Hey, reader.

If you're reading this, you probably clicked on a link in my sig at homebrewtalk.com.

I'm consolidating my blogging to my 'other' blog at http://morrisonblogback.blogspot.com/ Please have a look there!

Thanks

jds

So I gave in to peer pressure yesterday afternoon, and joined Twitter. Wow, there's a lot of people on there, and even some fairly famous ones.

I've never been a "social networking" kind of person. As far as I can see, MySpace is just a wasteland, and was from the very start. Ditto for facebook and all those other online popularity contests. So far, twitter seems a bit different.

So, how does one separate personal from professional life with all the new tools? Once again, the line between "life" and "work" gets fuzzier. If a work contact wants to follow my twitter feed, do I let them? I can see a definite need to keep these things separate.

So, readers, both of you (ha), How do you keep the professional part of life separate from the personal and vice versa. Do you? Is it even expected anymore?

I've seen a lot of people (well, a few anyhow) and been told by others that iodophor is an inferior sanitizer, because it can leave off flavors. I don't think so. I think the reason Iodophor has got a bad reputation over the years is because people use way, way, too much of it.

Iodophor's been around for a long time. Growing up on a farm (of sorts), I used it daily for dairy goats. A strong solution for teat dip, and a mild solution for milk buckets and pans. So, once I started brewing and got away from bleach to sanitize, iodophor was the natural choice.

Here's the secret to using iodophor as a brewing sanitizer. 3 ml per gallon. That's the magic number. Any more, and you waste it. A lot more, and you can taste it. I've heard of people measuring it by the capful, but I don't think that's accurate enough.

On brewdays, I mix up a gallon of iodophor in the fermenter. A syringe graduated in ml is the perfect instrument to measure accurately. I swish it around in the fermenter, then dump it out into a bucket and cover the neck of the carboy with Saran Wrap. Some of the solution from the bucket goes into a spray bottle, and the rest remains in the bucket. Everything that goes into postboil wort gets sprayed or dunked in the iodophor. Fast, cheap, effective. That's the mantra for the KISS brewer, and Iodophor fits the bill.

Plus, it doesn't etch your countertops at full strength, although it will stain your clothes.

I'm glad this presedential election is over. It's been a long time coming, and I'm glad to see the campaign ads off the TV.

For years now, I've said that John McCain was the type of person I wanted to see in the White House.

I voted for Barack Obama. It wasn't an easy choice. In fact, I waffled until the week before the election. There were a lot of things about Obama that I liked, and disliked. Same thing for McCain.

In the end, it came down to VP candidates, and who I thought would appoint a better cabinet. Sarah Palin? I think she's a walking joke. I think the Republican party has to do better than assume somebody "folksy" will appeal to middle America. I thought it was a cynical choice, to pick an idiot for a running mate. Sure, the R's have elected doofuses before (see Dan Quayle and W for examples), but there's something about Sarah Palin that just rubs me wrong. I think she's putting on an act.

So, where to now? I'm worried that we now have one party with both control of the executive branch, and the legislature. We need to keep an eye on our legislators, people, and keep them from doing stupid stuff because they can. We need to watch Pelosi and her cronies carefully.

I really believe in having one party control the executive branch while another has the majority in the legislature. That's why I voted for a lot of Republican legislative candidates. Hopefully, we, the people can keep the new majority in congress from taking the bit between their teeth and running off like fools.

The old adage still applies: Love your country, fear your government.

Wow, GABF was a ton of fun. I had a blast meeting up HBT'ers, drinking good beer, and generally walking around a rainy downtown Denver. Hope to see more HBT'ers next year. Now, I need to get brewing. Summer's over and the fall/winter brewing season is upon us.

Like the title says, I think brew kits and books do beginners a disservice by including hydrometers. After all, this craft has been around for thousands of years, mainly without hydrometers. In my experience, a hydrometer in a beginner's hands is an excuse to open up a fermenter and dig around in it.

Even though that's not normally a problem, it does increase the risk for something to go wrong. To what end? I honestly think most kits / beginner guides could just as easily dispense with the hydrometer and give instructions more along these lines:

1) Boil the wort
2) Add the hops during boil
3) Remove and let cool.
4) Put it in a sanitized fermenter.
5) Pitch yeast, add airlock.
6) Ignore it for a month.

So, sure, that's heresy to some, but I think a lot of beginners would have a better first batch if they were taught to leave it alone and let the yeast work its magic.

Signs that fall is coming:

The evenings get cooler
The CU-CSU Football game is tonight
I start thinking about my fall brewing plans.

With a nice cool basement to work with, and 5 or 6 empty carboys, it's time for me to start getting more busy on my fall brewing. Here's what I think is in store:

1. Finish my direct-fired keg MLT. I just need to clean up the top and add the dip tube/false bottom.
2. 11 gallons of my rye pale ale. I'll split ti into two fermenters, half with notty and half with Pacman, which I will culture up out of a bottle of dead guy.
3. Brewpastor's 999 Barleywine. The pacman cake from the rye pale will go into this.
4. Christmas ale: I've got a decent recipe put together for a spiced dunkelweizen that I'll brew up for Christmas, so I've got to get that in the works as well.

All that on top of the several gallons of apfelwein that have been aging in the basement for about five months, three gallons of peach melomel that won't be ready for a LONG time, and five gallons of dry stout that I'm kegging today or tomorrow. Fall plans, indeed.

So...
SWMBO and I bought a new house last fall. I'm finally getting around to putting in the back yard. Over the weekend, I transported a couple of yards of compost to the back and rototilled it into our nasty clay soil.

I mean serious clay. This stuff turns into cement when it's wet. Even with a beefy 9 HP rear-tine tiller, it took several hours, and the tiller was bucking all over the place. By the time I was done, I knew my back was going to be complaining.

This morning, I woke up and got out of bed. Ouch! I could tell there was something out-of-joint just by looking at my posture in the bathroom mirror. I figured I's try to give it some time to fix itself before calling the chiroquactor.

I limped into the office, and spent an hour catching up on the AM. I finally decided to get up and make some coffee. I went to stand up and SNAP! Something shifted in my lower back, and everything went red for a second. I fell back into my chair and thought "Crap. How do I get out of here."

Then I went to stand up again. Hmmm... Less pain. I can stand up straight now. Hallelujah, no trip to the back doctor. I think I may start shopping for an inversion table.

So I was talking with my wife from an airport last night, and she told me that she and our daughter were watching the Olympics together. An Obama campaign ad came on, and my six-year-old kid turns to my wife, and says:

"Mom, I don't think he has the skills to be president."

Sometimes, they really ARE listening.

So there I am, officeing away in my office, when the marketing whiz sticks her head around the corner. "Joe, the alarm people called. They say the burglar alarm's going off in Zone 3."

"Ummm, we don't have three zones." I reply. "Give them the code word and ask them if we need a service call."

Ten minutes later, my phone rings. I answer.

"This is ADT calling. Did you activate your 'under duress' code?"

"Ummm, no." I reply.

"Well, somebody did, and the police are outside your front entrance. Tell me what you're wearing so they know it's you coming outside to talk. You don't want anything to go wrong."

"Okay. I'll be right out."

As it turns out, ADT was working on another alarm system in the area yesterday, and the tech misprogrammed it. While he was trying to test somebody else's system, ADT was getting alerts from what they though was OUR alarm panel.

At least we know the police respond to those alarms now.