2012 Brewing Challenge

I’m planning on undertaking a self challenge in 2012. My wife and I bought a house last year and we’ve been pretty busy with fixing it up and making it our own. I’m happy with the house, but I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to much brewing this past year. So to make up for that, I plan on brewing 52 different beers this year. It will be a challenge for me, but I’m excited to try it out.

I’m not sure how exactly I’ll be sharing everything out yet, but I’ll learn along the way. Once I finish my UberFridge, I hope to share the fermentation temperature graphs. If you want anymore information or if you have any suggestions, let me know!

My first batch will most likely be a series of Weizenbocks. My current plan is to brew 6 gallons, split it in to 2 gallon batches, and ferment the 3 beers with different strains of yeast. Over the holidays I picked up and was gifted some 3 gallon carboys, so I’m all set for primary and secondary fermentation.

No Comments / Jan 03.12 / Beer / by Chris Larson

Stout battered tilapia

First I made a whole wheat stout batter:

3 oz – King Arthur whole wheat flour
1 oz – Baking powder
.5 tsp – Chipotle powder
.25 tsp – Salt
.5 cup – Atwater Cherry Stout

Then I made the dipping sauce:

1 part Tomatillo sauce

2 – Tomatillos
1 – Garlic clove
1 tbsp – Key lime juice

1 part Greek yogurt

Take the tilapia portions and rub them in the dry ingredients, then remove the fish and set aside for a moment while you add the beer to the dry mixture. Now you can dip the tilapia in the batter and fry it up!

No Comments / Jan 03.12 / Food / by Chris Larson

Mac OS X security woes

I’m running Snow Leopard and I keep running in to this error with a few applications:

‘SomeApplication ‘ application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?

e.g.,

So with some quick terminal magic:

xattr -w com.apple.quarantine "" /Library/PreferencePanes/SynergyKM.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Synergyd.app

We can remove the quarantine attribute and we will stop getting these warnings.

Found here.

1 Comment / Dec 01.10 / Uncategorized / by Chris Larson

Keep your Win7 computer awake while processing

So I as using HandBrake tonight and my computer kept going to sleep while I converted videos from DVD. This was quite annoying so I created a process launcher that will keep your computer awake while other processes are running. So, all I have to do is set HandBrake to quit when it’s done and then the process launcher will quit and then my machine can go back to sleep.

Thank you Delay for your p/invoke code!

Source

Binary

No Comments / Oct 28.10 / Coding / by Chris Larson

Sleep Cycle alarm clock data

So I recently started using Sleep Cycle alarm clock for my iPhone. Basically the premise is that it monitors how much you move in your sleep and then it recognizes your sleep pattern. Then it uses that pattern to figure out when best to wake you up within 30 or so minutes of your alarm. It doesn’t work with the iPod Touch because of some stupid API inconsistency. It seems to work pretty well, I’ve felt pretty rested lately.

So I was perusing the Statistics tab and comparing the sleep graphs:

And then I got frustrated with the crappy load time between each graph and triple clicked on the graph which brought up this:

So naturally I emailed it to myself. Turns out it’s a 7zip archive with a sqllite db file within. So if you’re interested in grabbing your sleep cycle data and generating you’re own graphs or comparing sets, that’s how you could do it. Pretty neat.

I used: 7zip the extract the file and SQLite Database Browser to view the data.

1 Comment / Jan 14.10 / Coding / by Chris Larson

Building a CNC machine table top

So I was inspired by Brian Oltrogge over at Grünblau Design Studio to make my own 3-axis CNC machine. I’m taking a page out of Brian’s book and attempting a 8′x4′ cutting surface in order to be able to machine pieces of wood large enough to build furniture.

I’ve been working with Rhino3D to design the machine. I started using it because it has a nice CAM plugin and I wanted to get familiar with the interface, but it’s just too expensive for my hobbyist needs. So I think I’m going to move to SketchUp for the CNC modelling/machining.

1 Comment / Jan 13.10 / Woodworking / by Chris Larson

Jolly Pumpkin starts making traditional Lambics

And is blending them in a Gueuze-like fashion (mixing a 2.5 and 3.5 year-old lambic instead of a 1 and 2 year). Makes me think like we have lazy wild yeast in the States. Maybe they can cut the fermentation time down in the coming years.