Beer 201

A little late for Easter, our first Easter Egger (my guess is Blinky) started dropping these bombs in the back of the coop.  The convenient nestbox complete with golf ball decor and external access was a little too "Irvine Company" for her taste, so now we tramp through chicken guano to retrieve her treasures.  Eggs have been getting slightly bigger by the day, but probably won't ever rival the uber brown grocery store version.  That said, the shells are way thicker and cooler colored and you've got peace of mind knowing where your food comes from.  Still waiting on potentially more easter eggs as well as the Maran dark brown eggs.  

MacGyver got a summons at work from The Loading Dock.  In a lucid moment, he had decided the 50lbs of grain and assorted equipment necessary for All Grain brewing was a bit much to ask the United States Postal Workers to lob over the padlocked gate.  Somehow it all fit in the Mini Cooper thanks to my limited legroom needs and his comfort driving with absolutely no rear view visibility.  The impetus for this project was 

1.  Consistently feed the chickens their favorite "mash" snack instead of conventional chicken feed

2.  Slightly cheaper materials (not that the inputs were that expensive to begin with)

3.  Increase MacGyver's beer snob cred (with minimal brewing of passe IPA) 

Now Ye Olde Stove looks not unlike a soccer sideline to me...  

Because I am not a beer snob, I will give you a very dumbed down version of what is going on here.  

Before:  we would make a limited amount of grain tea to give the beer an identity (i.e. wheat beer vs stout, etc.).  To the tea, we added some concentrated grain syrup and tons of water.  We'd boil this a while, add hops and other flair (i.e. coffee and smoked pepper for my Diableer).  Then we'd cool the kettle off in a sink bath, transfer the tea to a carboy, dump in yeast and airlock it.  

The new process cuts out the concentrated grain syrup step and creates lots more grain for the chickens.  It takes an hour or two longer (more if you are in 'set sail for fail' mode on your maiden voyage).  

Now:  boil oodles of water in giant stock pot that covers all 4 burners (manly!).  Use the spigot to siphon water into the thing resembling a Gatorade cooler while it is on the ground.  Clamber up the step ladder with said "cooler" of boiling hot water.  Route approx 4 gallons of water into lower "cooler" which is full of approx 15 lbs of grain (you have milled using a drill attachment).  Let it sit for an hour.  Cascade still warm water from top cooler into lower cooler using something that looks like a cross between a submerged PVC landmine and a sprinkler.  Cascade water from lower cooler into the giant stock pot (now on the ground and hopefully cooled off).  Boil this, add hops and other flair.  Cool with a copper heat transfer pipe (which was too big to fit in the concentrated brewing pot).  Runoff is routed into our laundry grey water surge tank to irrigate the avocado.  Transfer to a carboy, dump in yeast and airlock it.  Celebrate by scooping the spent grain in the lower cooler into every conceivable empty container you can find.  

Shades of greywater

What's wrong with this picture?

With the help of our awesome friends, Jen & Nina, the FrankenFruit (left) and Christmas Lamb Haas Avocado (right) made their way to the southern end of our lot for optimal sun.  Sadly, our 50' hoses did not stretch the length of the lot and watering was a hit or miss process involving the "jet" setting.  So when the pumpkin seeds from a failed solar baking experiment germinated in the compost mulch, I let them go, thinking the ground cover might provide a microclimate that prevented water evaporation...  I cringe to admit that I might have even planted zucchini down there...  But even with limited watering, things got huge, with stalks overtaking the lower branches of the trees.  I also learned that these gourd things are heavy feeders, apt to compete with the trees for water and other resources.  Our haphazard watering process had also unleashed a crop of spikey weeds which climbed to heights of 4' before we could don gloves to cut them down.  Zombie Rose Hedge re-emerged in all of its extra thorny heirloom glory, further dissuading us from taking care of the trees.

The idea of using the less-toxic water we create in the house was appealing; if it went into sewers, it would probably end up in the ocean and need to be desalinated before it would be potable again.  Stuff like the water MacGyver uses to speed cool homebrew had no solvents in it all all.  Why not keep it closer to home?  That said, we have a tendency to over-engineer things (see: shower curtain experiments).  We'd put this project off, thinking we'd need to wait for the bathroom and laundry plumbing renovations to go in with diverters, giving us plenty of time to plan elaborate greywater bogs and aqueducts, complete with ducks, koi, and catfish.  We ignored the tactical designs included in this book for the more involved ones...  (the golf balls are part of the Fertile Chicken project, the clicker is a token of Rho's status as "teacher's pet" his first day of Puppy K, and the zucchini-- heavy feeder, 'nuff said).  

But desperate times call for simpler measures.  The former owner had been kind enough to leave us with not one, but two broken water softeners.  The first one made its way into the dumpster with the help of surgery with a sawzall.  MacGyver emptied the second one this morning, leaving us with a cistern.  We had some left over cinderblocks from our composting stall that we used to build a base and increase the height differential of the tank.  It was just the perfect height to nuzzle up to the former dryer vent hole on the back porch.  No DIY project is complete without a trip to Home Depot...  

We picked up a spare 100' hose, a washer, a spigot, some gaskets, silicon sealant, and a 10' extension for our current washing machine hose.  All in, about $80, $30 of which was the hose and $15 was an impulse purchase of a spigot manifold.  

MacGyver nearly suffocated himself mounting a spigot on the bottom of the water softener cum-cistern.  It needs to be at the bottom because we aren't using a pump and if it were higher, it wouldn't drain fully.  He also indulged me by taping on a sheet of mesh to help filter the lint out of the water (MaGyver had mentioned this was a barrier to her using greywater).     

We tested it by filling it a third of the way by hose-- that's a lot of hosewater, so it took some time to fill.  MacGyver is bolder than me, attempting to "prime" it by sucking air out of the hose.  I think this "priming" step is optional once your system is set up and you know there are no kinks in the hose.  Any roller coaster loop-d-loops eat into your precious height differential as well.  It can only drain downhill (hence mounting the water softener cistern on cinderblocks).  

Then we tested the washer connection by running a load of laundry.  For detergent, I used this baggie of Soap Nuts which are supposed to be biodegradable.  There was a thin film of white foam on the top of the cistern after rinse.  I'm not sure if that was the Soap Nuts or residue from previous washings.  Clothes smelled clean when the load finished, so I guess it works fine.  I probably didn't need the mesh filter as it appears to be clear after the first load.  We'll see in a couple days if we've killed our plants in this adventure-- we're focusing mostly on fruit trees, not applying greywater directly onto crops we would eat (i.e. spinach, peppers, beans).  The Building an Oasis book has a lot of tips on how to filter greywater to limit risks of contaminating/killing your crops.    

Even though 1/3 of the cistern felt like a lot to fill with the hose, our washer uses more water than we gave it credit for.  If we'd put in a second rinse cycle or tried to hold the water to cool off before irrigating, we probably would have had an overflow situation.  With those caveats, this turned out to be a relatively quick and easy way to increase the amount of water we route to our thirsty fruit trees.    

In other news-- The Great Bean Bakeoff Results:

for folks comparing notes from further afield, we are growing in full sun raised beds in Zone 9b (SoCal) with a timer soaker hose irrigation system.  

Best Heirloom Bush Bean:  Royalty Purple.  Velvety purple pods are both prolific and easy to see.  You can tell that they are done cooking because their casing turns green (but the beans remain a pastel purple).  Bountiful proved to be anything but (that said, it was at a disadvantage hidden behind the Zucchini).  Painted Pony beans were pretty, but slow to germinate, if at all.  Burpee's Stringless feature sounds appealing, but the yield was underwhelming.  

Best Heirloom Pole Bean.  tie.  Cherokee was the prettiest, easy to spot purple.  Turkey Craw provided the most impressive yield.  In the future, pole beans are easier to work with than bush.    

Ballot Fatigue

Imagine my surprise to receive a California primary ballot complete with appropriate party preferences and in my native language.  Check "vote" off my bucket list.

The experience felt like a take home final that was fraught with trick questions...

Proposition 28:  Limits on legislator's terms in office. They already have individual limits on the assembly and the Senate, this would allow them to consolidate their tenure to a 12 year stint in one office.  So doesn't that sort of accomplish the opposite?  

Proposition 29:  Imposes an additional tax on Cigarettes for Cancer Research.  ... but only 20% of the revenue goes to smoking cessation programs and 60% to cancer research?  If a mutual fund management fee was 20%, I'd want to look at their cost structure... 

Libertarian Presidential Nominee?  You could choose from the 9 or just pick Gary Johnson who was announced in May (CA Primary is Jun 5). 

Has the incumbent superintendent done anything to warrant being ousted for an eccentric ketchup thief?

The Board of Education Candidates are quibbling over who can designate themselves as teachers on the ballot?  (and the most promising one appears to be home schooling his kids...)

Rut-Roh

We added another member to our pack.  This is Rho.  He's Chi's half brother's son, so I guess that makes her an aunt.  As orientation leader, she's taught him race & chase, rug & tug, wind sprints, boxing, and how to maneuver the cement stairs into and out of the house.  Like Chi, Rho decided the yard was his church and thus unfit for relieving himself in.  The 100 year old living room carpet, the couch and throw blankets and bed are a different matter.  We are doing an unprecedented amount of laundry, spot botting, and are dangerously close to depleting our paper towel provision.  Maybe this is just Rho's way of encouraging us to do a bit more cleaning around the house.

We're working on feeding him at consistent intervals and taking him outside immediately after, as well as crack of dawn and pretty much any time he looks restless.  Unfortunately, outside trips involve so much race & chase, Rho forgets his original intention until he's wandered back into a nice dark quiet redwood foyer...