Husband, father, music lover, mead maker, and tech enthusiast. Follow me on Mastodon! Subscribe via RSS!
Every month I do some research and get inspired by other brewers and mead makers and try to come up with an interesting mead recipe. Here's my idea for August 2026. This doesn't mean I'll be making it this month, but it's going on the list of things to try, and features some new methods like caramelizing the honey and using Voss Kveik yeast. This recipe is a bochet. If you haven't tried one, it's…
I've recently been curious about open-ear earbuds since I've been having so many problems with my ears hurting and/or getting infected from wearing earbuds that block the ear canal. I also recently got a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra 2 over-the-ear headphones, and whatever material their ear cups are made of made my skin break out. 😩 So I had to get some cooling gel, memory foam ear pads for…
Mango Nectar Mead Created: 2026-07-14 Batch Size: 1 gallon Style: Melomel (mango) Target ABV: ~12–14% Original Gravity: ~1.105 (estimate — confirm with hydrometer) Final Gravity: ~1.010–1.018 (71B will finish semi-sweet at this OG) Ingredients Base Must Langers Organic Mango Nectar: 1 gallon jug (minus ~2 cups reserved for topping up) 20% juice (Alphonso mango puree concentrate + mango puree),…
$14.95. Change back on a 20. A reasonable fee for an hour of conversation. An hour should be all I need. There hasn't been a lot going on lately, but the apartment has felt a little lonely. After a long day of QCing 873 different variations of virtual toaster ovens (each one supposedly "smarter" than the last), a guy could use some real companionship. Things have been a little easier since…
Today is graduation day for my twin girls, Moxie and Clarity. They've gone through a lot of things I didn't have to go through when I was a kid: divorce, moving, changing schools, going back and forth between two parents. Yet they turned out much wiser than I was at their age. They've both strived to be great students and challenge themselves, attending college-level classes at the high school or…
I've been thinking a lot about Vikings and mead lately, probably because I've recently started two batches fermenting in the basement: a spiced pomegranate and a pineapple coconut. It's funny how much mythology surrounds this drink versus what actually happened. So here's the thing: Vikings didn't invent mead. Not even close. Archaeologists have found evidence of mead production in China from like…
Friday night, my wife had book club here. Only a few of the ladies were able to make it. They brought their kids, most of whom are the same age as our youngest, 13, so they had a good time taking silly selfies and playing the Switch. One of our twin daughters (18) was here and hung out with me which was a lot of fun. It's nice to know that our kids actually want to hang out with us. I guess we're…
My wife and I are still watching a lot of the Taskmaster back episodes. We've slowed down a bit so we don't go through them so fast. We are watching the seasons in ordered chunks, but the chunks are out of order. We started with series 19 because of Jason Mantzoukas, then we watched series 20. Then we went back and watched 17, 18, and 19, but then skipped further back to series 4 and have been…
We just went to Wild Hare cider in Berryville. We usually love going there, but today we got there a few minutes before they opened at 2pm. We're sitting in the parking lot, and we see a car rush into the parking lot and a guy jumps out of the car and hurries into the building. Clearly, this guy was late for work. So we give him a few minutes before going inside. He greets us and politely says…
A lot of my favorite bands released new albums in 2025: Sleep Token Spiritbox Eidola Thrice Dance Gavin Dance Architects Dayseeker Thornhill Gore Novelists Ankor But there are a few artists that haven't dropped a new album in a while who I'm looking forward to hearing from this year. Poppy has a new album coming out in a few weeks. Bilmuri have released a couple of singles from their unannounced…
Albums: Sleep Token - Even in Arcadia Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea Eidola - Mend Architects - The Sky, the Earth & All Between Lauren Babic - Too Much and Never Enough Poppy - Negative Spaces Dayseeker - Creature In The Black Night Thornhill - Bodies Novelists - CODA Gore. - If You Do Not Fear Me Sleep Theory - Afterglow Deftones - Private Music Tyler Childers - Snipe Hunter Adept - Blood Covenant…
Here are my default or primary apps and services of 2025: Email: Fastmail Calendar: Fastmail and Google Calendar Notes: Obsidian and Google Keep To-do Lists: Obsidian Terminal: Warp and Ghostty Browser: Vivaldi Search Engine: Kagi Text Editor: VSCodium Passwords: Vaultwarden File Sharing: Fastmail, Koofr Cloud Storage: Koofr Photos: Google Photos and Ente Photos 2FA: Ente Auth RSS: Miniflux, Read…
While my LastFM 2025 yearly report likely won't come in until after the new year, I've grabbed some screenshots from a few tools that work with the LastFM API. None of this is really surprising. Sleep Token and Bilmuri have been my favorite bands for the last couple of years. Spiritbox is always in there, and Eidola has moved up the ranks lately. Architects, Novelists, Dayseeker, and Poppy were…
After taste testing and gravity testing the ginger peach mead, I decided to bottle it. The .75g of ginger only needed about 12 hours in the carboy to extract the right amount of flavor. That, along with a little back sweetening from the peach syrup, has given the mead a nicely balanced flavor. The other batch I've got going, the maple vanilla one, got to about 11% ABV with plenty of that maple…