Hot in herrrr

It was a really great week not to have been fermenting anything. Why? Because my house was doing it's best impression of a south Florida Everglades swamp this week. Minus the gators.

"Yo."

My house turned fifteen years old just about a month ago. A lot of the appliances in the house have never been changed, lucky me. Well the week before the wife and I noticed that it didn't seem the thermostat was kicking in as fast as it used to. Finally when it rounded out at 80 degrees inside last weekend it was time to call the air conditioning guy...

Which I have a slight problem with. I'm a mechanical engineer. An HVAC mechanical engineer. I design the guts of million dollar buildings, and I can't fix my own unit outside. That's a rant for another day.

We weren't able to get our unit fixed until just this past Friday. We dropped 5 grand on this new unit and at first the thought of that really sucked. I almost could have bought a Brewmagic system for that much. Then came the next 4 days without any air conditioning. It was in the low 90's all week, which made the interior of the house in the mid 80's. Highest we got was 86 inside. And humid. Damn was it humid. I had this little desk fan that I toted around with me like it was my oxygen for life support. It didn't occur to me until Friday that that would have totally thrown off my fermentation. I usually ferment at 78, and that's high. But 86? Ouch. After this week, the 5 grand doesn't seem that bad.

Well, the new unit is in now. And thank god. I'm enjoying the cool indoors. My 'frozen' margarita isn't melted by the time i sit down to watch the television. Now I can focus on some brewing again.

I carbonated the Saaa-wheat keg this weekend. Tastes great, but there's an issue. Apparently some sediment made it into the keg somehow. Promptly after opening the tap the flow slowed to a trickle. I blew out the dip tube with some CO2 and the same thing. Full flow for a split second, then a little trickle. I haven't decided what to do about that yet. I have one dip tube that's a little shorter than the others, I could swap that out. It seems to me my only other option is to rack to another keg. Any other ideas? Post them!

Also got a message from my fellow brewer Paul today. Apparently there's a faster easier way to carbonating your keg that doesn't involve shaking it until you shoot a vertebrae across the room. It goes like this: pressurize, disconnect, let some pressure off, pressurize. Repeat every few hours. I don't see how this would work. Anyone care to explain?