Sunday, March 25, 2007

SquamyBrew 1st Edition

In an effort to stay modern and relevant manarea.blogspot.com is diversifying. 'Custom' is the name of the game nowadays, I've applied it to bikes and now I'm giving it a try with beer. An epiphany at work turned into our first brew in about 2 weeks...pretty good turn around if I dont say so myself. Went with a basic starter kit and for the first brew we just bought a Pale Ale kit to get a feel for ingredients. ('we' = SquamyBrewing LLC. look for it on the NASDAQ under SQBR).
The actual 'first brew' went pretty well, i thought. Considering it was many of ours first foray back into chemistry/biology/cleanliness for a long while. No boil overs or other catastrophies. Transfering the wort to the carboy went well. Hopefully we were as 'clean' as we thought we were...only time will tell.

The picture below is brew day +21 hours.


Here we are at about brew day +45ish hours.

**UPDATE**
4/12 - Gina and I took another hydrometer reading and it came in at 1.010. I couldnt resist so I drank the beer we used to get the reading. Tasted like good beer gone warm, I was amazed.
alcohol content is a weird thing, the US does it different than everyone else (go figure). we do alcohol by weight and everyone else goes by volume. so right now our beer is 4.31% by weight and 5.49% by volume. typically yeast eating priming sugar will add another .5% during conditioning. which will put us around 4.8% by weight and 5.99% by volume all said and done.

SquamyBrew LLC has a bright future. c'mon

Saturday, March 3, 2007

monoCOG


Finally finished my new race whip this weekend. I am 100% excited to find out how this thing rides. Built it up for just under $800 all said and done. I would spec it out like most people but nothing on this bike matches and much of it is custom rag tag 'frankenbike' built up stuff....The Chopper Reborn.

I think i might post race results and recaps here as well as my projects cause i think the 2-3 people who check this blog will probably enjoy my stories about trying to race a single speed bike (rigid no less) against guys who put, on average, 30-45 minutes into me last year.

Little do they know ive been watching a lot of MacGyver....


**UPDATE: So its been awhile and this bike has changed a bit. This pic sums up all the changes pretty well. Carbon bars and nice cushy Oury Grips to absorb more chatter while I was still riding rigid and the latest addition is a Marzocchi MX Comp 29er Fork....cause one season riding ironman is plenty believe you me. Already cant wait for next year.