Like in the Fatherland

Bottled the hefeweizen; the cow-orker was a no-show. Sampled the Mild, although it's only been in the bottle for a week. Rough, but you can tell it will be nice enough.

After cleaning up I made a recipe for apfelwein, a hard cider. 5 gallons worth, and will take a month in primary.

Also picked up a bench capper.

Discount Tire fanboi

There are very few companies that have my complete devotion. One is NetFlix. Another is Discount Tire.

I bought my last set of Michelins from Discount Tire, and every experience since then has been fantastic.

You can find the tires you want, see where they are in stock, make an appointment, pay for them, and print your receipt. Then go to the store and they will be stacked up and ready for you. They also fixed my wrecked valve stem (my fault), plugged a nailhole (my fault), and, most important, made the wife feel comfortable and cared-for when she went in on her own to get her own tire plugged (giant nail, her fault).

Great business model, staffed with good folks. My highest recommendation. If you are in Richardson, the closest DT is off 75 and midpark.

Discount Tire (972) 231-7828 Make Appointment

3 W

13645 N Central Expresswy Dallas, TX 75243 Map

M-F 8:00-6:00 Sat 8:00-5:00

rain

Went out to check the rain gauge last night and it had overflowed at the 5.5" mark. This morning there was an additional .75", so we've had at least 6.25" in the last 24 hrs.

Walked around the house to look for standing water and saw none; I guess that is a good sign.

bottling and racking

I racked the beer[0] weizen to secondary (got a stopper for the Better Bottle!) which was a snap. Put it back in the beerfridge at 65F.

Also bottled the beer[1] mild ale and socked it away in the beerfridge. Cow-orker was supposed to come over and learn/assist and bring extra bottles, but must had other things to do. I had to bottle in some substandard (clear, etc) bottles but since it's in the fridge it should be ok.

Next brewday, ~Apr 6.

brew-curious

I thought I would be able to bottle the hefeweizen this weekend, but it's still active. So I put the weizen primary in the Johnson-controlled brewfridge at 65F.

P., a co-worker, came over to see how homebrewing works. I encouraged him to come over and help with a batch before deciding to buy-in for equipment and ingrediants. We brewed a low-gravity (1.030 OG) mild ale in a bucket since the glass carboy was still occupied and I didn't have a stopper for the Better Bottle.

He didn't run screaming, so we might have another larval brewer in the making.

bloop

about 65hrs into the fermentation and the weizen is happily blooping through the airlock about every 11 seconds.

Looks like the tender shoots in the greenhouse did ok; nothing wilted this AM. Ex cept the basil that I'm trying again to propagate from the cuttings you're supposed to eat at the local pho house. Never made it work, but I'm going to keep trying.

First brew in the new house

Made a yeast starter Thursday out of a pint of autoclaved wort and the liquid yeast culture (White Labs WLP300). Airlocked it in a 1/2gal jug.

Cranked up the propane burner (a repurposed turkey fryer) on Saturday and brewed 5gal of weizen on the deck outside. The monster propane burner made a huge difference in the overall brewing time; the water came to the boil very quickly and was finely controllable after coming to the boil. Cleanup was easy with a water hose.

Pitched at around 1530; by 2000hrs there was some bubbling. By 2330 hrs I had to install a blowoff. Now a half-day later it's still blowing krausen through the blowoff.