My wife got me this hard cider kit from Brooklyn BrewShop for Christmas:

Unfortunately apple cider was very out of season at the time. As we get back into the height of cider season, I want to tell you how easy it is to make hard cider with three (3!) ingredients and have it ready to drink in about a month.

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I told Jessi that I think her spirit animal is a grandmother. I mean that in an endearing way because her grandma Nancy was the best. Recently, Jessi’s favorite drink has been a cocktail from yesteryear: the Old Fashioned.

I’m not thrilled about the Old Fashioned mixes you get at the liquor store, mostly because you never really know what they put in them. So I decided to make my own.
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From touring Miller & Budweiser breweries, I noticed both sites have caves – which have steady year-round temperatures. I assume the caves were used to lager, which means “storage” in German.  Lager yeasts, unlike ale yeast which ferment at room temperature, do their primary fermentation in the mid-50 degree range.  During secondary fermentation the temperature is dropped steadily to slowly deactivate the yeasts.  Back in the day, the barrels could be moved deeper into the cave day-by-day to slowly lower the temperature from the mid-50s down to almost freezing (35°F).

Yogurt Maker?

I had an idea to automate this process using an Arduino, especially after reading Chris Reilly’s Arduino yogurt maker from Make Magazine volume 25.  Everything I’ve done here was based on that, so I’ll assume you’ve read it.

Lagering is essentially the same process except instead of using a heat source (crock-pot), we use a cooler (refrigerator).  Getting the refrigerator to maintain temps above 40°F can be tricky, so normally an external temperature regulator is used.  But this requires me going out to the fridge every day to lower the temperature by one degree.  So why not automate it?  Laziness FTW!
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Ahh, the Internet.  It’s primary usage has changed over the years, from file sharing, to pornography, to movie streaming.  But one thing has always been at the fore-front: social interaction.  But before the advent of Facebook, there were bulletin boards, newsgroups, and forums (some of which are still in use)… and all of these discussion outlets, once they hone in on a particular subject or subculture, become cesspools of riotous mobs, ready and willing to press THE CAPSLOCK KEY, and add copious amounts of exclamation marks at will!!!!!!!111one

A friend of mine said:

There’s something about the niche nature of [insert forum topic here] that attracts supercilious and argumentative people.

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