Dedicated to making homemade beer using Wifey's pots and pans.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Will It Ever Run Again?

This is what happens when you lend your equipment. The last time I used the snow blower it was running. Then I sent it over to the neighbor so he could clear his drive way. The snow was heavy and the motor seemed to be over revving. It was returned with a seized engine.


For grins I tore it down the night before the giant snowstorm.


I found a bunch of broken parts in the oil sump. The oil slinger broke off and the governor threw two counter weights & broke a few teeth of the gear. So, when did it break?



The main shaft seems to have wiped but it's not totally gone. If I can get replacement parts I will reassemble it and see if I can get it to speed regulate again. The smaller shaft with the larger gear is the cam shaft. There are two cams that operate the intake and exhaust valves.



Now I have to check the forums to see if this is how the timing marks are aligned. I sure do hope that I don't need this thing to be running tomorrow because I don't know if I can improvise the oil slinger and I don't want to run without a governor.




Saturday, November 16, 2013

The Imperial Blackness Is A Winner

Black IPA
Some people don't believe in mixing roasted malts with a lot of hops. I don't have any such prohibitions and as a matter of fact, I think I just knocked the Rye IPA out of my top favorite slot.

You can see one of my new Ikea quart bottles. I think I will convert to entire fleet over to this stopper type because having quart bottles in the fridge is a cool thing.

Rinse
Regarding the Hops: This time I strained most of the the hops from reaching the primary because I had two pretty good high alpha varieties and I didn't want to go too hoppy. A lot of the small stuff made it through the strainer but I would say 50% was leafy and so it didn't make it to the primary.

When I tasted this one at week one  knew I had a winner although with all the yeast in there it was hard to tell what was going on with the three layers of roasted barley and wheat. Now that the bare minimum time has past I can tell this one is really something. The spray malt has made this very sweet and would be  likely to continue to ferment if I didn't drink it all before it could reach perfection. The high alcohol content is noticeable I would guess it's at 8% and will go higher at time passes.

I think my next round will be minus the 3 lbs of spray malt and maybe use 14 lbs of 2 row. Every thing else can be the same assuming hops are available.