Recent content by acrowe

Statistically, population wide we get more conservative as we get older. I think I am less tolerant of people who I think are wrong and don't listen to other ideas, but I am still pretty tolerant compared to most (its my job). I was at the gym a while ago and the radio station DJ was saying this...

I think cast iron would work well as a steel. The one issue would be if you were using a cast iron frying pan in the oven or on a gas grill like a stone or a steel it would likely be less convenient to get pies onto and off of. I also use cornmeal or semolina on the slide pretty generously to...

Yeastwood above says its way better than what you generally get at the grocery store. I have heard that from several people in different places and am ready to try it out. Obviously if you have tasty tomatoes and make it yourself its going to be pretty good. In Canada in the winter the fresh...

I mostly make I guess Neapolitan style. I got to that from copying the pizza's we liked the best, especially my partner's favourites. I do use 00 flour, and i find it is well worth the extra cost. Its not super expensive as we have a couple brands in the grocery store. As far as the being hard...

I really like beer and enjoy brewing. Just this weekend I had a conversation with a friend I hadn't seen for a while (at a brewery taproom) who was asking if I was still brewing. He figured lots of people probably gave it up as the number of breweries exploded where you could get interesting and...

I am sorry to hear about Brew and Grow closing, I started homebrewing when I was in grad school in Chicago (2003-7) and I enjoyed going there for supplies, to talk brewing and see what was being brewed there. I wish I had known the clubs then, although it might have been harder to finish my degree.

It was a large volume of hops, but I don't think its actually much weight, and I have no idea what the alpha acid levels are at all. Thats why it was experimental increase. I didn't grow these, my wife got them from an older woman in town who was asking if anyone wanted them and would use them...

I ended up getting a fairly good amount of fresh hops - but I was out of town for several weeks so I just asked my wife to freeze them - just like that fresh cones in a zip lock into the freezer. It was a couple months before I actually tried them. Chinook and Goldings I made a basic pale ale...

I agree 6% is 6% the difference is likely psychological. I actually find homebrew worse just because of my habits. With store bought beers I tend to be really aware of opening a new can, but with homebrew I just pour another from the tap. Sometimes I will top up before I finish if I am headed by...

Glad your pool is up and ready!

Back when I had a basement, I used a surface temperature thermometer gun to find the coolest spaces in my basement. The whole floor was a few degrees colder than chest height and some areas were notably cooler and warmer than others. I was able to find places to ferment that were 14-15c (<60F)...

Looks good, but it also looks like my efforts with pizza stone in gas BBQ. Crust turns out awesome, toppings look like a bit more heat would have been better. Don't take this as a critique, my partner offered to get an Ooni for Father's day but I decided to stick with pizza stone on the gas...

I used a bunch of the Goldings hops in a pale ale. I used 3 cups 50min and 3 cups at 5 min before flame out. Its a low OG beer 1.041 or so. I could taste some hop bitterness and there was some aroma (nice hop aroma) . So we will see how it turns out. I use Kveik Voss for the first time (on sale...

I just wash my glasses - usually in the dishwasher, but I do try to keep printed glassware from breweries out of the dishwasher. Honestly I don't worry too much about sanitizing glassware that looks clean in my house (unless I have a bunch of people over and I use the dishwasher), maybe that's...

Homegrown tomatoes in anything basically can't be beat by store bought (IMO). I am pretty lucky because my mother in law gardens hard and in a big way, and loading us all up with fresh vegetables and preserved stuff for her is perceived as duty and love. So I often have access to homegrown...