Mah Dawg

So we got a puppy last week. His name is Raz. This is mostly what he does:

Nope, he's not dead. Just sleeping upside-down.

Is he really sleeping? Or is he just watching?


So yeah. He's pretty cool. It's only taken a couple days to housetrain him. He'll sit when you ask him to. Still working on leash training.

Observation: Leash train your dog indoors. There are too many distractions in a neighborhood. It's likely to frustrate both dog and owner. Outside is for after your pup knows to pay attention and heel. Not appreciating that set back leash training by a few days.

I did my best to do my homework on dog training. The most fun part? All kinds of things that aren't in the training book occur to you. Like, "I can associate a command with 'Go over the threshold of the door quickly so flies don't get into the house'". Once you've got the framework, you can do all kinds of interesting things.

For instance, the 'play fetch' game just kind of evolved. It was pretty simple to work out a series of reinforcements to turn the instinct into a game. Very fun.

So anyway, here's a video (from a few days ago, before he had worked out 'fetch'). He's a funny little guy.

Quackhead Wheat: The Label

Oh yeah.

Classic Post: A Tale of Two Pastries

Note: I haven't built anything good this week, so here's a web page I made a few years ago about donuts.

I've always believed in freedom. In speech, religion, music, or beer, free is usually best. Why, then, should I be subject to the tyranny of the bakery? They're never open when I want a donut. Wal-Mart has donuts 24/7, but shopping there isn't exactly supporting your local sheriff.

All these feelings came to a head recently when I decided it was time to make my own donuts. What follows is a fictionalized account with names changed to protect the innnocent.

It started with an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats. If you're looking for it, it's the one called "Circle of Life" (S08E04). To make donuts as Alton describes, we need the following items. Items in red I don't have.

Hardware	Software
Large mixing bowl Stand mixer Kneading hook Deep-Fry thermometer Dutch oven Adjustable Pastry Cutters Food scale Cooling rack Rolling Pin 3/8" Rolling Guides Chopsticks Whisk Saucepan	Donuts: 1-1.5 gallons peanut oil 1.5 C. Milk 2.5 oz shortening 2 packages instant yeast 1/3 C. warm water 2 eggs 0.25 C. Sugar 1 tsp nutmeg 1.5 tsp salt 23 oz flour
	Glaze: 0.25 C. Milk 1 tsp vanilla 2 C. Confectioner's Sugar

A few hardware notes:

My deep fry thermometer I found for about $10 at the ARECO Restaurant-Supply store at the bottom of the big curve on School St. It has an adjustable clip so it'll stick to the side of whatever pot you're using, and it's very easy-to-read. In short, it's teh r0x0r.

Stand Mixer and Kneading hook? Who do I look like, Donald Trump?! To do the initial mixing I used my el-cheapo (Wal-Mart, $12) 200W hand mixer. I nearly killed the poor thing, so if you have hardware similar to mine, be careful. The kneading? I did it by hand.

Adjustable pastry cutters... I looked all over town for these. They're a set of concentric rings so you can select any size circle you want. ARECO told me they sold their last set the day before - I'll be ordering some from them. Wal-Mart, of course, had never heard of any such thing, and didn't have anything even resembling a biscuit or cookie cutter. Nothing at Ozark Natural Foods. The Bed, Bath, and Beyond people tried to point me to these metal devices that seem to be for retarded children who can't cook eggs and have too much money. Also, they had nothing at all to do with dough cutting.

My solution was two-pronged. For the outside I'd use a medium-sized plastic cup. It's from Jimmy John's if you must have one just like it, and is covered with funny statistics that are sure to get the conversation started at your next Math-Department throwdown.

For the inside I use a straight-sided Pucker's-branded plastic shot glass. To get one just like this, work at Shorty-Small's for a month as a dishwasher and come home covered in industrial-grade sewage every night. Then find a way to get a shot glass out of the deal before you quit.

Tiffany shows off our rockin donut-cutters.

Dutch oven? Bah, humbug! If I had one, I'd have used it, but I just used a big pot instead. No big deal here. I tend to think the mass of the oil overrules any thermodynamic properties of the pot in question.

Software notes

Good nutmeg is easy to find if you're in the know. I wasn't in the know, so it took me awhile, but that doesn't have to be your fate. Head to the Ozark Natural Foods on College and go all the way over to the left wall. Here are bulk spices - It's all in alphabetical order. The ground nutmeg will probably be visible, but reach in behind it and you'll find the whole nutmeg nuts. If you're not down with the ONF process, just put however many nuts you want in one of those plastic bags on the counter, tie it off with one of the large twisties, and label the twistie with the number on the nutmeg (0726, if I remember correctly). One tsp is about 1/3 of one of these nuts, so you'll really only need one nut. Two nuts cost me $0.34. If I'd had a hundred dollar bill in my wallet, I'd have used it to pay just to see the look on the cashier's face as she counted out $99.66 in change.

23 oz of flour? But Dan-sensei, I have no scale! Seriously, go get one, it's important. I picked up the cheapest one at Wal-Mart (<$4), though I sure would like a nice digital one.

Also, go ahead and pick up some whole-milk. I used skim, and while the results were good, Tiff hypothesized that whole milk might be tastier still. I'm inclined to agree. Get on with the donuts already!

Alright, alright, here's what you'll do. Put the yeast in that warm water. Don't use tap-water, either. It's got chlorine in it, that'll kill your yeast. I used bottled water. If you have a Brita filter, that'll work just fine. Also, I know it's instant yeast- we're giving it a head-start.

Now get out your mixing bowl and throw in the milk, shortening, eggs, sugar, nutmegs, salt, and half the flour. By the time you've measured the flour and everything else, your yeast should've been sitting around for about ten minutes, so throw it in as well now. Beat this with a mixer until it's homogenous. Now sift in the rest of the flour in, keeping the mixer going. You should have some hella-doughy stuff in the bowl now. If you've got a kneading hook, now's the time to put it on and set the mixer on medium until you've got a ball of dough on the hook. If you've got no kneading hook, it's time to flour the table and start doing it old-school.

After all, ain't no school like the old school.

Once all of the dough's kneads have been met, throw it in an oiled bowl, cover it, and let it sit for about an hour. It should double in size. I've got a picture of some dough, but this is after we'd already made most of the donuts. Your dough will be bursting over the top of a bowl that big at this point in the process.

Once the dough is risen, take it out and throw it on a well-floured table. With bread, you'd punch it down right now. Donuts are foods of a gentler path, so we're just going to fold it. That is, pat down the dough gently, fold it in quarters, and repeat. Once you've done this thrice or fource, the yeast gases will be well distributed.

Roll the dough out to about 3/8". If you're fancy, you can use rolling guides. If you're more of an Ace Hardware person, you can use 3/8" strips of wood to guide you. If you're an invincible donut ninja like myself, you throw caution to the wind and guess.

Now, bring out the cutting tools of your choice. Once you've got a stack of raw donuts, roll that excess dough back up and let it rise for another half-hour. You can do this a few times. On the third time or so, we just decided to make donut holes (pictured on the right). The leftovers from this we made into two bearclaw shaped things.

Let the cut donuts rise for another half-hour before you cook them. They'll rise up impressively, really. This brings us to....

Fire and Thunder, Donut-Style!

Start heating up your oil. You want it solidly at 365 Fahrenheit. USE THAT THERMOMETER Seriously, I tried a few donuts at 355 and 375/380 (for science, of course), and while not bad, they were noticably different. I can only assume that greater temperature deviations would've made things that bore little resemblance to donuts.

To flip the donuts, ol' Alton recommends chopsticks. I had none, but I had plenty of bamboo skewers, so I employed a few of these to become a walrus. Once safely disguised, I snuck up on the simmering donuts, cooing old walrus songs to ease their minds. I let them cook 1 minute on each side - a timer really helps here as well.

To receive the cooked donuts, I put some paper towels on top of a half-sheet pan ($9, ARECO, useful for 1001 things and far better than the pans from Wal-Mart). I put a cooling rack on this so the donuts could drip.

The donut holes don't quite cook the same - you can't reliably flip them. To help them cook evenly, I poked at them with my skewers while they were cooking, keeping them rolling and bouncing.

After cooking all the dough, I had about 15 donuts and maybe 2 dozen donut holes, plus the funny shaped bearclaw things. All of this is for naught, though, if we have no glaze. Donuts without glaze are like pudding without meat - you can't have it.

Note: If you don't want the donuts to stick together thile they cook, wait about 5 seconds between donuts when putting them in the oil.

Glazed over

The preceding paragraphs have been mostly believable. Here, however, it where you'll have to take my words on faith.

Mix the milk and vanilla in a saucepan. Recall, that's 1 tsp of vanilla and 1/4 Cup Milk. No, really, that's one-fourth cup. It'll seem like nothing. I'm serious, though.

Heat this up a bit - Not to boiling, but let's say to around 150 F. My thermometer and my saucepan were incompatible, so I had to guess.

Once you've done this, throw in 2 cups of confectioner's sugar. That's the very fine kind, if you spread it on your nose you can pretend you're Johnny Depp in Blow. And yes, I bloody-well meant TWO CUPS. It'll seem to dwarf the milk, and you'll wonder how that'll ever turn into a glaze. Trust me.

Now, start whisking, In no time at all, that measly quarter-cup of milk will consume every bit of that sugar. It's really quite unbelievable, even if you're watching it.

Be careful with this glaze, by the way. It'll burn easily. Keep the heat very low, and keep it well-whisked. Take your donuts one at a time, dip them into the glaze, and put them back on the rack. Couldn't be easier.

Note: You don't have to wait until all your donuts are done. This glaze can be reheated if you're careful. I recommend this, because by now you're probably ready for a donut. I know I am. I think I'll have one.

Aye, that's a tasty donut!

Beer Notes

So I've made two beers so far. A third is ready to be bottled tomorrow. A fourth is patiently fermenting. (A second-and-a-half one, which I've disowned, had to be thrown out. I killed the yeast due to some stupidity.)

Here are the first two:

Amber Ale (Beer #2)

I got it from this recipe. I didn't do the full month in primary - Two weeks for me.

How did it turn out? Well, rather inconsistent, but that's my fault. The good ones are entirely drinkable, well balanced, medium-hoppy and not too sweet. The bad ones are either flat, or fizz for days, or just taste funky.

Why? Well, it was my second attempt at bottling, and I encountered an issue I didn't know how to deal with: About 15 beers from the bottom of the bucket, my bottle-filler clogged up.

Not being an experienced type, I assumed it was broken. I switched to the tube alone, and filled the rest of the bottles as best I could. The result is that there's about a one in four chance of getting a beer that just isn't good. All that extra oxygen and gunk didn't do good things.

So anyway, to mitigate that happening again, I bought an extra bottle-filler for quick-change emergencies, and am taking extra precautions to filter the gunk out of the wort.

American Pale Ale (Recipe #1)

This one is pretty yummy. It's a little cloudy - Hey, I didn't properly filter it, and I didn't have a proper wort-chilling solution. Nonetheless, it turned out great!

The ingredients? Dammit, I didn't record them. They came from this kit though. I'll have to ask the good folks at Rebel Brewer what they put in it next time I'm there.

Why Polders Rock

Was waiting to open my packet of yeast until the water was just the right temperature.

I've used this thermometer for just about everything there is to do in the kitchen. I wish I had two more just in case one broke. Then I found out they're only like $20 on amazon now, where they used to be $60. Always more stuff to buy...

Wort Chillin', Rhyme Illin', Can't Shake that West Coast Fillin'

So I built a wort chiller.


That doesn't mean I can freeze warts off at home. Gross. It means that I can cool down big pots of boiling wort, which is kind of like proto-beer. It's beer that has all the barley and hops and such mixed in, but hasn't yet had any yeast added. And it needs to be cooled off, like, right now.

That's where my wort chiller comes in. It carries heat away from the wort swiftly, as if the very hounds of Mordor were at its back. But, you know... with thermodynamics and stuff. No hounds were harmed.

One thing I like about the way I built Chilla v1.0. The first is that the on/off valve is very accessible. It's right up there with the main bits of the chiller, meaning I don't have to get under the sink to turn it on and off, like with the Alpha designs.

Mostly, this was about me learning how some basic plumbing works. I've never really done any, so I didn't know what anything was called, or even what was available at my local home improvement big box. The first thing I tried was one of those self-tapping thingamajigs that you use to get a water line to your ice maker. It was immediately clear that this was a terrible place to have the on/off switch for the chiller.

It became especially clear when I accidentally twisted the self-tapping thingy out of the pressurized line and sprayed water all over myself. Dammit.

So I got a new heavy duty 3/8" line (with a 1/2" nut up top, of course), and a nice little 3/8"x3/8"x1/4" adapter that I could screw a 1/4" line directly onto. Real easy, low leaking risk. Of course, you can see the leak here left over from my troubleshooting.



Then it was mostly just learning how to put things together so they worked. Here's a quick lesson.
In case you're not the Rain Man, here's that in English. First, we need names for those things - From the left, I'm going to call them A, B, and C, because I can't think of any names that are kid-friendly right now.

1. So you insert B into C. The flat side of the flare goes in first.
2. Put your tube into B+C contraption. Put it in a good ways.
3. IF AND ONLY IF your tube is plastic, insert A all the way into the end of it. Otherwise, skip to 4.
4. Push the B+C piece almost to the end of the tube. If it's a plastic tube, this will be bloody difficult.
5. Insert into the appropriate threaded end (might be a union, or maybe an adapter, or whatever)
6. Tighten.
7. Turn on the water, realize you didn't tighten enough, turn the water off.
8. Tighten some more.

So anyways, there you go. If you can't figure out how to build a wort chiller from the above, there's not much I can do for you.

Notes on how well it worked pending - I haven't tried it yet.