I’ve been looking at improving my beer in one way or another. Wort chiller, auto-syphon, yeast starter? I wanted to start at where I might see the most improvement: the yeast starter. I quick reason on why I’d want this thing. First, it’s just another beer toy – pretty obvious. Second, there are different ‘sections’ of life that yeast go though and without going into the boring details the faster to the part where they poop alcohol and burp co2 the better.

Well I had seen and read a handful of how-tos on  making my own stir plate so I thought I could easily pull that off. Basic idea is grab a pc fan stick a knob on to limit the speed and stick it in a box, plug it into the wall, drop a glass flask on top and use a little metal pill like thing in the yeast and malt to grow the critters.

Problem being I’ve tossed all my old useless computer widgits years ago and haven’t upgraded my desktop in over 4 years. So, I did what any good cheap nerd does and asked a buddy. I asked my quasi-boss (thanks Seth) if he had any old computer parts – namely a fan (which he supplied two) and an old HHD. Well this “old” hard drive was newer and bigger than anything else I was packing so I had to swap. I moved all my data around and now I’ve got the smallest hard drive ready to go under the “knife” to harvest the rare earth magnets.IMG_20110222_183646

I’m looking for a lucite box or small cigar box-like container to sum it all up and will be visiting ‘the shack’ tomorrow to pick up a couple pieces.

More to come soon, I bought labels (still in transit) and a fourth beer (in transit). Plan on starting both as soon as they show up, posts forthcoming.

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Computers and beer

Posted on

February 22nd, 2011

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do-it-myself

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