Author: jason

Let me tell you something about this Guinness clone stuff I whipped up a month ago.
It goes down smoooooooooooooth.

Today was the second brew day of the season and I decided to try to clone Fat Tire from New Belgium.

The recipe I used was from the book North American Clonebrews, which is a book full of tried and true recipes for your favorite commercial beers. I definitly recommend it.
I missed my target SG by a little bit because I forgot to account for the extra wort size. I like to have 11 gallons of wort so I can put a little extra in each fermenter. I only used enough grain for 10 gallons so I missed my SG by a few points. Should still be the same beer, with maybe a little less alcohol.

I’m particularly proud of the PVC sparge arm I am using in this picture. I built that from 1/2″ PVC in about 20 minutes with about $5 in parts from Ace Hardware. It worked great! This fits the top of a 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler. If you want it to fit something else just measure the diameter of where it should sit, subtract two and divide by two. Use that number in place of the 7″ cuts I have below. Here’s how I made it:
Buy:
4′ of 1/2″ Schedule 40 PVC
(3) 1/2″ PVC slip on end caps
(1) 1/2″ 4 way PVC cross
(1) 1/2″ slip on PVC to 1/2″ FPT (female pipe thread) adapter
(1) 3/8″ to 1/2″ brass hose barb to MPT (male pipe thread)

Do:
Cut four 7″ lengths of the PVC. Put a cap on the end of three of them and the adapter on the end of the fourth. Stick the other end of each into the 4 way cross. Put some teflon tape on the threads of the hose barb adapter and screw it in to the PVC adapter.
Using a teensy drill (mine was 1/8″ I think, but smaller would be even better) drill a few holes in the bottom of each of the four pieces. Leave about an inch or two near the ends so water doesn’t sprinkle outside your cooler.
You could PVC cement to make everything permanent, but it all fit together nice and snug and I didn’t have any leaks so I didn’t bother.

Throw it on top your sparge vessel and you are ready to go. It doesn’t rotate, but if you drilled small enough holes it doesn’t matter. The drops coming out won’t bore holes in your grain bed.

Tonight Andrea and Charles showed Adam, JoLynn and I Kansas City’s artistic side. We went and enjoyed First Friday. First Friday is the first friday of each month and all the art galleries (of which there are way more than I realized) downtown open their doors and everyone goes and gets drunk and enjoys art. It was super cool and made me realize how little I know about the city and it’s downtown. There were hundreds of people wandering around several blocks having a good time. I ran into Jeff and Catherine (whose name I might have spelled wrong) and completely failed to ask them to join us, because I’m stupid. I didn’t get to see Eric (Hi Eric!), who was also down there somewhere.

This whole deal was an eye opener for me. I’m not really the art gallery type, although I love art. Andrea mentioned at one point that I’m “one of those guys” in response to me suggesting that maybe some of these artists were just untalented hacks who were calling their lack of skill art to try to make some money. When I see a piece of pottery that is supposed to be a cup and saucer and part of it is caved in, and part is broken and the glaze is all messed up and it’s painted in various shades of shit I think to myself “That guy just isn’t very good, so he calls it art and then you can’t criticize him for it.” I learned later that that guy founded Kansas City’s art district and basically invented pottery as an art form.

What the hell do I know?

I’m just subjective as hell. I either like it, or I don’t, and if I don’t I’m not likely to beat around the bush. That’s okay though, not everyone has to like the programs I write 🙂

Yea, I just compared my bits and bytes to your paintings.

We wrapped up the night at 75th Street Brewery which was awesome. Giant soft pretzels and cask brown ale a happy Jason make. Andrea lives within walking distance of: 75th Street Brewery, Chipotle, Wendy’s, a French bakery, Waldo Pizza and some other great stuff. I’d be dead in 6 months from alcohol and cholestoral.

Anyway, First Friday was very cool, and I think will only get better. I’m really looking forward to next month and I think it will be more fun as I get to know the area better. It gave me a better appreciation for downtown. While I’ve always thought the idea of urban living was cool, I’m so suburban it hurts and I really don’t have a clue. Andrea and Charles live and breath it, and made it accessible. So, thanks 🙂

You know the phrase “I have to pee so bad my back teeth are floating”? I never understood that phrase till I became a fan of the beer. Now I get it. For those of you who don’t fill your bladder so full that it wants to pop, I’ll explain. Eventually when you have to pee sooooooooooooooooo bad, when you START peeing you feel it in your teeth. It’s really freakin’ weird. It’s like this tingly, painful, weird feeling.

Man, I love that.

Also, thanks to Adam, Scott, JoLynn, Ryan, Shawn and Kwanza for partying it up with me at OC. Happy birthday to me! I’m old now.

I am looking for someone to go to Coachella with. If you wanna go, drop me a line.

I’d probably be interested in flying out Friday and coming back Monday or something but it would be open to whatever you wanna do. So, drop me a line and let’s make some plans.

Check out The Rasturbator. I did!

Can anyone tell me why my menu separators in my program show up blank instead of with the horizonal line that other applications have? This only happens in the dock menu. I’ve tried adding the separator through Interface Builder and through code (with [dockMenu addItem:[NSMenuItem separatorItem]];

In the example below, my menu is on the right. There should be separators below the ~08. item and below the Stop item. They should look just like the one below the Mute item and just like the ones on the menu on the left, from iTunes.

You know what really drives me nuts? When people are so in a hurry to prove they know what you mean (in a conversation) that they don’t bother to listen to your words and then they fuck it all up cause they didn’t hear a thing you said.

Me: “Yea, so we are going to need a clas…”
Them: *nod, nod, nod* “Yep, gotcha. Exactly.”
Me: “…s that will interpolate th…”
Them: “Yep, perfect. No problem. Easy.”
[time passes]
Them: “Here you go!”
Me: “This is a bag of dog shit…”

Just slow the hell down for a minute! I believe that you know how to do your job, there’s no reason to try to prove it by cutting off sentences!

This also applies to waitresses who don’t write shit down.
Man, that drives me nuts. You got 8 people at a table ordering all kinds of food and drinks and you are gonna remember it? Please.

P.S. I’m not talking about you. Just calm down.

Today was brewing day and I made Guinness! At least, that’s what I intended to make. I won’t really know what I have for a month, but it sure looked like Guinness!

<hitokiri> he and i administered a MUD for like 3+ years
<robin> what’s a MUD?
<barjam> it is like IRC except it is for virgins

Hahahahahha!