Greenhouse Update

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.

 

20140424-IMG_0748 Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Cukes and Zukes

20140424-IMG_0752 Some of my hot peppers.  Some carolina Reapers in there.

20140424-IMG_0750 Herbs.

20140424-IMG_0751 My koi and goldfish

Brewed up a Special Bitter Last night

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.

20140424-IMG_0745

 

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.

20140420-IMG_072320140420-IMG_0724

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!.

 

20140420-IMG_0732

 

Lonely Boy

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.

20140418-IMG_0700

Double Neck – Paint Prep

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.

20140418-IMG_0705 20140418-IMG_0703

Double Neck Guitar Project

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.

20140410-IMG_0656

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.

20140417-IMG_0674 20140417-IMG_0671

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

20140417-IMG_0687 20140417-IMG_0686

Stay tuned, More to come this weekend.

Peach Small beer 1 gallon experiment

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.

20140411-IMG_0659