Last night I had Finn help me transfer a batch of American Wheat Ale from the primary fermenter into a secondary. She was awesome, and I couldn’t have asked for a better helper. I had her stand on her stool at the sink as I explained each piece of equipment, showed her how I wash and sanitize it, then put it all together and siphoned from the first tank into the second. Then we took a gravity reading and I showed her how to find the numbers (it’s going to be right around 4.1% ABV) before cleaning up all the parts and putting everything away. She was fascinated by the siphon, and I was able to hold her attention span all the way up until the end.

This batch was my first blowout. On the second day of fermentation it was at about 69° and foaming heavily; sometime between midnight and 7AM on the third morning the airlock blew off and I got foam down the sides. I was worried it had gotten infected, because the krauzen never really receded (it mainly dried on the upper portion of the fermenter) but a taste test last night proved my fears wrong. It starts out smooth and flavorful, like a heavier domestic but finishes brittle and sharp to my taste. I’m hoping a few weeks’ conditioning in the fermenter will smooth it out before I keg it.

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About a year ago I set up an eBay search for 6×9″ speaker covers for the Scout, and I’ve gotten notifications in my inbox since then. The backstory is that the speakers I got for Christmas didn’t come with covers, so they’ve been installed without any protection for a year. Having shoved three loads of very sharp and brittle brush into the back of the truck this last week, I decided I couldn’t put off purchasing something any longer, so I pulled the trigger on a pair of Alpine covers for $12 with free shipping (about $12 cheaper than the average listing). Here’s to hoping they’ll fit.

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Jen had the cable guy out the other day to check on our wiring, because after a few follow-up moves the set-top box wasn’t pulling a signal at all. He futzed around with it for a while and said something about the barrel connector in back; whatever the case it’s functional again, and that room is shaping up nicely.