Monthly Archives: February 2011

President’s Day Brew

I had off yesterday for President’s Day, and I used to take care of two important things, my house, and my booze. First up was the house. Then, following my win against the termites, I applied two coats of Drylock to my previously untreated walls, refreshing the general area. Finally, after completing my homeowner chores for the day and at least a beer or two in at this point, I switched gears to the booze.

After all, I did have to let the paint cure! One of my biggest pains is where to put fluids as I’m transferring them. There are beer buckets and carboys of wine and potassium metabisulfite, and it’s always a process to rack or move something. So I finally broke down and purchased a spigot for some empty juice buckets, drilled the hole, and verified that it did not leak. This should make things much easier/faster. In addition, I treated myself to an auto-siphon. Finally, I picked up two-gallon jugs for test batches of fruit wines and who knows what. 

After the tortuous process of peeling the labels off of what seemed like a billion bottles (or just over a case), I started to sterilize everything. Next, I racked the Syrah into a bucket, cleaned the carboy, put the wine back in, then added some chitosan for clarity. Just to note, I previously added a bit of potassium sorbate and MBS to kill off some fermentation and avoid dizziness. 

After that, I decided to bottle the batch of Bavarian Wheat I had. I’m a bit nervous about it. I left it in the primary bucket for 21 days, it was COLD down there, and I think it needed more time. But it smelled great. I can’t wait to taste it. I also started a 1-gallon batch of “White grape raspberry wine” and some “Ginger Beer”.

Why I’m done with Starbucks

So I’m upset with Starbucks to the point where I’m done with them until at least 2012.  Considering my office is in the same parking lot as a Starbucks, where I love the people, that says a lot.  The short version of the long story goes something like this.  For the past four years that our office has been in this location, the owners of the company I work for also go to SBUX daily. I have been purchasing gift cards for them for Christmas.  I decided to spice it up a bit more this year than the standard plain off-the-shelf card. What a mistake that was. read more