North Cackalacky Visitor

My buddy from North Carolina came up to visit this past weekend. I lived in Raleigh during the dot com boom back around 1999 to 2001. I had my first tech job at that time and through a coworker I was introduced to a whole new crowd of folks. "E", as I'll call him, was one of those folks. He's the only one I still keep in touch with from those days.

In any event, once or twice a year either he'll come up to Virginia for a visit or I'll slide on down North Carolina-way. This time he paid us a visit.

Friday night we made the local brewery beer tasting rounds. We went to Blue Mountain Brewery and had many, many beers. We then swung on down to the South Street Brewery (affectionately known locally as the "Soussed Street Brewery"). After that it was off to Beer Run - not a brewery but a must on the beer Mecca rounds in the central Virginia area.

Saturday we mainly hung out around the house. E and I did some errands - got some lures at Dick's Sporting Goods, picked up a batch of California Common at the Fermentation Trap, dropped off recycling, and then went home. I whipped up the California Common and tossed it in the carboy to ferment.

We had a nice dinner - Apple Ginger glazed chicken on the grill, home made cornbread, and a salad along with multiple whiskey-n-coke drinks. Follow that up with some homebrew Oktoberfest, and then a sampler 12 pack of Victory Brewery beers and we were all lit up like three Christmas trees. Me, E, and the wife that is.

Sunday morning E and I went out to Barboursville to shoot some targets. I brought Hilda (SKS), Cletus (Remington D870 Express), and Harry (Ruger GP100 .357). Here are some pics:

Teh-hut!

Me and Hilda

Me and Harry

A nice action shot with E and Harry

We were firing Fiocchi 12ga. 00 law enforcement buckshot

Cletus putting the hurt down on E

E using Hilda's BSA Red Dot site to terminate the target

Home Brewing Adeventures, pt 1

This Saturday I brewed up a batch of Nut Brown Ale. This is the most alcoholic beer available to home brewers. Due to a happy accident, it appears that my brew will be even more boozey than that.

Basically, you are supposed to start with one and a half gallons of water in your wort pot. For some reason, I thought 8 cups made a gallon (rather than the actual 16 cups). I corrected the error later in the carboy by adding more water. The initial specific gravity readings for this ale was supposed to be between 1.049 - 1.051. My reading, temperature corrected, came out to 1.055.

This error will more than likely translate into even more alcohol in this batch. Oh, darn. A pal of mine who is a master home brewer told me that the way I corrected this error was just fine and that he was currently brewing a batch of Nut Brown that looked just the same in the carboy.

So that makes me feel like a pretty smart guy. This is only my third batch. Even though I made an error I was able to correct the error midstream, thinking on my feet. I'm quite proud of myself. Below you can see the fermentation trap bubbling away with the byproducts of yeast makin' booze.

Camping Trip!

My brother and I went camping Monday night. We woke up to season's the first wintry precipitation at around 4 am Tuesday morning!

We built a stick wall and then draped an emergency thermal blanket over it. Once we lit the fire, standing where I am in this pic you could feel almost no heat from the fire!

I brought my small tent since it was supposed to be cold. We used an extra rainflap to create a little sheltered spot to the side of the tent for our gear and for a little extra insulation.

The beginnings of my brother's bean cassole.

Preheating the iron pan.

As the evening wore on, we broke into our homebrew IPA.

My brother huddling by the tent. My little propane camp stove is heating my brother's antique iron coffee percolator. It was the perfect size for two cups of coffee and it was the first cup of camp coffee I'd ever had without any grounds in it!

Another Apoca-List

Sometimes my mind starts racing and I have to dump it all to a list if I hope to remember half of it the next day. Last night I was thinking about the pending gridcrash and I realized that I needed a clearer idea of a) what needed to be done ahead of time, and b) what my goals would be after the gridcrash.

I'm the only one in my entire family spending any time preparing. Most people have just learned that this is part of who I am and they humor me when I talk about how close to the edge our unsustainable society is. Well, that's fine. I'll do my best to prepare for my entire family.

To that end, I have divided my Post Apocalypse Task List into two main goals. The first is to improve our farm to make it a useful part of a cooperative. Goal two is to setup and initially lead the aforementioned cooperative.

Really the big idea with our farm is to grow enough veggies to feed ourselves and enough hops and barley to make enough beer to trade and for a little personal consumption, of course. With the law being gone (or utterly unenforceable) we may even branch into some other types of cultivation...

• Pre Apocalypse Tasks
• Top off ammo supplies
• Obtain Barley Seeds (en route) [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Obtain Hop Sprout/Seeds
• Build Hopvine Trellis
• Get Planted
• Increase long shelf life food stocks
• Post Apocalypse Tasks
• Start a Cooperative on Our Road, resources including:
• 2 Vinyards
• Brewing
• Corn Farm
• Horses (Plows? Hauling?)
• Metal Working
• Close to railroad tracks
• Multiple ponds (fish?)
• Our Farm
• Build a Root Cellar
• Rain Collection System
• Build Composting Outhouse [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Gather Firewood (tree down by road)(uses last of chainsaw fuel?)
• Compost Pile
• Start Crops, depending on season
• (Peas, Radish, Onion, Spinach, Cabbage, Swiss Chard, Beet, Carrot, Lettuce, Kentucky Wonder Beans, Corn, Cucumber, Squash Zucchini, Green Pepper, Winter Squash, Tomato, Barley, Hops)
• Water Distiller
• Setup Butcher Shop (for hunting: deer, rabbit, & squirrel are abundant)
• Get Some Dogs
• Beer Brewing Equipment Setup
• Gather Rocks
• Spring Improvements
• Firepits
• Landscaping
• Sources
• "New Driveway" & Back by Alamo (a part of the farm on which we used to play "Alamo")
• Scavenge Electrical Resources From Town
• Solar Panels (be on the lookout for those now)
• Electrical Wiring
• Generators (for use in hydro or wind applications) [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Turbines (for use in hydro or wind applications) [edit: 01-09-2009]

Home Brewing

Santa treated me right this year. My wife got me a great home brewing kit. I started my first batch of beer last night (True Brew IPA). I have to say that when I peeked in at my fermenter this morning and saw the bubbling in the fermentation trap I experienced a little perk of pride similar to when your child says its first word or takes its first step.

I really enjoyed the process of brewing. Ninety percent of the work is done up front, for those who know even less about brewing beer than I do. The output of this upfront work is called wort. My wife seemed to think the smell was weird, but I liked it. You could definately tell I was brewing an IPA. The smell of hops was pretty strong.

I still have a while to go before I can actually drink the beer. After placing the wort in the carboy for fermentation, you let it sit for a week to ferment. After this you bottle it and wait for another 2-3 weeks before you drink.

This will be a nice skill to have, should TSHTF. Of course I'll have to advance my skills beyond using kits if I plan to brew post-gridcrash. I am currently looking into hops cultivation, as well. It would be nice to have fresh hops for brewing (gridcrash or no), so I plan to grow enough hops for my own personal brewing uses.

Another point of interest is the water source I use for brewing. While the city water at my house is good, excellent compared to other municipally sourced water I've had, the water from my parents' well is outstanding. I may brew another batch soon with the well water and see if there's a noticeable difference in the taste of the final product. If there is, my Mom will get to see me a bit more often as I come out to her house to get water!

And the best part is that this will save me a lot of money. I am a big fan of the beer (so is the wife), but I won't drink crap beer. Budweiser? Hell, no! Headache in a bottle, is more like it.

No, the beers I like tend to be in the $8-$12 range per six-pack. With this IPA kit coming in at $30 and yielding 48-50 bottles I am looking at roughly $50 in beer saving each batch I brew (8 store-bought six packs at about $10 each being $80).