Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

One the mash completes, we start the "mash out" step. This heats what we can officially call "wort" (pre-beer or sugary barley liquid) up to 75C to denature the enzymes and stop the creation of any more sugars. This also makes it easier to rinse out more sugar in the next step.

Halfway through the mash you can see the effect of recirculating liquid through the grain. The husks and perforated bottom are filtering as they should and the cloudy liquid from 30 minutes ago is much clearer.

While I wait for the mash to complete, I take notes in a notebook I've used for years to track my brewing. This makes it easier to repeat beers I like, and review my notes if something doesn't work out.

Now we mash for an hour. The pump recirculates liquid through the grain. Enzymes (alpha and beta amylase) in malted barley convert starches into sugars (maltose and glucose). Each enzyme has different but overlapping ideal temp ranges to convert starch, both are active at 68C.

Now we add our pre-crushed malted barley to the water a bit at a time, stirring in between. This process is called "douging in" and you are basically making a giant barley porridge.

As the water heats up I drop in the mash tun insert. It has a perforated bottom that prevents most of the grain from getting through, and it plus the barley husks in my mash ultimately act as a filter so only liquid gets through as we recirculate it.

Step one, add the "strike water" (what we steep the grain in) and heat it to 68C, the temperature we need to "mash" the grain (essentially steep it like with tea).

Let's brew a Bock! I'm using a Grainfather brewing system, essentially a giant computerized electric kettle with an integrated mash tun and a pump at the bottom. The process is similar to when I brewed with a big pot on a stove and a modified cooler for mashing, just automated.

My German Altbier is boiling along. Tomorrow I'll document my whole brewing process on here as I brew a Bock, explaining how I make beer with a Grainfather brewing system so if you are interested in brewing stay tuned.

It's been one week since the grocery
Still out of pasta sauce and wipes and TP
Five days since I saw Fauci, saying
Keep social distance, not enough testing
Three days since a shave and groom
I disable my camera when I talk with Zoom
Yesterday, someone coughed on me
So it'll still be two weeks `til I'm out of quarantine

What things are you #3dprinting to keep your kids occupied while on lockdown? My son's current favorite is this robot (we're printing a multi-colored army of them). https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2887306

With so many relying on video conferencing at home, it's more important than ever to disable your camera w/ a hardware kill switch when you aren't using it. If your laptop doesn't have one, cover up the camera when your call is over. #privacy https://puri.sm/learn/hardware-kill-switches/

There are many remote work guides out there, but most describe proprietary tools w/ vendor lock-in. @purism has not only been a remote workforce since the beginning, we've done it ourselves with FOSS tools. This article describes how: https://puri.sm/posts/our-essential-list-of-free-software-for-remote-work/

The thing about shaving with safety razors and $0.10 blades is you order 100 at a time. Just checked my stock and at 2 weeks/blade I'm good for 2+ years before I have to sharpen my straight razor. #lockdown

I can't go any other place, when I think of COVID I don't touch my face.

My beer fermentation fridge broke and while shopping online for a replacement, I didn't expect to see panic buying of small chest freezers in the Bay Area...

One thing I was missing in my disaster preparedness kit was a keg full of homebrewed beer, so I just ordered ingredients to brew a Märzen actually *in* March for once!

Based on my INBOX, it looks like the opportunists are already taking advantage of the pandemic to market their wares.

I was able to install @micahflee 's dangerzone package on my #Librem5 and w/ some QT tweaks the main screen fits (other screens need more work). It uses an amd64 Docker image so I need an arm64 image to actually clean docs, but it was nice that I got as far as I did without much effort.