I’ve been very slack on this blog lately as I’ve been working on a couple of other projects lately.

One of them is another area of interest for me - Alternative Energy.

Now I’m not someone trying to become totally self sufficient and willing to sacrifice some of the modern living conditions to be able to achieve this (although it would be nice to be totally energy self-sufficient).

My major goals are to significantly reduce the cost of the energy I use at a reasonable intial cost outlay.

The main area of interest for me at the moment is Solar energy, mainly solar heating and net-metering (sending any excess power produced back into the electricity grid to offset my own power usage when my system is not producing enough energy). Other forms of renewable energy are much more efficient but impractical for me at the moment.

Anyway I’ve started a new blog - Alternative Energy Sources for this interest

I’ve started it with a lot of articles I’ve collected over the years going through various forms and applications of Alternative Energy, and from now on I’ll be adding my own experiences and projects.

Have a look and see what you think….

I finally got around to uploading a photo of myself on this blog

The photo is of me just before going for my NiDan (2nd Black belt) in Kyokushin karate, trust me you don’t want to see what the after photo was like 4 1/2 hours of very hard training.

It’s now 2 weeks later and my cracked ribs are still reminding me of that day.  My boss (and good friend) asked me when I was limping around and wincing in pain all day “was it really worth it!!”, it’s very hard to explain to someone who has not been through something like this, but yes it is!!!

I’ll be writing more about the lead-up and the grading itself on my other blog at

www.mackaonline.com

 Cheers

MACA

The article below was originally posted on my other blog site www.mackaonline.com 

Pondering the “What if I’m wrong?” question of personal development, whilst it is generally seen as a bad thing to do this as it can often lead to indecision and lack of action, it is good if you can question your decisions without creating this effect.

And as I find myself surrounded by a lot of people who regard personal development as a “touchy feely” waste of time, I thought I’d ponder this question anyway (especially after a couple of years of applying personal development philosophies to my life), and one of the main conclusions I have come to from this is even if I am following the wrong path (which by the way I don’t think anyone following a path of self development is wrong) is I no longer have the cliche “Bad days”.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have days where things go wrong or situations frustrate me, but they are not “bad” days, rather it’s just something that has to be worked through, I’m finding that by taking responsibility onto myself for my life or taking the view “what happens in my life is my doing”, no one else is the cause of my problems/challenges (although they may be the symptom or result of these issues).

This attitude/view can be developed from several different perspectives, from just simple positive thinking, to taking responsibility for your own life, through to The “Law of Attraction” or subjective reality concepts of life, but at the end of the day it does not matter which way you approach it or what theology you use, the end effect is when things go wrong, you are not having a “Bad day”, it’s just another situation that needs to dealt with, further to this it was not “someone else’s fault”, the world is not against us or any of the other excuses used to use to explain why life was so hard and why I would have “Bad days” in the past.

I do not think it matters how you get to this point, but rather that you get to the point where things are not bad, they just need to be looked at a different way or they are just problems to find a solutions to (OK that’s the Engineer in me coming out) or just a simple “it will be better in the morning” you’ll find that you’re whole life improves, there are something’s that I upset and annoy me, but in general I lead a happier life.

Another aspect of this I’ve noticed is the downward spiral people get into when something goes wrong, where something goes wrong in the morning (or anytime during the day really) and if you get caught in “Bad day” syndrome or the world is against me or you believe someone else is to blame for this, it seems to get worse, I cannot remember if I did this previously (I’m fairly sure I would have), but I’ve seen many people have something go wrong, and even when that situation is under control, they drag their own day down because of it, even to the point of generating new problems to keep the “Bad day” going.

When you stop pushing your problems outwards at “the world” and accept that it is your responsibility to deal with your own life and no one else’s, the world is suddenly a much nicer place.

All in all not having “Bad days” probable answers my question “What if I’m wrong?”, by saying the result is good so who cares if I’m wrong, I don’t hurt others (I tend to help others anyway) and I’m happy.

Looking back over this article, it is a little disjointed and hard to follow, I have touched on several subjects which should probably be split up and expanded into several other articles, but I’ve decided to leave it as I first wrote it and I’ll come back and write some further articles on some of the subjects in this article sometime soon.

I’ve started a seperate sub-domain for my brewing web pages,

All of my brewing posts and articles can now be found at

http://brew.mackaonline.com

My other pages are still at

http://www.mackaonline.com

Cheers

MACA

Well my Perle Amber ale has been kegged and gassed.

I tasted it last night, needs a bit more gas, but initial thoughts
• Little sweet, could have used more bittering hops, but this may improve with more gas
• Nice heavy style - the type I like - beer with caramel type flavours
• Perle hops probably don’t really suit this style, might be better in a lighter pale ale
• Maybe could have left out the Crystal Malt…

All in all my comments above are a bit on the negative side, but that’s because I’m fussy, it really is a nice beer, and I’m going to enjoy it over the winter months (i.e. right now!!)

Related Posts

Perle Amber Ale 3rd June 2007

I’ve had the sad situation recently where I’ve had to farewell a person I had a lot of respect for and have known throughout my working life from my original trade as an electrician through to working as a manager to now as an engineer.

But the one thing I never realised until his passing, was what an ideal role model he was…..

He was a very Christian man, but never pushed his beliefs on anyone, he was what I would idealise in a true Christian, and the lack of people like him has pushed me away from Christianity over the years.

But I really knew him best in his role as a teacher in the electrical trade where I first met him many years ago as an apprentice electrician at the age of 16. As an apprentice I only knew him as a very good teacher, little did I know then how much I would have to do with him over the years.

Later as I continued my career and moved into supervisory roles, we worked together on the Industry training advisory board, and on development of training for my electrical employees.

He was always happy and wanting to help, I can not remember a time where he ever became angry or upset, he would always be the one to calm a situation and remind everyone to “let’s not worry about that it will work itself out” or “don’t worry about that I’ll work it out”.

I was also lucky enough to get to know some of his family, who also follow in his footsteps in their open and friendly manner always wanting to help out.

As an attestment to the type of person he was, his funeral was attended by a very large number of people, the church could not fit them all, many had to stand outside where audio equipment was setup for them to hear the service.

I can only hope that I can learn to treat life as he did, always happy and not dwelling on the negatives of life only the positives, nothing was too much trouble no matter how frustrating a problem might be he worked his way through them, he helped so many people of so many walks of life from his own family, to his church, to the community, to the electrical tradespeople he helped, taught, and I hope inspired

I found his death initially very sad, losing such a wonderful man so unexpectedly and far too early, but I realised later, he had, had a wonderful life, always happy in what he was doing, with a wonderful family and many friends and able to help so many people where ever he could.
He even was able to see his family before his unexpected passing as sudden as it was, it just happened that his family happened to all catch-up with him over that weekend

So while it was a very sad time I take some comfort and I hope his family do as well, in that he lived happily doing what he wanted to….

Hi,

I’m relocating this blog to my own web site, I will keep both running for a while, but will eventually switch completely to the new site.

The new location can  be found here www.mackaonline.com I’m going to try fill the site with useful information on Brewing, Health, Self development and anything else I’m interested in.

Just thought I’d post another older recipe of mine that I enjoy

This was a throw together brew that turned out quite nice, I’ve found it a nice after work beer, that you can enjoy having a few of with out getting too inebriated.

 Once again I’ve just included the promash recipe print out

 light brown ale

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines
——————————-

10-B  Brown Ale, Northern Brown

Min OG:  1.040   Max OG:  1.050
Min IBU:    15   Max IBU:    30
Min Clr:    12   Max Clr:    30  Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics
—————-

Batch Size (L):          35.00    Wort Size (L):     35.00
Total Grain (kg):         6.60
Anticipated OG:          1.043    Plato:             10.75
Anticipated SRM:          10.7
Anticipated IBU:          21.6
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts
—————-

Pre-Boil Wort Size:   41.18    L
Pre-Boil Gravity:      1.037    SG          9.19  Plato

Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name       Potential SRM
—————————————————————————–
 90.9     6.00 kg.  JWM Export Pilsner 1.037      2
  7.6     0.50 kg.  Amber Malt      1.032     35
  1.5     0.10 kg.  Chocolate Malt   1.034    475
Hops

   Amount     Name     Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
—————————————————————————–
 25.00 g.     Pride of Ringwood     Pellet   9.20  21.6  60 min.

Yeast
DCL Yeast S-04 SafAle English Ale

If you try this recipe please leave a comment and let me know how you found it

Related posts

 bavarian lager 9th June ‘07

My Favourite brew so far 

perle amber ale 3rd June ‘07

 Well I’m now on about the 3^rd week without any coffee, an experiment I decided to try to see what effect it had on my health and concentration.

The result, well to start with, I did not suffer the reported withdrawal symptoms that I’ve heard of from many people, and I used to drink reasonable amount of coffee, usually 2 for breakfast (instant, 2 spoons of coffee) and at work I have a 4 cup coffee plunger, that was usually gone within the 1^st hour, then top ups for the rest of the day. Just before starting on my no coffee experiment I was tending not to drink it from mid afternoon, so that may have contributed to no withdrawal symptoms, as I was already sending my body into shock by drinking large amounts for ½ the waking day and then stopping.

Probably the most noticeable effects noticed were

no more dehydration effects:

where I might get tension around the head that may lead to a headache if I did not drink more coffee or start drinking some water, and this has had a positive effect on my exercising routines as I no longer need to worry about making sure I hydrate myself before starting an exercise routine, by drinking a large amount of water, which of course created issues of carrying that water in the body while trying to exercise and then needing to get rid of that excess water ½ way through the routine.

and

no more over stimulation:

When I had drank way too much coffee in a short period, often causing a slight unwell feeling and difficulty focussing on more complex tasks, although it was good for just getting mindless things done like paperwork, etc…

I’ve had no trouble with waking up and getting going, in fact I’m waking up earlier and getting out and doing things before I need to start getting ready for work, but this was also a conscious choice unrelated to the removal of coffee.

One thing I have noticed about drinking coffee as a ‘pick-me-up”, I now look back at when I was run down and tired and would have a coffee to ‘perk me up’ and I now realise that this was not helping, the stimulating effects of coffee for me seems to work best when I was already moderately active and alert, and seemed to enhance that state of being, whereas drinking a strong coffee when run down, just gave a short term boost which went nowhere and left me feeling worse than before, this maybe due to that fact my body had adapted to drinking coffee that it no longer had a strong enough effect on me any more to lift me up when feeling tired and run down, it will be interesting to see what happens when I start drinking coffee again, although at this stage I’m not sure when that will be as I’ve become quite attached to drinking green tea at the moment, and trying different varieties of green tea and other herbal teas (I must admit I really have never liked the traditional herbal teas - camomile, etc but the with a better selection available at my local supermarkets I’m starting to enjoy the variety of teas I can try.

An interesting article on coffee by Yvonne Volante can be found here http://www.articlecity.com/articles/food_and_drink/article_1467.shtml

 Well I had a chance to do another brew on Saturday and as I said I would in my post Perle Amber ale 3^rd June I dropped the new brew straight onto the yeast cake from that brew. 

Once again I’ve been pushed for time and my ‘kettle’ is still out of action so I’ve just done an extract brew to save a bit of time.

Ingredients:

• Coopers Bavarian Lager Kit,
• 1 kg light dry malt extract,
• 500grams generic brand honey (not looking for honey flavours, just wanted to lighten the body of the beer),
• 200 grams crystal malt (colour 140 EBC),
• 25 grams Saaz Hops (pellets)

Method:

This brewing session was much the same as my Perle Pale ale, so I’ll not go into too much detail on the brewing of it.

Put Crystal malt (crushed) into 2 litres of water and start heating until it just starts to boil (can even be stopped just before this stage) and strain into the main pot when ready, this can occur at anytime during the preparation of the main wort.

Heat up another 5 litres of water and add the Coopers Bavarian lager kit, Dry malt extract, Put hops into a ‘hop bag’ and the honey and bring to the boil.

I’ve used a “hop bag” this time mainly as the hops were in pellet form, using whole hops I find I don’t really need to use the hop bag as the hop flowers form quite a good filter by themselves and don’t release too many small particles.

Once the wort boils take immediately off the heat cover and place into a larger container of cold water to cool it a little.

While the wort is cooling, transfer the current brew into another ‘barrel’ or other suitable container for secondary fermentation, fill newly emptied fermenter with approximately 15 litres of cold water, squirting it in under pressure to stir up the yeast cake at the bottom of the barrel and also forcing some extra oxygen into the water which helps the yeast get going, add the wort (which will be still quite warm to hot), the temperature hopefully will stabilise around 16-18˚C which is a good starting temperature for a lager. Top up the fermenter to 24-25litres and take a SG reading

Should be around 1.050

As the brew has been put onto an existing yeast cake, fermentation will become visible very quickly, most likely there will be a strong fermentation within 45 minutes, I would strongly recommend that you do not use this method with a very heavy beer and an ale yeast, such as a stout, as the fermentation will be so strong that it is likely the beer with attempt to ‘crawl’ out of the airlock, using this method with lager yeast at low temperatures usually keeps this under control a little (although I have had a lager crawl out of the airlock once before gravity of 1.065)

The next morning I found the fermentor had cooled nicely to 12˚C  so it was time to put into my “fermentation chamber”, actually an old refrigerator, which works really well at this time of year to hold the temperatures stable i.e. The heat losses from the refrigerator=the heat generated by the yeast.

Although I won’t need it for this brew, I have set the refrigerator up with a temperature sensor, so I can turn on the compressor if I need to remove some heat in summer or for lagering, or turn on a small light bulb mounted inside, which can be used for heating. I’ll go into detail on how this is controlled thought a Linux PC I have running in the shed in another post.

This beer should actually have quite a rapid fermentation due to the very large number of starting yeast cells from the previous beer, I suspect it will be finished fermentation in about 5 days rather than the 10 I usually expect for lagers at low temperatures.

Looks like next weekend is a bottling or kegging weekend