Manly lists and the like

 I’ve noticed, on more than one occasion, random men’s articles will publish their “100 things every man should know how to do.” Or “top 50 things to do before you die,” well, here’s mine. It’s similar to all the others and really I wanted to see what things I’ve remembered.

Clothing and Appearance:

Know how to tie a standard necktie with at least 3 different knots

Know how to tie a bow-tie

Iron/starch a shirt/pants

Sew on a button/hem your slacks

Shape your facial hair no matter how minimal or excessive it may be

Shave with a straight razor or safety razor.

Match your leathers (belt and shoes) to compliment your wardrobe

Know the difference between Hounds tooth, Herringbone, and Glen Plaid.

Know when and how to wear a variety of gentlemen’s hats.

Shine shoes.

Maintain leather (belts)

Properly wear and use a pocket watch

Three piece suit (nuff said)

Skills:

Wire a light fixture

Split firewood

Start a fire

Cook on a campfire

Climb a tree

Pitch a tent

Change a wall switch

Change a thermostat controller

Brew your own beer

Hang,, tape, mud, drywall.

Paint (walls, trim, furniture)

Change a flat

Change your oil

Maintain your vehicle fluid levels

Change your brakes/rotors

Shoot a firearm

Field-strip and clean said firearm

Know the difference between calibers and NATO ratings of ammunition

Dig an irrigation/flood control ditch

Swim 100 meters

Float

Turn your clothing into a floatation device

Administer minor first aid

Administer the Heimlich

Wrap a sprain

Stabilize a possible spinal/neck injury in prep for medical attention

Stabilize someone going into shock

Change a diaper

Dominate a canine

Cook (period)

Wash your own clothing

Sharpen a blade (knife, axe, razor)

Maintain control of a vehicle in hydroplane

Maintain control of a vehicle drifting on ice

Weld with a stick welder/tig welder

Purify water

Take a tequila shot, straight

Same with whiskey

Replace your under sink plumbing

Replace the guts of your toilet

Unhook a bra, one-handed

Please a woman

Open a bottle of champagne without making it pop (seriously it does make a difference in the flavor)

Mix a variety of basic cocktails

Granted this collection is not complete, I can expound on almost all of them. There are some that just shall not be published as its none of your damned business. Enjoy.

Some random musings

My father in law gave me an old "beer fridge," basically the tallest minifridge. It's perfect for a fermentation chamber. Looks like I'll be doing my first lager in this thing. If I can get a second one I'll get two going.

My employing department's chair has commissioned me to help him build a stand alone green house in a refrigerator for a specific cold weather plant that he still hasn't told me the name of. It'll be an interesting project and if I'm lucky I'll find a way to patent the design.

Gnarlyhead vineyards has earned my seal of approval recently with this one admission. Granted they are in California, they must have southern roots. "The word “Barbecue” is often misused. When cooking steaks, hot dogs and hamburgers on the gas grill it is called grilling. Barbecue is slow-cooking meat (over charcoal or wood) at a low temperature for long periods of time…sauce or dry rub? Your choice!"

Got the square foot gardening enclosure built. The wife wants to use it for herbs (which I support fresh herbs for cooking) but part of me wishes we were staying in this house for another 5 years so I could plant some hops.

Work fookage has taught me that it is possible to get put into a position of power and authority without really knowing how to do your damned job. I mean how hard is it to use the programs available to update the budgets of all of your grant holders? They shouldn't have to wait two days to get their numbers while you break out the abacus. An employee shouldn't have to wait a month to get paid from a FUBAR on your part. In the same vein, said employee should be able to get a response from you regardless if you answered said question in another email. Ignoring employees with payroll questions is not acceptable. FLSA complaint incoming.

School is starting soon and ROTC PT has reminded me that being lazy in the summer hurts when school starts up. I should have been working out all summer.

That's it for now. Leave suggestions of topics you wish me to muse on. Tell your friends, that you think need a straight answer, about the blog. I think next post will be about my attempt to change my shocks and small engine repair on my weedeater.

On the subject of Social Media

My sister recently invited me into the beta for google+. It looks pretty intuitive. Finding people is a snap, adding them to groups or circles is easy. I will play around with the settings some more but I think it'll take some hardcore facebookers away. More to follow.




Yeah....notsomuch.

RIP Wellington

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Dream Theater - Octovarium, Nightwish - Dark Passion Play
Current Drink: Feckin Irish Whiskey

A word about domesticated pets. They have been referred to as "our furry friends" or "fur babies," etc. Whether you have a cat or a dog, or hell even a monkey, you inevitably form a psychological bond. You care for said animal as if they were a member of your family, albeit kids change the equation but you still care for the pet. I say this because I have had coworkers chastise me for being so attached to a cat because it is considered a lesser pet in the eyes of men, or it is considered a girls pet.  Let me tell you something about "man-code" and pet love: it's all bullshit. If Johnny badass with his full blooded Rotweiler can be reduced to a (blubbering 12 year old girl who just got dumped by her first crush when his Rottie just got diagnosed with a fatal disease) wreck and still be considered a man's man then I believe I can be excused for being torn up over having to put my cat to sleep.

Wellington was a hard luck case from the start. Fat cat came to me as a rescue from a friend who didn't know the first thing about animals. Kept in a cage sized for a mid sized cat, 8 week old Wellie shared it with his Large sized mother, covered in excrement and half starved. This cat acted like he had no spine, draping himself over chair arms and whatnot.  He tore through his first bowl of food and Ione's (my other cat) food bowl. Ever the gentle giant fatcat was just a poof of love. He topped out at 17lbs. after which we discovered he was part Maine Coon, and with that size still moved like he was a sleek and tiny cat. He had so much fur between his toes there were times he'd chase the other cat around the house only to drift around corners on hardwood floors like a race car.  He had digestive issues since we got him and with patience we adjusted both cats' diets. In the end what took him was a form of cancer in his abdomen that metastasized in his pancreas and his lymph nodes.

RIP little ginger kitty, you will be missed.

The idiot's guide to making beer

The condensed version.
If you can make a cup of tea, you can make beer. Simple as that.
Extract brewing:
1. Boil water
2. Add specialty grains in grain bag (big ass tea bag), steep for recommended time.
3. Remove specialty grains, add LME/DME (liquid malt extract/dry malt extract).
4. Bring to boil, start your hop schedule.
5. Remove from heat, cool to approximately 90ºF.
6. Take the original gravity reading, record it.
7. Pitch yeast, stir, transfer Wort from brewpot to Primary Fermentor.
8. Wait.
9. Transfer to secondary fermenter add hops for dry hop or bottle/keg.
10. Drink and profit.

Now, some terms and concepts.
•The grain water prehops is called sweet wort (pronounced wert) due to the sugars from the malted grains. The wort post hops is called hopped wort. LME/DME can be used to speed to brewing process. While all grain brewing gives the brewer more control over the whole process, when making a simple brew malt extracts are just fine. There have been many a competition winner made using the extract method.
•A hop schedule is just what it sounds like, a schedule for your hop addition. Normally read in reverse the hop schedule should consist of a bittering hop and a finishing hop, though some recipes have been done with a single hop addition. ex. of a schedule.

1.00 oz. Chinook Pellet 13.00 52.5 60 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade Pellet 5.75 9.3 15 min.
1.50 oz. Willamette Pellet 5.00 6.1 10 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade Pellet 5.75 3.9 5 min.
1.00 oz. Willamette Pellet 5.00 0.0 0 min.
2.00 oz. Cascade Pellet 5.75 0.0 Dry Hop

what this mean is the Chinook pellet will go in right as the water boils, start your 60 min countdown, the rest is based on the time left in the boil.

•Now, remember when you said I'd never need chemistry again? Bet you are going to feel as stupid as I did when you realize it has practical and honorable uses. Sg - Fg * 131 = ABV% Your specific gravity reading, minus your finishing gravity reading multiplied by 131 will give you your alcohol by volume rating.

example: SG = 1.062 FG = 1.015
.062 - .015 = .047 * 131 = 6.157% ABV

You get the  SG reading from a hydrometer or a refractometer.

•The reason you need to chill the hopped wort to 90ºF or lower is because when you pitch the yeast you don't want to kill it outright. Brewers yeast comes in two different main forms. Liquid and dry. Liquid yeast is simple, you just pour the liquid in before it goes into the fermentor. Dry yeast needs to be activated before it can be added. Either rehydrating in ~4oz. of warm water for ~15mins. or like Wyeast labs does with an all in one packet that reactivates rehydrated yeast (too long to explain, but it's cool as hell). Rehydrated yeast can also be added to a starter which will speed the process from the start and also help to verify you have a good batch of yeast. This process is much like proofing bakers yeast.

•Secondary fermentation serves multiple purposes. Mainly it removes the beer from the dead and dying yeast cells and sediment that given time to steep into the beer can give off flavors to your beer. By siphoning the beer to a secondary fermentor you are moving the beer to another container giving it more room to settle and allowing you to add a dry hop addition (another post for this later).

•Starting off one should bottle, it's easier and cheaper. Bottles are easy to come by, chances are you are a serious enthusiast and should have a good collection of POP TOP bottles. You can recap pop tops, not screw tops. 5 gallons of beer (average brew amount) will fill about 50 12 oz. bottles. Be sure to clean and sanitize your bottles and tops. 


•Finally, something to remember that every brewer must do at all times; SANITIZE YOUR EQUIPMENT. Cleanliness is next to godliness and we all know beer is God's proof of his love to man (Franklin).  Sanitizers can run up a hefty bill but you can do a world of good with home chemicals, more to follow in another post. 


I hope this condensed (lolerskates) guide will give the hopeful neophyte an understanding of the process. 

 

On the subject of Beer

I currently have an Irish Red in the secondary fermentor. I would post the recipe but my program was a trial and the payment site is being stupid, as is paypal. Moving on. The Irish Red is my 5th batch and in my error I used the priming bucket to measure my gallon marks. Big pickle bucket with decal markings, probably mass produced means inaccurate measurements. Long story short, this will be a true Irish Red as the projected ABV was 5.5% and the actual ABV was measured at 7.9% Go me for undercutting the water in the recipe. Moral of the story, break out the measuring cups and get an accurate marking by gallon for 5 gallons.

TL;DR
When doing something that requires precise measurements, use a proven gauge; don't wing it.

It begins

I figured it was time to start passing on the wisdom I have accumulated over the past few decades (read as warn you against my mistakes). This blog will be a collection of tips and tricks learned the hard way or passed on from friends and family. It will contain discovered recipes that any person who can't cook to save their lives can reproduce successfully (challenge accepted f7u12). There will be a recurring section pertaining to home brewing beer, as well as reviews of my own creations and helpful links to the neophyte brewer and the experienced alike.  I hope to inform as well as entertain. I doubt this will be daily, possibly weekly but definitely at least one post a month. So, introduction done, I guess I should work on the first real post. See you shortly.