Growing hops from seed Growing hops from seed

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

Note: this is from 2013. You might also be interested in the 2014 breeding, 2015 breeding… Oregon is an optimal place to grow hops. They take up a lot of space, but are very gratifying and economical to grow. At the local homebrew store, hops will run $2-3 per ounce. Last year, with 7 mature […]

Filling the barrel - oak aged beer project Filling the barrel – oak aged beer project

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Anyone want to join in on a brew project? My good friend Jamie picked up a full size Bourbon barrel. Now the plan is to fill it with Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Ale (clone) and let it oak age for a year. If you haven’t tried Rasputin, you really should – it’s a smooth, delicious […]

Fermented Pickles (and green beans, and carrots) Fermented Pickles (and green beans, and carrots)

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Every fall, we make pickles and dilly beans. It’s fun, easy and saves lots of money  – if you eat pickled vegetables in the amount that my family does. Normally, we can the vegetables in a vinegar solution. Then last year, I discovered how easy it is to create true sour pickles at home… Pickles […]

Dust Cover (NES) Dust Cover (NES)

Friday, November 19th, 2010

We were at the goodwill today and I spotted a strange accessory for my old school Nintendo Entertainment System. Was it a power glove? Or, perhaps an NES Advantage controller? No, it was something even more useless… an official NES Dust Cover! But hey, we’re talking a mint-condition, still-in-the-package accessory from 1990. For only $2, […]

Hold Up! WordPress Can Do That?!? GTFO!

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Mike Richwalsky Director of Marketing Services, John Carroll University Let’s play ” find the WP site” – oh, wait they all are! Full university web sites? Allegheny – 151 sites and 104 users (soon to grow) John Carroll – Just launched. 27 sites, 35 users. Must have plugins (for a CMS) Amazon S3 – all […]

Pear Cider (Process and Recipe) Pear Cider (Process and Recipe)

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

So we decided to make hard pear cider (perry, or poiré) this year. There are some good recipes on the web, but very little documentation on the complete process. Hopefully this log of our process will fill in the gaps for you. Before we begin, here are some of the essentials. Type of fruit: Ripe, […]

Cuban Cigars 101

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Note: I wrote this while in Mexico, but due to an error in the wordpress app – it was stuck on my phone. I just had a chance to  update the application, which seems to have fixed the bug. So, here we go: We spent several hours Sunday in a small cigar shop that we […]