Bottling beer

I would definitely enjoy making beer more if there was no sanitizing. It took over an hour today to sanitize the bottling bucket, tubes, hydrometer, caps and beer bottles (and this doesn't count the hour I spent last night peeling off all the beer labels). All this cleaning and scrubbing was just prep work for bottling. The actually bottling part was fun - kind of mindless - but enjoyable since this is the second to last step before waiting 2 weeks to drink. In total, I spent about 4 hours from getting everything ready to putting the filled bottles away to carbonate.

In summary, for $45 + x gallons of water used for the beer and even more for sanitizing + approximately 7 man hours, I made:

• 28 x 12-oz bottles of beer +
• 12 x 22-oz bottles of beer

Would I do it again? Probably, but not until this beer supply goes down and I accumulate enough bottles again.

Screenprinting T-shirts

For an upcoming girls' weekend in Milwaukee, I decided to screen my own t-shirts. I had done this once before on white t-shirts, but never on colored t-shirts, so I wasn't sure how it was going to come out. It took 3 shirts to finally get the hang of screenprinting a lighter color paint on a dark shirt. The first 2 prints came out too light (pushed paint through too much) and the third print was too thick that some of the paint stuck to the screen and not the shirt (didn't push enough paint through). The happy medium was doing a few heavy strokes of paint followed by a lighter stroke of paint. I still had to go back through all the shirts and do touch ups, but the fourth and fifth shirt touch ups were much easier than the other three.

The screen itself was made from 1" x 2" wood, cut and brad nailed into a picture frame. The I used a screen cloth found at a fabric store and tightly canvased the frame with it. After tracing on the design, I painted on Mod Podge glue to cover the areas that shouldn't get paint.

A finished product below:

Strawberry Buttercream

I made this cake for a friend's birthday bbq yesterday. The cake was yellow box cake mix with homemade strawberry buttercream. The buttercream consisted of butter, shortening, powdered sugar, macerated strawberry puree, and vanilla.

At first, I had only used the strawberry juice that developed after macerating fresh, diced strawberries in sugar, but the pureed mixture had a more intense flavor. I thought I could create a super strawberry filling by adding a little basic buttercream to the puree, but this turned disastrous as the ratio caused the buttercream to separate and suspend in the puree; adding in more buttercream and salvaged the filling.

Brewing Beer

I happened to find myself near a homebrew supply store and decided to pick up a $45 kit to brew a Belgian Farmhouse style ale. I already owned a basic beer making kit ($30 off craigslist) and had been meaning to brew some beer for a while. The kit came with malt, hops, barley, yeast, and flavorings such as paradise seeds, coriander, and dried orange peel.

Reading through the directions, I figured it would take 3 hours to brew the beer. So if I started at 6:30 PM on a work night, I would be able to finish around 9:30 PM. The brewing part was easy, boil, simmer, 20 minutes, 50 minutes, and never once did it come close to boiling over (something I was really concerned about when brewing in the kitchen). I sterilized everything with the powder that came in the beer making kit and dumped my wort into a 5-gallon bucket with water. Then, I was suppose to wait until mixture cooled to 70 - 75 degrees.

10:30 PM - 88 degrees
11:00 PM - 86 degrees (add ice packs around the cooler, including bags of frozen peas that I had)
12:00 AM - 84 degrees (put bucket in ice water bath in the sink)
1:00 AM - 80 degrees
1:30 AM - 78 degrees (screw it, adding yeast and going to sleep)

I had no idea that it would take so long to cool the wort. Next time, I'll do this on a Saturday.

3 days later... After lots of bubbles being released in the air-lock, the bubble activity has started to slow down. The mixture is transferred to a secondary fermentor.

7 days later... The mixture doesn't look like it has bubbled lately. I'm not sure if this is normal, or a sign that I have done something wrong. I tried to sanitized everything as much as possible, but I'm a bit worried that something may have gone in.

Reflection: If this is successful, I would have brewed 5 gallons of beer for $45 (plus cost of time). That is equivalent to about 6 microbrew pints at a pub I regularly go to. If this is not successful, I'll be super bummed.

Baked Potato Cake

A friend of mine decided to throw her boyfriend a mashed potato-themed birthday party since it's his favorite food. So I decided to contribute by baking a baked potato cake, not exactly mashed potato, but it was on the potato theme, plus I really wanted to make one.

I initially got the idea after watching Sandra Lee make baked potato ice cream sundaes using potato-shaped chocolate ice cream dusted with cocoa powder and topped with whipped cream. For my cake, I used 2 boxes of cake mix for the cake covered with chocolate frosting and dusted with cocoa powder. I carved out an area in the middle to add the potato filling which was actually just frosting with extra powdered sugar. More frosting went to creating pats of butter and green fondant was rolled and cut to make chives.

Building a Bed

I thought I'd start off my first project entry on a good note with a project I have completed, a bed. (Note: the first major piece of furniture I've built.) I had owned an IKEA bed previously, but sold it when I moved 2 years ago. Since then I've been sleeping on a mattress and boxspring that sits on the floor. Now that I've moved to a more permanent residence, I've decided it's time to have a real bed again, and one that's not made out of particle board.

Inspired by a Pottery Barn design, but turned off by the price tag ($$$$), I decided to build my own bed. I used the dimensions listed on Pottery Barn's website to create design plans for the bed and purchased all the wood from Lowe's for about $200.

The construction consisted of 3 identical boxes with storage space, trim around the borders, and a support system to connect the 3 boxes. Working here and there on the project for a bit, I built the three base wood frames with my boyfriend's help in 2 weeks. The first week was spent cutting all the materials, then the next week was used for assembling of the boxes. As expected, I dropped the project for about a month until I picked it up again to do the trim and paint which took only 3 work evenings since I did not buy enough trim the first time.

Now the next hiatus in the project was not my fault. This was the time when mother nature released her wrath on New England for supporting the Patriots and the basement was flooded with an inch of water for 2 weeks. Luckily there was a wooden pallet in the basement where we could stack the boxes until the basement was dry again.

I then dragged my feet on the project because I had no idea how to connect the 3 boxes so that it supported boards for the mattress, but could also be disassembled without unscrewing the wood. When I finally sat down, figured it out, and did it, it was already 3 months since I first bought the materials for the project.

The final product is shown in the picture above. The wooden plank and 2x4's on top of the bed are used to fill the whole in the middle and connect the 3 sections together. The dimensions fit a queen size mattress.

Flying Lesson

When Groupon Boston had an introductory to helicopter flying lesson for $80, I immediately bought the Groupon deal and only afterward, did I actually think about what I had just monetarily committed to.

Going to the online course site, I had to read 3 different manuals, fill out a questionnaire that checked I had read the material, and then register for the ground school class. The reading took hours, especially since some of the information was very technical and ground school class was an additional 3 hours in preparing for a 20-minute introductory helicopter flight.

The instructors kept ground school class fun and as entertaining as humanly possible given the topics of aerodynamics and laws of physics. At the end of the class, there was a 30 question quiz where you had to get at least a 75% to pass ground school and be able to fly. Failure to pass meant you had to take ground school again. Although the test was open notes and handouts, a few students did manage to fail.

I signed up for my flight the very next day and the weather could not have been more perfect. The 20-minute flight went by so fast and was incredible. The only "oh sh*t" moment I had was when the instructor first started the helicopter engine and the whole helicopter shook. It also didn't help that the cockpit of a helicopter felt less securely caged than a car.

I would love to fly again, but to take the helicopter out for an hour costs $330, plus an additional $50 for the instructor. The flying club also has airplanes for rental for as low as $95 an hour, so that may be a viable alternative.