Bro Beer

We spent St. Patrick's Day weekend with J.'s brother and sister-in-law in Tacoma. They have been making beer (this was their 7th batch, we believe) and having fun. It was great to taste of their resent works while brewing up a new batch. We've never done this before, so it was fun to see how it all works. Unfortunately, we had to leave before this batch was finished. We'll have to hear how it turns out. Enjoy the photos of the process.
By the way, any errors are our fault, not J.'s brother's. It was likely our addled brains that didn't track.



Bro - feel free to correct any of this! You're the brewer, not us. We just took the pictures and had fun!

2 1/2 gallons of water @ 170 degrees soaking the grains in bag

Times up, pulling the grain bag and rinsing it

Adding brewing malt extract

Adding the dry malt extract

Boiling before adding the hops

First we added Centennial Hops

We were/are making a creamy stout, so here comes the lactose sugar

Adding a little Irish moss

Adding the Tettnanger hops

Cooling the batch down

Pouring it off into the fermenting bucket

In the past, Bro has used bags for the hops, etc. But time thought he'd try straining it.

L. is again getting into the action (she was stirring earlier).

Adding water to wart to bring the total to 5 1/2 gallons. After racking, etc, will yield about 5 gallons.

Adding the yeast

Stirring it all in

Adding lid with airlock

Ready to find a dark place to brew for 2-3 (more?) days.

Hard to believe that this may be ready for the next step by now! Wow!

Happy pi Day!

Today (3.14) is otherwise known as pi Day. This is also Albert Einstein's birthday. Any coincidence?

This is how we celebrated on MERGANSER. Marionberry, Blackberry, Raspberry, Blueberry and Strawberry Pie! These pictures were taken before we partaked. Yummy!

Thank Goodness for pi Day!

How did you celebrate?

Projects: Enlarging the Quarter Berth

The plan all along has been to do this project, as this is our son's bunk. What was here before, was an aft facing navigation station. The "desk" piece is a teak faced piece of plywood that fits on two "runners" on each side. We had long sense removed this, and then J. roughly boxed in the area between the seat and the "shelf"/water tank. By also raising the seat, this created a small bunk. But even as J. did it, he knew this was a temporary fix - our son was growing!

So, as we were house sitting over Christmas break, J. set to work removing bulkhead (across the boat) and adding one more (length of boat) to create a bunk for E, our son. J. hadn't realized how tight it was until E. climbed in and said, "I can stretch out now, and don't have to sleep cramped up!" Why did he never mention this before? We don't know. We would have then made this a priority. Oh, well. At least it's done now. He even has cushions!

Just after we got the boat, with the table top removed.

 For some reason J. didn't take any pictures of tearing out the bulkhead. Moving the battery selector switch (the black round thing on the bottom right) was also a part of this project. Also, in the mid-ground to the left is the outlet for one of the bilge pumps - just above water level. At the next haul out J. wants to patch this hole, and move the through hull (outlet) to a better location. In the meantime, as you can see toward the end, we've got it hooked up. The green hose is from the cockpit foot-well, and drains overboard behind the engine (to the right).

This last picture, show him all moved in (including a bag of magazines and a backpack of legos!) He's got just over 7 feet of length now! Big improvement!