I’m writing this short post not to brag about my toaster oven repair skills but to hopefully help out someone else looking to fix their appliance. I have had this stupid toaster oven since college (18 years as of this writing), and still use it every day. I even built a custom under-counter mount for… Continue reading Black & Decker Easy Clean Toaster Oven Repair
Over the last few months I’ve noticed the buttons on my dust remote starting to flake out. Some days they would require a few clicks to work, other days they would be fine. Well today the on button totally died. Because the buttons were getting more and more unreliable over time I had a pretty solid… Continue reading Grizzly T26674 Button Repair
My back rim has had a wobble that has prevented me from adjusting my brakes as close as I’d like them. In the past I’ve done a minor spoke adjustment with the rim on the bike and using the brake calipers as guides but I having some spare time this weekend I made a truing… Continue reading Homebrew Bike Rim Truing Stand
I commute to work on my bike so I tend to work on it more than your casual weekend biker. The repair videos on Youtube where people are using fancy freestanding racks to work on their bikes made me envious so I made my own, simpler version. All it is is a wall bike… Continue reading Simple Bike Work Rack
In the past I’ve used one of those 11lb Esacli scales for weighing out grain. It works well enough but the size of your container is limited by its plate so I only ever could weigh 4 pounds at a time. While getting a bunch of other cheap junk to play with from DealExtreme I… Continue reading Hanging Scale for Weighing out Grains
Today I made my annual pumpkin beer and I took the easy way out by using some butternut squash for the vegetable portion. They’re a lot easier to find than pie pumpkins, and are cheap. The flavor after roasting wasn’t all that different from pumpkins of years past so I didn’t feel too bad… Continue reading Butternut Squash “Pumpkin” Beer
For the past 5 years or so I’ve mashed using my 10-gallon Gott cooler with one of Northern Brewer’s bulkhead kits. I never was perfectly happy with the bulkhead as it would occasionally leak and it is insecure/wobbly by nature because it’s trying to sandwich two pieces of plastic separated by foam. And you if… Continue reading Reworked MLT Bulkhead
So I was feeling a little spendy a few months back so I sprung for MoreBeer’s $70 carbonating keg lid. I’ve used it to carb two kegs and by golly it does work. Each batch has been ready in about 3 days total, a big improvement over the week of shaking and waiting I’d… Continue reading MoreBeer Carbonating Keg Lid
What a great recipe. Lovely mix of smooth smoked malt with a not-too-bitter dark backbone. The wood adds a nice charred, bourbon element to the beer which may or may not be desirable to you. I really enjoyed my hydrometer sample before racking to secondary along with the wood pack and now I’m wishing I… Continue reading Northern Brewer’s Surly Smoke Kit
I just got the 8-cup Yama stovetop vacuum brewer, and immediately noted the large amount of water left in the carafe. I typically brew 20 oz at a time so this wasn’t going to work out because that water would dilute my coffee too much. As I had done with my Cory brewer I extended… Continue reading Yama Vacuum Pot Dip Tube Extension