Kegerator v3

Finished up revision three of the kegerator today. This version will eventually have four or five kegs inside, and maybe a small one up in the freezer, if I can make sure it doesn't get too cold.

Had to buy a new barb for my distributor to match barb sizes with the regulator. Learned about plumber's tape. Learned that it's very hard to make a compression union hold pressurized gas. (That's why I bought the second barb, so I could ditch the union.)

I may end up drilling two holes for the distributor, so I can use bolts instead of screws. We'll see. I'll probably wait until I've got it loaded up with kegs, in case the position of the thing ends up changing.

Shoutouts to some great tools: My bench-vise did a damn good job of holding the distributor in place while I swapped out the input barb. Also, by big cartoony crescent wrench guaranteed that the barb will never, ever come out.

When Do I Change My Air Filters?

Seriously, how do you remember?

Well, I just replaced mine, and I wrote today's date on the edge of the air filter in permanent marker.

If the Nobel committee is reading, you can go ahead and just mail the prize to my house.

Curious Corgi Cherry-Smoked Porter

Steep @ 160 degress F for 30 min:
3lb Briess Smoked Cherry Malt
6oz Black Patent Malt

Malt:
6lb Amber DME

Hops:
2oz Fuggles, 90 min
1 oz Fuggles, 30 min
1 oz Kent Goldings, 20 min
1 oz Kent Goldings, 5 min

I used whole hops because they were out of Fuggles in pellets. One thing about whole hops: They're a heckuva lot easier to strain out. I scooped most of them out with a slotted spoon, and squeezed the liquid back in.

First Planting

I planted some onions and achillea today.

Achillea x1 Feb 20, 2010	Jalapeno x1 April	Chard x4 April	Radish x6 March/July
Cilantro x4 April	Nasturtium x1 April	Shallots x16 March	Radish x6 April/August
Marigold x2 April	Thyme x2 May	Shallots x16 April	Beets x9 May
	Tomato x1 per two squares Basil x1 per square April		Tomatillo x1 May
Trellis

Anaheim x1 March	Chard x4 May	Onion x16 March	Onion x16 Feb 20,2010
Zinnia x1 April	Marigold x2 April	Chard x4 April	Onion x16 April
Corn x1 June	Okra x1 May	Arugula x2 March/July	Arugula x2 April/August
Corn x1 May	Okra x1 June	Potato	Potato

Watered both just to dampness. Also planted some achillea by my mailbox.

Here's the fun part. Check out the wikipedia page on achillea. Some highlights:

In antiquity, yarrow was known as herbal militaris, for its use in staunching the flow of blood from wounds.

Several cavity-nesting birds, including the common starling, use yarrow to line their nests. Experiments conducted on the tree swallow, which does not use yarrow, suggest that adding yarrow to nests inhibits the growth of parasites.

In Classical tradition, Homer tells us that the centaur Chiron, who conveyed herbal secrets to his human pupils, taught Achilles to use yarrow on the battle grounds of Troy

Old folk names for yarrow include arrowroot, bad man's plaything, carpenter's weed, death flower, devil's nettle, eerie, field hops, gearwe, hundred leaved grass, knight's milefoil, knyghten, milefolium, milfoil, millefoil, noble yarrow, nosebleed, old man's mustard, old man's pepper, sanguinary, seven year's love, snake's grass, soldier, soldier's woundwort, stanch weed, thousand seal, woundwort, yarroway, yerw.

In the Middle Ages, yarrow was part of a herbal mixture known as gruit used in the flavouring of beer prior to the use of hops.

Hey, that last one sounds right up my alley. Maybe I'll make some gruit beer this summer.

Anyway, there's a lot of information about yarrow's use as an herbal medicine. I'm generally in agreement with Dara O'Briain on this point. Herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years. That means they've had time to test it all, and the stuff that worked became just plain medicine. The rest is potpourri.

But, that doesn't mean I won't brew up a cup of yarrow tea. I want to see what this "mild stimulant" thing is all about. Are they talking a cup of coffee, or a shooter of five-hour energy? Inquiring minds want to know.

Latest Beer

The beer I'm kegging today: Kyle's Shamaly Wham Pale Ale
6 lb extra light DME
0.5 lb Caramel 40 malt
0.5 lb Caramunich malt
1 oz Saaz - 2.8% - 60 min
1 oz Centennial - 9.2% - 15 min
1 oz Cascade - 7.5% - 0 min

It came to about 1.050 OG. I've not yet checked the final gravity. It spent two weeks in primary before kegging.

Hex Hop Planter

Because I figured it would be prettier than a square. The interior sides are about 8.4", which means the area is
((8.4/12)^2) * (1.5 * sqrt(3)) = About 1.3ft^2

So it's a little bigger than my 1 foot square box, but will probably provide way more room for the roots. I'm no gardener, but I figure roots branch out in a pattern that's a lot closer to round than square.

Garden Plans

Plants take research. I've scrapped the squash - it turns out those bushes can eat up about 9 ft^2. Shallots moved to their spots, and I'm planting potatoes in their space, as that's the deep end of the garden.

Deodorant

I ran out, and had to use Tiffany's. It was Dove Smooth Cashmere brand. Now I have to take my armpits to the dry cleaners.

Garden Planning

I've made some beta plans about what to plant in my gardens. Here they are.


The numbers (x1, x2, x3, etc) denote how many to plant in each square foot. The months denote the planting date. I've tried to stagger things throughout the season, within their limits.

North is roughly up in the image. You can see that I've also put the tallest things on the west side. The idea is that even the short things will get sun most of the day this way.

I've put some marigolds in each garden to help with bugs. Same thing with planting basil among the tomatoes - I've been told the smell keeps bugs away.

This stuff is entirely new to me, though. Still looking for more good gardening books. It's tough to find one that strikes a balance between being way too simply written, and annoying me by repeating itself (like Mel's Square Foot Gardening book), and ones that assume I know quite a bit. I'm sure that somewhere out there, there's an Alton Brown of the gardening world that'll go through all the details in an entertaining way, but not patronize me.

Seriously, Mel Bartholomew's writing annoys the bejesus out of me. SFG is an interesting system, but he seems like the kind of guy that would just never, ever shut up.

My Square Foot Gardens

I built a couple of Square Foot Gardens.

The big ones are for general vegetables and such. The little ones are for hops.



Hops need something to grow up. To keep things contained, I built a tower.

Building a tower goes roughly as follows:
1. Take a metal fencepost, and sledgehammer it into the ground a ways.
2. Take a ten foot piece of iron rebar. Sledgehammer THAT into the ground, inside said fencepost.
3. Compression-couple two ten foot pieces of 1-inch electrical conduit to each other.
4. Bolt a couple of ears onto the top piece to hold your line.
5. Run some twine or nylon line through the ears, and secure it to some stakes.
6. Insert tab A into slot B. Make sure you've got someone to hold your stakes so the line doesn't get twisted. (I didn't do this, and look what happened. I need to take it down and untangle things)



When you're building your boxes, I highly recommend long screws over nails. Nails don't hold together in that shape.

To get the boxes sitting flat, I used a long level along with a ruler, and measured the dropoff from a staked-off point. Then, I pretty much sharpied a line at that angle onto a 2x6, and cut it with a circular saw. I used some board-joiners to stick it all together.

HOWTO: Work CO2 Regulators

Here's how you work a CO2 regulator.

The regulator has a hex nut that screws it onto your tank. This is a big hex nut - Something like 1 1/8 inches. Just go to Lowe's and buy the biggest crescent wrench they've got if you want to be able to get this on and off.

The left gauge shows your tank pressure. If you've got a five pound tank, it'll hold about 600-700 PSI at room temperature.

The top gauge shows your line pressure. This is the pressure being applied to your beer. This should read around 10-15 PSI.

The big screw in the middle sets your line pressure. Turn it inward (ie, clockwise), and you'll increase the pressure. Turn it outward and you'll decrease the pressure. At about halfway out, you'll stop the pressure entirely. That means you've got to screw it about halfway in to START the pressure.

That safety/test valve - It should be horizontal. If it points straight up, you're hemorrhaging CO2. This took me about 50 psi to figure out. 50 psi equates to about ten seconds.

Turn the line valve to match the direction of the line to turn it on. Turn it perpendicular to turn it off.

And that's that! There's your howto, internet!