Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

I finally started weaving the next in my series of fancy-so-you-feel-guilty-using-them household items: fancy cotton hand towels!

This project is an excuse to try doubleweave for the first time. In this case I'm doing a doubleweave overshot technique which results in a dense, thick fabric without the long floats overshot usually has.

#weaving

When I finished threading my warp, I discovered I had some unexpected threads left over. Oops. So when I sleyed the reed, I painstakingly double-checked every threading and caught a few mistakes.

In one case I had to insert temporary heddles, and halfway through I found I threaded a pattern twice in a row, so I had to shift the remaining 200+ threads, a pair of heddles at a time. After 13 hours total to measure warp and dress the loom, I'm now ready to weave.

#weaving

Straight Outta Cosby

#knitting #machineknitting

So I bought a set of vintage Knitking magazines from the late 1980s, early `90s so I could learn more about garment construction for my knitting machine and... wow...

#knitting #machineknitting

It was officially cold enough when I got to my office this morning (~5C) that I broke out my new fingerless mittens I made on my knitting machine a few weeks back. I did a pretty poor job stitching them together but they do the job!

#knitting #machineknitting

Just finished measuring out 600 2.5yd warp threads for my next project: a pair of hand towels woven with a doubleweave overshot pattern. In my enthusiasm I actually overshot (pun always intended) the thread count. I originally only needed 540 threads (16.75" wide towels), but now I'm just going to extend the warp to be 18" wide (576 threads) and have wider towels.

Why not use all 600 threads? My overshot pattern repeats at 18 and I don't want to figure out how to divide it. #weaving

The latest edition to my office is a vintage Warmink wall clock from the 1960s I got as a gift. Unlike the vintage alarm clock I tried in my office before, this has a quiet and slow tick, and a pleasant chime on the hour and half hour. Plus it tracks moon phases!

I will likely be spending the next few weeks adjusting the pendulum and minute hand so it keeps perfect time. #vintage #clocks

Beer Update: It's alive! The first few days the beer was perfectly still with no sign of life (the yeast were reproducing), but now a week in you can see bubbles on the top and the airlock is bubbling away. This means the yeast is alive and happily converting sugars into alcohol and CO2.

This is a lager yeast so it will hang out more at the bottom of the container compared to ale yeasts. In a few weeks they will run out of food and settle to the bottom.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

I thought it would be nice to begin the year with a little Sense and Sensibility. I haven't read this novel yet, but I really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice when I read it about two years back so I have great expectations.

#reading #janeausten #books

With the last bit of wort pumped into the carboy, I pitch my yeast, add an airlock to the top, fill it with vodka, and the brewing process is done. I will move the carboy to a temperature-controlled chamber where it will ferment for a few weeks, then lager for a few more weeks, before I transfer it to a keg.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

As the wort pumps into the carboy, I redirect a bit into a cylinder so I can take a gravity measurement (in this case I was right on target: 1.050!). This measures the specific gravity of the liquid compared to plain water and approximates the amount of sugar you have in your wort. Later when the beer is done fermenting I will take another reading and use the difference to determine how much sugar was converted into alcohol.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

With enough cool water flowing through the system, the counterflow chiller can chill the wort enough to go into the fermentation vessel (plastic carboy) within a few minutes. I have an in-line thermometer I use to monitor the temperature of the wort leaving the counterflow chiller and when it's within the right range I stop the pump, move the wort output to my carboy, and start the pump again, pumping the cool wort into the carboy.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

The boil is done so I've attached my counterflow chiller to my Grainfather pump and I'm recirculating boiling wort through it for 10 minutes to sanitize the inside of it before I connect it to cool water to actually chill the wort. I also filled my fermentation vessel with sanitizing solution for 10 minutes so it will be disinfected when I'm ready to transfer wort to it.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

Now for the first (and for this recipe only) hop addition with 60 minutes left in the boil. These are whole leaf Cascade hops that we harvested from our hop plant in our garden this summer.

Adding hops at this stage of the boil extracts compounds that make the beer taste more bitter. These compounds are also anti-microbial and help protect the beer from infection post-boil, especially in the sensitive stage before the yeast make any alcohol.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

We are about 30 minutes into a 90 minute boil. If you look closely at this picture you can see light tan bits that aren't foam, that seem to be floating to the top. This is known as "hot break" and are proteins that are cooking out of the wort during the boil. This is something we want to happen and is one of the reasons for the boil.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

The lautering/sparging process is complete so I removed the top grain basket and now we are waiting for the wort to reach a boil. What do we do while we wait? We clean of course! I dumped the spent grain into the compost bin and cleaned the grain basket and lauter kettle and all mashing and lautering equipment. In a minute I will start stirring the foam at the top of the kettle back into the wort so it doesn't boil over when it hits boiling temps.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

After mashing, I lift the interior metal basket and rest it at the top of the Grainfather. There is a mesh at the bottom of this basket which allows the sticky, sweet brown liquid called wort to drain into the kettle while leaving the grain behind.

While the kettle heats up to boiling, I start rinsing the top of the grain with hot water from my lauter tun. This water trickles through the grain bed and extracts more sugars as it drips down into the kettle.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

After mashing, the next step is the lautering process, where I remove the grain from the mash water and rinse it with hot water to extract more remaining sugars.

This is my lauter tun. It's an electric brewing kettle that I used to brew beer with before I got my Grainfather. I fill this kettle with the appropriate amount of water, heat it to the proper temp, and then connect a hose to a spout at the bottom and use gravity to move the water to my Grainfather.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

Once all the grain is added I add a mesh screen above the water level in the kettle, attach a recirculation arm to my Grainfather's pump and tell it to start the 90 min mashing process. It recirculates water throughout the process to improve efficiency and clarity in the beer.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer

After the water heats up I can "dough in" or add my ground grain to the mash water. I have a long metal mashing paddle that makes it easier to stir the grain as I add it to remove clumps, which helps improve mashing efficiency later. Basically you are making a barley porridge and the consistency at the end is pretty similar to oatmeal.

#brewing #happybrewyear #beer