Don't watch if you have a weak stomach

The narrator is kind of annoying, but the point is still the same.

Cider's done

So I finally got around to bottling my hard cider and I ended up with 75 12oz bottles and 1 22oz bottle.  The OG was 1.066 and the FG was 1.004 for and ABV of 8.5%.  Due to my unfortunate acid blend additions early on I was afraid that I would have to throw it out, but after the champagne yeast got done the cider is a little tart less so than a Mikes Hard Lemonade or similar beverage.  I expect that this will be the best batch I've made.  The champagne yeast makes it so dry that most people think it tastes more like a sparkling wine than cider.  This way there is still some tartness that pairs well with the dryness.  Letting the yeast attenuate to 1.004 was not the plan, but I didn't think I had any star san to sanitize my bottles with and snowpocalypse messed with my local home brew store's supply chain.  Keep in mind that I didn't think I had any, I was cleaning my kitchen and hidden behind some spices was my star san, so I was in business this weekend.

This bottling marks the second time that I've had help bottling, my Dad was in town so the sanitizing, filling and capping only took about an hour and a half versus the normal 3 or 4 hours it takes me.  I decided that because the cider was still bubbling slowly when I bottled it to only had about 3/4 of a teaspoon of corn sugar.  The juice of apples has so much sugar in it already I didn't want to make bottle bombs

More advocacy Stuff

So apparently your thirties are for getting political, here is a petition that will help you mail your senators asking for them to support a constitutional amendment that would end corporate personhood.  The broad point being that because corporations are considered people (via a court case known as Citizens United vs FEC)

It's and interesting read and worth a few minutes of your time.  You can see the petition over here.

Vacuum ziploc bags

My family has started buying and sharing a side of grass feed beef and we just had to make room in the chest freezer for a mountain of meat.  It seems like a lot upfront, but my wife and I hardly bought meat over the summer last year so it feels like it makes sense for us.  While I was re-arranging the freezer I saw my huge pile of frozen pumpkin and frozen blackberries.  I had meant to put some of the berries into one of the hard cider batches I have going, but with 8 gallons waiting to be bottled and a boat load of beers I want to brew I don't see this happening soon.  Maybe I'll make a fruity session ale for the summer heat, but before that I have got to make my Pumpkin Cranberry sour ale.  This beer needs to happen, those that have been following may have read about it a while back.

Any way this rambling ass post was really about the pumpkin and blackberries I have stored in Ziploc vacuum storage bags.  I read about them on a Lifehacker post about sous vide cooking, and was excited about a lower cost vacuum sealing product.  My aunt and uncle claim to have ruined 3 of the fancy ones you see at Costco was they tried to seal up fish for storage (my uncle fishes a lot).  The beauty of the pump that comes with the Ziploc product is it's manual and when I bagged the blackberries I just stuck a paper towel down between the flap and the pump to catch the excess liquid from the berries as I tried to work the air out.  It worked great and the pumpkin and berries both looked good when I checked them recently.

I can only find the gallon size bags at my grocery stores, but Amazon has the quart size.  I like them and they are way cheaper than the electric ones, and so far are holding up well in my freezer.  I'll try to remember to get pictures when it comes time to thaw them for beer making so see if they kept fresh.  I know they are doing better than the standard freezer bag we put our yearly blueberry picking harvest into last June.  The berries that are left all have ice in the bags, vs the blackberries I froze in August have none.

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SMBC Comic

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal chimed in on the HR 1981 and SOPA/PIPA with this comic.

I think he did a solid job of grounding examples of what the powers they want mean to citizens.  Check it out.

HR 1981 aka Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act

A few commenters have brought this up and I have taken action personally, but this will be the first time I actually write it down.

Demand Progress has a form for contacting your Reps about what is being dubbed the internet snooping bill that wants to create a federally searchable database of your name, address, phone number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses.  This seems like a terrible idea on it's face, lets make a huge database for scammers and con-artists to target; but what's worse is the intent of creating a surveillance state.  As long as you value your individual liberty, and like that the government does not have access to the books you peruse at the library (who goes there any more?) you should be concerned about this.

I personally took action with Opencongress.org and if you want to see the letter I sent to my representatives you can see it here, you can also read about the bill here.  This is another nasty bit of legislation from the lovely Senator that brought you SOPA.

Thanks to Dreadnaught, neatfit, A Beer for the Shower, and Baur for pestering me to say something about this. Sometimes after I've taken action I forget to talk about it with people I know or interact with.

Further thoughts and readings on SOPA/PIPA

Okay so before this gets really stale I figured I empty it out of my drafts folder, it's about SOPA and PIPA so if you are bored already move along.

First up both bills are currently shelved and of little interest for the time being.  It may be toxic enough to not come up again in the immediate future. There where a few summary posts that really highlighted great info on the guts of these bills and the efforts to curb them that I thought needed to be shared.

Finally some perspective and thoughts on the future, and maybe a little of how we got here.


Those links are all over the place but the one to read that is the most interesting of the bunch in my opinion is from Binary Bonsai.  The author of that blog is very passionate about Star Wars, he is part of the effort to get the real stories of the origin, and creation of the Star Wars universe out to people.  He has found amazing interviews with people that where part of the guts of making this movie and really shows the magic was quite different from the story that George is trying to sell the world.  He likes people to believe that he wholly created it from nothing with no support from anyone and certainly didn't draw inspiration from the environment around him.  The passion he has for Hollywood is evident, and his perspective is truly a different tone than anything you've been reading about killing Hollywood.

I found this video because of him.

@jamieSWB - Star Wars Begins - The Complete Documentary from jambe davdar on Vimeo.