties.
· Temperature probe in place and gas line and Y fitted. Excess foam was left in place to serve as a hose guide.
· Operational Johnson Controls A419 temperature control indicating that it is currently cooling.

All of the photos can be found here. And yes, Roxie approves of it.

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