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foxcroft foxcroft here is a record of our restoration of a 1928 craftsman we will be the second family to live in the home watch our progress when we prevail and our privation and pratfalls as we do not links house blogs foxcroft homepage original interiors photos 2nd floor plans planbook house foxcroft is adapted from blog archive 2020 1 january 1 where has the time gone 2017 3 december 1 november 2 2015 3 may 1 april 2 2014 1 october 1 2013 1 january 1 2012 5 december 3 july 1 january 1 2011 11 december 1 july 1 may 1 april 1 march 2 february 3 january 2 2010 21 december 2 september 1 july 2 june 2 may 2 april 2 march 3 february 4 january 3 2009 51 december 2 november 5 october 2 september 4 august 4 july 3 june 4 may 8 april 6 march 5 february 4 january 4 2008 61 december 5 november 3 october 7 september 1 july 3 june 14 may 4 april 8 march 3 february 4 january 9 2007 57 december 4 november 1 october 7 august 2 july 7 june 9 may 10 april 7 march 7 february 2 january 1 2006 50 december 1 november 7 october 3 september 2 august 3 july 4 june 9 may 5 april 3 march 1 february 5 january 7 2005 76 december 8 november 6 october 12 september 8 august 6 july 2 june 13 may 7 april 9 march 5 about me mike view my complete profile monday january 06 2020 where has the time gone after quite a long pause i m resolving in 2020 to get back to blogging about good old foxcroft to say the least the last decade has been busy and eventful at our house a major factor in my slowing down on posting was that from 2010 through 2017 i served on our local city council that certainly cut down on my free time to write in july i also retired from my day job the last six months have been my gap year with a good deal of time spent straightening the garage again see earlier post here sadly the pictures are lost replacing the original roof on half of the garage adding 2 inches to the bottom of 7 salvaged storm windows in order to finally have every window with a storm and screen with storms in place i have begun to remove interior double hung windows and renovate them these windows are now 91 years old and this is the first major attention they have ever received so i don t know if any of the faithful readers from 10 years are still around but if so i ll be publishing again posted by mike at 12 43 pm 4 comments labels garage house history window repair wednesday december 06 2017 beer update 2 and home improvements not at our house scott came over last night and we completed the next set of tasks in the creation of my end of term beer to celebrate the completion of my tenure on city council rather than work in the basement this time we worked in the kitchen i set the carboy on the work table we had already sterilized 60 or so bottles the bottling bucket the siphon system and the bottle filler this is done by washing them all in bleach water and the rinsing in clean water scott inserted the siphon system and we started to fill the bottling bucket after we had started the siphon going we decided to have a little taste so we partially filled a mug and tried it i don t want to jinx this process with a rash prediction but we were both pleased with what we had after the bottling bucket was filled scott attached the bottle filler to the siphon hose and started filling our sterilized bottles my job was to take the full bottles and cap them i bought my bottle capper in 1982 when as a first year teacher i made root beer with my 5th graders for our halloween party a tradition i carried on for three more years scott had never seen a capper like that so he wanted a turn at trying it out so he capped our final bottle in the end our batch made exactly 50 12 ounce bottles of beer youngest daughter saw my photo above and said it wasn t artsy enough so she shot a better version her s does a much better job of showing off the hops cone bottle caps i bought for our brew so despite working on our home at glacial pace i ve actually picked up a few jobs on the side i finished one last weekend so here are some shots from that susan not her real name is a new faculty member at the university of iowa and has bought a nice bungalow on the east side of iowa city over the summer i did some work in her kitchen and installed a correct period front door she said that she wanted a tin ceiling in the kitchen to cover a not so great plaster job and i agreed to work on it with her first thing we needed to do was cover the ceiling in 3 8 inch plywood after doing that i snapped out lines and started to install the ceiling panels a couple weekends after finishing the ceiling panels i went back to install trim around the walls to make the project look finished in the shot below you can also see the paneled box i created last summer to hide the soil and water pipes that run to the upstairs bathroom originally this area and the furnace chimney were covered by a plaster wall bump out susan wanted the get some exposed brick in the kitchen so she had the plaster removed but wasn t expecting to see pipes she is pretty handy herself and has been stripping the woodwork on the window and doors and will take them back to their original varnished condition the kitchen is not big but it certainly had interesting challenges working around the stairway to second floor led to some creative cutting but i think it looks quite good now posted by mike at 7 00 am no comments labels beer bungalow construction iowa city kitchen politics repair tuesday november 28 2017 beer update and thanksgiving scott stopped over last night and we siphoned the beer out of the fermenting bucket and into a glass carboy we will let it rest in the carboy for a week or so before bottling it i had taken the fermenting bucket down to the basement on sunday so that sediment stirred up in moving would be settled back down before siphoning here is the fermenting bucket after removing the lid there was a very strong beer hops alcohol scent before we opened the fermenter we had already sterilized the carboy again since i had done it last week too and the siphon tube and hose we then started the beer into the carboy after it had run a bit we filled the beaker for the hygrometer so we could test specific gravity again we tested it last week and got 1 56 now specific gravity was 1 011 with a quick calculation we know that the alcoholic content is almost 6 which is right at the target for our recipe we filled a mug and tried it the taste is not overly hoppy and is very pleasant we brewed using my hops that i transplanted to the back yard in 2011 from the ancestral family farm in nw iowa since the hops were likely a type of german noble they are relatively low in alpha acids meaning they are not as bitter as many modern varieties while the beer tastes and looks good it does not have very much carbonation that is what we will create when we bottle it by adding just a bit more sugar to stimulate yeast activity so the beer is now in the carboy and in the back room upstairs to sit at a warmer temperature than the basement besides beer activity we hosted thanksgiving as usual we only had 10 on thursday the smallest group we have ever hosted several weeks ago my dad pointed out that the local grocery chain had a special of buy a ham get a turkey free i went and did that the turkeys were small and the biggest i could find was 9 lbs while at the store i noticed that they also had frozen goose so i bought one of those too and we are set for christmas imagine my surprise when i went to brine the turkey on tuesday night and i discovered it was only half a turkey the drumsticks and lower portion of the body weren t there if i hadn t been so distracted by the goose i might have noticed this when i bought it so it was good we had the ham to go along with the white meat only turkey here it is before i put it in the basement oven while getting ready for thanksgiving this year that i discovered that we have 4 turkey sized granite roasters a smaller chicken sized granite roaster and an aluminum rectangular roaster i d say we re set for everything i made one version of stuffing in the chicken roaster and used the most interesting looking turkey roaster for our half bird here it was after 2 5 hours of cooking and after carving we used our special thanksgiving tablecloth and got out the good dishes and silver so the near record highs on friday allowed me to get out while everyone else was shopping to put away all the summer porch furniture and rugs and allowed me to even wash the porch floor before winter i even put up christmas garlands on sunday in my shirt sleeves i ll need to get a picture of them later posted by mike at 1 47 pm no comments labels basement beer christmas holiday porch recipes thanksgiving sunday november 19 2017 basement shenanigans today i took the first major step in a plan i ve been ruminating on for the past year or so scott one of my school district instructional coaching partners came over with his beer making equipment we went into the basement first we started 3 gallons of water to heat on the stove when the temp reached 172 5f we poured the water over 11 5 lbs of varied malted grains that we had worked out in a recipe last week those grains were in a container with a spigot at the bottom the malt had to steep at a temperature of 156f if the temperature gets too hot the starches won t convert to the correct sugars needed later when the yeast is added the malt needed to steep for about an hour we added more hot water occasionally eventually we started draining the mix to reheat it on the stove and pour back over the top in order to release all the sugars from the grains finally we had the liquid roughly 5 gallons now since we d been adding more drained into the big pot and we turned up the heat to get it to boil all that was left in the strainer was the wet malt once the pot started to boil we added 4 ounces of hops i picked these from my backyard in september i planted these hops from shoots i d gotten from a farm that goes back 6 generations in our family they were likely brought by an ancestor who was a saloon keeper in luxembourg after half an hour we added more hops and more again after 45 minutes and finally again when the mix had boiled an hour at this point we took our wort off the stove now we need to lower the temperature of the liquid to 99f so that we can add yeast rather than wait for hours for this to happen we placed a pipe coil inside the pot and hooked it to the sink we ran a slow stream of cold water through the pipes to lower the temperature when it reached 99f we spooned enough out to fill a graduated cylander later when the mix reached room temperature we would be able to float a hygrometer to tell the density or specific gravity of the liquid if we know the starting gravity we will be able to later measure and determine the alcohol content then we needed to pour the beer from the kettle into the fermenting bucket we added the yeast mix to the bottom of the bucket before we started pouring since we had used my hops we needed to get them out of the mix as we poured we used our old applesauce sieve to strain out the hops then we fastened down the top and put a vapor lock on it that will allow the co2 gas to escape as the yeast digests the sugar and turns it into alcohol i put the bucket in our back room upstairs since the basement is a little too cold for good fermentation next sunday we will check it and probably move it to a 5 gallon carboy for further fermentation i checked the specific gravity later and the reading is 1 54 which is pretty darned close 1 58 where we need it in order to have a final alcohol content of 6 so i never mentioned why i m doing all this now my goal is to have a beer to celebrate the end of my career in public office my term as city councilor ends 12 31 2017 at midnight out of office ale will be ready on 1 1 2018 posted by mike at 7 42 pm no comments labels basement beer politics recipes older posts home 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