Greenhouse Update

2014/04/24Whats Growingadmin

Just a little garden update. Seedlings are doing quite well in the greenhouse.

Historically, June 15 was last frost date for the Reno Area. The guy at the nursery is saying “Go ahead and plant”, but I think that’s just because he likes to sell new plants to people that roll the dice and plant early.

I’ve got a greenhouse, So I’m just going to keep repotting these guys and keeping them safe for at least another few weeks.

Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Cukes and Zukes

Some of my hot peppers. Some carolina Reapers in there.

20140424-IMG_0750 Herbs.

My koi and goldfish

Brewed up a Special Bitter Last night

2014/04/24From the Breweryadmin

Keg inventory is getting a little low, so decided to brew up a Special Bitter last night.

OG of 10.50, pale ale extract, some crystal malt, fuggles hops, and West Yorkshire 1469 yeast. It’s always nice when you wake up in the morning to a nice active fermentation!

Oh, The beer on the left is a milk stout a buddy of mine made using my equipment last weekend.

2014/04/20From the Breweryadmin

Bottled some of the Manifesto Mango and Spine bender today. I had kegged both of these beers and force carbonated them. It gives me more control over the carbonation level, and makes the beers ready faster than using corn sugar to ‘naturally’ carbonate them.

Here you can see me using the filler and the capper.

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It took me a little while to get the hang of using the filler, so I had a ‘factory reject’ that needed to have some ‘quality control’ peformed on it. Here’s a picture of it in the Nevada sunset. I have to say, it’s delicious. It’s strong, 10.5%abv, but you’d never know it. Strong grapefuit notes, but the bitterness never overwhelms the flavor.

You can smell the mango on the initial taste, and it’s just a juicy tasting beer.

Cheers My friends!.

Lonely Boy

2014/04/18Around the Ranchadmin

This guy has been hanging around for a couple of weeks. Found him eating weeds in the front ‘yard’. Feel really sorry for him. There’s a herd of at least 20 horses hanging out about a mile south, but they just won’t let him join. He just seems to be really depressed. I went to escort him off the yard and he just moved around slow and gave me the once over. Poor guy.

Double Neck – Paint Prep

2014/04/18From the Shopadmin

Painting is hard for me. I like instant gratification. It takes everything I have to just not grab the can of paint and start spraying on on the bare wood.

But what I’ve read, and started to learn and get stuck into my thick head is that the quality of the finished product really relys on the prep work you do before you ever take the cap of the can of paint.

So here are the parts with all the old finish stripped and cleaned off. I’ve sanded them up to 320 grit and have wiped them off with lacquer thinner and naptha. Since I literally hosed the body off, I’m going to let every thing dry out for a little while before I move to the next step.

The next step will be to put a seal coat (or 2) of lacquer on the parts, let that dry, and sand those back on up to 320 again, just to make sure the wood is sealed and properly prepared for painting.

This is killing me. It’s going to take days and I’d much rather be putting the electronics together.

Double Neck Guitar Project

2014/04/18From the Shopadmin

So a buddy of mine got this guitar for cheap off of ebay. It’s an inexpensive chinese guitar, probably a kit put together by somebody here in the states. The hardware on it is ‘ok’, but the pickups really needed replacing. So I bought it off him and we came up with a plan for rewiring it using some new dragonfire screamer pickups and push pull pots so I could do the humbucker coil tap mod.

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I’ll be doing away with the tone knobs, and basically each knob will control one pickup. The switches will still do the front/both/bridge and top/both/bottom neck selections.

Since I was going to do that much work, I decided I might as well just go full bore and repaint it as well. Not a fan of the plain white paint job on it.

Here’s a couple of pics I took before I remove everything from the guitar.

And here we go, stripping the paint off the body and the headstocks.

Stay tuned, More to come this weekend.

A Couple of new labels

2014/04/17From the Breweryadmin

Will be doing some bottling this weekend, so need to get some labels ready.

Worked with Greg Lonesome at the Rock and Roll manifesto on both of these beers and labels.

Loving the way the labels turned out, can’t wait to see how the beer turned out!

Zorch-O-Matic Stopwatch

2014/04/14Arduinoadmin

Put together a little project for a friend who had some very specific requirements for a stop watch.

1) 2 distinct timers
2) Each time should be controlled by a button.
3) Pressing a button would start/reset the timer and display the last recorded interval.

Used an Arduino to put it together.

Download Sketch and Fritzing Diagram

Peach Small beer 1 gallon experiment

2014/04/11From the Breweryadmin

Ok, Up next is from the same mother batch as the black beery. In fact, everything was pretty much the same except for using peaches instead of black berries during the primary and only fermentation.

Again, Nice, Light, effervescent, and a touch of peach really does come through in the aroma and flavor.

Notice the difference in color from the blackberry. That is entirely due to the different fruits used.

Black Berry Small beer Experiment.

2014/04/11From the Breweryadmin

Made a little 1 gallon batch of beer from the second runnings from the Mango Monster.

Added a couple of handfuls of blackberries during the primary, and only fermentation.

Turned out nice, effervescent, and light.with a touch of blackberry. Not bad at all, to tell the truth.

Isolated Desert Compound

Living on an Isolated Desert Compound in Nevada