Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Homebrew Digest #5789 (February 08, 2011)

HOMEBREW Digest #5789 Tue 08 February 2011


FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
Steve A's suggestion ("A. J. deLange")


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Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:05:14 -0500
From: "A. J. deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Steve A's suggestion

Steve,

Yes, the blue thing is a steam boiler intended for the replacement home
steam heating market though one guy whom I had in to see about
installing it (I wound up installing it myself) asked if I was intending
to cook crabs and when I asked him how in heaven's name he came up with
that idea said that he is part owner of a crab house and that is the
boiler they use. That, of course, gave me an idea and so the boiler is
dual use - brewing beer and cooking crabs. It is not used to heat the
brewery on a daily basis though it certainly does that on brew days. The
black thing is a Sears rollaround which serves as storage for bits and
pieces and as a desk. The gray thing is indeed the thing that houses the
PID controllers, SSR's, some switches and an RS232 to USB adapter.
See http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/84072194.

Now as to the last part of your post: I'm sure your intentions are kind
but what you are suggesting sounds a lot like work! One of the guys in
my brewing club (guy on the right in
http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/75851258) is always after me to start
a nano brewery - apparently they are quite the rage and there seems to
have been a sea change in the TTB as there are a couple of these
operating using equipment at and below the scale at which I brew (50 gal
batches). But I didn't retire in order to turn my hobby into a full time
job and a hard one at that.

I did at one time (when I was still working) think about supplementing
the Social Security checks (which I'm not getting) by doing some lab
analysis. I approached the head brewer at Capitol City (guy in the
middle in that last picture) about using my services and he said that
he'd love to be able to get alcohol, bitterness, color... data on his
beers but that there was nothing in his budget for such. He solved that
problem by quitting Cap City, opening his own place and getting me on
board as an investor so now he gets the occasional analysis - free.

I also got approached by a gentleman planning to make his grandmother's
limoncello commercially about doing gauging for him. If it were whiskey
it would be a piece of cake - shoot the stuff into the meter, write down
the number (or have it written automatically to a computer file) and
charge $10 but because it's loaded with sugar distillation is required
and that's 4 hours work. I also am not too keen to have TTB sniffing
around the place I live.

And given what my accountant charges I'm betting any thing I took in
would be consumed by what he'd collect for doing Schedule C.

So yes, I've thought about these things - but only half seriously.

A.J.


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5789, 02/08/11
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