Homebrewing: Brewing Outside | Serious Eats: Drinks

Homebrewing: Brewing Outside

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Sitting in the backyard and sipping on a homebrewed beverage as the wort boils away is one of my favorite ways to relax on a warm weekend. While homebrewers typically first learn to make beer inside their homes, most will eventually move the kettle out of the kitchen and onto the porch. It's not hard to make the change to outdoor brewing, and once you do, you'll find your brewdays to be more efficient and much more carefree. It just take a couple pieces of equipment and a little extra care to bring your homebrewing outside.

When you decide to brew outside, the first thing you'll need is a source of heat. The most common choice for homebrewers starting to brew outdoors is the inexpensive and effective propane camp burner. Some tech loving homebrewers might look into home-built electric burners or a custom natural gas range, but nothing beats propane for its simplicity.

The price range for a propane burner is usually between $55 and $100, depending on the BTU rating and the quality of the frame. For the homebrewer who makes 5 gallon batches, any burner rated over 35,000 BTUs seems to work fine, and it's hard to find anything rated lower than that. If you ever want to upgrade to 10 gallon batches or larger, don't go less than 60,000 BTUs?and the higher rating the better.

Almost more important than the heat rating of the burner is the quality of the frame. Since you'll be boiling a hefty 5 gallons or more for an hour, a cheap frame can bend over time. It's usually better to spend a few extra bucks to get a burner at your homebrew shop where they have experience with the different brands, rather than just getting the cheapest burner you can find online.

In my experience with brewing 5 gallon batches of beer, a standard 20 pound propane tank will last about 3 to 5 all-grain batches on a camp burner, while extract brewers might get 5 to 8 batches. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on the type of burner you have and your brewing methods, so it never hurts to have a spare propane tank on hand in case of emergencies.

Benefits to Brewing Outdoors

If you're accustomed to brewing on your kitchen stovetop, the first thing you'll notice when you brew outdoors is how much time you save. Those propane burners heat large amounts of water so much faster than a stove that I save about 30 minutes when brewing extract recipes and almost an hour when brewing all-grain. The extra heat can be a double-edged sword though, since the faster boil can result in more boil-off than you expect. If you forget to add additional water to compensate for the rapid boil, you might find yourself with a 4.5 gallons of beer at the end of the day instead of 5 gallons. Once the boil starts, I try to turn the burner down as much as possible and I still use about an extra half gallon of water for most recipes. Every system is a little different, and it might take a couple of batches before you find the right adjustment.

Aside from the speed, brewing outdoors has a few other major perks. When you brew inside, the aroma of malt and hops tends to linger in the house for the rest of the day. While I happen to like the aroma of malt and hops, it's not always desirable when you have family or friends coming to visit. Brewing outside solves this problem, and also helps if you have a significant other who may not be quite as enthusiastic as you are about living within a brewery.

Moving out of the kitchen and into the backyard will also save time on cleanup at the end of the day. For me, using a hose to clean out my my brewing kettle or mash tun is a whole lot easier than scrubbing them out in the tub or sink. That reason alone is almost enough to get me brewing outside even when the weather isn't ideal.

One Warning

For the most part, your homebrewing process won't change much when you start brewing outdoors. If there's one thing that might need a little more attention, it's careful sanitation practices. With the wind and the open air, there may be a higher chance of infection if dust or debris is blown into your unfermented wort.

The easiest way to mitigate the extra risk is just to be more conscious of your sanitary practices. Always leave the lid on your brew kettle when you're cooling the wort, and close up your fermentation vessel immediately after you sanitize it. Anything that touches the wort with after the boil, including a spoon or racking cane, should be soaking in your bucket of sanitizer just before you use it and it should go back in as soon as you're done with it. If you keep simple sanitation rules in mind, brewing outside will lead to better homebrew and a more relaxing brew day.

About the author: Joe Postma is a homebrewer who is seeking that perfect blend of creativity and science required to make great beer. He moonlights as a consulting actuary during the week.

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GeekFest 2012 Pushes Collaboration Between Communities

GeekFest 2012 (GeekFestID 2012) have been held on Saturday and Sunday, March 31 ? April 1, 2012. The event, organized by Fowab and KibarKreasi, was held at Sasana Ganesha (Sabuga) Bandung, inviting more than 20 participants from various communities.

GeekFest itself, inspired by SXSW, as mentioned in the press release some time ago, is intended to collaborate variety of existing communities such as music, video, multimedia, information technology and gaming communities. The event was devided to several programs, such as main program, mini stage and exhibition from several communities. Aside from the already mentioned above, there are also comic, art graffiti and other communities.

Although not every community gave the work of collaboration, the highlight of the main event is about collaboration. In addition to collaboration in the form of work, collaboration also comes with a gathering of several communities in one event.

The presented work of collaboration, in example, is from Movieholic which collaborated in making movie based on photos collected by photo community, iPhonesia. Collaboration also presented from Riset Indie with its product animatronic collaborated with performance of Bottlesmoker plus live drawing as their background as they performed to entertain the audience. Of film and music genre, also presented collaboration such as Kepompong Gendut that in the process of preparing to launch its first film Demi Ucok (which is now in the process of crowfunding to raise funds to distribute the film at local cinemas) in collaboration with Homogenic who makes the video clips. Both appeared at the main program of GeekFest 2012.

Then, there was another collaboration of Petshopbox Studio ? that also made GeekFest?s mascot, and Fowab in creating Twitter Runner game, game asset ? characters made by Petshopbox, while the game itself was developed by Yohan from Fowab (back end) and Ibnu Triyono (front end). This game uses the hashtag tweeted by the audience where most tweeted hashtag will be the winner. Athlete character appears on the screen and moves like in a running race. GeekFest 2012 opening ceremony also featured collaboration between Saung Angklung Ujo with participants who tried to play Angklung on iAngklung application on iPhone.

I, who happened to be part of the committee (see disclosure below), is hoping that the collaboration would ?not stop after the event. When several communities present in one event, collaboration is expected to occur. At least communities meet each other, like a game studio with musician, which later may be able to collaborate in creating music for a game from certain band, or for example, Jogja Force, which was also presented and demonstrated its art process, may collaborate with other communities, such as video or multimedia communities.

Event on the main stage was not merely performances but also performers telling the stories of their creative process. This is also a focus of GeekFest, where in addition to the performance, the people behind the performance were also asked to come on stage and shared the process in creating the performance. Like OpenLabs that after the show, talked about the community or the people behind Demi Ucok film who revealed the process of crowfunding or Joko Anwar who talked about behind the scene of Modus Anomali film and other sharing session.

Aside of that, introduction to people behind the creative process could also be found in the exhibition area where in addition to showing off the work, audience could directly experience the work and got to be up close and personal with the people behind it, like at the game community booth or Ableton Live electronic music booth.

On the mini stage, Agate Simfonia or Agate Akustik, which is a ?band? who creates music for Agate?s game, performed a couple of songs including the music from Titok game by Agate Studio. In addition to the mini stage area, a couple of performers were also representing communities ? aside from the mentioned above: LifePatch, StandUp Comedy, HitmanSystem and other communities.

I personally were taking care of gaming community booth. Although it could only accomodate a few game studio (several game studios represented GameDevID namely NightSpade, TinkerGames, Studio Independent as well as Digital Happines, friends from Gamelan that even though present but couldn?t exhibit their game because of force majeur, Jotter Production and Altermyth), I hope that the event could provide space for them to introduce their games and the gaming communities to the visitors as well as giving space of collaboration with other communities. A game studio ? TinkerGames used this event as a way to gain feedback for the game it was developing. Another game studio ? Jotter and Altermyth showed their ability by doing live drawing and holding a Fan Art Speed Painting competition.

Some communities ? other booth participants like JogjaForce, Twittalk or MalesBanget.com tried to entertain the audience with various activities like Twittalk with its live interview via Twitter and Malesbanget.com with its hilarity.

GeekFest was held for the first time and is far from perfect. There are still many shortcomings and still needs improvement for the next events. But when I chatted with several parties who are competent in their field (often hold or participate in an event), the concept and idea is pretty interesting, the execution must be corrected. Certainly we can expect improvement for this event that is scheduled to be held annually.

Disclosure: DailySocial is a media partner of GeekFest 2012. I am active in Fowab and is in the committee of GeekFest2012.

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NC State researcher finds more efficient way to cool devices, looks to cut costs too

NC State researcher finds more efficient way to cool devices, looks to cut costs too
Does your electronic device have you a bit hot under the collar these days? A researcher at NC State has developed a faster and less expensive method for cooling gadgets -- especially those that tend to crank the heat up. Dr. Jag Kasichainula, an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, authored a paper on the research that implements a "heat spreader' composed of a copper-graphene composite and an indium-graphene interface film to cool devices. Because the two materials exhibit a high thermal conductivity, they allow the device to cool more efficiently while distributing said heat -- 25 percent quicker than the pure copper in many pieces of tech. And if that wasn't enough, the research also details the process for creating the composite using electrochemical deposition. "Copper is expensive, so replacing some of the copper with graphene actually lowers the overall cost.," Kasichainula notes. If you're itching to read a full rundown of the findings, the full text can be accessed via the source link below.

NC State researcher finds more efficient way to cool devices, looks to cut costs too originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Porter Robinson Aims To 'Make The Ravers Cry' With 'Language'

' 'Language' is, I think, my favorite song that I've ever written,' 19-year-old EDM phenom says.
By Akshay Bhansali


Porter Robinson
Photo: Skip Bolen/WireImage

After an exceptional 2011 that saw him touring the U.S. with buddy Skrillex and veteran EDM giant Tiësto, 19-year-old electronic dance music star Porter Robinson put out an exceptional array of music in the form of his EP Spitfire. The disc includes hits "Unison," "100% in the Bitch" and "Spitfire," along with Knife Party's remix of "Unison," which stands among the more popular DJ set staples today, as evidenced by Swedish House Mafia's epic finale of their first Masquerade Motel Show in Miami last month.

With a catalog that boasts the fiery electro smash "Say My Name," one of the seminal songs that helped forge PR as an EDM rookie to watch for in 2012, comes news of another mammoth creation.

" 'Language' is, I think, my favorite song that I've ever written," 2012 Woodie Award nominee Robinson revealed to MTV News in Miami recently. "I'm mostly known for writing electro and aggressive bangery house music. But before I started making electro, and while I was making electro, this sort of gushy, make-the-ravers-cry sort of sentimentality is so important to me."

PR's latest single, "Language" is a small departure from his typical rocking electro house: a beautiful coming together of trance "builds" and house "drops" that will have audiences both swaying in euphoria and pumping their fists. That's how it was received by jubilant fans catching his performances during Miami Music Week, which included an epic set at the UMF Korea Stage at Ultra Music Festival.

"Being like 14 and 15 years old, listening to trance music in my home, I just had this fantasy of going to these big clubs and going to these masses, and just hearing this gorgeous, delicate music," Porter explained. "My goal was to make something that captured just that beauty and was still effective and playable for electro DJs."

With "Language" already in the hands of a select few DJs, artist support for the song was strong going into MMW. "Language" made U.K. music trade paper Music Week's Cool Cuts Chart, a chart voted on by DJs and music industry tastemakers, and fans eagerly anticipate the song's release on Tuesday, via Big Beat/Atlantic and Ministry of Sound.

"I've been so, so pleased thus far to see that my fans aren't just accepting it, they are embracing it," Robinson confessed. "They are really happy to hear something musical, so it's been a real treat."

What's your favorite Porter Robinson track? Leave your comment below!

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Easy Marketing Techniques for Small Business | Business and Sport

Article by Jack

Small organizations have several diverse characteristics to large organizations. Their operational and strategic dynamics normally are distinctive from one to an option together with the capacity at the identical time. As a result of several differences this way, the marketing for small business has several differences for the marketing of larger organizations. In the event that should you be wanting to use marketing approaches and methodologies which can be most effective with for larger organizations, you could have the negative impact to your mini business.

For starters, you?ll want a spending budget allocated for your business. With out a correct spending budget, you can?t do just about anything in marketing. Needless to say you?ll locate free of charge marketing methodologies and tools small business can utilize, but in order to execute some significant marketing effort and commence receiving targeted buyers to your business, you just must invest some dough in marketing for mini business. Consider the type of marketing you have to do together with the marketing segment you want to enter. Determined by this information, you?ll be able to pick a strategy of marketing for small business or perhaps you can seek aid for performing the identical. On the net, there are various of marketing businesses that could possibly be found and so they will help you to execute the marketing campaign in your mind. More frequently than not, these parties can design custom marketing strategy for your business and commence receiving targeted business to you. As a result, you might wish to be small obtainable to the minds written by these experienced marketing businesses in marketing for small business.

A high level start-up or possibly a mini business operates locally, you have to use some of free of charge marketing tools as the marketing for small business. For instance, social networking is an extraordinary platform when planning on taking your business for the globe. Starting a business page on one of existing social support systems won?t run you any funds in any respect. As a result, soon after a bit effort to fill some needed information, you will get your very first marketing strategy executed. In the event that should you be not computer literate because of this job, use one more individual, like a family friend for finding this completed.

Along with online community as marketing for small business, there are more methodologies that could possibly be disposed for marketing for small business. Classifieds is one using the well-known marketing methods that cost small funds, and so the small organizations are more into accomplishing this. In this way, you spend just a small quantity of funds to have published nationwide.

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Lanka to complain to international watchdog about India's nuclear plants

The Kudankulam nuclear power plant.

Colombo:? Sri Lanka has expressed concern over possible impact of radiation from India's nuclear power plants located in the southern region, as it prepares to raise the issue with global atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA.

The official raising of concern with the IAEA is to be made in September, Sri Lanka's Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka said.

"We respect the right of India to have nuclear power stations. But our concerns are on the possible radiation affects they could have on Sri Lanka. We have already written a letter", Ranawaka said.

The minister also said that Sri Lanka's concerns stem from disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima and that the country would work towards achieving guarantees of safety.

Sri Lankan energy officials say at least three nuclear plants are located on the southern coast of Tamil Nadu which is separated from the island by a narrow strip of sea.

The minister said the IAEA had proposed that a mutual agreement on the matter should be reached between the two countries. "We have sent a proposal to India through the External Affairs Ministry and the Indians have sent back a note on the matter," he was quoted as saying by Colombo Page.

According to Ranawaka, the Indian government has sent a proposal to commence a broad based discussion while Sri Lanka wants only to discuss and reach an agreement on a disaster mitigating programme in the event of a nuclear disaster in the South Indian plants, the paper said. Sri Lanka has no nuclear power plants but is just 20 kilometres away from Indian main land at the closest point.

The Kudankulam nuclear plant in India's Southern coast is just 250 km from Sri Lanka's northwest coastal town of Mannar. Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Authority does not possess adequate facilities to face a threat of nuclear accident.

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The test for colorectal cancer just to the right patient | Health Care ...

Screening recommendations for average high-risk individuals, Americans ? particularly African.The ability to prevent colorectal cancer by removing polyps is the cornerstone of ACG recommendation of colonoscopy as a screening strategy preferred . There is an enormous amount of evidence that the compensation of colon polyps, including small polyps, significantly reduces mortality from colorectal cancer. When detected in its early stages and easier to process, survival rates for colorectal cancer exceed 90 %.

Confusion on options for screening is particularly alarming for African-Americans, who have the highest incidence of colorectal cancer of any racial or ethnic group, and who face reduced survival compared to whites, because early detection is essential.

Recent reports of President Obama colonography or virtual colonoscopy as a screening test and coverage by the Associated Press in a state-of-the-Science conference heralding the NIH blood stool, as a cheap alternative to colonoscopy may leave many consumers wondering What test for colorectal cancer is best for them. Medical experts of the American College of Gastroenterology are available for comment and help provide perspective on the different options for screening for colorectal cancer during Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March.

- Advantages and disadvantages of different methods of screening for colorectal cancer, including colonoscopy, blood tests and stool tests the so-called virtual by using computed tomography of the abdomen

The researchers found no difference in brain size among girls in the study. This corresponds to the general trend of schizophrenia, which is more common, and often more severe in males.

As GI physicians on the front line of diagnosis of colorectal cancer, we are concerned that recent news may give an incomplete picture of the use of different screening tests detect cancer of the colon and rectum, especially if patients are higher risk than average, said ACG President Philip O.

Katz, MD, FACG.

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Halo 4 - Righteous Kings Gaming Community

This is a discussion on Game Informer's May Cover Revealed: Halo 4 within the PC Gaming News forums, part of the PC category; Game Informer writes: We've seen a surprising amount of speculation this month about our May cover, with all sorts of ...

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Finding Inexpensive Auto Insurance Quotes | Iphone tips and Tricks ...

There are plenty of items that affect your car or truck insurance premiums that it?s a good idea for you to reassess your car or truck insurance coverage every year, especially if your needs has changed in any way. This is where you have to look for a motor insurance quote as well as 10. You?ll not have the ability to boost your online auto insurance quote situation with out them. One thing to carry out is actually locate a few motor insurance companies that you can get your car insurance coverage quote from. For this the very best strategy is to have onto the internet and after that do a search regarding ? car insurance?. This can bring up huge amounts of insurance firms that offer motor insurance to a number of individuals.

Acquiring comprehensive auto insurance for a automobile also drastically depends on the level of the car you possess. If your automobile is in the old model, drop the particular clause of collision protection into your insurance plan. The nature in the collision protection is it covers the restoration of the automobile just in case a major accident occurs towards car. A great usual principle is the fact that previous cars are of lower value which can be regarded as a danger to pay much more insurance when compared with is actually necessary to occupy for your collision protection. By falling this protection you?ll be able to get cheap car insurance charges.

People should be aware of that they would do well to manage cheapest car insurance companies that come in the business for a long time and have a waiting in the market for you to back them up. This sort of companies will never be in a position to provide car insurance with the cheapest price ranges. However, they may very well be capable to offer an insurance plan that provides an excellent coverage for your car. Look at the companies your pals have suggested and get online. There are numerous sites out there declaring to supply an ideal charges in automobile insurance inside Tennessee. Take one high on its present, and measure the completely different automobile insurance coverage companies and policies.

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