As promised, here is the ferment-o-cam.
This is what the top of 5 kg soaked wheat looks like

And here it is ready for germination

Gmail has a sense of humour:

Mash into 6 qts. water at 127° F, then allow 45-minute protein rest at 122° F. Raise the temperature to 151° F and maintain for 90 minutes. Mash out at 167° F and sparge with 6 qts. 170° F water. Add hops and boil for 90 minutes. Cool to room temperature, aerate, and pitch yeast. 

As those of you who have have been paying attention will know, we’re brewing our own beer. But tonight, I’ve gone hardcore, and am attempting to make a wheat beer by malting my own grain.

For various reasons we have (‘had’, now) a half-hundredweight sack of wheat. I have taken 5 kg (= approximately 2 lb per gallon for a 23 litre barrel. I know, I know), washed it to remove the chaff, and will now soak it overnight. Then I’ll perform some magic and malt it. Then I’ll make beer.

Watch this space. . .

Via CK, from the I want one of those for Christmas department:

In my formative years I used to read a lot of science fiction. This ranged from the classic (Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke) through the outrageous (E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith) to the execrable (Heinlein). Somewhere in the midst of all that I came across a single book by a forgotten author, number two in a four part series I think, that actually attempted to be a little more realistic.

Yes, I know; ‘realistic’ and ‘science fiction’ in the same paragraph. Bear with me.

The thing that I remember most about the book was the description of space warfare. In a thinly-veiled dig at Star Wars one of the characters talked about the impossibility of aeronautical manoeuvering in the airless void and the equally unlikely practicalities of light and ‘plasma’ weapons with which entire generations are familiar. Opposing fleets would, instead, use atomic-tipped missiles fired at each other across vast distances, making space combat a somewhat — ha ha — hit and miss affair.

But this cove had equipped his spaceships with railguns that fired pound-sized lumps of metal at some prodigious rate into the path of the enemy fleet. Which, on encountering thousands of these small but very fast projectiles, was colandered (not having the advantage of something so dubious as shielding technology.)

And of course, the Aurorans in Escape Velocity have rail guns too. The Auroran’s weapon is a slow, clumsy affair, not as cool as my mind’s eye version of them: Massed banks of the things firing scatter shot across a vast volume of space.

So a little bit of me is pleased to see that the US Navy is taking delivery of a 32 megajoule experimental railgun.Apparently it draws 3 million amps per shot, which to me seems a small price to pay for delivering a payload two hundred miles. . . at Mach 8.

My plan, therefore, is to lobby the NSW government to build that bloody nuclear station, in my garden, and construct a hundred railguns. That would result in withering fire of six hundred rounds per minute, which might not be in the same class as a Gatling gun, but boy, it would make the bastards who speed down our road at 3 in the morning think twice.

My current cow-orkers:

Still in testing, but basically we’re all set. I have to fiddle with the sidebar some more (the font is screwed up) and all the redirects and slight oddities I was struggling with last night seem to have mysteriously resolved themselves.

That’s a little bit worrying, but I’m sure I can live with it.

As you might have seen over the last couple of days, and as you can probably tell by now, the BioLOG is now WordPress powered.  Hopefully this might mean I’m inclined to write more.  The old stuff is still available — see the links to the right.  If you don’t like anything, let me know! 

 Enjoy!