Beer Update 2, and Home Improvements (Not at Our House)

Scott came over last night and we completed the next set of tasks in the creation of my "End of Term" beer to celebrate the completion of my tenure on city council.

Rather than work in the basement this time we worked in the kitchen. I set the carboy on the work table.

We had already sterilized 60 or so bottles, the bottling bucket, the siphon system and the bottle filler. This is done by washing them all in bleach water and the rinsing in clean water. Scott inserted the siphon system and we started to fill the bottling bucket.

 After we had started the siphon going we decided to have a little taste so we partially filled a mug and tried it. I don't want to jinx this process, with a rash prediction, but we were both pleased with what we had.

 After the bottling bucket was filled Scott attached the bottle filler to the siphon hose and started filling our sterilized bottles.

 My job was to take the full bottles and cap them. I bought my bottle capper in 1982, when as a first year teacher I made root beer with my 5th graders for our Halloween party, a tradition I carried on for three more years. Scott had never seen a capper like that so he wanted a turn at trying it out. So he capped our final bottle.

 In the end our batch made exactly 50 12 ounce bottles of beer.

 Youngest daughter saw my photo above and said it wasn't artsy enough so she shot a better version. Her's does a much better job of showing off the hops cone bottle caps I bought for our brew.

So despite working on our home at glacial pace, I've actually picked up a few jobs on the side. I finished one last weekend, so here are some shots from that. "Susan" (not her real name) is a new faculty member at the University of Iowa and has bought a nice bungalow on the east side of Iowa City. Over the summer I did some work in her kitchen and installed a correct period front door. She said that she wanted a tin ceiling in the kitchen to cover a not so great plaster job and I agreed to work on it with her.

First thing we needed to do was cover the ceiling in 3/8 inch plywood.

 After doing that I snapped out lines and started to install the ceiling panels.

 A couple weekends after finishing the ceiling panels I went back to install trim around the walls to make the project look "finished." In the shot below you can also see the paneled box I created last summer to hide the soil and water pipes that run to the upstairs bathroom. Originally this area, and the furnace chimney were covered by a plaster wall bump out. Susan wanted the get some exposed brick in the kitchen so she had the plaster removed, but wasn't expecting to see pipes. She is pretty handy herself and has been stripping the woodwork on the window and doors and will take them back to their original varnished condition.

 The kitchen is not big but it certainly had interesting challenges, working around the stairway to second floor led to some creative cutting but I think it looks quite good now.

Basement Shenanigans

Today I took the first major step in a plan I’ve been ruminating on for the past year or so.  Scott, one of my school district instructional coaching partners, came over with his beer making equipment. We went into the basement.

First we started 3 gallons of water to heat on the stove.

When the temp reached 172.5F we poured the water over 11.5 lbs. of varied malted grains that we had worked out in a recipe last week. Those grains were in a container with a spigot at the bottom. The malt had to steep at a temperature of 156F. If the temperature gets too hot the starches won’t convert to the correct sugars needed later when the yeast is added.

The malt needed to steep for about an hour, we added more hot water occasionally. Eventually we started draining the mix to reheat it on the stove and pour back over the top in order to release all the sugars from the grains.

Finally we had the liquid (roughly 5 gallons now since we’d been adding more) drained into the big pot and we turned up the heat to get it to boil. All that was left in the strainer was the wet malt.

Once the pot started to boil we added 4 ounces of hops. I picked these from my backyard in September. I planted these hops from shoots I’d gotten from a farm that goes back 6 generations in our family. They were likely brought by an ancestor who was a saloon keeper in Luxembourg. After half an hour we added more hops, and more again after 45 minutes, and finally again when the mix had boiled an hour. At this point we took our wort off the stove.

Now we need to lower the temperature of the liquid to 99F so that we can add yeast. Rather than wait for hours for this to happen we placed a pipe coil inside the pot and hooked it to the sink. We ran a slow stream of cold water through the pipes to lower the temperature.

When it reached 99F we spooned enough out to fill a graduated cylander later, when the mix reached room temperature we would be able to float a hygrometer to tell the density or specific gravity of the liquid. If we know the starting gravity we will be able to later measure and determine the alcohol content.  

Then we needed to pour the beer from the kettle into the fermenting bucket. We added the yeast mix to the bottom of the bucket before we started pouring. Since we had used my hops we needed to get them out of the mix as we poured. We used our old applesauce sieve to strain out the hops

Then we fastened down the top and put a vapor lock on it. That will allow the CO2 gas to escape as the yeast digests the sugar and turns it into alcohol.

I put the bucket in our back room upstairs since the basement is a little too cold for good fermentation. Next Sunday we will check it and probably move it to a 5 gallon carboy for further fermentation.

I checked the specific gravity later and the reading is 1.54 which is pretty darned close (1.58) where we need it in order to have a final alcohol content of 6%.

 So I never mentioned why I’m doing all this now. My goal is to have a beer to celebrate the end of my career in public office. My term as City Councilor ends 12/31/2017 at midnight. Out of Office Ale will be ready on 1/1/2018

Channeling Bess

So it's time to come clean here and admit that over the last 2 months I have been running for political office. At the end of August I filed for University Heights city council. Terms are two years long; we have 5 councilors and a mayor, who also serves a two year term. This means our town elections are like the U.S. House of Representatives, everyone is up every two years. Elections only fall in odd numbered years when NOTHING else in on the ballot.

Bess, who built Foxcroft, was on the original University Heights city council. The town incorporated in 1935, seven years after she built here. She was the only woman on the council, and apparently only served one term. University Heights will celebrate its Diamond Jubilee next summer, our 75th anniversary.

There were 10 candidates for 5 seats on council and 2 candidates for mayor. All the incumbents were running along with 6 challengers. We officially have 798 registered voters in town, which is falsely high. Given that we have many medical, and graduate students who live here for a short while, then graduate and move on, many names on the rolls are no longer here. I would guess our electorate is closer to 650.

When I decided to run I made a vow to walk around town at least once a week, knock on doors and talk to people. I did that and it was fascinating. I really had fun. Besides the conversations, stepping onto everyone's porch or stoop allowed me to notice details about houses that you don't pick up on even when you're on the sidewalk. We have so many 1920's-1940's homes that are in such good shape. The mid century modern homes are spectacular, and our "new" homes from the 1960's and 70's are also of very high quality. The only architectural beef I have is with our apartment complex that was build right after WWII. It is being converted to condominiums and I was saddened to see their original windows get replaced, the new ones don't fit the character of the building well.

We had one political event, a candidate forum that drew about 150 people. With so many candidates and a promise to keep the event to only 2 hours long, we were given three questions in advance. Each question, along with our opening and closing statements were to not exceed 2 minutes. Everyone held to it.

Typical voter turnout for municipal elections has been in the 200's. The record turnout was 350 in 2005 (the first year we voted here) due to a library levy being on the ballot. On Tuesday 413 people voted. That is a 51.8% turnout officially or about 64% using my adjusted numbers. Iowa City (the larger community that completely surrounds us) had a municipal turnout of 9.7%.

I was one of the winners. I'm happy and more than a little nervous. I take very seriously the public trust of my neighbors. Here are the official results. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find us.

The editorial page editor of the Iowa City paper called yesterday and asked why did I think U-H should remain a separate entity. I replied it's pretty obvious that we participate in our community life to a degree unparalleled by our neighbors, individual voices certainly matter. Who wouldn't want to live in community like that? Who wouldn't want to work to ensure its future?

Vote GARNER: For Verne...

..For YOU



If anyone needs a good laugh before we start watching election returns, I suggest you go here:

http://www.votegarner.com/HOME.html

3 term Verne Mayor, Garner St. John is in the re-election battle of his life!

Be sure to watch each week's campaign video starting with week one. Then check out Garner's recipes and his work prior to politics when he was the host of "Travellin' Man." Read his blog too:

Garner's Musings

Some would claim that in an alternative universe, Garner St. John is an old high school friend of mine, and that Verne is merely his Los Angeles based comedy troupe's latest endeavor. Some would claim that that he was mentioned this Foxcroft blog post: Holiday Plumbing. Some would go so far as to say that I appear briefly in the crowd scene in the "Opponent Chooses Running Mate" episode on votegarner.com. But I wouldn't know about that. All I know is that the town's bar is called "Haverkamp's..."

All I can say is that this is the proud bumper sticker on my car:

And Now A Word From Ralph Stanley!

As a banjo player I can't express how absolutely delighted I was by this:



I think it's great that "Rank Strangers," a song about coming home to find everything changed, is playing in the background. I think that pretty well sums up the realization of what the Republican Party has become for working class Americans. The "devoted husband" plug was a nice touch too.

Dr. Ralph Stanley is one of the great bluegrass legends. With a 60+ year performing career he is an American icon. Most of you not familiar with his story should recognize him as the person who sang "O Death" in the movie "Oh Brother Where Art Thou."

The very first and last promo shots has him holding a Gibson archtop banjo very similar to one I have.

Caucus Report

Lisa and I went to our precinct caucus tonight, our first in University Heghts. The town of University Heights is a single precinct. There are nearly 1000 people in town. There were 287 Democrats at our caucus this evening. Not too bad a turn out.

The large crowd was expected, we met outside city limits at West High in Iowa City, in the cafeteria. There were eight other precincts meeting at the school. We met in the cafeteria. Other precincts were in the band room, the library, and class rooms.

When we came in nearly every candidate had a portion of the room marked out and there were treats at each table, something I’d never seen at our old precinct.

We are a highly educated precinct, many doctors and PhD’s live in town. Given that you wouldn’t think it would be nearly so hard to count us all. Everyone was given a numbered card when registering. Our precinct chair then wanted to count everyone to double check that the number was correct. At this point my neighbor Mike looked at me and said, “You realize these are the same people that are going to be in charge if the Bird Flu ever breaks out. We’re all doomed.” The group shouted that down and proposed just accepting the number count from the cards, so our count was 287, and apparently 45 minutes that were used in 2004 were saved.

At 7:00 each presidential candidate was allowed to have someone speak for them for up to two minutes each. After that it was announced that each group would have to have at least 44 members to be viable. We then broke into preference groups.

I decided to back the same person I did in 2004 and looked for a Kucinich group (he was the only candidate without a sign anywhere) I found the six other hardy souls backing Dennis. At the end of the first session here were the group totals:

Obama 115
Edwards 49
Clinton 47
Biden 32
Richardson 30
Dodd 8
Kucinich 7

Then it was announced that there were 4 total delegates to the county convention that would come from our precinct. Every viable candidate would get at least one delegate. The groups could discuss and move if they wished.

We decided to go to Obama as Kucinich had mentioned. The Richardson, Dodd and Biden groups tried to figure out a way to merge and become viable, but it didn’t work so at the end of the second round we had our final standings:

Obama 144 2 delegates
Edwards 53 1 delegate
Clinton 51 1 delegate
Uncommitted 35

So the caucus groups selected delegates to the county convention, accepted resolutions and pretty much finished.

I am a great believer in this process of getting out and talking to your neighbors, listening to others and making decisions. I also really understand that we in Iowa don’t pick the winners, but we do pick the losers. I think the best quote ever regarding the caucus was from Bruce Babbit after finishing 5th in 1988, “I was in it right up to the beginning...”

I Like Hillary Well Enough...

...but I wish she'd stop calling me at dinner time.


Bill Clinton made his very first campaign appearance for Hillary in Iowa City last July

For that matter, the daily email from John Edwards and Joe Biden are getting a little old too. While I'm whining, I'm tired of the two old guys in the barber shop talking about Dodd, during his commercial that runs during the 10:00 news. I'm even ready to snarl at the ubelievably earnest Obama volunteers who phone to invite us to picnics.

As a matter of fact, the only candidates not bombarding my family right now are Richardson and Kucinich.

I supported Kucinich at my local precinct caucus in 2004. We were viable! (arcane Iowa Caucus term that no one else cares about) This time around we will be in a new precinct. That should be interesting.

Our old precinct (Iowa City 20) had college student rental houses, senior citizen apartments, and a Catholic rectory all included in it's area, quite the diverse group. Our new precinct is the entire town of University Heights. Our county is HEAVILY Democratic. I think we Democrats get the biggest "public" structure in town, the Presbyterian Church. The Republicans will likely get a room at West High School, which is not located inside city limits, but is in Iowa City. In know that in 2004 the Republicans met at the elementary school that is inside city limits, but since people parked on the streets around it for more than the posted 1 hour time length, they all got ticketed!

One kind of cool spin off of the caucuses are the Iowa Electronic Markets. These are "futures" markets for political events. Here is the link to the Presidential 08 Market.

The two "futures" currently trading are the popular vote percentage for each major party (as of 11/13/08 Dem- .530 Rep. .493) and winner take all market (as of 11/13/08 Dem- .612 Rep. .397)

I am looking forward to January 4th. (The day after the caucuses)