| Beer-related musings |
[03 Jun 2009|04:03pm] |
Haven't posted in a while, probably because I haven't made a batch of beer in several weeks. I was going to a few weeks back but ants decided to start infesting the kitchen near the sink and I didn't want to have to deal with them at the same time. At this point they're nothing more than an occasional nuisance after giving them a good dose of boric acid and sugar solution. I still need to order a digital thermometer as my old dial thermo reads two degrees off, and the burner on the stove is starting to get warped from weight and heat so I need to pick up a canning element at some point. 10 gallons of liquid in a big pot on the stove isn't exactly friendly to a burner, and the drip pan has dents where the burner supports are.
Last finished batch was an ordinary bitter, but frankly it isn't very good. It wasn't a brewing process issue at least, just a mistake on my part in recipe formulation. For some reason I was thinking in Munich malt amounts when I was instead using Victory and I used way too much of it. I now know why the recommended limit on Victory is 15% of the total grist; I used around 22% and you can definitely tell. Victory gives a bready quality to beer, but too much is just almost overpowering like chewing on a loaf of stale bread. I had intended to use it as the "tan" in black and tan with a stout I have on tap right now, but I didn't consider density. The bitter came out lower density than the stout and as such the stout just mixes into it rather than sitting on top. I'll need to remember to consider that for future attempts so I can make a heavier "tan" beer and maybe use Nottingham yeast and lower mash temp to aim for a drier stout. An accurate thermometer would definitely help there.
By itself this stout is great but it doesn't work well for the black and tan idea as the FG was a little high for a dry stout (around 1.013 or so). It does, however, work in a mix with the flawed bitter as it helps cut that Victory flavor. About 2/3 bitter and 1/3 stout makes for a decent - not great, but drinkable - pint of beer.
I still have an amber in a fermenter I need to dry hop; I just haven't bothered yet. I'm not sure what the next batch will be, probably a porter.
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| New brewing toys |
[01 Feb 2009|05:18pm] |
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music |
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The Crystal Method - True Grit |
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Got a chance to get to use my new brewing gear yesterday. I'm going to have to alter my calculations a little since I was
a little off, but that's to be expected with using new gear for the first time. I'm not going to detail the whole process,
as I've done that before, but the following photos cover some of the process steps that differ from my old methods.
( Pictures of new gear follows )
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| New heatstick |
[29 Jan 2009|12:02am] |
I have a bunch of new beermaking gear (read: homebrewer bling - trust me on this) that should ease the process a bit that's getting its first real run this coming weekend; I don't have any pics yet. I also built some new gear this week in preparation for this session. I haven't brewed in six months, so it's about time.
I wanted to build a new low-wattage low-density heatstick to gently heat the wort when boiling on the stove so as to aid the boil but not have scorching issues. My old 2kW sticks were too high density and wattage and would pump out too much heat over too small of a surface area; I ended up with scorching using them. I also was never too sure if the plumber's putty was entirely safe at boiling temps. I rebuilt a stick by cannibalizing parts from one of the old ones; the cord was just long enough to reach the outlet from the boil kettle without slack.
The new element is a long low-density 240V 4.5kW one, but running on 110V so it outputs around 950W. Due to the length of the coil, the wattage per inch is much lower than the old ones and it should heat a lot more gently.
I sealed the pipe with J-B Weld inside and out instead of using putty on the outside.
I had to bend the element for this purpose, and it looks a little weird, but it fits fairly well in my brewpot like this with the bottom of the "foot" resting on the pot bottom and the handle against the side of the pot.
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| FiOS |
[09 Sep 2008|04:13pm] |
Finally scrapped Comcast yesterday (although I still need to return the cable modem) for FiOS. It took a little fiddling to set the Actiontec router Verizon supplies to just bridge the coax that runs into the house to Ethernet so my trusty WRT54GL still acts as the primary router and firewall device (and thus gets an external IP), but it seems fine now. I took the cover off the outside box, and the ONT does have an ethernet port in it, but the tech said they just install coax by default now for all services. I think you can get the ethernet port activated and just use that if you really want to, but the coax is already running in and the bridged Actiontec doesn't seem to be an issue.
The upload speed is way better than the Comcast service at the same price (5 Mbps vs 1.5 Mbps), and even though Comcast seems faster on speed tests for download I found out that they use "speedboosting" that screws up speed tests - basically the first few megs of a download can go up to 30 Mbps by using unused bandwidth on the shared line but it drops back to 6 Mbps afterwards. The FiOS service is capped at 20 Mbps downstream but the speed is sustained. Obviously this is just theoretical max speed as everything depends on the slowest link in the chain from the PC to the endpoint, but the cap on the line from the home to the backbone is a lot higher than the standard Comcast 6/1.5 Mbps cap. Running repeated speed tests to a Washington, DC test point shows 14-19 Mbps down and about 4 Mbps up.
The DHCP lease seems to run out and get renewed with a different IP every time, unlike Comcast which usually gives you the same IP every time the lease is renewed, but it's not really an issue since my router updates Dyndns every time it happens. Verizon does block ports 25 and 80 incoming, but if I had any actual use for that there are ways around it.
It was kind of amusing when the tech finished installing the ONT and power box and made sure the link was up - he handed me the router instructions ("this is for folks who don't even know what a router is"), looked at the five computers and pile of routers and said, "I guess you've got it from here, looks like you know more about setting this up than I do".
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| Slayers Revolution - if you liked the old series WATCH IT |
[05 Aug 2008|12:53pm] |
Having seen the first 5 eps of the new Slayers series, I have to say that I'm very happy to see where it's going. They've already introduced a character from the novels that weren't used before (Duclis, a white tiger beastman with Zanaffa armor), and another one is coming up soon (Zuuma the assassin). It definitely looks and feels like Slayers, and this past week's episode was just pure fanservice for Slayers fans with a plot setup all in one. I mean, they mention Rezo, Hellmaster, introduce a novel character, Xellos shows up, the Claire Bible gets a mention, Sairaag is mentioned again, etc.
The use of the old music cues is nice to hear as well. Rezo's theme hasn't been heard since the first Slayers but is used as he is talked about, and at one point the music alone would clue you in to what is going on before the dialogue does. "Hey, that sounds like the music used in Hellmaster's scenes at the end of Slayers Next!" - followed by dialogue mentioning something looks like an effect Hellmaster created back in Sairaag. There even now seems to be a purpose to the pissy Pokemon-looking character who showed up in the first ep.
If you liked the old Slayers, you MUST watch this.
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| Brewing failure... equipment issue |
[23 Jun 2008|02:03pm] |
The heatstick I made recently apparently had a minor leak in it as it failed part of the way through the mash Saturday. I couldn't find the leak but there was definitely one somewhere causing a ground fault. There is no way to fix one of those due to how they're made, so I scrapped it and salvaged any useful parts off of it and built two new ones so I'll have a spare. The new sticks have an extra helping of JB Weld and plumbers putty on them to seal up everything.
The mash got dumped as it really wasn't worth going through the trouble considering the reason I made the stick was to avoid DMS off-flavors in the particular beer I was making, and I would have had to do a decoction (with necessary water amounts uncalculated) since the step mash idea was bust. The hops and yeast will get used next week, as I have enough specific grain to do the recipe again, but it hurt dumping it out. It's still better than using the other ingredients and turning out flawed beer.
The new sticks appear to work without leaks - for now, at least - and both going at once raised 5 gallons of cold tap water to boiling in about 30 minutes without the stove helping. It does still feel a little weird running nearly 30 amps of electricity into a pot of water though.
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| Homemade heatstick |
[26 May 2008|03:17pm] |
Several of my beers in the past have had DMS (dimethyl sulfide) issues, which is a vegetal quality. DMS is very common and is a natural byproduct of boiling malt extracts, but it typically gets driven off with the steam during the boil. This is why leaving the lid partially or fully on during the boil is bad, but I can't keep a rolling boil without doing it. So the solution: a heatstick.
I put this together yesterday and have tested it in 7 gallons of water and it seems to work well. I'll still need to use the stove's burner, but this should cut down the time needed to get to a boil and it should hold a rolling boil once it does without the lid.
It uses a 2000w water heater element attached to a drainpipe, with the internal wiring encased in epoxy. All of the outlets in the kitchen are GFCI protected, so if there is a short the breaker gets tripped.
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| Food porn |
[30 Apr 2008|01:03am] |
Tonight's experiment: Swordfish Almandine
I wanted to try making something different.
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| Amusement with a WRT54GL |
[22 Mar 2008|01:29am] |
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I bought another WRT54GL the other day (meaning I now have three) to try a hardware mod on it. I hadn't used a soldering iron since junior high - about 15 years ago - so I was a little leery of potentially bricking a new router, but I think I managed fine. There is a hardware mod for the WRT54GL that allows it to use SD or MMC flash cards; with the correct driver you can use 4 GB cards in it which is a LOT more than the 4 MB flash the router has out of the box. I won't detail the procedure here as there are several FAQs on it.
I bought a cheap SD to USB adapter and just stripped all the components off of the board in it since all I needed was the card slot, and soldered a ribbon cable to it (which was part of an old IDE cable). There are six connection points on the router's board.
The use of the GPIOs where some of the LEDs are has a neat side-effect in that they become disk access lights. The old DMZ LED lights when there is any access, and the orange and white SES button LEDs blink when there are reads and writes. As the green DMZ LED was repurposed as a disk activity indicator, I replaced it with a yellow one to make it stand out.
After actually getting the hardware part done, it was a little bit of a headache to get the software working as I had to find an MMC driver that worked with 4 GB cards since I'm not exactly adept at hacking C code to write hardware drivers. After solving that issue, I built a customized OpenWRT firmware image with the packages necessary and flashed the router. This is really kind of neat to see:
I have it set up now with Dnsmasq disabled (no need for DHCP how I'm using it), WAN and wireless disabled. It is now on the primary router's LAN acting as a Samba server.
The card slot is mounted inside the case so you have to open the case to switch out cards. I don't consider it an issue as it's meant to be internal storage and I have no real need to switch cards.
In the below pic, the top router is the primary one, running Tomato with the OpenVPN mod. The second one is the fileserver with the MMC card, and the bottom one is a separate unencrypted wireless network that is running CoovaAP. Anyone can connect to the bottom router but it requires a login to get internet access. It's mostly so anyone who comes by with a laptop can get internet access without altering the access restrictions on the primary router or handing out a WPA key, and none of the shared directories on the primary net are accessible from there. This router is connected to the primary router via its WAN port.
Do note that there is no real reason for doing this... I just thought it would be kind of neat.
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| Flaming death |
[12 Mar 2008|03:23pm] |
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Out of curiosity I tried some Dave's Ultimate Insanity sauce on a sub today. Surprisingly, the heat level was not all that bad - I didn't even need a drink. However, that stuff tastes like bug spray or toxic waste, one or the other (or both). Even if you can ignore the heat you can't ignore the nasty chemical taste. Yuck. All of the other sauces Firehouse has in the same heat range are chemical-tasting as well. I think I'm sticking with Bellycheer Gourmet as my sub hot sauce - it's got a good burn and it actually tastes good.
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| Stupid router tricks |
[04 Mar 2008|10:25am] |
I got a new Linksys WRT54GL yesterday just to play around with. The network at home already runs off of one of those, so I got a second one so I could play around with various 3rd party firmwares without hosing the internet connection. The regular in-service router is currently running Tomato with an OpenVPN mod, which is pretty awesome.
I flashed the new router with OpenWRT White Russian 0.9 at first just to look through the file system since I'm not familiar with it. After I got bored with that I reflashed it to Tomato to actually set something silly up. Here's what I did:
The second router is configured to be an open wireless access point. Its WAN port is connected to a LAN port on the first router's switch. This completely separates the two networks, and the second router gets an address and network config from the first router via DHCP just as it would if it were connected directly to a cable modem. It is set to have AP isolation on and it blocks all UDP traffic. Back on the first router, I have QoS set to allow the second router to use a max of 5% of available outgoing bandwidth and only pass 5% of available incoming to it (if there is any other traffic on the network at the time, most packets to that second router get dropped making web browsing painfully sluggish). Wireless access to the admin console is disabled, so it can only be accessed via a wired conection - anything connected to the primary router can get there, but nothing on the second router's wireless. Finally, the second router was set to B network only instead of B/G to make the actual connection back to the router from a client be as slow as I could get it. The lights on the front were also configured to show when a wireless client is connected.
So now there is a second SSID out there on a different network that is open access and can reach the internet... just very slowly and only via TCP. That isn't any fun though... so I set it so all requests translate to a Google address. Go to any address and you end up at Google. Go through the search results, click a link... and you're back at Google.
This is what does it:
iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -s 192.168.97.0/255.255.255.0 -p tcp -j DNAT --to-destination 64.233.187.99
Two clients connected last night. I doubt they stayed connected for long.
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| D&D Quiz |
[26 Feb 2008|11:55am] |
I Am A: True Neutral Human Ranger/Sorcerer (2nd/2nd Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-11
Constitution-12
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-15
Charisma-13
Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.
Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Primary Class:
Rangers are skilled stalkers and hunters who make their home in the woods. Their martial skill is nearly the equal of the fighter, but they lack the latter's dedication to the craft of fighting. Instead, the ranger focuses his skills and training on a specific enemy a type of creature he bears a vengeful grudge against and hunts above all others. Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. His skills allow him to move quietly and stick to the shadows, especially in natural settings, and he also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does, and like a druid he is often accompanied by animal companions. A ranger's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.
Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)
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| Grain Pile |
[22 Dec 2007|09:54pm] |
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I now have around 150 lbs of various barley malts vacuum packed and sort-of stored in a bookshelf. I'm set for a while, unless I want to make a hefeweizen for which I'll need to get some wheat.
Also, hops! I have about 6 lbs - this isn't all of it:
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| Homebrew Irish dry stout |
[25 Nov 2007|03:25pm] |
This stuff came out awesome. It's actually good as a breakfast drink. The nitro tap and the beer gas cylinder really makes a difference in the pour and creamyness of the beer.
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| New taphandle labels and brew update |
[12 Sep 2007|10:42am] |
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I made new labels for my taphandles using the logo I created a few days ago.
( Photos of a couple new labels for the beer on tap and the soon-to-be-tapped keg )
Right now, other than the English ordinary bitter I have on tap (2 kegs worth), I have 20 gallons of beer in various states of not being finished at home:
- English brown porter - carbing and conditioning in keg, not ready to drink quite yet
- American robust porter - in secondary (a glass carboy - for clearing and conditioning)
- American pale ale - second week in primary, dry hopping for a week before transferring to secondary
- Bavarian hefeweizen - in primary fermentation
Next up is an English special bitter. This will be my fourth all-grain recipe variant on English bitter. I overdid the water chemistry adjustment on the first version so it had a little too much sulfate bitterness. I altered the recipe based on suggestions given by noted homebrewer Jamil Zainasheff in a podcast, and version two came out very well taste-wise but was a litle hazy. Version three that I have on tap now is a little too weak and simple for my taste as a result of removing the flaked barley that added the body (and the haze) and cutting the hop bill. This next recipe will be a variant on version two with carapils instead of flaked barley to try and keep the body but cut the haze issue, and it will have a little more in the way of hops and malt as it'll be brewed to a higher gravity. Also, I will try a different English yeast this time - White Labs WLP002 rather than Safale S-04.
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