Homebrewing

December 30th, 2009 2 Comments

About two months ago I decided I should try my hand at brewing my own beer at home. I started reading about it and borrowed a brew kit from a friend. Well, after weeks of fermenting and bottle conditioning, I cracked open my first bottle this past weekend. It was pretty dang good for my first go!

Beer

It’s a Belgian Ale from an ingredient kit by True Brew which I’m guessing is about 8% ABV (I didn’t use a hydrometer for that batch). I wanted to go with a kit for my first one so I didn’t need to know too much about the components. However, since then I spent a lot of time reading about it and found a recipe on homebrewtalk.com for my second batch, which will be an ESB.

Beer Ingredients

I purchased these ingredients from my local homebrew shop in Lilburn today. In case you’re wondering, the paper bag has specialty grains in it (which are steeped in the muslin mesh bag in front of it), the large container is liquid malt extract, the vial in the glass is yeast, the gold packages are hops, the white powder is priming sugar (the additional sugar you put into the brew right before bottling for carbonation), and, of course, the bottle caps.

Beer Kit

And all this goes well with one of my xmas gifts from my dad: a really good brew kit. If you’re thinking about getting your own, this one is a good deal since it comes with a carboy and is still under $100. You do still need a brew pot, though (which I also got for xmas).

If anyone is interested in doing this on your own, it’s a good bit of fun. Making a five gallon batch gets you two cases of beer. Doing an extract or partial mash beer will run you $30 – $40 (so about $0.70 per beer) which is ok, but after cost of equipment and bottles (unless you collect your own) it’s not really a way to save money on beer. However, you end up making a beer that exists no where else and it’s fun to let others taste what you’ve made.

Here are a few reference links if anyone is interested:

How to Brew: Everything you need to know

Homebrew Talk: Forums and Wiki

Midwest Supplies and Austin Homebrew Supply: Good suppliers, but local suppliers should be supported when possible, especially since they are helpful when you have questions.

I’ll be starting my ESB this weekend which will spend a week in the primary fermenter (big plastic bucket), two weeks in the secondary (glass carboy), then three weeks in the bottle. So I guess I’ll tell you how it tastes come February :) It should be around a 5% ABV beer based on the recipe’s listed OG and FG, and I’m hoping the time it spends in the secondary will clarify it a bit. I guess we’ll see.

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Zend Application + Navigation

November 3rd, 2009 No Comments

This has been driving me nuts for days. There is so little documentation on this out there I guess because it’s a newer feature and Zend’s reference manual is lacking.

With Zend Framework 1.9.x, you can instantiate a lot of stuff automagically simply by adding specific commands to the config application.ini. For instance, in order to instantiate a Zend Layout, you simply have to add the line

resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/views/layouts"

That is in lieu of a dozen or so lines in the bootstrap file. Then you can create your layout.phtml as you normally would in that layouts directory.

The reference manual for Zend Application says you can do something similar for Zend Navigation (which is how you can generate menus, breadcrumbs, and a sitemap), however try as I might, I couldn’t work it out. Finally I got it to work.

So let’s say you want to make a menu that looks like this:

  • Home
  • Login
  • List Objects
  • -> Add New Object (subpage of “List Objects”)

And you have two controllers, index and object. Index has a login action, and object has an add action.

Here’s how you lay it out in application.ini

resources.navigation.pages.home.label = "Home"
resources.navigation.pages.home.controller = "index"
resources.navigation.pages.home.action = "index"
resources.navigation.pages.login.label = "Login"
resources.navigation.pages.login.controller = "index"
resources.navigation.pages.login.action = "login"
resources.navigation.pages.object.label = "List Objects"
resources.navigation.pages.object.controller = "object"
resources.navigation.pages.object.action = "index"
resources.navigation.pages.object.pages.add.label = "Add New Object"
resources.navigation.pages.object.pages.add.controller = "object"
resources.navigation.pages.object.pages.add.action = "add"

I probably tried a dozen different things here before I got the format correct. That “resources.navigation.pages” thing was messing me up the most, and I ended up figuring it out by first implementing it using the old bootstrap and xml config file method, then translating to this method. Also the Zend manual was using the word “page” to represent a page name, which combined with the keyword “pages” to be confusing.

Anyhow, the above code can then be used like this in your view:

< ?= $this->navigation()->menu() ?>

or

< ?= $this->navigation()->breadcrumbs() ?>

It’s easy in retrospect, but was pissing me off for a while. More examples online would have helped.

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Gluten-Free Honey Pumpkin Pie

October 20th, 2009 2 Comments

I wanted to make a not-as-bad for you pumpkin pie because it’s one food that I love this time of year, but hate to take in all those refined sugars. Plus, a friend at work has celiac disease which means he can’t eat gluten and has a difficult time finding food he can enjoy without detriment to his health.

So, I went around researching different recipes and put this one together. It uses honey instead of granulated sugar which makes it a little better… honey requires less processing by our bodies since the sugars have already been separated into fructose and sucrose by the bees. It has a slightly lower Glycemic Index value and generally takes less to get a similar sweet to regular sugar. It doesn’t make it diabetic-friendly, but it certainly makes it friendlier.

I also used almond meal as a base for the crust as opposed to flour. This is where gluten comes from in pumpkin pies and is a big source of refined sugars.

In all, I came up with these nutritional stats per piece vs. standard pumpkin pie recipe as gleaned from nutritiondata.com:

  • Calories: 243 (vs 316)
  • Total Fat: 13g (vs 14g)
  • Sugars: 26g (vs 41g)
  • Protein: 7g (vs 7g)
  • Total Carbs: 30g (vs 41g)

The difference in carbs and sugar is fiber. So 4g of fiber in mine, 0 in the regular recipe.

I thought it came out really well. The sweetness is more subdued than a classic recipe which makes it more pumpkiny. The guy at work also liked it, and Mel liked it even though she said she prefers more sweet.

It isn’t completely guilt-free, 26g of sugar per piece isn’t exactly low, but it is a good bit better than the regular recipe. Also, since pumpkin is filling, it may be easier to turn down a second piece.

Directions:
Start by making an almond crust:

1.5 cup almond flour or almond meal
3 tablespoons melted butter
2-3 tablespoons honey (or artificial sweetener but I think honey tastes good here)

You can make your own almond meal by taking raw almonds (not roasted or salted) and pulse grind them in a coffee grinder. If you grind too much, it’ll turn to almond butter, however, so pulse until it looks good and broken up. Sift it, what falls through is almond meal, continue grinding what doesn’t sift. It’ll break out into a 1:2 ratio – 1 cup of raw almonds will become 2 cups of almond meal. Of course, if you use a sifter that you also use to sift wheat flour, make sure it’s clean otherwise you ruin the “gluten-free” part of this dish.

Put the almond meal/flour and butter into a pie pan and mix together with your fingers until all the flour is clumping. Add the honey and use a silicon (nonstick) spatula to mix it in so you don’t get as much on you. Use the same spatula to spread the mixture around the pan. Press the mixture down to compact it and press it out toward the edges. It’ll want to gather at the corner, but keep pushing it up the side and try not to let it be too thin at the top or it’ll have a tendency to burn while cooking.

Put the crust in a preheated oven at 350 degrees. After 8 minutes watch it. It’ll begin to brown and should be ready to pull out within 3 more minutes. Don’t leave it in too long or it’ll burn, and that can happen quickly.

While that cools, you can make the pie filling:

2 eggs
.5 cup honey
1.5 cup pumpkin (fresh is better, but canned is fine)
2/3 cup hot milk (I microwave it for about 30-45 seconds)
1 tablespoon melted butter
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg (buying whole nutmeg and using a rasp to shave your own tastes better)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground ginger

I use a hand mixer, but a stand mixer would probably be easier. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs well. Once you start adding stuff, add them all slowly while continuing to beat the mixture. This is especially important with the honey since it will otherwise just stick to the bottom of your bowl.

Add the honey first and slowly. Add the milk and butter next, both kinda slowly so if they’re too hot, they won’t scramble the eggs. Add all the spices next, they can be tossed in all at once. Finally add in the pumpkin.

Once you’re sure everything is well blended, pour into the previously prepared pie shell.

Put into a preheated oven at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until the filling is pretty firm. It may take even a few minutes longer than 25, it’s just an estimate. I shake the pie back and forth to see how firm it is. A little movement in the very center is fine (at least for me).

Let it cool for 30 minutes before cutting and serving. I like to serve this type of pie at room temperature and do not refrigerate for storage, just cover on the counter.

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A webserver that isn’t a webserver

October 16th, 2009 1 Comment

The machine that sits at GT’s root domain is one that’s under my control. But, of course, I have nothing to do with GT’s main website. So obviously I want to redirect people who type in the address in a browser without the “www” to the www location.

Unfortunately, installing Apache (or similar) on that machine isn’t an option. It is a Linux box, however, so we can make it run a script when someone connects to the www port.

In order to do something like this, you start by opening /etc/inetd.conf and adding this:

www stream tcp nowait nobody [script location]

That says

  • on port www (which gets the number 80 from /etc/services)
  • with a streaming socket
  • over a TCP connection (TCP is generally stream, UDP is dgram)
  • do not wait for the previous socket to close before running again (allow multiple simultaneous executions)
  • run as user “nobody” (the user doesn’t have to be a real user on the system as long as permissions are set correctly)
  • run [script] (which should be an absolute location)

If you look in /etc/services you see that www can come across TCP or UDP, so both should really be handled:

www dgram udp nowait nobody [script]

Make sure your machine is listening on port 80:

netstat -an | grep 80
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

If not, you’ll need to open that port with iptables which you can do like this:

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

And do that for UDP as well.

Now it’s just a matter of making the script. It doesn’t have to be complicated at all, and for me, since I just want to redirect to the www address, I simply echo the redirect headers as outlined in RFC 2616 Sections 6.1 and 10.3.2. Essentially they say that a 301 redirect only needs a Location header in addition to the Status line. I do this with a simple bash script:

#!/bin/bash -r
echo 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently'
echo 'Location: http://www.gatech.edu/'
echo
exit

Each echo causes a newline, and headers are supposed to end with two newlines. That’s why there’s an empty echo.

To support older systems and methods of navigating the internet (like gopher) I did add a little HTML after that so that if the redirect isn’t followed automatically, a link to the correct location would be provided, but what I have listed here is the minimum required for a 301 redirect.

You can test with Telnet, Netcat (nc on Linux if it’s installed), or Httpfox or Firebug in Firefox.

I don’t know why you’d want to, but you could even provide an actual webpage. The bash script would instead be

#!/bin/bash -r
echo 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK'
echo 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8'
echo
cat [some file with HTML in it]
exit

Of course, bash is just what I used. PERL, PHP, or whatever other scripting-capable language would also work.

Some browsers don’t seem as reliable with this as others. Firefox works every time, but Safari sporadically doesn’t follow the 301 for me. If you can install apache, using mod_rewrite to do a redirect would be far better.

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A Memory: Elementary School Gifted Program

October 4th, 2009 4 Comments

My elementary school had a program called “SOAR” which stood for Students On Active Research (whatever that means).

In second grade you were invited to go if you excelled enough. The program would bus you off to another location one day a week where they aggregated all the elementary schools in the area into the program. In all there were about 20-30 kids from each school.

So they send me to this thing and I can’t even remember everything we did, but I remember I thought what we were doing was too easy to really be for smart kids. The logical conclusion, then, was that it was actually for stupid kids and they had lied to me to make me feel special and willing to go.

I cried my eyes out over this. I was convinced that while they had removed the poor performers from class, the other kids were advancing unhindered by us. My parents and my teacher all tried to assure me that wasn’t the case, but for about a month I didn’t believe them.

A few years after I left elementary school I heard some minority parents accused the program of being racist (even though there were certainly minorities with me in the program). The parents yelled and screamed until they changed the program so that all kids were in the “smart” program.

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