Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I’ve been brewing beer on occasion for over 20 years, starting when I was in college and learn such a thing was possible in my Science of Beverages class in my senior year.
Always lurking out beyond the homebrew scene was the idea of making spirits. More complicated than making beer or wine and requiring the use of a still, it seemed out of reach. Being officially illegal didn’t help either. But the idea lingered on in the back of my mind.
Recently, I stumbled upon a device called an Easystill. Basically, it was a water distillation unit that could be used to distill alcohol as well. As Darth Vader would say, “All too easy…”
The idea of distillation is simple. Alcohol boils at a temperature less than water, so if you get temperature above 78 °C but below 100 °C, the alcohol becomes vapor, leaving the water behind. A still captures the vapor, cools it enough to turn it back to liquid, allowing you to capture it.
The EasyStill does all that in a tabletop device that you can store in the closet or garage when you are finished. Obviously, I had to order one.
I read up a lot at homedistiller.org and reddit/r/firewater while I waited for delivery.

I started with making a simple wash. Moonshine people call it a wash, beer brewers call it a wort, but it’s basically the same thing. I used 5 pounds of sugar, 2.5 pounds of cracked rye, and 2.5 pounds of malted barley. Traditional whiskey is made with sugar and corn, but I was hoping to get some rye flavors.

I cooked the wash at 155 °F for about ninety minutes. I probably should have used some sort of calculator to determine the optimal time and temperature to convert the most starch to sugar, but I’m not taking this too seriously. The wash was super sweet when I finished.

I strained out the grain from the wash and let it cool to around 95 °F and pitched 3 packages of champagne yeast into the fermenter. Ideally, I should have used a distiller’s yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance, but the local shop didn’t have any. Champagne yeast was the next best thing for allowing maximum alcohol conversion before the yeast died.

Put the fermenter top on, fill the airlock, and cross my fingers that the fermentation starts. So far this is exactly like the process for brewing beer.

After about four days, the fermented stopped and I cracked the lid. Now was the moment of truth. The alcohol percentage was probably under 10% at this point. I didn’t have a hydrometer, so I couldn’t take an accurate reading.

I put 4 liters of wash into the fermenter and turned the EasyStill on. It had come with a long tube that I filled with activated charcoal. I couldn’t figure out how they intended this to work, so I made do with this Rube Goldberg set-up.

The first things that evaporate are the nasty things like methanol and other distillates that you shouldn’t drink. The recommendation is to discard the first 50 mL that comes out, but I played it safe and tossed out double that, 100 mL, the so-called foreshot.
I then tasted what was dripping out, and sure enough it was alcohol. Success.

I started capturing in a larger container. From turning on the still to first drops took about 45-60 minutes, and then ran around 2 hours under there was more water than alcohol coming out.

I did three runs of the wash and gathered up each into an old apple juice bottle, appropriately marked.
In total, I had around 3.5 liters of booze. I didn’t have an alcoholmeter, so I didn’t have an accurate reading, but it was probably 15-20% alcohol. The taste was smooth, but lacked any flavor characteristic of a whiskey or rye.
The guys are my local poker game seemed to enjoy it.

I wanted a strong liquor, so I ran the first pass through the still one more time. I ended up with 750 mL of final product.
At this point it tasted like a neutral spirit, like grain alcohol, without a lot of flavor, but smooth and not harsh. Enough to warm your insides, but not so strong to taste harsh.

I had acquired an alcoholmeter by this point and found that the moonshine was 75 proof, meaning 37.5% alcohol, just a little bit less than store bought whiskey.
The real test was to see if people liked to drink it. I took it to a friend’s BBQ and everyone sampled it. And they liked it! Some people drank multiple shots.
Obviously, there is a huge amount to learn about making whiskey that I haven’t touched on from more complex recipes to maximizing the “hearts” (best part of the distillation) to aging with wood. Nevertheless, I had a good time and found that you can make your own moonshine without a big investment or large amount of space.
So as long as you are willing to break federal laws against home distillation, give it a try.

I’m posting this more to help others on the interwebs find help, rather than because Loyal Cruft Readers will find it awesome.
For the last year or so, there was a strong smell of sulfur or rotten eggs that occurred when we washed clothes in our washing machine. It seemed to get worse over time.
I tried searching on The Google, but didn’t find a lot of good answers. I cleaned the washer with various things like vinegar and baking soda, and even tried the washing machine cleaners sold at the store. They would help a little, but nothing solved the problem.
We even had the plumber out and he was stumped as to what was going on.
The clothes came out clean and had no smell, so I determined it wasn’t in the washing tub itself. I was beginning to think I’d never figure it out.
Then one day I saw a clump fall out of the drain hose into the sink in the laundry room. I looked into the drain hose and saw this:

Sure enough, there was a bunch of nasty stuff growing in the drain hose. I could smell the sulfur coming from it. That made sense, the drain hose would have water in it even after a wash cycle since it never fully drained. Perfect growing medium for some sort of organic, foul smelling sludge that must suck the sulfur out of the lauryl sulfate that is found in most detergents. I studied engineering not biochemistry, so all I know is it smelled like hydrogen sulfide.
I went to an online parts store and they had the part for ~$30 and even a video that showed how to replace it.
Replacing the drain hose took me about 15 minutes (mainly since I’ve taken it apart so many times) and I did a test run. No smell.
I’ve run the washing machine about 5 times now and the smell seems gone. So if you are having the sulfur smell from your clothes washing machine, consider replacing the drain hose!

One hundred years ago, this month, Edgar Rice Burroughs published the first story about John Carter and his adventures on Mars, known as Barsoom to it’s inhabitants. The story was hugely popular and launched his legendary career.

Soon after this, he wrote Tarzan, and began a career of writing wonderful fiction series that inspired many in the 20th century in both science and literature. Ranging from Pellucidar, the hollow Earth, to Venus, to the Moon, the stories focused on adventure in new worlds. Hugely successful, Burroughs was wealthy enough to buy a ranch estate in Southern California large enough that it literally created the city of Tarzana around it. Burroughs died in 1950 and the age of 74. Personally, I’ve read many of his stories and have come to love them, especially the Barsoom series.
The laws of copyright are complicated and elude my understanding when it comes to figuring out exactly when stories leave copyright and enter the public domain. Regardless of my understanding, somehow, much of Burroughs early work has entered the public domain. Several years ago, I printed my own edition of A Princess of Mars.
Today you can see what happens when good stories enter the public domain.

Besides the widely advertised movie of John Carter, there are five different comic book series and a new book of short stories.
Top left: Warlord of Mars by Dynamite Comics – Retelling the basic John Carter story
Top middle: John Carter: The World of Mars by Marvel Comics – A prequel story to the soon to be released Disney movie
Top right: Under the Moons of Mars – An anthology of new short stories taking place on Barsoom by various authors
Bottom left: Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom by Dynamite Comics – Tales of Barsoom from before John Carter arrived
Bottom middle: John Carter of Mars: A Princess of Mars by Marvel Comics – Retelling the basic John Carter story
Bottom right: Warlord of Mars Dejah Thoris by Dynamite Comics – New adventures of a scantily clad Dejah Thoris
A sixth comic, John Carter: Gods of Mars is coming out later this year.
As you can seen, a literal plethora of new art, stories, and interpretations of the story of John Carter and Barsoom happening, 62 years after Edgar Rice Burroughs died, helping to introduce a new generation to his wonderful work.
Much of this is due to the stories falling into the public domain, allowing new artists and writers to get involved in the world of Barsoom. The publishing world has not collapsed and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. is doing fine still licensing content, selling merchandise, and holding conventions, 62 years after the original author died.
On the back of the Under the Moons of Mars book is this statement.

Clearly, this effort is a sign of the future as more stories fall into the public domain. Imagine how great it would be to have new takes on Superman, Mickey Mouse, and Bugs Bunny by various artists and writers. Clearly we have a while to wait until some of those fall into the public domain, but what we see about John Carter is a good sign.
Of course, nothing is simple when money is involved, so recently the Estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs sued Dynamite for trademark infringement, which is different than copyright. As the legal battles continue, I will be happy to read everything and help pay this generation’s artists and writers for their work in continuing the story of Barsoom.
If you want to read the original stories for free, visit the Project Gutenberg where much of his work is available in a variety of digital formats.

After marrying into a a Chinese family, I was introduced to cha siu, an Asian style of roasted pork that I’ve come to love. A little cha siu over rice is fantastic treat. You’ve problably seen it before or had it inside a bun.

Photo by hensever

Cha siu is marinated and roasted slowly on skewers to melt off the fat and crisp up a bit. While visiting family in Cincinnati, we have home made cha siu and I decided to try it at home. With a Crufty twist, of course.

I bought a couple pounds of pork shoulder and sliced it into strips.

For the marinade, I used the mix my Chinese mother-in-law gave me. I considered researching recipes, but when your Chinese mother-in-law tells you how to do something, you listen.

Traditionally, cha siu is bright red and this mix was no different. I think red dye was the majority ingredient. It was time to don the nitrile gloves to prevent permanent staining of m hands.

I mixed the marinade and soaked the pork in it. Overnight into the fridge it went, to suck up the maximum amount of flavor.

I got into my mind that I need to roast the cha siu hanging vertically and not in a pan (as I was shown by my Chinese mother-in-law). I went out and got some inexpensive metal skewers. Here I realized that this might not be the optimal plan. I had been taken in by the picture on the seasoning mix that showed the pork on a skewer, like a shishkabob. I did my best to hang it, but could think of a better way in the moment.
I hung it in my smoker from an upper rack and set the burner to keep the heat around 350 degrees. After about 45 minutes, it was done. Easy breezy.

Roasted cha siu, still on the skewer.

After slicing, it appears to look like cha siu. Red ring around edges and glistening with melted fat. I tossed it onto a bowl of rice and begun to eat.

It was OK. Not bad, not great. Just OK. You could taste the seasoning, but just not as strongly as what I get at an Asian butcher. As you can see, I had plenty of leftovers.
There are two changes I’ll make the next time.
First, I’ll simply rub the seasoning on the pork, rather than adding water. I think this will allow more of the sugar to stick to the pork and get caramelized in the cooking to maintain the delicious sweetness. Just like a dry rub in smoking, the maximum flavor will come for the spices and flavors sitting directly on the meat overnight.
Second, rather than a vertical skewer, I’ll hang the strip from a hook, letting gravity to do it’s work. It will avoid the skewer sag and let even more of the fat melt off. Also, it will be a lot easier to handle and I’ll avoid burning my wrist on a skewer.
Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome, but plan try again for better results.

Things I believe

• R2D2 is the true hero of the Star Wars saga.
• Pennies should be eliminated.
• The dollar coin should replace the dollar bill.
• There should be playoffs in Division 1 NCAA Football.
• Deckard is a replicant.
• Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone.
• The Designated Hitter is an abomination.
• Gimme Shelter is the best Rolling Stone song.
• Fighting should not be allowed in professional hockey.
• Fish Out of Water is the best Disney character.

For the last ten years, I’ve attended SxSW Interactive, a wonderful conference focused on changes in the way people interact, especially online. When I started going to SxSW, it was a much smaller conference and more like a fan convention than a typical industry convention. I felt as if I had found my tribe and met lots of new people that I have kept in touch with ever since. I learned a tremendous amount and hopefully added to the discussion a bit myself. The trip was a sabbatical from my corporate life.

Photo courtesy Ashley Bischoff
Over the years, SxSW Interactive has changed, as all thing do. Many old time attendees complained a bit every year, but I was still enamored of the event and defended it’s unique status. Last year, I was a bit dismayed, as a trend of recent years became complete. I found that the highlight of SxSW was almost exclusively events outside the show itself. Meals, drinks, and events outside of SxSW became the focus of my time, not an addition to the sessions. Sessions were hard to find and attend. The explosion in number of sessions and widely disparate locations lead to hard choices about what you could actually see. Gone was any chance to casually strike up a conversation in the hallways. Stand still for a moment and a marketing person was trying to hand you a postcard advertising a start-up or film.
I struggled with understanding what had changed. Was it me? Was it the show? Both? It’s taken me about a half year to really understand what happened to SxSW, but now it’s clear to me exactly what’s happened.
SxSW Interactive is now a business conference and no longer a conference for individuals.
Let’s compare:
Business Conference

• Uni-directional lectures
• Focus on making money
• Company sponsored sessions
• Trade show marketing booths
• Product launches & announcements
• Press attending to report on events rather than participate
• Formal sponsored parties

Conferences for individuals

• Bi-directional discussions
• Focus on individual knowledge and talents
• Focus on innovation and exploration
• Time/space for people to meet

It’s clear that SxSW has now grown and changed into a full fledged business conference. Yes, there a several sessions that I’d like to see, but mainly because my friends are in them rather than the topics being discussed. The opening keynote is by a business consultant. I’ve met the guy, and he’s not a bad guy, but his sole focus is spoon feeding the basics of social media to C-level executives for consulting dollars. His talk will be old news for the alpha geeks and nothing new or innovative to report.
Yes, there will be interesting sessions, but finding them between the endless ones about start-ups and marketing approaches is hard to do. I mean when you have sessions titled “Keeping Loyal Consumers Engaged by Shaking Sh*t Up” and “Startup Marketing: Big Results with a Small Budget” is there any doubt that this is a business conference?
How interactive can a conference be when the larger talks require large overflow rooms linked via closed circuit television? How revolutionary can a conference be when even the power plugs are sponsored? How fresh can the information be if the speaker is there to promote their book, printed on paper?
Clearly there’s a market for today’s version of SxSW Interactive since every Austin hotel is full and the place will be packed even with the badges for Interactive at $850. The average person will need over $2,000 to attend. Not many individuals have this kind of disposable income.
As a veteran attendee other major business conferences like NAB, CES, and Comdex, I can say that there is plenty of value to attending these kind of events, but the value was always to my company and not to myself. Meetings were had, deals were made, relationship were created, but always for the benefit of the company, not the individual. Today’s SxSW Interactive is about companies, not individuals.

Photo courtesy DL Byron
Holding SxSW in the neutral ground of Austin allowed the mixing of the various geek tribes from San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London, and other places to exchange ideas and concepts over kickball, BBQ, and beers. Amazing ideas and companies came out of the mix at SxSW. Even a number of marriages between the blogerati began at SxSW. The cross-pollination that happened in the casual surroundings of 6th Street has led to numerous great things.
Too bad the idea of casual anything is gone from the SxSW experience. This mixing of tribes is going away as the branding of Silicon Valley, Alley, and Beach are creating business competition where there should be enjoyable coordination.
The thing that attracted me to SxSW Interactive in the first place was that people were interested in Michael, the guy from LA that blogged, not what my company was. That SxSW is gone now.
Change is good, but change is hard. I am going to miss seeing my friends and I have no doubt I’ll be second guessing myself when the show is happening, but it’s time for me to move on to finding a new place to meet with my tribe. My tribe is no longer in Austin, they’re on the move elsewhere.
The time is right for a new conference that is focused on interesting people and not on companies. There is not a lot of money to be made, but to help inspire the next generation of great ideas, it is surely needed.
Lastly, to those that are going, remember the most important rule of SxSW: ABC – Always Be Charging!

Today marks the first day of the 13th year of Cruftbox. I’ve been blogging regularly for 12 years now. Like raising children, it seems like just yesterday and an eternity since I started.
I wrote about my feelings after 10 years and pretty much it still all applies. I did do a bit of a redesign, so I feel good that it only took me around two years to do that.
Since then social networks and micro-blogging have accelerated dramatically. It is a very good thing that more and more people are finding their public voice. But what is troubling that so much of the stuff people are writing is basically disappearing. For a vast a majority of posts, that’s not a problem since they are about what someone ate for lunch or thought about a movie. But the good stuff also appears to get lost. Either behind a privacy wall, not indexed by Google, or simply deleted by the service provider over time.
For good information to stick around, a weblog is still the best thing around. Searchable, linkable, and usually archived somewhere, it stands the best chance for being useful to someone in the future.
Maintaining a weblog doesn’t work against social networks, it works well with them. Linking to your weblog rather than posting a Facebook or Google+ entry is more easy to share, likely to branch into other social networks, and most importantly, you maintain complete control over your words.
No one knows what the future will bring to the Internet and the ways people communicate, but if you want your words to continue into the future, your best bet to have them survive is to have a weblog.
Update: Felt like adding a little more.
Another thing about blogging that an individual can get is wide distribution. As an example, I wrote a little post about making Lasagna Cupcakes. For some reason it hit a note with people and has been read over a million times by people in the last year. Reading the comments on places like Stumbleupon are rewarding when I see people enjoying what I helped share. The post from 2003 about making a smoker from a trash can is well over a million as well. I still get emails from people seeing it for the first time and asking questions.
When was the last time someone got value from a Tweet you made last week, let alone a year ago?
Lastly, thank you to all the Loyal Cruft Readers that have put up with my shenanigans for more than a decade.

When I ride and run solo, I like to listen to music or podcasts. Of course, this makes my friend Mike crazy, but I do it anyways. To be safe, I only put a headphone in my right ear so I can hear cars and the surroundings.
For a couple years, I’ve used the Apple Earphones with the built-in mic/clicker. The problem with this is that the left earbud just kind of dangles in my jersey, sometimes tapping on my heart rate monitor.
At Christmas, I got One Good Earbud, to try out.
The idea is pretty simple, make headphones with one good earbud for people that are active and need to hear out of one ear. The left and right channels are mixed into a mono feed so you don’t miss anything.

They make several types and versions for left or right ears. I got the over the ear version for the right side.
I’ve been on a few rides and runs with them now and I pronounce them Cruft-worthy.
Everything works as expected and I think the larger button on the mic is good, especially when wearing gloves. Much easier to find without having to slow down and fiddle with finding it. There’s also a small clip that I find useful when I run to keep the cable from bouncing. The mic quality is pretty good and I can still receive calls while running and riding without stopping.
The one drawback is no volume up or down buttons. I didn’t use them often, but they were handy. No reason not to get them, but you should be aware if you don’t equalize your music tracks.
Priced between $20-30, depending on the model you choose, it’s a great value.
Update: One Good Earbud changed their name to Far End Gear, so I changed the linkage.

I made this a few weeks ago to share with a few friends. You all might like it though.

Any vegetarian friends might want to stop reading now.
I made bratwurst a couple weeks ago and it turned out well. I decided to make more and document the process. For those unfamiliar, a bratwurst is a German sausage, popular in the American mid-west for it’s rich and distinct flavor. A staple of cookouts and tailgate parties, it’s often simply referred to as a ‘brat’. I love ’em.
My sausage making guide is Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. If you don’t have this book, get it. It’s wonderful.
The basic recipe for bratwurst in the book is this.

Finding pork back fat is hard. I don’t care what the book says or what people on the interwebs say, you can’t buy that stuff anywhere. As a result, I buy extra pork shoulder and ask for them not to trim the fat. Also, I couldn’t find veal shoulder anywhere. So I substituted ground veal instead. “soy protein concentrate” sounds nasty, so I left that out as well.

Here is the pork shoulder as I prepare to dice it. Look at all the fat. That fat is one of the main things that make the sausages taste good. I tried to work fast so that the fat wouldn’t start melting. You want to keep as much of this fat in the mix as possible.

Here is the pork diced, ready to mix with the veal and spices.

The three main spices, white pepper, ginger, and nutmeg are key to the recipe and responsible for the distinct bratwurst flavor. Here I’m holding a whole nutmeg. I slice off an end and use a micro-planer to shave into a ramekin. Don’t skimp on the spices. If they aren’t fairly fresh, you’re wasting your time.

After mixing the meat and spices, the bowl goes back into the fridge. This is the Kitchenaid setup with the meat grinder attachment. There are dedicated meat grinders that handle volume better, but this setup gets the job done slowly. The bowl of ice is to keep the ground mixture as cold as possible. Keeping the fat from melting is important. Any time I’m not working with the meat, it’s in the fridge.

Here is the grinding setup as I get rolling. This part of the recipe takes the longest. Grinding 5+ pounds of meat with a small machine takes time. Serious sausage makes use much bigger grinders and can mount them on a working table.

One trick I’ve learned is running bread through the grinder to help clean it. You still need to clean and sanitize it all by hand, but it makes the job much easier.

Defining ingredients for bratwurst include eggs and heavy cream. You whip them together and mix with the ground meat. The paddle blade is used to bind everything together.

After one or two minutes, the texture of the sausage changes and it now sticks together. You could shape them in your hand here and then cook them, but we’re going to stuff. them. Back in the fridge again, while I prepare to stuff.

I use a 5 pound sausage stuffer. The Kitchenaid attachment for this sucks. Use a real dedicated stuffer. I picked up the sausage casing at the butcher counter when I bought the meat. It’s real hog intestine, cleaned by the pros, and works well. If you are going to eat meat, you need to know what you are eating. Patience is key here as sliding the casing on takes time to prep all ten feet.

Stuffing begins. If you can’t bolt down the stuffer, it’s a two person job. Goes quickly when two people are working together.

I twist into links, cut into manageable strings, and their ready to go. I made these for a New Year’s Eve party and everybody loved them. Well, my vegan friend didn’t love them, but the omnivores did.