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I've never been involved in a "bottle grenade" before. This evening I got to experience one up close and personal. The bottle was a 1L EzCap bottle, a bottle rated with a burst pressure of over 100 PSI. It must have been a defective bottle. I've used these for years, and normally the seal...

I recently discovered that my well water was contaminated with bacteria of some kind..... in the "usual" and unpleasant way. The persistent intestinal problem clued me in to bad water. It's been a regular problem during the irrigation season of a couple months each year. I'll treat the well...

I quit brewing quite awhile ago, and went on a fasting program to lose weight, bring blood pressure down and stimulate autophagy for general health. I've entirely given up drinking....though I'm not an extremist. In spite of a lifetime of drinking, I've always been able to walk away from it or...

Nitro infusers are something of a mystery. For nitro covfefe, they often have a high dollar widget that adds nitrogen inline at up to 25%. How these are designed to meter properly is a bit of a mystery. I presume that the pressure of the nitrogen and the covfefe must be equal, and it is a...

Awhile back my neighbor's wife gave me a can of "coffee beer" or some such thing..... No resemblance to beer, it was just alcoholic creamed coffee, and asked me if I could "brew" that. I laughed after tasting it, and explained that there was no "brewing" involved except brewing coffee. The...

I have evolved what I call a "power breakfast" over the last month or two. Needless to say it is not my exclusive breakfast. I absolutely refuse to eat the junk from the "garbage isle" as I call it in the grocery store, and probably haven't bought a box of such junk except bran flakes for...

I'm no longer brewing beer, though I brew other things including vinegar, some wine, some things we are not allowed to discuss here, as well as kombucha and kefir. I also work closely with a neighbor in his brewing, having gotten him started a number of years ago. Recently I was delighted...

Since I quit brewing beer, I've done numerous projects. I make cheese, bought a kamodo grill, and am using it for grilling and smoking. I bought an Omega 900 auger type juicer to get more and broader based nutrition, as I've never eaten enough veggies. Also a dehydrator, (LEM brand) which...

2 years ago I set out to develop a way to preserve meat in as fresh state without refrigeration. The idea was to be able to package steaks in a food saver bag so that they could be reheated to medium rare temp and eaten months later. The original process involved first searing the steak with...

Sounds like a contradiction in terms....... freezer jam that is not frozen.... It will not be a cooked jam, nor will it be a "raw" jam. I would use radiation if I could, but I do not have any way to generate and contain gamma rays ;-) I have a bumper crop of raspberries this year, and I...

I've lived here for about 25 years now, and deer have been the bane of my existence in the summer. They do the "graze through", mindlessly cropping down my garden, and I've resorted to everything short of tall fences. My favorite was a cannot I once built that ran on bullseye powder, with an...

I'm making 2 gallons of rhubarb wine, or more accurately strawberry rhubarb wine for a friend. The basic rhubarb wine recipes call for about 3 lbs rhubarb and 3 pounds sugar per gallon, which works out to about 24% (roughly off the top of my head) potential alcohol. You ferment to 12%...

My GF loves sweet potatoes baked in the hide like an ordinary potato. I find them less than exciting, and decided to employ brewing technology in preparing them the other day. Using the sous vide, I dropped several into 135F for an hour, then raised it to 145 for couple of hours, then 150...

I'm using invert sugar syrup in kombucha making to accelerate fermentation..... It does actually help. Normally making invert sugar syrup is a messy process involving putting sugar and some water in a pan and adding an acid.... usually citric acid or cream of tarter, then cooking it using a...

While I've quit brewing for health reasons, I am still using brewing technology in various ways. For example, I am currently doing a starch to sugar conversion in sweet potatoes. This is something I did in a couple of beers, but I lacked the equipment I now have. My process uses the sous...

There are a significant number of articles on the net about growing hops hydroponically, but they are all oriented toward indoor and greenhouse growing, and are also oriented toward conventional hydroponics. Though I'm no longer brewing and only drinking about one beer a week, I was...

Apple Cider Vinegar obviously gets it's benefits entirely from the single acid (acetic), and the probiotics.... only yeast and acetobacter. It's a live culture, and that is the main difference between it and ordinary white vinegar. The apple cider it originates from has minimal health...

One of my projects is making apple cider vinegar using kombucha instead of starting with Braggs. The reason for this is that vinegar normally has a single organism.... one variety of acetobacter. It has a far less complex flavor than kombucha, or even kombucha vinegar. In my previous...

Kombucha is a tangy sweet fizzy drink, generally considered to have about 30 calories per 8oz... That's good compared to about 93 for coke, but I'm on a weight loss, health improvement program ... of my own design. I've been fasting aggressively, as fasting does many good things for your body...

My neighbor called me up for advice brewing with fresh hops...... what to use and how much. He's doing a brew today. I suggested that I bring over my Omega 900, which is a masticating type juicer that uses an auger. It contains non-juicing components for doing things like nut butter, where...