New Homebrewing System - Initial Run

After adding the new mash tun to my brewing equipment arsenal, I was finally ready to break it all in with a brewing session. I chose to brew an all grain version of the partial extract Full Sail Ale Clone I brewed recently. This will give me a good basis of comparison.

For this batch I decided I would make yeast starter for each of my five gallon batches. However 90% through the process I realized I did not have the appropriate size bungs for my one gallon jugs. Since I had already pitched the yeast into the starter, I had to think fast. I remembered hearing of a trick, using balloons as an airlock. I had a bag lying around so I washed, sanitized, and turned the balloons inside out and attached them to the top of the jugs. This worked pretty well and definitely did the job of preventing pressure explosion and preventing cross contamination. The next afternoon the balloons where very full, visually showing the yeast starter was a success.

On brew day, I enlisted the help of a couple of my brewing friends to assist me in the process. And I'm glad I did, definitely helped to have an extra set of hands helping haul the full brew pot and mash tun around. In the course of brewing I found that my cheap digital thermometer was inaccurate, off as much as +20°. Fortunately the thermometer on my brew pot was accurate.

I chose to batch sparge for my first all grain on this system, and it seemed to work out just fine. In the future I may try to fly sparge, but for that I think a rectangular mash tun would work better, so as not to upset the grain bed.

After boiling the bittering & aroma hops, and cooling the wort with an immersion coil, we leveled out the wort into two 6 gallon carboys. I lost more liquid in the process then I thought. Starting off with 7 gallons in the brew pot, adding 4 more for the mash, ended up with about 6 gallons of wort. I boiled more water and topped each carboy off at the 5 gallon mark. Even though one of my buddies tried to talk me into loading it all into 1 carboy and going imperial style.

In all a successful brewing day. I now have 10 gallons of Amber Ale in primary next to my recently brewed Mocha Java Stout. I found some bugs in my new all grain system that I'll quickly work out before I brew again.

DIY - Mash Tun

Upgrading my brewing setup from 5gal to 10gal batches requires that I also create a 10gal mash tun. Following the advice of one of my fellow home brewers, I followed these instructions to build mine. The project was very simple, requiring a quick trip to Home Depot and 10 minutes of assembly time. Can't wait to put this to good use on my next batch of homebrew!

Pac-Man is Alive!

After four months of hard work I've finally finished restoring/converting my Pac-Man cocktail arcade cabinet to full glory. This cabinet has been locked away from the world for more then a decade, maybe even two decades. It was hidden away in my buddies garage forever, and then a few more years in mine, until I had the time to invest in restoring it. The cabinet was empty other then the original monitor, and in very poor shape. So I made the tough decision to "MAME" the cabinet. I'm sure I'll be flamed by the purists out there, but for me and this cabinet, this was the right decision.

I started off by stripping the cabinet bare, and giving everything a thorough cleaning. I had to rebuild the under carriage and leg levelers as the wood was splintered from years of moisture. I sanded rust off the metal components and gave everything a new coat of paint. I installed my old 19" IBM CRT monitor, which to my surprise fit perfectly with only minor alternations.

I then installed a vast array of new components:

• 11" Cocktail Control Panels from ArcadeDepot. I had to modify the controls from pac-man's centered solo joystick to a proper joystick & 3 buttons layout.


• Red/Blue Suzo Universal STC 500 (OMNI Stik) Joysticks (set to 4-way)


• Red/Blue Translucent Pushbuttons from FX Buttons


• Mini Round Momentary Pushbuttons


• Reused my old I-Pac4 Encoder from Ultimarc, however I may installed a GP-Wiz40 Eco from Groovy Game Gear that I have lying around to try it out.


• Cold Cathode Lights from NW Computer Accessories


• an old Dell Optiplex GX1 - running Micro XP Pro.

To keep the cabinet as authentic as possible I only installed MAME and classic ROMs that have a cocktail cabinet dip switch mode. No Nintendo, Sega, Virtual Pinball, or jukebox craziness on this cabinet. I configured everything under the MaLa front-end, and set the machine to boot directly into Pac-Man (you can then backout to select other games to play).

I still have a few more lighting, electrical, and software tweaks to make to the cabinet, but it's in fully function order. It was ready in time for my 30th B-Day party, and got a lot of usage and rave reviews.

Mark another knotch in the project tree, let's see what's next ...

DIY Video Camera LCD Monitor

I'm back in full project mode again and have been planning to work on my filmmaking. There is still a lot of gear that I need to collect, purchase, and/or build before I dive into the deep end. I've been wanting to add an external field monitor to my equipment, due to the lack of (or maybe to the benefit of?) a flip out LCD viewfinder on my camera. This helps show exactly what the camera sees, fine tune focusing, and removes your eye from the internal view finder when tracking, dollying, or other large movement scenes.

I started off pricing out various high quality, light weight, portable LCD monitors, and found some great options. However at the last minute I remembered I had an old Insignia IS-PD040922 portable DVD player laying around. I got it a few years ago as an Xmas gift, and the DVD player broke after just a few hours of usage. Best Buy refused to fix it, so it's just been sitting around. I pulled it apart, fixed it up, and modified it to mount on my camera's MA-100 microphone adapter plate.

It works very well for this application, even if the resolution sucks by comparison to newer screens. It's an excellent option until I get serious about my filmmaking. By then I'll have the experience of using this screen, and know more about the specs I want in my next screen. I'm excited to put this new setup to work.

Pinewood Derby 2009

This past weekend my son and I had the chance to build and race our first pinewood derby car. This was a great opportunity for me to continue to instill my philosophy of "if we can think it up, we can build it". In the past I've included my son on various phases of my own projects. Showing him that we can build anything. However he's never really caught on or gotten excited about any of it (unless it has to do with video games). However this time he seemed to catch on to the idea, and was pretty amazed by what we came up with.

We constructed our car using the Official BSA Derby Car Kit, a NASCAR helmet Pez dispensor, a pair of plastic exhaust pieces from a toy semi truck, yellow duct tape, an old bolt/washers (weight), hot glue, some number stickers, and 2 coats of blue and clear/gloss finish spray paint. I made sure to weigh the components at various stages of construction to ensure it weighed in just under the 5 oz max (final weight 4 7/8 oz).

We arrived onsite Sunday to race with all the other kids. Unfortunately the school custodian didn't arrive to let us into the school gym so we setup the track outside and suffered in the cold weather (there was still snow on the ground 4 hrs earlier). We made the best of it though for the kids.

Soon the racing action started and everyone had a great time. One of the parents was positioned as the starting gate keeper, and did an excellent job of riling the kids up, getting them excited and voicestrous about every race. The races were purely for fun this year, as in past years people (ie. Dad's) have become too competitive. Our car wasn't the fastest, but not the slowest either. It was however one of the top 4 best looking cars! I took notes however and next year I'll do some more research, testing, and tuning.


In the end everyone won a trophy. I was happy to see the scout leaders came up with creative award categories, which each child won via voting. Much better then a traditional "participation" award. Ever kid came away feeling like their car won them a prestigious award. We ended up winning "Shinniest Car"!

DIY Pool Table Light

I shopped around local retail and web based billiard supply shops for a hanging lamp for my pool table. However I was disappointed with the quality and pricing of many lamps. So as a hobbyist I decided to build my own. After shopping around for components I ended up with:

• 3 x Portfolio hanging antique brass pendant


• 1 x Expanding aluminum drapery rod (2" x 72-144")


• 2 x Decorative aluminum/glass finials


• Misc hardware: threaded pipe, ceiling hooks, ceiling cover plate, ...

I spent a few hours assembling, installing, and leveling the new lamp. In order to center the lamp over the table I had to create a bit of a "cat's cradle", due to the table being between ceiling joists. The proper method would have been to installed a cross joist in the attic above the table. However due to the combination of regular & vaulted ceilings in my house, it's a major pain to navigate to the section above my game room. For now I just wanted to get the light installed and wired in. This spring I will haul my tools and lumber there and put in the cross joist. For now maybe I'll hang some brewery flags or some other decorations to mask the hardware.

I'm very satisfied with my home made billiard lamp. I saved some money, and have a much better lamp then if I purchased a retail one. In the future I may make some further modifications to improve its look. Possibly some decorative curled metal on top between the lamps like this.

Mad Max Moto

Went outside at lunch time and saw this "inventive" motorcycle parked out front with the rest of the employee's bikes. This thing has a keg for a gas tank, and combination ammo box / rusty farm tractor seat. Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to hear this thing fired up. This guy should hookup a deal to include it in a viral marketing campaign for the next Mad Max movie!