Tag: adventure

Compost Woes: Fine-tuning My Compost Pile: The Search for Black Gold

 

Not a pretty picture

 

We’ve had our composter now for a year-and-half or two years I think. It is definitely its second winter. Unlike last winter though things aren’t going as well. Instead of things breaking down and turning into a nice mulch I can spread into the garden. They’re turning into a stinky sewage. I’d like to blame this on the cold and rain but I don’t think they are completely at fault.

Our household has recently (the past six months) started composting everything possible. This means a lot of “green” is going into the composter. According to what I’ve been able to find out about composting all this “green” needs to be balanced out with “brown,” if you want the ideal environment for composting to occur. I’ve been neglecting the brown and throwing in a lot of “green” recently and things have gone sour.

That is okay though because I’m getting a little help from the United States Government:

 

The 1040EZ also known as "brown"

 

The Post Office had stacks and stacks of these packets sitting there waiting for John Q. Citizen to pick them up if they needed some tax assistance. I grabbed 20 or so figuring that’d help. I cut off the glue binding to the packets and shredded them:

 

A stack of about half of the paper I shredded

 

After the paper was shredded into the bin it went:

 

In two weeks this better look like compost...

 

Composting hasn’t turned out to be the simple formula I thought it was: scraps in, soil out. It takes a lot more tweaking and guesswork. I’m still getting the hang of it. If adding paper doesn’t do the trick I might have to get some straw or move the composter so that it gets more sun.

I never thought I’d be experimenting with the “art” of composting.

P.S. Love that title up there don’t ya?

 

Wherein I Drink the Ale I Made!

Cheers to not being poisoned by my own concoction!

Sorry for not posting on Monday but it was a holiday and I was distracted by important things, mainly Mass Effect 2 (That game is soo good!)

You can see the first two parts of this series below:

Wherein I attempt to brew an Ale

Wherein I attempt to brew an Ale Pt. 2

last night marked two weeks since I bottled my ale; which meant that they were fair game for consumption. I opened the chilled bottle with some trepidation, my wife was convinced that my sanitization regimen was lacking and that the beer would be tainted. The beer passed the sniff test and so I moved on to the next step pouring the beer. With the exception of some sediment the beer appeared fine, it had good carbonation and a nice foamy head.

Well, there it was nothing left today but taste the fruits of my labor. The beer turned out pretty good! Darker than an amber ale but lighter than a stout. The beer had a subtle floral smell, much like the hint of green apples, and nice roasted malty taste to it.

I was sure when I started this process the beer was going to be terrible but I have to say, I’ve paid money for worse tasting beer. I have a few bottles and if local friends want to give it a try and let me know what they think they’re welcome to come by and give it a taste.

Things I learned from this whole experience:

  • Beer is not that difficult to make
  • Gravity and physics are crappy things to count on when bottling. Next time I use an auto-siphon.
  • Make sure your bottles are not screw-top!
  • Have a place you can go to ask questions of more experience users. I was lucky enough to have the fine folks at Talking Time to answer my questions.
  • Get something to filter out sediment. It doesn’t seem to hurt anything but is kinda gross
  • Get a second big metal pot for the sparge.

I’m happy enough with my results to try this again. I’m not ready enough to start making my own recipes yet, so I’ll still be buying mixes, maybe a nice gingerbread ale or tripel?

Yeah, I don't have a name for my beer...
Apple Crisp ale in my Odd-tober Fest 2009 pint glass
*glug* *glug*

Wherein I attempt to brew an ale Part. 2

This is just how I did it too

Last Friday was when I was supposed to bottle my apple crisp ale. I couldn’t though because the bottle caps had not yet arrived (either had the bottle capper.) Spoiling my plan to have this post appear here yesterday morning and why you are reading a post here on Tuesday. I received the capper on Saturday and the caps showed up on Monday.  Seeing as I was already behind schedule I decided that last night had to be the night. With the help of D I sanitized all the instruments, brought the beer out from its dark hiding space and tried to move it into a pot.

This is MY beer you go make your own!

Why did it need to go into a pot? Well the pot had some honey in it which I believe is necessary to either sweeten the beer after the yeast has eaten everything or give the yeast a little more to eat, maybe both. I have no idea really this is my first time doing this and I spent more time just trying to get the procedure right without worrying too much about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of it all. The hardest part by far was managing the suction in the hose and getting the beer to flow into the pot and afterwards into the bottles. I also had a small problem with some of my bottles, when it came time to cap them. They were screwtops. It only took me breaking one bottle and for D to point this out to me before I figured it out though! So, not a lot of beer was lost nor any additional bottles broken.

All total the one gallon kit made nine beers. One which I couldn’t drink because it had broken glass in it. Two which might become contaminated because I couldn’t cap them all the way. All in all not the most efficient use of my time or money. Beer is cheaper just about anywhere. These cost my, not including labor, more than $4 dollars a bottle. But, the experience of brewing my own beer is priceless, right? RIGHT? Right. Next time maybe I’ll share some with you.

Everything I need to get bottling...
Everything after it's been sanitized.
The mysterious art of siphoning... I'm not very good at it.
What's left after all the beer is gone, yum?
These might not make it two weeks. They're only 'half-capped.'
A bottle full of beer that I can no longer drink. *sadface is sad*

Vermiculture, or still playing with worms

J constructs a vermilculture box thereby making him responsible for 300 odd squirmy, slimy lives…

When D and I ordered the composter a year or so ago we had some trouble with the shipper not sending the the thing out for a month or so…  After numerous emails and a few calls to Amazon’s customer support people the composter finally arrived and with it, to make up for its delay, a worm composter or vermiculture box as well.

The Vermiculture box has been sitting in the garage in its shipping box since then.  Until today.  D had a pond to make and since she would be going to Ace and working out in the yard I figured now was a good time to finally get the thing put together and going.  Worm poo is fantastic apparently and I desperately wanted in on that action!

RANDOM FACT:  Worms can eat as much as their body weight in a 24 hour period!

So while D was picking up wife a wine barrel, some fish and a papyrus plant I got some worm take-out.  Once home I opened up the box and took at look at the box…  Everything looks the same here… and I only have half the instructions…

So what we have there is a water, or worm tea, collection tray, the bottom feeder tray, three additional feeder trays, a lid, two weed filters, and coconut coir.  Oh and a spigot for draining out the worm tea.  Once I found a complete set of instructions on the manufacturer’s website it wasn’t too difficult to assembly during which I soaked the coconut coir in some water.

RANDOM FACT: Worm poo is more commonly known as worm castings and worms can eat it too!  The more they eat it they better it is for whatever plants you decide to put it on.  Also, GROSS!

Now to add the damp coconut coir, mixed with some potting soil and food.  I put in some tomatoes, apple cores, leafy greens, and some figs.  Mix it all together and then add the worms!  I forgot to take a picture of everything mixed together with worms in it so you’ll have to use your imagination.

After I filled up the first feeding tray and added the worms I put on the second feeding tray and partially filled it with soil.  This vermiculture system works by slowly having the worms eat their way up through the boxes and then pulling out the lower ones and emptying them before placing them back on the top of the stack.  I’ve got to take care not to drown, cook, freeze, starve, or acid burn the poor beasties though so I’m sure micromanaging this all will be fun…

RANDOM FACT:  Worms will eat human hair?!

Finally, with all 3 feeder in I put in the last weed filter, which keeps the worms from getting out and other things from getting in and put the lid on it and placed it by the side of the house.  Where it should stay warm without getting too much direct sunlight.  I suppose during the winter if it gets too cold I can bring it into the garage.  The bins aren’t supposed to produce any odors.

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