Wort Filtering

When you make beer, you end up with a big ol' pot of steaming wort, and it will have loads of CRUD. If you want to make your life easier and your beer clearer, you need to get the crud out.

So far I've tried:

• A fine-mesh metal strainer
• The strainer plus a coffee filter

The coffee filter is a bad move. There's way too much crud for a coffee filter. Might be a good move after a first pass, but not right off.

The metal strainer is pretty decent. Some crap gets through, but not a ton.

A little cheesecloth with my strainer might work real well.

Ultimately, I probably need to move to some kind of multi-pass system. I just haven't worked it out.

Doggie Gate

We got this playpen. It did its job alright and all, but we decided it wasn't what we were after.

So I took a trip to Lowe's.

Seventeen dollars later, we've got a sweet gate that's both dog and human-friendly.



The door has magnetic clasps so it stays closed, but you don't have to mess with hooks and such. The two weights keep things stable.

Future revisions:

• Going to sand and stain the wood so it looks extra nice.
• Going to replace the staples holding it together with aluminum strips and wood screws
• Need to saw an inch off the wood by the door hinge, to allow the door to fold back all the way