I’ve already mentioned my new homebrewing system. One feature I made sure to include was recirculating the wort with an immersion chiller. Like a counterflow or plate chiller, this provides for very efficient cooling. But it retains the advantages of an immersion chiller regarding easy sanitation, by dropping the chiller … Continue reading
After growing hops for a few years, I thought I would try growing some two-row Conlon barley to have a go at turning it into malt for brewing. I probably won’t get a lot of product, but it should be a neat experience. Not surprisingly, the seed looks very similar … Continue reading
Mrs. Nerdly Endeavours likes to fly with me in the airplane, but she gets annoyed at the radio transmissions I have to listen to from air traffic control. So I made an inline switch to block the incoming audio to her headset – she can still listen to her tunes … Continue reading
Always keen on being on the bleeding edge of technology, I bought an LED light bulb despite the relatively high cost. Namely, it’s Philips Dimmable AmbientLED 12.5-Watt A19 Light Bulb (model # 409904 / 423343). First impression: as Public Enemy once said “my Uzi weighs a ton.” Actually it has … Continue reading
I was excited to try the Foreflight app with the latest iPad 3 having a “retina” display with 2048×1536 resolution, four times as many pixels as the old hardware. Version 4.4.2 of Foreflight was at least partially updated for the new iPad, but still wasn’t optimized as you can see … Continue reading
Poort Miss Silvia was still laboring with the original brew system gasket that seals the portafilter against the body of the machine. After six years of almost daily use, a replacement was in order as it was prone to leaks. I knew the old gasket would be difficult to remove … Continue reading
So I carelessly wiped clean my old iPad before copying all the photos from it. A lot of them did not exist elsewhere (transferred from a digital camera and then cleared the memory card), so I wanted to recover them. There was an iTunes backup of the iPad still on … Continue reading
As a youth I saw this advertisement in an old Dragon magazine and while I forgot the name of the game, the picture of it stuck in my mind for decades, particularly the clever tagline: Excommunication is a harsh sentence. Can you stand up to the Pope’s attack fleets? Recently … Continue reading
The lovely Mrs. Nerdly Endeavours treated me to an awesome birthday present of a new homebrewing system. I wound up sourcing a Blichmann Top Tier stand, burners, and shelf from a local shop and the kettles, pump, fittings, etc. from an online source. Here it is squeezed into a nook … Continue reading
I received some parts for a new homebrewing system & thought I’d better calibrate the thermometers to ensure the desired mash conditions, where temperature is critical. To start, I heated water to approximately mash temperature and put it in an insulated mug. I used a reference mercury thermometer and a … Continue reading