heehee! i see what you did there!
long time ago, my stepfather and i drove over to eastern washington (from seattle) to purchase a couple hundred pounds of wine grapes (pinot noir? i think). he borrowed a press like that from the wine club he was in. we crushed 'em up and left it to do the first stage ferment on the skins, for a deeper red.
anyway, we botched it and had many bottles of really bad wine that years of aging did not mellow at all!
may your blend be a fortunate vintage!
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I eventuly got six gallons of juice with an OG of 1.062, which would be a really weak wine but in the range for a decent beer, so Iâve decided Iâm going to make a grape beer.
I have some belgian yeast and czech saaz hops. The juice is pretty tart so hopefully the final result will come out tasting like a lambic.
Iâm boiling it now to kill off anything that might be in there. With the tartness I wont have to add any bittering hops, so the saaz for flavor and aroma should be nice.
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tart grape lambic!
that sounds delightful!
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Progress! The starter motor works now. But, somethingâs still amiss.
TIL that Pine-Sol makes a great carb cleaner.
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Any chance the crushed remains of those grapes end up as grappa?
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We had a year like that with our dandelion wine. We called it our punishment wine. Every time we opened a bottle we would joke, âyou deserve this! You know what you did!â
Ah, good times. 
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yikes! dandelion wine!
the mum tried to make that once.
i think we used it as paint remover.
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Weâve had some really nice batches. That year we thought we knew better and got lazy and said, âdo we really need to do all this wracking?â
(Narrator: you do.)
One of the tasting notes I recall was, âshrinks the tongue.â
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My âgrape beerâ is bubbling away merrily. It isnât terribly frothy in the fermenter but there isnât any protein in the juice that would allow for head retention so not that surprising. Come to think of it this is gluten free!
Smells good so far. I think this may end up being a refreshing, end of summer drink. Weâll see.
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Favorite oddball wines weâve made are: beet, carob, elderberry california coffee berry port and a not completely awful apricot w/ candy cap mushroom dessert wine. I probably wouldnât make that last one again, but it was âinterestingâ.
All of the above use frozen grape juice concentrate and or raisins to round out the body.
Never have tried dandelion though. Maybe somedayâŚ
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Do you sterilize your coffee grounds before adding to the mushroom buckets?
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No. Figure making coffee pasteurized them pretty well. I canât overemphasize, the way i do this would probably be a disaster with anything less aggressive than oysters. The need for prep work is much less demanding because of that.
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A railing from the kitchen to the patio. Itâs only two steps, but mom frequently has a teapot or coffee grounds in one hand, and thereâs not really anything else to hang on to.
The big box stores only have fancy interior railings at $omg/ft, so a sanded bit of patio ceder and linseed oil did the job. Drilling into brick without a hammer drill is slow and tedious work.
Hm. Maybe I should caulk that crack?
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The Ms. and I spent our anniversary getting super baked, listening to dancehall, and making mandalas on the Cricut machine.
The last one is getting watercolors:
ETA: done
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Itâs that time of year again: dock repairs. Dismantling the old one and saving the tanks, deck planks, and large hardware for a new dock in the spring. Itâll be like the ship of Theseus.
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Oooh, a Honda C50/70/90! Here in Australia postal delivery folks ride those. Theyâre generically referred to as âpostie bikesâ. They are legit indestructible. I rented one in Thailand to get around Sukhothai, the original capital city, and it was a joy to ride.
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Landscaping for the family astronomy patch. Those are the kidsâ scopes, under weatherproof insulated bags. Theyâll stay outdoors 24/7 so the kids donât need a grown-up to carry and set up their scopes. My scope will join them soon. Mine has a ground-level base that would make an excellent rodent home, so there are a few rodent-proofing steps needed first (a cage like a rabbit hutch to surround the scope, to be wheeled off when scope is in use).
Gravel for drainage, so that rising dew doesnât settle all over the optics. The fence looks terrible for views near the horizon, and it kinda is. But from the eyepiece height, the fence top is in line with the neighbourâs treetops, so thatâs as good as it gets. 
Lots of observing higher altitude angle things.
My 8-year-old daughter just did her first observing of Jupiter and Saturn with her scope. âWhy does Jupiter look all rainbow-y?â When I explained, she had to step back in wonder. âIâm looking at clouds on Jupiter through my telescope?!?!â Followed by a happy dance. Awesome fun.
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Decided to remodel one of the closets. The original 120+ year walls, installed after plumbing was added, were a mess, and there was old termite damage.
Progress after day 1.
Inside wall, with an old alarm system wiring behind it.
Closet wall, in front of an outside wall. Thereâs an old door next to it that was covered up in the 1950s.
Stack pipe that comes up from the crawl space, installed in the late 1800s. The board to the left is so termite-ridden it is crumbly powder.
Old termite damage.
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