Granite SW: Our Tuesday Off, A Non-Snow Day

A foot of snow? Last night? Today? Tonight? On the road? Preventing any kind of driving? Bah.

The sun was out. The sky is blue. So we took advantage of it.

My drive to work on Monday morning.

Today has been awesome! Chad and I have been effective, busy, humans today!

Woke up, made a real, home-cooked breakfast and coffee. Then Chad went out to a dentist appointment (he had a tooth, that was eating away at his lower jaw bone, removed) and got his hair cut. I stayed home and ran 5 miles - only the second time I've ever run this distance. The first time was two days ago on Saturday - when I did it in 73.5 minutes. Today I did it in just 63.0 minutes.

Once Chad returned, we went to Costco - stocked up on all the good stuff - then to Wholesale Sports where we got some 20 gauge for my shotgun.

The real fun started when we got home - and we assembled our counter-flow wort chiller. I've been planning this stupid thing since our first day brewing. I was talking to every brewer at Big Brew about their chosen wort cooling method - everyone agreed that the counter-flow system was the most effective.... but expensive. I came home that night and researched the system on the internet. We could buy a new, manufactured one for a daunting $120 (including shipping, but who knows about tax).... or according to a few home-builders - we could make (what looked like) an over-engineered, complicated one for $70.... still stupid. I knew I could do better.

So I came up with this, which we assembled and tested today. Remember this was only a test - nothing has been sealed and this is not its final configuration. But holy crap, it worked. And it worked, perfectly. Water from the pot, that was just a minute before boiling - going through a mere 10 feet of tubing - ended up in the bowl below at a perfect 66 degrees. If this were a real brew, we could pitch the yeast directly - and we still have a solid 10 degrees of breathing room.