Flat Beer & Frozen Pipes

There aren't many things that piss me off more than the two things mentioned in this post's title. I'll share a little bit about both today.

First, the beer...this being the hazelnut porter Russ & I made a few weeks ago. The yield was a bit low due to the crappy siphon I had. It wreaked havoc on my primary to secondary racking and cost me a little under a half-gallon of beer. That being said, when it came time to bottle, I cut back on the priming sugar since I didn't want to over-carbonate the beer and potentially cause bottles to spew their caps all over the kitchen. The last few beers I've made have been too carbonated, not to the point of exploding, but those that have to wait for 10 minutes after pouring due to the 4 inches of head in the glass. I definitely wanted to avoid this. SO, what happens next? I crack a few of these beers with great expectation only to find out they're flat. I mean TOTALLY flat. I can't tell you how disappointed I was. However, not wanting to throw in the towel, I decided to try & re-prime some of the bottles with more sugar. I figured the batch had nowhere to go but up, so what the hell? I haven't cracked one open yet but will share the results with you soon.

Now for those pipes...Beth has been very good at keeping the friends & family up to date on our house woes, so shouldn't be new to any of you. However, it IS relatively new to find out that you have a house can have pipes on the 2nd floor freeze when those on the 1st are fine. Sound strange? Well, giving full credit to the idiot who owned our house previously, our feed pipes to the second floor are right next to an uninsulated outdoor wall that happens to have some draft issues. I must admit that a little influence is also due to sub-zero wind chills we've been having in NY lately too. All of these things together equals no water in upstairs bathrooms. Luckily for me, the pipes were in reach and could be insulated and heat-traced without needing either a sledge hammer or a chiropractor. 3.5 hours on a ladder in my basement's stairwell was all it took. In my house, that's not too shabby...

On a completely unrelated note, I urge all of you who visit here to read the following. Over the last few weeks, there has been ALOT of press on the recent findings of the IPCC on global warming and the potential influence of man (and his CO2) on it. What I find fascinating about this topic in the press is the near addictive quality of buzzwords and sometimes unsupported conclusions that are reported. I'm of the opinion that much of what gets reported on this topic (given the current level of understanding) is likely more due to politicos and not scientists. I'd like to see far more SCIENCE reported and far less propaganda. However, science doesn't sell. That is unless geeks like me are reading it...