Lousy week.
My neighbor, who I have inherited and/or purchased much of my kegging equipment from, has been bitten by the brewing bug hard. I have more than a little blame for this. We brewed his third batch of homebrew while his first went into the kegerator this past weekend. We’ve been trading notes on force-carbonating since I kegged my batch last month, and it looks like we’ve hit on a workable solution. When I put my batch in, I connected the gas feed to the gas post and outlet to the spigot at about 10psi with the valve open, as most of the advice I’ve read says. My neighbor swapped his gas feed to the output post, essentially forcing C02 down a long intake tube to the bottom of the keg to filter up through the batch. As a result, his batch is fully carbonated after about five days, while mine is only at 30% after almost three weeks.
Another thing he found out is that the gas and liquid posts (and their quick connects) are different sizes, so it’s not a simple matter of just swapping lines; in order to work correctly, I’d need to have a third line dedicated for adding gas to the liquid post. Which means I’d have to spend money on a 3-way manifold to add that line.
In the meantime, I’m going to try to make it out to the homebrew store this weekend to pick up a second keg, as well as a length of gas hose, some clamps, a spare liquid disconnect, and a couple of adhesive thermometers for my fermenters.
Update: I bought a short 5-gallon keg and two flared (threaded) disconnects for gas and liquid as well as a check valve and several barb fittings. I put the hose barb, check valve, and liquid disconnect on my second gas line and then connected that to the liquid post on my keg for 12 hours. Last night I poured a beer with 1/2 inch of head, which means it’s getting more gas through the solution. I’m going to take it off at 24 hours and connect it up the proper way to see how well it pours. Having flared disconnects means I can easily swap them out whenever I need to force carbonate a new keg, and then replace the fittings on their proper lines with a pair of wrenches.
Brian Lam, of the Wirecutter, wrote an article that sums up a lot of what I’ve been thinking about for the last six months or so, but haven’t been able to put into words. Using a quote from, of all people, Ted Kaczynski, he illustrates a great point:
Technology lets us do things faster and more efficiently; why would we use that newfound free time to do more and more of the same old thing? I’m not just talking about smarter consumption of content like Johnson is– I’m also saying, fuck consumption.
I spend about two hours each night on the bed looking at my laptop before I go to sleep. Sometimes I’m watching TV and looking at the computer, sometimes I’m switching to my phone. And the whole time, I’m wishing I was doing something else–I spend eight hours a day looking at a computer, why the hell am I doing it when I get home?
So I’ve started a list of things—small things—that I can accomplish with the 1-2 hours of free time I have after Finn goes to bed. Things like spending non-TV time with my wife, reading, doing self-assigned illustration projects, cleaning my workbench, untangling the nest of wiring in the basement, (when the weather warms up) maintenance on the cars, etc. With each one of these things there are ancillary tasks that must be accomplished before I can begin, and those will be part of the list. I’m going to try and close the laptop when I get home and leave it until I get to work the next morning, unless I’m using it to create, not consume.
Addendum: I read this article abut the top five regrets of the dying, and I’m going to try and use it as a roadmap for the time I’d like to reclaim.