Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Modding the Kitchen, part 1

About the only bad thing about my kitchen was the refrigerator. There's only one spot where it will really fit, which is fine---it's a good spot---but the hinges were on the wrong side of the door, so the opening of the door faced the wall. Very inconvenient, to say the least. One friend made a comment that the hinges can be reverse, though, so after some looking at the fridge, I decided to spend some quality time with my Craftsman tools. It took about 30 minutes, most of that was on one part. There were a lot of plastic screw-like thing that went in the ``other'' side. I pulled them out, and remounted the hinges there. The plastic things were a pain, because they clearly were meant to be inserted and never removed, so a couple of them got destroyed in the process. I don't think it will matter though; you wouldn't really notice unless you were looking for it. So now my fridge opens ``correctly''. And I have a few leftover fridge parts that I'm wondering what to do with. Next project: modding the coffee maker.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Brew 18 --- Irish Red

First brew in the new apartment!

This is a standard from morebeer.com. Usually I add some red pepper and oak to turn it into a Burning Forest, but I decided to do something more normal this time. Yeah, I know. I'll be feeling better soon. John came over to watch, he's getting into the hobby soon.

I decided to try the V-Vessel for beer this time. It seems to be working, mostly. There seems to be a cone of sediment forming that didn't make it into the little ball at the bottom. I will probably try pushing it through with a wine paddle and see what happens.

One scare: I forgot to oxygenate the wort. After about 48 hours with no sign of fermentation, I decided that desperate times called for desperate measures, and oxygenated the wort. Fermentation started within an hour. Note that times are given in terms of time remaining for a 60 minute boil. Date of Brew: Saturday, August 13, 2005 Date of Bottling: Not yet! Ingredients

  • Malt Extracts 7 lbs Ultralight
  • Grains 1 lb Crystal 120L 8 oz Aromatic 8 oz Caramanich 2 oz Black Roasted Barley 2 oz Special 13
  • Hops 1 oz Magnum (Bittering, -60 mins) 2 oz Willamette (Flavoring, -5 mins)
  • Water Treatments Whirfloc (1)
Number of Gallons in Boil: 5 Boil Time: 60 mins Gallons in Fermenter: 4.5 Yeast: White Labs Clifornia Ale Quantity: 35 mL

Friday, August 5, 2005

The Move

The Move is finally completed. Well, there's still a bucket of cleaning stuff at the old place, and I need to drop by there to give it a once-over before I hand in my keys. But all the stuff is in the new place. I hired movers this time. The new apartment is on the forth floor (SBC thinks it's the third floor; it must be one of those first floor/ground floor things) and I thought it would be much better to pay someone else to sweat and risk injury than to ask friends to do it. My friends all thought this a very good idea. I hired King David Moving and Storage, partly because of the cool name, partly because their rates seemed reasonable, partly because one of their competitors "forgot" to tell a friend that furniture wrapping would be an extra $120. They sent four guys over, who did an excellent job; they only took 3 hours to do everything. I learned a lot of neat tricks for moving by watching them, too... especially about how you can use tape to do move just about anything. Later when it was time to move the plants (I thought it best to move the plants myself), we bubble-wrapped the Cactus of Doom and put it into a granny cart. So to all of those who wondered how I was ever going to move the cactus, there's your answer. The new apartment is very nice. I just got the office and computer set up, and will be trying to get the bedroom and kitchen set up today. Well, at least started....