Category: making things

Golden Ale, Red Ale

Published December 30, 2012

Today I was able to keg, chill, filter, and carbonate my latest two beers, a golden ale (left) and a red ale (right). I’d brewed these from Cap’N’Cork recipe kits over the last couple weeks by first fermenting the golden ale then brewing the red and racking it on to the trub (leftover hops, yeast, etc) from the golden. This resulted in the red fermenting extremely quickly and both beers being ready to keg this morning. I transfered each to kegs (pulling these samples in the process), put the kegs to chill on the porch, and around 10:30pm they’d reached 37°F and were ready to filter.

They’ve since been filtered with a 1μm water filter, force carbonated, and while they need a bit more CO₂ they are generally ready to drink.

I’m happy with how both of these came out. They were simple to make, fast to brew, filtered to something fairly nice, and taste good. That’s about all I can hope for. I’ve now got four drinks on tap (Hard Cider, RyePA, Golden Ale, Red Ale) and should probably think about making something a little more special to age and put on tap once one of these run out.

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Beer Filtering: First Attempt

Published December 16, 2012

Ever since I began brewing beer I’d heard about filtering my beer to remove haze. While I know that filtering is not necessary as with sufficient skill one can produce quite clear beer without it, it held some appeal to me. After learning that a number of local breweries filter their beer to remove haze and produce sparkling, shiny, clear beers that still have quite a bit of flavor I became even more interested, so after cleaning the beer lines and getting some more stuff kegged I decided to order the parts to give it a go.

To get started I tried filtering a rye pale ale that I brewed a few months ago and kegged just after cleaning the lines. It was already partially carbonated so it foamed a bit during the process (nucleation in the filter and due to pressure drop), but there it wasn’t nearly as much of a problem as I’d expected. I used a 5 micron filter for this batch (the 1 micron filters hadn’t come in yet), and this left the beer a every so slightly hazy, but it looks way better than it had with just aging and letting settle in the keg and it still tastes great.

The process I put together (based on lots of info I’d read) uses a Pentek 158116 filter housing with two liquid-out ball lock keg fittings connected to each side. The housing is sanitized then fitted with a filter that has been dipped in sanitizer, the filter is fitted between two kegs (full keg on the in side, empty on the out), the empty keg’s safety valve is opened, and CO₂ is applied to the full keg to push the beer through. I started out with 2-3 psi, but near the end I had to increase this to around 10 psi as the filter became clogged. Periodically throughout the process I’d open the top of the output keg to check the level and foamyness, closing it back up to keep the system relatively closed.

This worked out very well, and I only had a bit of foam blow out through the safety valve right near the end of the process. This lost foam likely resulted in a loss of only a couple ounces of beer, and the filter housing itself probably lost half a pint.

Next time I try this I’ll chill (but not carbonate) the beer in a keg, then force it through the filter to another. I expect that there’ll be no foaming then resulting in even less hassle and mess. The next time I try this will be with the two beers I’ve got brewing now (a golden ale and a red ale), perhaps with 1 micron filters if they arrive in time. My desire is to get crystal clear, sparkling beers that still have good flavor in a relatively short period of time, just by filtering it.

Here’s a few photos taken during this filtering experiment:

· Two kegs, Pentek 158116 filter housing, 5 micron water filter, and connections necessary to filter beer.
· Mostly-carbonated rye pale ale being filtered.
· Since the beer was already carbonated it foamed a little out of the pressure release, but not enough to cause problems. There was very little loss overall.
· Side view of the filter after processing five gallons of beer.
· End view of the filter, from the top, after processing five gallons of beer.

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Beer Line Cleaning

Published December 10, 2012

About a month ago ran out of beer in my Kegged Beer Cooler and I hadn’t really gotten around to refilling it. This past weekend I was ready to rack some new beer in, but I noticed that the lines had some residue in them, so I wanted to clean them out. (This is good practice, as it keeps the lines clean so the beer doesn’t become fouled by whatever might have ended up in there.)

A bit of online reading showed that there are generally two ways to go about doing it, either something to push the liquid from one end through to the other, or a pump to recirculate the liquid. Being a bit lazy I figured the pump would be better, as I could set it up and let it run for a while instead of having running a few containers full of liquid through the system.

I ended up purchasing a cheap Pacific Hydrostar (read: house hydroponics brand) submersible pump from Harbor Freight, fitting it with a 1/4 flare to 1/2 MIP brass adapter from Warren Pipe and Supply. This allowed me to connect the screw-on ends of the beer lines (after removing the ball lock fittings) right to the pump and push the cleaning solution through them. Doing so required ignoring the warnings about not pumping hot liquids nor cleaners, but the pump didn’t have any problems doing so.

Prior to using the pump for cleaning I removed the suction cup base and inlet filter material, as I figured these wouldn’t provide any benefit, and might just foul things a bit more if the soft rubber and plastic had issues in the caustic cleaner. I then ran the pump for a few minutes in a sink full of Oxyclean and water, then in another rinse of straight water to clean it out. This made a noticable difference, as the plastic no longer had an oily sheen and lost the typical Harbor Freight cheap Chinese machine oil funk that permeates the store.

After connecting the pump to a beer line, I then submerged it in a bucket of BLC Beer Line Cleaner, fit a return line (1/2″ thinwall) to the end of the tap and back into the bucket, and powered it up. A few times during the cleaning process I’d cycle the tap handle to be sure the cleaner found its way into the nooks and crannies around the shut-off ball and O-ring. Each line was cleaned for 15 minute and leave the lines looking practically new.

Once the lines were all clean I wanted to sanitize them, but with the cleaner being a base and the sanitizer acid-based, I thought it best to rinse the system with water first. So, a brief cycle of water went through each before I ran the sanitizer through, with a bit more tap handle cycling to be thorough.

After this the lines were great, so I hand-washed and sanitized the liquid out ball lock connectors and put it all back together. Now it’s ready to dispense more beer!

Here’s a few photos of the cleaning process and pump:

· Harbor Freight’s Pacific Hydrostar submersible fountain pump with a 1/4″ flare to 1/2″ MIP adapter, ready to connect to beer lines.
· Detail of the gunky residue that had built up in some of the lines.
· Cleaning the lines with a submersable pump connected to the beer lines, return line connected to the tap, and some warm caustic Beer Line Cleaner.
· Using the pump without a return line to rinse the taps with sanitizer.

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Leave It To The Professionals

Published December 4, 2012

For years the MMBA has distributed posters cautioning riders to stay off of trails during the spring thaw, as riding in the mud (and through what are essentially pools formed by frozen subsoil) can be damaging to the trail and is often difficult to repair. (Examples: 1, 2, 3) After talking with Dave Schall about difficulties with people riding muddy trails at the Stony Creek Skills Park, we got to thinking that it’d be good to make a sign asking riders not to ride in mud during all seasons.

I started to throw together some text, and in talking with Wiggee from Reddit /r/bicycling IRC channel on Freenode came up with the Ride Dirt Trails, Not Mud Trails title. I then tried to put together a design based on photos I had and one Dave had sent me of the Skills Park, but after coming up with this draft I knew that I was going to have a very hard time coming up with something nice looking, if I even could. I contacted my friend Kristi Heuvers, who has done a bunch of CRAMBA‘s artwork, including many race t-shirts and logos, and along with whom I’m on the CRAMBA Board. She quickly came back with this excellent design. (She even went so far as to create an InDesign template of this poster, CC BY-SA licensed, so that other MTB organizations can build on our work and help share this message.)

Needing them printed to hang up along trails I threw around a couple ideas before Marty Shue (another friend, the CRAMBA board chairperson before me, and now the CRAMBA treasurer) pointed me to Printing by Johnson, located in the old Prieh’s Stamp, Coin & Hobby Center location in Mount Clemens. When I first visited them I mentioned that I was interested in laminated, laser-printed cardstock, but they had the idea of using digitally printed Coroplast with a UV coating. I ordered 32 of these (at $5/ea) and upon picking them up today I was extremely happy with how they came out.

I like doing many things myself, but both the design of this flyer and the printing are very good examples of why it’s sometimes best to leave things to professionals like Kristi and the print shop. Doing things for the sake of learning them is great, but sometimes what’s best is to get the task completed and save the learning and experimentation for when there’s a bit more flexibility available.

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Fixed Tie Out?

Published November 1, 2012

Roxie’s collapsable tie-out broke, which meant we could no longer let her lay outside; something which she loves to do. I had a bit of time at lunch today, so I had a quick go at fixing it.

The plastic used for the body of the tie-out is quite strong, and I was able to drill a new hole and reattach one of the metal stakes. It all seems quite solid and went back in the ground easily, so I think this fix will last. The original break occurred while it was being pressed into the ground, so as long as we are careful about placing it in the future I suspect (and hope) it’ll last for quite a while.

Reduce, reuse, repair, recycle.

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Muddy Trails Enhance OpenStreetMap Data

Published October 30, 2012

JOSM w/ tile info illustrating that imagery of muddy trails in River Bends during March 2012 makes clarifying OpenStreetMap data much easier.

Part of my map making workflow that uses OpenStreetMap (OSM) data requires updating the existing data set to be as accurately as possible before exporting the data. The data that I originally loaded into OpenStreetMap for River Bends was based on GPS surveying that I did not long after some new trails were built. Thus, the (prone to error) GPS data was the most accurate data available.

When updating OSM data, one is explicitly permitted to trace Bing imagery to enhance maps. Earlier today while poking around in JOSM (which adds Bing data as a tile so it can be traced) I noticed that the latest imagery for River Bends was taken on March 11, 2012 and most of the recently built single track is now visible. Because of the particularly wet spring here in Southeast Michigan many of the trails were muddy while these photos were taken, resulting in the trails being visible dark marks on the traceable photos.

The image above demonstrates this, showing the imagery date, current OSM data (red dashed line), and the wide/dark lines are the trails themselves. By adjusting the routes to match the imagery I can radically clarify the OSM data, validating and refining routes. River Bends is due for a map update soon after some new trail construction is complete, so this means that the next map of there will be much, much more detailed and accurate. Thanks in large part to a wet, muddy March.

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Home-Made Cheez-Its

Published October 15, 2012

Yesterday afternoon I came across this post about making home-made Cheez-It-like crackers on LiveJournal. Since they sounded good and we had all the ingredients around the I went ahead and made some. It took about five minutes to make the dough then 10-15 to cut them out. After this they baked for 18-20 minutes until they were done.

Brief recipe is as follows:

Combine the following ingredients in a food processor and process until crumbly:

8 oz. Shredded Cheddar
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
4 tbsp. room-temp Salted Butter (Use 1/2 tsp. of salt if using unsalted butter.)
1/2 tsp. Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp. Ground Mustard

After completely integrated, drizzle in 2 tbsp. of tap water and process more so it forms a dough.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Lay the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap and roll thin; perhaps 5mm thick.
Cut the dough into rough squares with a pizza cutter.
Poke small holes in the center of each piece of dough with a round toothpick with the end cut flat.
Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Sprinkle with flaked salt. I used a flaked Spanish sea salt.
Bake at ~375°F until golden brown. This took me almost 20 minutes. (If underdone the centers will be soft and they won’t be very good.)
Cool, transfer to an air tight container for storage.

These are very, very good. They are similar to Cheez-Its in that they are snack crackers, but they taste much better and don’t have that odd vomit-like smell familiar to anyone who has opened a new box of the Nabisco product.

UPDATE / Lessons Learned: The second time I made these I did a couple things differently which made it much easier, and they came out quite a bit better (photo of the second batch):

I split the dough into two halves, rolled the halves out separately, and baked each half in a separate pan. This gave me much more room to work and allowed me to roll the dough thinner making them more properly cracker-like.
When rolling out the dough I put some thin bamboo skewers down next to the dough and used this as a spacer for the rolling pin. This allowed for all the crackers to be a consistent thickness.
Dough was cut into 1″ squares for consistency in baking.
After cutting the dough into squares I inverted the cookie sheet over it, then flipped the whole assembly over. Don’t bother separating the dough squares, this can be done later.
Part-way through baking use a spatula to separate the partially-crunchy squares, shake to distribute them throughout the pan, and continue baking. This is much easier than trying to separate the squares when putting them on the pan.
Be sure to bake any mis-shapen trimming pieces from the edges. They are just as good, but know that they’ll cook faster.
Err on the side of over baking. Slightly browned crackers are better than chewy ones.

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FOX F29 RLC Seal and Oil Replacement

Published October 9, 2012

Today I did my first seal and oil replacement on a FOX fork. I’d watched Erik do his before, but it was a few years back so I didn’t remember much about the process. While I took my time this was easier than I’d expected, and almost everything went smoothly.

To do this work I’d purchased a bottle of 10 weight (Green) Suspension Fluid, a SKF low friction seal kit, 5mL packet of Float Fluid, and a seal driver tool to help seat the seals. I’d also picked up some graduated cylinders for measuring the oil, and a friend made me a very nice tool for removing the top caps. These parts all worked out very well, and following FOX’s documentation for seal and oil replacement, oil volumes, and use of the seal driver I had no problems getting everything together.

The greatest difficulty was removing the old seals, but a little persistance on the first one paid off, and then using this as a model I was able to get the second out much more easily. There were a few small things learned that’ll make the work easier next time, including:

· The foam rings take very little time to soak up oil when pre-soaking them.
· Once the damper is in place, there’s not much room below the damper cap for adding oil unless air is let out of the spring side to collapse the fork. After this there’s a plenty large space to pour in the oil.
· Tilting the fork while adding oil to the damper side makes things slightly easier.
· The nuts on the bottom of each fork leg are identical.
· Crush washers stick solidly to the nuts on the fork legs and blend in. The replacement ones, before being crushed, fit much more easily.
· Suspension oil tends to get all over the place. Even with wiping the entire fork down there is still an oily residue which leaves a nice sheen, especially if the fork is a bit weathered and becoming matte.

I received this fork when I purchased this bike in December of 2009. Since that time I’d put around 5000 miles on the bike, but never rebuilt the fork nor replaced the oil. While I’d been particular about keeping the stanchions clean I was not shy about riding it in poor conditions. FOX recommends changing the oil every 30 hours on forks. I definitely exceeded this, yet the oil in the fork was still quite clear, the foam rings mostly clean and oil-saturated, the stanchions unmarred, and there was still a fair amount of oil in the various chambers. The only way the stanchions look not-new is some fading on the portion which was exposed to sunlight. Here is a photo of the disassembled uppers and lowers showing nothing more than a slight bit of fading.

Hopefully after the work I’ve done the fork continues to work as reliably as it had for these past years.

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Series 30 American Lock: Cut Open

Published October 7, 2012

My friend Erik uses a heavy cable and a padlock to keep someone from walking away with the bikes on his car rack. He recently lost the keys to one of the racks but wanted to keep the cable, so he needed to cut the lock. Being an American Lock purchased from a locksmith we figured it’d be quite a task to get it apart, but since it ended up to be a Series A30 aluminum body lock it was much easier than we’d anticipated.

Using a heavy duty Hilti reciprocating saw he first tried to cut the hasp, but the hardened steel was only polished shiny by the saw blade. He then cut into the lock body and ended up severing the pin which holds the lock together. It was then easy to remove the core and use a screwdriver to actuate the lock mechanism, releasing the hasp. With a set of picks I was then able to disassemble the core and remove the pins and springs. A quick tug on a small brass ring with needle nose and the ball locks for the hasp were free and the lock was completely disassembled.

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Addison Oaks MTB Route in OpenStreetMap

Published August 19, 2012

With the upload of OpenStreetMap changeset 12787189 I have finished adding all of the hiking and equestrian trails, intersection markers, and mile markers needed to draw a second generation version of CRAMBA’s Addison Oaks map. This data includes the still-under-construction connector trail which’ll create a new park entrance at Indian Lake and Lake George and provide a safe route to Addison Oaks East and Oakland Township’s Cranberry Lake Park. I also added all of the named routes through the park as found on the official park map, including the specific hiking, biking, and equestrian permissions and restrictions.

If all goes according to plan, the next version of the map will show the actual locations of the C and D trails, shared hike/bike/equestrian (on C only) areas in the west of the park while highlighting the MTB route. The mountain bike route (trail F) frequently crosses these trails and occasionally shares their route, so I want to better illustrate the interplay between them all. This next version will also be based on OpenStreetMap data, which beyond the benefits of being CC BY-SA licensed should make it easier to update and use for future planning.

The only things I have left to add to OpenStreetMap before it’ll be usable for drawing a complete map of the park are a few campground roads and the B loop, a relatively flat and straight hike/bike loop around the campground in the northeast of the park. I’ll probably record that route the next time I’m at the park.

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