Its a Van again.

There is always lots of things to do with the van, but I'm happy that I got it up and going again.  The replacement part went in very easily and it looks good too. (pictured below)

Sweet new bleeder valve/hose thing.

Its always nice to have some shiny silver stuff in the engine bay to contrast the black hoses and 25 year old dirt.  The small hose is what snapped off the old plastic piece.  I don't know exactly what it does, but I imagine it is some sort of system pressure balancing crossover.  Either way it's important that its attached so coolant doesn't leak out. 

I've been meaning to clean up the inside and outside of the van.  Although I didn't get to the outside yesterday, I managed to vacuum it out and clean up the dashboard and rear deck area over the engine bay.

I bought some long handled pruners and a trash can for yard waste yesterday, so today I spent some time on the oleanders in the front and it didn't take long to fill up the trash can.  The trash (and hopefully yard waste) gets picked up tomorrow, so tomorrow afternoon I will work on the fruit trees in the back.  The fruit trees have a bunch of white fly and aphids and such, so they need to be cleaned up and maybe sprayed with some Neem Oil. 

On friday I applied for a cable assembly position at a place in San Marcos. I might call them tomorrow and see if they will give me a chance.  I also have to drop of my application at Pizza Port, I have been hesitating because..I don't know why.  I will do that tomorrow too, I swear.

The beers are almost crashed, I had the freezer set at 65 F to finish out the primary fermentation of the rye beer, so it has taken it a little while to get 10 gallons of beer down to 35 F.  The beer acts as a big heat sink, and especially without any airflow it takes a long time for the convection heat transfer to take place.  I'd be willing to bet that the conduction heat transfer between the bottom of the freezer and the carboy provides a large portion of the cooling process.  I really need to install a small computer fan in the freezer to keep the air moving and it should really help even out the temperature inside.  Once they are settled out pretty good I am going to rack the N.G. Alt bier into the secondary carboy.  Prior to doing this I am going to prepare a couple yeast starters (starter = base beer for propagating yeast) in order to harvest some of the German Ale yeast off the bottom of the carboy.  I plan on trying out the WLP029 German Ale yeast in the Janet's Brown Ale that I'm going to brew this week.  This is an effort to save money on yeast as well as play around with different yeasts and try to find a few really versatile strains.  This particular strain is said to be very clean fermenting and suitable for quite a few styles, so why not try it out.

2 updates in one day, but only because I should have posted the first one a day or two ago.
Cheers.

VWs Beer and Mopeds

Blacks Beach from above.  Apparently its a nude beach...

 Jammie, Beth and I went for a trip to La Jolla to go for a walk/hike along the beach.  I didn't know until after the walk but I guess Blacks is a nude beach.  Jammie and Beth said they saw a nude person hanging out, luckily I missed them.  Either way it is a really nice beach and a pretty cool hike down there.  We parked at the gliderport, which was also pretty cool to check out.  We origionally planned to walk up to the base of Torrey Pines and hike up the cliffs there, but it was quite a bit further than we had pictured.  We made it most of the way there and stopped and looked around a little tidepool area on the way.  

After the hike I went and watched a guy take off and loop around a little bit.  The marine layer was in full effect, so I imagine it is scary to venture far from the edge of the cliff as the visibility was very poor.  It was cool to see though.  Takes some balls to just run off the edge of a cliff.

Cali brew day #2 - German Roggenbier.

A week ago Thursday I brewed another batch of beer, a German rye beer.  I've never had one, but it sounds good and the recipe was in my Brewing Classic Styles book, which hasn't steered me wrong.  With my second brew day under my belt, it seemed a bit easier.  I have gotten better at using my limited cleaning resources here.  This brew went into the evening which isn't the best as there aren't any outside lights in the back where I've been cleaning everything.  Both beers are done with the primary fermentation, and I started cold crashing them today.  I plan on letting the rye beer age cold for another week or so and just leave it in the primary, while the Alt beer I will siphon into a secondary carboy and actually lager it for a few weeks.  In order to do that I had to get some CO2.  Luckily the hydrobrew shop does tank exchanges on 20lb tanks.  It isn't as cheap as going to Airgas, cost me $30, while Airgas would have been 20-25, but the closest Airgas is a half an hour drive each way, so I figured it was worth it. 

Bottled a week before I drank it, oozing hop flavor and aroma.

A very nice perk of being on the west coast is the availability of some really good west coast beers.  Pliny the Elder from Russian River is a double IPA that aside from being one of my favorites, has a delicious 'balanced' hop usage.  The hop aroma is matched with good hop flavors and the bitterness is subtle and balanced with the rest of the beer.  It is my goal to find all the well made IPAs out here, and I have found quite a few while still getting tripped up by the occasional extremely bitter hop bomb.   The availability of beers is made possible by some amazing beer stores.  This one is from the Pizza Port Bottle Shop, which is known for its amazing bottle selection of something like 600+ different beers from around the world.

Jammie on the Pinto on the Strand in Oceanside.  Decent waves behind her.

We went 'pedin the day after the van broke down to make sure they were both running well, so that Jammie could ride one to work.  The mopeds are the most temperamental sons o guns I've ever had to deal with.  Just because it ran well yesterday doesn't mean that its going to run well today.  They sure are fun when working though. 

Sticking with the temperamental piece o crap theme.  The camper decided to start spewing coolant the other night when we got home from the store.  Turns out every VW I own doesn't like to keep its coolant inside.  AND just like my other VW this was related to a plastic hose barb breaking off, really strange right?.  Well I diagnosed it and ordered the cheapest of the replacement parts available, which happens to be a custom machined chunk of aluminum.

Ordered all this from van-cafe.com, whom I will certainly be doing business with again.  Spend $350 and they were kind enough to throw in a small bag of cookies.  That is what I call service :)  That shiny piece in the bottom right corner is reason the van is out of commission and subsequently the reason for the order.  The rest of the parts are to redo the fuel system up front.  When I put the "new" engine in I replaced all of the fuel hose at the back of the car, and the front has been something that needed to be addressed.  Kinda embarrassing leaking gas at the gas station and when people point it out to you all you can say is "oh yea...it does that."  The package arrived around 3:30.  I had the part in place and managed to replace a good portion of the vacuum hose in the engine bay all by 4:00.  Rode the moped to the store to get a bottle of coolant and had the van up and going by 5:00.  I used Jammie's mom's car to give Jammie a ride to work and then came home and tried to bleed the cooling system one more time.

I really need to work on writing less, more often.  I started writing this post a couple days ago...  I'm thinking multiply the number of posts by two and cut the length in half.

And Then...

So much has happened since I last updated that I probably won't do a recap, as some of it I don't want to think about again.  A short summary is Jammie and I are out in CA and have a sweet place in Carlsbad.  It is walking distance to the beach and has a garage and nice size back yard, which is exactly what we were looking for.  I'll post some exterior pictures at some point.


I am enjoying southern california so far, with the exception of no job it is a lot of fun and although the sunshine is hit and miss, it is almost always comfortable to go out in a t-shirt and shorts.  I have not purchased a surfboard yet, but it is high on my list of things to do.  Unfortunately I also have to get a wetsuit as the water is pretty chilly.  It was already in the 50's when we came out here in September.  I really enjoy walking down to the beach on a daily basis, as I never went hiking in the mountains every day so the trade seems worth it so far.  Being in Southern California I have also seen my parents more in the month and a half we've been here than I did in for year or two prior, which is a nice change.

In other news, I brewed my first batch of beer in CA.  Its a Northern German Altbier, which I brewed once before in Denver and it was delicious.  I wasn't able to find the same yeast I used before, so we will see what the new WLP029 German Ale/Kolsch yeast does with the beer.  Along those lines I really miss my favorite Denver homebrew shop, Stomp Them Grapes.  I am paying $2 more for a vial of yeast than I did out there which is a significant increase.  Also both shops I've found in North County have okay selections and their grain is average prices, but they gouge the crap out of you on some of the smaller items.  Frustrating to say the least.  I think I will resume purchasing the bulk of my ingredients online.

It was interesting figuring out how to do everything in a new setting.  I definitely miss the giant sink and sprayer of the Humboldt house.  I also miss the giant dumpster behind the house to dump grain into.  When I went to measure my pre-boil specific gravity I discovered that I didn't bring a hydrometer with me from Denver.  I managed to drive up to Hydrobrew, the homebrew shop up the coast highway in Oceanside, during the middle of the boil and grab one so I could measure my original gravity.  All in all it went well and I'm sure after a couple more brews I will figure out the most efficient way to do things at the new house.  

The other batch of beer I had the opportunity to hang out for was a 7bbl batch at Breakwater Brewing located in Oceanside, CA.

This is a view of their brewhouse and fermentation vessels.  It is very compact, and I had to get up very early (5am) to see them brew as they have to finish before the restaurant side of the brewpub starts up due to the lack of space.  It was fun to see the process from start to finish at that scale.   I was also able to ask the Brewmaster, Lars Gillman, a few questions and learned quite a bit about their processes.  Lars also happens to be the owner of the Hydrobrew - hydroponics and home brewing store.

I've also made my way over to Stone Brewing Company for a couple beers and a tour.  Perhaps the best thing about their bar/restaurant is the number of guest beers they have on tap.  I was able to try a beer from Heretic Brewing which is up in the bay area and was started by one of the best homebrewers of the past decade.  I also got a Blind Pig from Russian River, always a treat.  Russian River is one of those breweries that just doesn't release a bad beer, in fact every one of their beers I've tried has been amazing.  Oh, I had a Stone beer too. 

The Stone facility is smaller than I imagined.  Definitely seemed quite a bit smaller than New Belgium.  I've heard they are building a huge new facility across the street from where they are now, which I imagine will expand their capacity substantially.  It was a fun tour and the best part was 4 free tasters at the end.

I am sorry for the lack of updates as I know the blogs I enjoy the most are also the ones that update frequently.  I will try to 'step it up' in the near future.