I like this time at night on HBT

What he said.

 

LG

I'm at my daughter's place today, drove up yesterday. She moved up here, Monterey for college. It's nice here, close to the ocean and the air is cool and clean. We refinished a wooden dining room table today. Dad and daughter building something together, making memories, nice father daughter project. I live for these days, or should say, days like this keep me alive. (whoa-melodrama Dan!)
Need to apply a few more coats of polyurethane finish but I have to leave tomorrow mid-day. Life is way to short

 

Don't rush those coats of poly.

 

That's good advice and because the air teperature (we applied the poly outside) is at the lower limits, the recommended six hours between coats is more likely going to be 12. I really need a few more days. I figure we'll hit it with some quad 0 steel wool tomorrow before she leaves for school and then apply a second coat. There will be plenty left in the can, thinking I'll add a few more coats next time I'm here around T-day. Should be okay to do that. I'll slightly roughen the finish a little first. Funny thing is, this table is 14 years old but when we're finished with it will look and hold up better than new. I love wood!

 

That is nice about hardwood, it can sure be refinished a lot.

 

Yep it can. I think it's like anything else, quality material, craftsmanship, and time go a long way. Beer and brewing gear certainly fits in that category

 

If you ever run a file server, try to remember to empty the trash on it once in a while. It's been a couple of months, and I've been doing that for like an hour.

 

Take out your trash and do dishes daily. The more often you do the less the hassle. Otherwise that crap becomes overwhelming.

 

Wise words there Dan.

 

Good night HBT...

 

It seems like late night to me but I see it's not even 5 PM. Long day. Thanks so much to all who sent "good vibes". Leaving to see my kids at college this week and next week will be hubby recovering from surgery. Back to "nurse mode". I've started a batch of hard lemonade and a batch of hard apple cider. Lemonade for difficult days, and apple for difficult evenings.

 

You're IT? It all makes sense now. Do you know Homer?

 

So, when's the bottle of whiskey for?

It seems rather late to me too. I am not used to getting up at 5:30 am. Something about getting up before the sun does seems wrong to me...

 

I'm the families IT. Not professionally. That means I'm the only one who understood how useful a high capacity network drive would be. That's the file server I'm talking about. I'm not familiar with Homer, either connect or admin. Though I do know what it is.

My new job title is "Operations Analyst". Which breaks down to doing work that computers are either terrible at, or that would be very complicated to automate. With a double shot of, "whatever we need done right now".

I am pretty nerdy though. I'm using Fedora 17 right now for instance. I'm also the only person I know of that has a HDD in my PS2... So, yeah.

 

My sugar free orange stuff is carbonated. Yeah, I need to get longer serving lines. By a lot. I knew that, but I didn't realize quite how bad it would be. I get paid Friday, so I'll order some then. The existing line is 5' of 3/16 ID. I'm thinking 20' would be about right.

EDIT: A nice bonus is that I could sit on my couch and fill my glass. As long as I didn't mind leaving the keezer lid cracked or warm lines anyway.

 

I don't even remember mentioning the bottle of whiskey hidden in my jacket pocket. That's for a rainy day.

 

Raise your hand if you tried to learn to play this on a keyboard back in the 80s:

 

I failed at that...thankfully.

I did learn this on guitar though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J-tvJcTPxHc

 

HA! I played this pretty good!

 

Tried? Tried?

I mastered that $%#+. I could even play it on the touch tone back then.

 

I was only kidding. I can play it. Here's a shot of us back in the day.

 

Pasteurizing apple cider Breaking Bad style!

50 bottles done and no explosions this year...

 

Saftey First

 

I had a bottle explode in the pot last year, and it put the fear in me. It put quite a dent on the aluminum lid, and glass managed to get passed it. I walked in the kitchen to find glass all over the stove top and on the floor all around the stove. The sound was quite impressive, too.

 

Next time use a pressure cooker. The lid is locked down so glass won't get by it.

Nothing can possibly go wrong.

 

Ha...Hahahaha

 

Intuitively, I'd say the best plan is to leave plenty of airspace in the bottle.

Gases (air) are very compressible, but liquids are very not (that's why brakes, et.al., are hydraulic and not pneumatic). With the highly compressible headspace in the bottle, your chances of explosion are minimized.

LOVE the pic. And, what is Krave?

 

It's a breakfast cereal.

I pasteurize exactly the same way as I would water bath can, only to 160f instead of boiling. That means adding the bottles to the water with something in the bottom of the pot to keep them off it. Submerging the bottles. Heating the whole pot of water until you get to 160f, uncovered. I maintain that for 10 minutes. Then lift the bottles out onto a towel. Pour the water out, and refill the pot with cold. Then start all over again with a new batch of bottles. No bottles touching while heating or cooling.

That minimizes the chances of giving the bottles thermal shock. Unless they are flawed or over pressured, that's usually why bottles go when they are being pasteurized.

Ironically, the pot for a pressure cooker is perfect for this. They have false bottoms. Don't use the lid.

 

If I had one I would! I put 2 very heavy cast iron dutch ovens on top this time.

I actually have always suspected that it was indeed a weak bottle, but that batch was pretty heavily carbonated. I wouldn't say over carbed, but it was definitely very well carbonated. I'm sure those 2 things led to the explosion. This year I carbed much lower, which I'm fine with..

I did notice that the liquid was about 3/4 inch away from the cap after pasteurizing. Perhaps next time I'll fill them just slightly lower.

Krave is some new fangled, trendy cereal that my daughter just had to have!

 

The pressure cooker thing was a joke. Needs to be said for safety's sake, I guess.

 

That makes sense. I hadn't actually thought about that when I responded.

 

Intuitively I think it's safer than boiling in a pan. Science might not back that up.

By safer, I'm thinking that it is less likely to explode. Or, at least, no more likely.

 

Sake? What about sake? I like sake...


The carbonator caps leak. I thought I could just let the bottle carb at 30psi for several days. Not a good idea. The gas connector doesn't seat exactly right no matter what I do. Not sure how much gas I lost, it's not a fast leak.

So, I decided to reset the high regulator to 45 psi like is recommended for carbonating soda. I set the low one to 30 for the moment, and switched the carbonated orange drink stuff to that one. At 45 psi with a cold liquid I was able to shake the bottle and carbonate a 2 liter bottle in about two minutes. You can sure tell that it's happening too. The regulator was groaning from the temp change. The bottle was also vibrating slightly. When it stopped doing that, I stopped shaking it. Carbonation was perfect on a sample I just poured.

I did try replacing the O-ring on the carbonator post. It didn't help. I think the carbonator caps have a check valve in them. I had the bottle on it's side and was shaking the ish out of it. No liquid went back up the line. That saves me some time in building a custom detachable extension piece with a check valve in it.

That's mixed news. I'm annoyed that the gas ball lock connector won't seal. Happy the carbonation happens so easily with a cold liquid at 45 psi. So, I'm back to my previous thought that I will want to run three regulators. At 45, 30, and 15ish psi. For carbonating bottles of soda, for carbonating kegs of soda, and for carbonating kegs of homebrew respectively.

I could just disconnect the high regulator from the kegs, set it to 45 psi, and carbonate the bottles. Then turn the regulator back to 30 psi. I'd prefer to end with a system that doesn't require opening the coffin unless you need to switch out kegs though. I also don't want the gas system external. That looks really messy, and this is in my living room.

Well, once I get some longer dispensing lines, I'm going to call phase 1 of my keezer build complete. It will be functional, even if you do have to open the coffin.

Phase 2 would be adding a 3rd regulator. Setting everything up, with a nice long 5/16" ID line for the 45 psi line.

Phase 3 would involve building a collar, adding a 4th 5 gallon keg, setting up faucets through the collar. Possibly I would upgrade the co2 tank at that point too.

Phase 4 would be building a box into the collar to house the 45 psi connector, and prettifying the whole thing.

I will probably build the box to house the external gas connector into the collar when I build that. Phases 3 and 4 will not happen until after my family visit in January....

Except the government shutdown is messing up my eldest sisters business, so they may not be able to come at all. That would include my nephews, and would remove the need to delay phases 3 and 4 until after the visit. Building a collar is going to make the lock on the freezer pretty much useless, and I want to use it to lock up the kegs and the hard liquor while they are here.

That's the plan as it stands now. Things do change though.

 

Hmm, I just took a good look at the carbonator caps. No check valve. Oh well. I guess it was the gas inflow that kept the liquid out of the line. I'll probably just put a check valved shutoff at the regulator. With a fairly long line, I doubt any liquid with get all the way back there anyway.

 

Hmm, I don't think that's true if you lock the lid and let it build up pressure. You have to be careful not to let those things get to much pressure in them. If you had one with a blown seal, then sure. The lids are a lot stouter then a normal pot, and the locking flange should keep the lid from popping off and allowing shrapnel to escape.

I like mine for bottle pasteurizing, I just don't put the lid on at all.

 

Yea, but the pressure inside the bottle builds also, because there's fluid in there too. So, is the differential between what's inside the bottle and outside so great?

Pressure cookers won't exceed a specific pressure by design. I have one and use it.

 

Soul, for your soul. For your late nite soundtrack, Nina Simone, doing an epic Sinnerman.

 

Pappy, you sort of brought this on bro

Bare with me, or is it bear? Doesn't really matter. Weird the way a mind works.

Sinner Man -> Daughter of ->Methodist minister -> Grenwich Villiage -> Bohemian ->

Next song.. Bohemian Rhapsody!

Seems to me this song is about let down, falling short of expectations, an apology, and humble love. It's fun, it's deep and passionate. Doubt there will ever be another song like this.

A better discription may come from Wikpdeia. "

The meaning of this song.. well many have interrupted (EDIT, interrupted was a typo, ...many have interpreted it. Then again maybe interrupted was an accidental correct word). Guess nobody will ever know for sure

To me, and probably most of us, this is just a great song and a gift from, Freddy Mecury.

 

LBR! You still up my friend?

 

Yep, but not for long. Was teaching tonight and that always makes it hard to get to sleep after.