Kids with guns

And I never liked your type of music
In fact, I sold all your CDs out the back of your car
Just to prove it
And I spent the money- HAHA!
Seriously- on all that whiskey!
And that time that I puked up on the doorstep,
And you told me I was a monster!

Minnesota Twins = Fast Food

"In case you hadn't noticed this, Santana is merely the best pitcher in the whole solar system. He's a franchise-changer, a season-changer, a league-changer. Since 2003, the year he moved into the rotation, the Twins went 105-47 (.691) when he started, and only 335-323 (.509) when anybody else started. In other words, they played like a 112-win team when Santana pitched -- and like an 82-win team when anyone else pitched."

-Just so you know.
And who do the Twins pick up? NO, not some name-brand stars from Boston or NY, they pick up 4 potential rookies.
Here's how it goes, the Twins have undeniably the best farm system in the MLB, and what do they use it for?
To be a barely above .500 team that's what. They use it to be successful enough to make money. never to win a pennant.

But Kremer, I wish to lose fat naturally too!
You can! all you need to have are young players found by good scouts, a good training program, and someone who can teach young atheletes how to avoid being tested for steroids. Knoblauch did
and you can make $$$ too!

/rant. I'm sorry, but for anyone who knows the Twins, anybody who knows Minnesotan teams (/randy moss, /kevin garnett). We are excellent at finding talent, and at trading it away for mediocrity. It's what we did with KG ( the wolves are 9-36 after trading him), The Vikings missed the playoffs again while the superstar player we had is in contention for a ring. (P.S. I'm taking bets how soon we trade AP) and now the Twins trade Santana. (I'm also taking bets on the Mets winning the pennant in the next 4 years)

Hopefully This gamble pays off and we see Franky Liriano facing grandma Johan for the pennant in game seven at the Twins new ballpark.
Until then, my rants will continue to make much more sense in my head.

Thank god for the Wild by the way!

Excess in Moderation

Props to Doug Stanhope

'I'll leave you with a few keys to good livin.
The key to a good life: Excess in Moderation.
They'll tell you that moderation is the key to life but that's bullshit. Excess in Moderation.
Don't drink a few beers everyday after work. Wait 'til the end of the month and drink all the beers at once. Get completely soused.
Don't get a $20 crackwhore on a whim. Save up and then get the $1,500 Heidi Fleiss high class call girl on new years eve and wake up with a damn good story.
Don't eat the stem of the mushroom and see a few colors. Eat the whole bag and see god. Just don't do it everyday. If you practice in moderation you'll never get the full effect.
And don't ever learn from other peoples mistakes. That's the worst advice you could get. Cause other people might have fucked it up, and you could be the one guy who can do it right, and be a hero for all of us.

12:59 A.M. - Restate My Assumptions

Here is verbatim a sheet of paper I found dated Oct. 14, 2007. 12:59 A.M.

12:59 A.M. - Restate My Assumptions
-Given: All sports previously played in high school including some form of racing. *(see note)

-Given: I am invincible from a racing death. All of my accidents involving elements of high momentum have not killed me. **(see note)

-Be it resolved, I like Racing.

*note: Cross Country, Track, and Cross Country Skiing. These all involved racing against people and simultaneously time.
**note: I've spun out racing pro-kart when I decided to full throttle a turn. I've rolled an SUV driving safely @60mph down a highway. I've slid across ice to hit my B-pillar in an SRT-4, and while biking to class safely down a street I've been sideswiped by a car.

P.S. I also like understanding how things work and reading and all things medical related.

Tonight's ruminations

So, here I leave you with this rumination.

- You know the saying that if a girl sees another girl wearing the same outfit they will hate each other to death. Meanwhile, a guy may see another guy in the same outfit and they will become best friends for life.

Well, I think that the saying reflects the major strife in relationships; A girl is looking for someone opposite her, and a guy is looking for a girl the same as he is. Thus the difficulty in finding someone that you will get along with.

Right down to the basic level: a girly girl wants a rough guy, and a dominating woman is looking for her teddy.
Meanwhile, a rough guy is looking for a girl who gets off doing X-treme sports while a library nerd wants a girl to play Pokemon with him.
Or maybe, for every yin there is a yang and I have yet again over analyzed this shit.

comments?

Kremer is Hard for Hard Cider

So if you've read the first part of this ongoing cider series you may have noticed that I wanted to raise the alcohol to around 18% alc. by weight. My first attempt by adding sugar I calculated wrong and it the alc. only rose to about 8%, up from 6.5%.

There still is time left; so here is what I need to do to bring up the sugar content.

Above: Brown sugar. How come you taste so good.

1. I now have 20.25 quarts of cider that had a starting specific gravity (SG) of 1.074
2. My SG needs to be up around 1.1614 if I want 18% Alcohol by weight.
3. I need to keep the total volume under 6 gallons, for that is the size of my glass carboy.
4. The current volume is 20.25/4= 5 1/16th gallons.
5. So I have 15/16th of a gallon (3.75 quarts) space for brown sugar water to boost the gravity up to 1.1614.
   

If my California math is correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious shit.

(20.25*1.074)+(3.75*[sugar water gravity]) = 24*1.1614
This means that my sugar water gravity needs to be 1.63336

Here's how we make the brown sugar water gravity 1.63336

• I know the specific gravity of water is 1.000
• I know that when I added two cups brown sugar to 1 quart, the final volume was 1.15 quarts. So I will assume one cup brown sugar raises the water level 0.075 quarts.
• I know that the gravity of the light brown sugar water from my previous experiment was 1.12869.
• This means that liquid brown sugar has a gravity of (1.000*1)+(0.15*[gravity of liquid brown sugar]) = 1.15*1.12869
• The gravity of liquid brown sugar is 1.98662
  

I need to solve this equation then, where X = amount of water and Y = liquid brown sugar.
X*1.000 + Y*1.98662 = (X+Y)*1.63336
and I know I can only have 3.75 quarts, so X+Y= 3.75
and then Y = 3.75 - X
Then my equation is:
X + (3.75 - X)*1.98662 = 3.75*1.63336
X + 7.449825 - 1.98662X = 6.1251
-0.98662X = -1.324725

X = 1.342690 quarts water
Y = 2.4073098 quarts liquid brown sugar

If 0.075 Quarts liquid brown sugar comes from 1 cup brown sugar, then I need:
2.4073098/0.075 = 32.097 cups brown sugar. [appx. 32/2.25 = 14 pounds of sugar!]

Umm.. WTF. 14 pounds of sugar? I'm going to need to find what I can scrape up around the house or go to the grocery store/Costco. Maybe I'll just throw in the towel...
No. Goonies never say die.
I'll be back with an update.

An open letter to Tonk re: Hard Cider

Tonk you asked me a question to which my facebook reply was too lengthy to be allowed. So here I am posting it here for peer review.

edit: This is a winded and round about way to answer your question about how much brown sugar you need to add to boost your cider's alcohol percent

Hard Cider experiment
Goal: to make 18% Alcohol (by weight) hard cider to use in making Apple Jack.

-Prelude
I did an experiment which I thought was scientific and reliable; but it is neither:

I had exactly 2 quarts (1/2 gallon) of cider juiced from apples in my backyard with a specific gravity of 1.052

1. I took 1 quart (1/4 gallon) of water and boiled it with 2 cups light brown sugar. [1 quart water plus 2 cups light brown sugar resulted in about 1.15 quarts. The jug that contains the apple juice holds 3 liters which is 3.17 quarts. This jug was near full after combining the sugar water and cider, which means that 3.17-0.02 quarts remaining space-2 quarts cider leaves 1.15 quarts sugar water.]
2. I then combined the apple juice and sugar water and let the mixture cool back down to room temperature
   
3. The measured the gravity was 1.080.
   

So I assumed that for every 1 quart water boiled with 2 cups brown sugar raised the gravity by 0.028.

• I didn't put much thought into this assumption although I based the remainder of my experiment on it.
• [Update] What I now believe is that I should have measured the specific gravity of the sugar water before combining it with the apple juice.
• Had I measured the sugar water's gravity before combining it with the cider I believe it would have been 1.129
• Working backwards, if 2 quarts of 1.052 + 1.15 quart of X specific gravity brown sugar water = 3.15 quarts of 1.080 specific gravity, then (1.052*2)+(1.15*X) = (3.15*1.080) then the specific gravity of the light brown sugar water would have been X = 1.12869.
  

What is your opinion?

The Main Experiment
I wanted to make another cider 18% Alcohol by weight. I knew it had been fermenting for a day and a half so measuring it's gravity was worthless at that point, but I knew that the initial specific gravity was 1.060.

-side note: I don't care if I am unable to ascertain the final % alc. anyways, since I will be ice distilling the cider into apple jack; As long as the liquor doesn't freeze in a freezer it's good, or perhaps I am able to proof it] I also knew that the yeast had an alcohol tolerance of 18%, thus my goal.

Assumptions:

• I have 4 gallons of cider
• It had a starting specific gravity of 1.060
• I am assuming that this cider ferments to a final gravity around 0.990. I have done two previous ciders which fermented down to 0.992 and 0.990 respectively. Although this time I am using a different type of yeast, Lalvin EC 1118, I predict it will ferment similarly.
• The alcohol tolerance of this yeast strain is 18%.
  
• The calculation for % alcohol by weight is 105*(starting gravity-final gravity) = % alcohol by weight.
• My Goal would be to add sugar so that 18=105*(Starting Gravity-0.990) - Thus my starting gravity should be around 18/105+0.990=1.1614
• And I need to raise the gravity by 1.1614-1.060=0.1014
  
• And for every 1 quarts water plus 2 cups light brown sugar, the gravity increases by 0.028. [Wrong]
• Therefore I need to add 0.1014/0.028= 3.62*(2 cups light sugar and 1 quart water)
• Because it's easier to measure, I boiled together and added 3 2/3rds quarts and 7 1/3 cups light brown sugar
  
  

Results:
As yet to be determined but the air lock is indicating a healthy fermentation bubbling a couple bubbles every second.

Upon Further Review:
Like I previously stated, I believe some of my methodology was wrong. Estimates using my updated hypothesis are as follows:

• 4 gallons of cider*4 quarts a gallon = 16 quarts of cider at 1.060 starting specific gravity.
• The ratio of water to brown sugar mixture did not change, so it's gravity should be the same as well: 1.12869.
  
• Therefore, (16*1.060)+((1.15*3.66)*1.12869) = (16+(1.15*3.66))*[Starting Gravity]
  
• Thus, what I actually created was a starting specific gravity of 1.074
  

Side notes:

From rough estimations I found that 2.25 cups sugar is roughly 1 pound. I've also noticed that recipes call for upwards of 5#'s sugar for 5 gallons sugar. with 7 and 1/3rd cups of sugar, I added approximately 3 and a 1/4 pounds sugar for 4 gallons cider (also, I have a hunch that it's over 4 gallons of starting apple cider when I include a few 12 oz. concentrates I threw in there.)

This means that I just brought my cider up to about 105*(1.074-0.990)= 8.82% Alc. by weight, or /0.79 = 11.16 % Alc. by volume. Not bad when you consider your average beer is 5% Alc. by vol. but this is upsetting if you're trying to make a liquor.

TL:DR version
I tried to make my cider more alcoholic by adding sugar. It turned out not as alcoholic than I had hoped but there is still some time left to add more sugar. Should I add more sugar?