Category: hobby
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basketfull
This is how I end up with so many tools. When my Mom was preparing to move out of the ancestral manse, she lead me to the bottom of the basement stairs where Dad had built a work bench, waved her hand at the piles of tools he had accumulated over the years and said… Read.
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horsepower
Motive power on the Lost Continent Railway is a hash of electric, diesel and steam. Until I started building the layout in its current incarnation I wasn’t sure what era I wanted my railroad to look like, so for the longest time I collected just about anything that came along at the right price. Later… Read.
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fillerup
Beer’s ready! It’s been at least four weeks since I’ve cooked up a batch of home brew, so I wanted something special. A porter seemed just about right for the cold days coming up, and I found a recipe that seemed to be not only very popular, but easy to tweak as well. Several people… Read.
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splinters
The Lost Continent Railway occupies a lot of real estate, most of it at chest level. I wanted to stand alongside the right of way instead of looking down at it. That left quite a lot of room underneath the bench that the layout’s built on, room that I had barely begun to make use… Read.
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Tower of hops
Riding my bike to work this morning, I spotted this towering pillar of hops growing in the community gardens just off Atwood Avenue. Some enterprising homebrewer is making the most of his garden plot! Wish I knew who he was so I could ask him how to tend a hop plant as successful as this… Read.
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brewing up an ESB
Another brewing day. This time I’m trying to brew an ESB, which stands for either extra-special bitter or extra-strong beer, depending on who you ask. I’m going to go with extra-strong, but only because I was careful to cut back on the bitterness. My Darling B doesn’t like bitter beers and I want her to… Read.
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splooey
This evening I found the batch of beer I brewed yesterday standing in a puddle of its own puke. Sometimes even beer itself has trouble keeping beer down. I’d loaded the beer – wannabe beer, really – into a great big glass bottle that should have had enough room in the neck to hold every… Read.
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PGGB?
Bottling Day! The second all-grain batch of beer is in bottles: six bombers and twenty pints, a respectable haul. Still not sure what to all this batch. I’m not very good with names. It’s the batch that was supposed to be Centennial Blonde ale but I forgot to halve the recipe, so it’s a little… Read.
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Centennial Blonde take two
Brewing Day! This will be my second try at brewing a light ale called Centennial Blonde. I brewed a batch of this about a week ago but forgot to halve the recipe (I was making a five-gallon batch versus the ten-gallon batch the recipe was written for), ending up with a powerfully strong soup that… Read.
This Is Drivel 