nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Bell’s Two Hearted Mini Keg

December 10, 2007

[Cross posted to and …]

Bell's Two Hearted Mini KegBell’s Two Hearted Mini Keg

This should make NYE a bit more interesting. That right there is 1.32 gallons, or 5 lites of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (sorry, no direct link available).

At 7% ABV the numbers work out to just under 12oz (or 350mL) of pure alcohol, or about the same amount of alcohol as in a fifth of vodka. It’s a good thing that this is much tastier than vodka.

Oh, and the cost was US$19.99, plus Michigan sales tax (6%), but without deposit. Not bad, when you consider that this is just about as much beer as 14 bottles, and a six pack normally runs right around US$8 – US$9 each.

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U2 Can Celebrate Christmas

December 9, 2007

U2 Themed Flyer from Heritage Church
(Click to embiggen to full res 300 dpi scan.)

A couple weeks ago I received this flyer for Heritage Church, one of the local churches which meets in a rented high school facility.

To quote from the flyer:

Just what does the biggest band in the world have to say about things like faith, hope, joy and peace on earth? I think if you look closer you’d be surprised…

Join us this Christmas season for four weeks as we investigate and unpack the music of U2. We’ll explore the themes, lyrics and Biblical messages found in some of their most popular and enduring songs. You will come away inspired this Christmas… possibly with a new appreciation for U2, but more importantly, for the amazing story and meaning of Christmas. Come check us out, if you’re ready to really rock around the Christmas tree!

[…]

Please note that the band U2 will not be appearing at Heritage Church, but their music will be there.

Looking a bit further, it seems that MTV has picked up on this, and it is being called U2Charist. Per Wikipedia:

A U2Charist (also spelled eU2charist) is a communion service, or Eucharist, accompanied by U2 songs in lieu of traditional hymns and sometimes as part or all of the service music.

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Ginger Beer / Ale / Soda

December 9, 2007

3L of Ginger Beer
(Click to embiggen.)

Yesterday Danielle and I stopped by Cap N Cork so I could check out prices of the champange bottles for when I finally get around to bottling the cider. While there we picked up stuff to make soda (basically, a small funnel, yeast, and some soda flavor).

Today we made it. 383g of cane sugar, a bit of honey, 2.5 tsp of ginger flavor, yeast, and 3L of water went into the three bottles. That’s it sitting right there. The rightmost bottle also has minced ginger in it, to boost the flavor. Hopefully it’ll be good.

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HELO

December 5, 2007

After not receiving the shipping notification for something I received last night, I have decided to try disabling Postfix’s HELO validations on my server. This will likely lead to far more spam being delivered, but it should eliminate odd rejections from non-compliant servers.

I had smtpd_helo_restrictions = reject_invalid_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_hostname set, which can be referenced here. The problem was some sites wouldn’t send a proper HELO, leading to mail not being delivered as it should have been. Maybe it’d be best to have a SA rule which marks down improper HELOs instead of simply blocking them.

If spam levels get too high again, maybe I’ll go back to the old restrictions. They generally work fine.

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Motherboard + RAM

December 5, 2007

Do any of you happen to have an old motherboard + RAM + CPU which you don’t need any more?

I need something reasonably fast, Intel or AMD, with PCI slots. It is going to go in my MAME Cabinet and hold an AudioPCI running the fabulous DOS driver (thanks, !) and some flavor of MAME.

Really, I’m not too picky as to what it all is, so long as its reasonably quick and free. :D

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Dragonmead Tour

December 2, 2007

Danielle is treasurer of the microbiology society at U of M Dearborn, which she is just about to graduate from. For a group activity she set up a tour of Dragonmead Microbrewery, over in Warren, MI. While I’m not a member, I went along and took some pictures.

Dragonmead is one of my favorite breweries in Michigan. It’s a nice, small, non-smoking place which has an absurd variety of beer, all of which they make themselves. In fact, they produce the largest variety of beer for any microbrewery, and have 52 taps and two beer engines. I think there were 40-some taps going when we were there yesterday. They are also starting to offer mead (one style for now, more to come once co-owner Larry Channell’s son graduates from college and starts making some.

All in all, it was a very nice tour, lasting somewhere around three hours. After the tour we (Danielle, Sarah, Bo, and one of their friends and I) ran over to Chicken Shack, grabbed food, then brought it back to eat at the brewery while having a few more beers.

If you’d like to see more of the photos (there’s a lot), click here: Dragonmead Tour (photo gallery retired)

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Tonight’s Beer Purchases. And Not.

November 29, 2007

I went to buy some beer today, but I instead was given a six-pack of Arcadia Jaw Jacker. I don’t particularly care for pumpkin beers, but it’s much appreciated anyway. I also ended up getting a six pack of Brooklyn’s Black Chocolate Stout. I’ve been told that it’s tasty, but I didn’t realize it is 10.1% until I got home. I also grabbed a 2004 (or is it 2005?) bottle of Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout.

Now I’m going to go make another toasted cheese sandwich. I forgot to mention in last night’s detailing of dinner that I had put the bread in the oven until it was thoroughly hot, cut it open, then filled it with the cheese before toasting it some more. This will be the same, but with hot pepperjack on different bread. Unfortunately I don’t have any side veggies or whatnot to go along with it. Although… I could heat up some fire roasted corn… Mmm!

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Caol Ila 12 Year

November 28, 2007

750mL Bottle of Caol Ila 12 Year
(Click for bigger…)

Out of a desire to try something new, on suggestion of , and after reading a bit about it online, I decided to pick up a bottle of Caol Ila 12 Year. This was purchased, along with the aforementioned dinner at Nino Salvaggio located in Clinton Township, MI on M-59.

Thankfully the price was the state minimum of $47.92, which made it reasonably affordable. It’s still not cheap, but it’s right around what my other choice, Laphroaig 10 Year would have cost.

I tried a few sips of it straight, before cutting it with about 40% bottled water. (Just Aquafina, PepsiCo‘s finest highly filtered tapwater product. I find it good for mixing things because it has a nice, neutral taste.) I’m thinking that I rather like it. It’s plenty peaty and smokey, but it’s also got a little bit of sweetness to it. There is not enough sweetness to make it something I dislike, though, more like just enough to nicely round it out.

I’m wishing that I had one of the Millett Hybrid Maxed headphone amps to use (my two are disassembled currently) so I could sit back on the couch and listen to some music while sipping this in the dark. It’s quite nice.

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Garlic! Cheese!

November 28, 2007

Here’s my dinner tonight. It is 12oz of Magic Hat‘s Circus Boy Hefeweizen, a slab of peppered hot smoked salmon, and a sandwich made of roasted garlic cheese and a piece of herb ciabatta.

It’s too bad Magic Hat’s site is a monolithic piece of crappy flash, else I’d actually link to info about the beer. The smoked salmon is some (non-farmed) Alaskan stuff, and the cheese actually contained roasted garlic, and is just whatever was on sale at Nino Salvaggio.

Sorry about the color on the photo, I just took the photo on my kitchen counter which has crappy warm halogens above it.

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