My hops are exploding. The Nugget have climbed up to the top of their twine, and are now exploding with hop burrs. SHould get quite a good yield this year from them. Suprisingly enough, the Nugget might be rivaled by the Zeus for yield. I can’t believe how many hops these rhizomes are producing, even [...]

… But not the homebrewing type. I’ve been collecting the necessary tools to venture into home Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturing, such as drlll bits, exposure sources, and developing & etching chemicals. At this point I have got pretty much everything except a drill press for my dremel, which is on backorder and should arrive [...]

As I indicated in my previous post, I was somewhat concerned whether the VAA505 component was going to be stable enough and adequate to power my PICAXE. Over and over I have heard that one of the most important aspects of designing and coding your own microcontroller circuits is a stable power supply - and [...]

I am just so damn excited… I got a bunch of new toys to play with in the mail today, and I couldn’t contain myself - I had to come here and write about them. I suppose I *should* be downstairs in the basement playing with them, but I’m holding off until tomorrow to do [...]

I feel like I was moving non-stop all weekend. Between activities in the garage, activities in the yard, and everything between I didn’t get much downtime… but I actually prefer that, even though the weekend goes by fast.
One thing I did was rack my 10 gallons of wheat to secondaries. 5 gallons of it was [...]

My birthday present arrived 2 months early today - a 26 gallon Heavy Duty kettle from MoreBeer.com. We ordered well in advance this time mostly because of last year’s debacle. This year it was not on backorder, and it shipped within a day or two of ordering - But I am not going to complain [...]

I have been chipping away at my to-do list for BrewzNET - its going painfully slow compared to what I want, however an hour here and a few minutes there just isn’t cutting it for getting major blocks of work done. I’ve added context menu items to the Pipe, Tank and Coil designer classes that [...]

I recently received an order from Libbey.com of their Poco Grande glasses which work remarkably well as tulip glasses for belgian beers. My dogfish glass bit the big one a few months back, and it has been paining me to drink my belgians out of wine glasses (I know, how snobbish). The Libbey glasses [...]

So I haven’t been Blogging very much lately… I have been kind of busy. Doing what, you ask?
Bottling and brewing my friends. And both in large amounts. In the picture you’ll see 10 gallons of American Brown Ale on the left that I brewed this past weekend with the help of my friend Brian. It [...]

Its a little after 5am and I’m already frustrated. After this morning’s mash-in, I may become a Marty Drinan disciple….
Promash calculated a strike water temp of 176 for me to hit my desired 151-152 range. I heated the water, and it hit 178 before I could catch it…. so I turned the burner off, let [...]