The Beer Tent

Dos Equis Amber is preferred by the Bard. The light malt taste and bronze color is enought to settle even the most upset stomach.

 

Hey, I found a deliscious beer for those of the non-miller super duper ultra light persuasion: Warsteiner Dunkel. This is a great german dark bier.

 

Having some Molson Golden in the bottle tonight.
I keep them on the front porch and they are starting to get frozen/frosty when I open them. No school or work tomorrow so I might-should-am- drink them all ASAP.

 

SO I was having problems communicating properly with my wife just now. She says I'm slurring. I';m not.

ANyways, was thinking about my beer being too cold to drink and freezing my esoph-o-throat and found this. Not a bad idea for the tinkerer

What follows is my story about a shed, a warm beer and a home made jet engine. It is being presented for entertainment purposes only and no-one should attempt to emulate what I have done here. The risks should be obvious but it is worth pointing out that beer is a very dangerous substance when used without due care.

Please be careful!

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UPDATE: Sunday 29th July 2001
As this site has appeared on www.slashdot.org and is experiencing slightly increased traffic I would like to add a few extra comments...

1. Guinness was used as it is an internationally recognised beer. I would have used a good, well known American beer but that is like finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
2. In my opinion I do not recommend using this technology for cooling overclocked AMD processors. Saying this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I work for another processor maker who I probably shouldn't mention but who want me to say you should all buy P4s.
3. Yes, I am the same guy who did the Star Wars Asciimation (www.asciimation.co.nz) thing a few years back and this is what I've been doing instead.
4. Sorry Mum.

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UPDATE: Tuesday 21st May 2002
As you can see below I finally bought the small, old, British car I always wanted. For those interested it is a 1970 MGB-GT. Unfortunately this does present me with a problem. My shed is now somewhat lacking in space!

You will note the second, improved engine/beer cooler I built will not fit into the back of an MGB! I now plan to build a smaller, more portable version of the engine. Perhaps suitcase sized to make it handy to take to parties. What I need is a much smaller turbo. Something off a small car or a motorcycle perhaps.

If anyone in the Auckland area would like to sponser me a turbo I would be very glad to add their name and details as a thank you in helping to further the cause. Please contact me at coldone @ this domain

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THE JET POWERED BEER COOLER

In New Zealand there are two things that are the essence of being a 'good Kiwi bloke'. These are of course playing rugby and having a shed.

Not being built for playing rugby I have had to go with the shed. I may not know a rugby hoop from a cricket stick but I know my shed like the head of my hammer. A shed is a place where a kiwi bloke spends much of his time alone surrounded by his tools, current and past half finished projects and the collection of parts and material usually referred to by others (typically wives/girlfriends) as 'that pile of junk'.

Here is a picture of my shed.
<center></center> My shed is in fact really a garage as I live in suburbia but for the purposes of this story a shed it will be. Luckily I don't own a car. If I ever do get a car it will be something to tinker with and be small, old and British. Just like my mum.

Here you see my shed just before I started working on something important and it became messy.

As has been mentioned many long and productive hours are spent in the shed by kiwi blokes. Many fine inventions such as the hydraulic sheep potter and the double headed golf club have been produced as the result of much blood, sweat and beers. And herein lies the dilemma.

Beer.

A session in the shed is typically an all day affair. Starting very early in the morning and going through until late at night when the light fades to the point that you can't see and hit your thumb with a hammer a bloke will not leave his shed for anything (Hint: Empty paint cans can be very useful here). All supplies must be taken in at the start of the shed session. And the most essential of these supplies is beer.

But how to keep the beer cold?

To illustrate the problem here is a typical scene inside the shed. This beer has been sitting on the bench for some time and as you can see it is at 14 C, not a temperature suitable for consumption!
<center></center> A closer inspection of the can shows how it quite clearly states 'SERVE EXTRA COLD'. It is interesting to note that here is one of few times a bloke will actually read the instructions for anything. Ever.
<center></center> Now this presented me with a problem. How do I keep my beer in the shed all day yet have it cold and ready to drink at a moments notice?

My first solution to this problem was ice. Here is a picture of some of the early experiments.
<center></center> Unfortunately that small quantity of ice would not keep multiple beers cold during the course of a day in the shed. And no, you cannot, not under any circumstances, put ice into the beer. No!

It was obvious I had to come up with a better solution to the problem.

I knew from some long forgotten physics lecture that when a liquid expands into a gas it will draw heat from its surroundings. And I happened to have a source of a suitable liquid right in my shed in the form of a LPG cylinder (liquid petroleum gas). Obviously it would not do to evaporate vast quantities of a flammable gas into the closed confines of my garage. That would probably be dangerous. What I needed was a way to remove the dangerous gas. The solution was obvious. The gas is flammable so why not burn it. Burning the gas with a normal burner would not use up the gas fast enough to give me any serious cooling. What I needed was a way to use up a lot of fuel very, very quickly.

What I needed was a jet engine!

As everyone knows jet engines use a lot of fuel. And a smallish one running in my shed would use up enough fuel from my gas bottle to sufficiently cool my beer.

I went to work. A jet engine in its simplest form consists of a COMBUSTOR where fuel is burnt to heat air, a TURBINE extracting energy from the heated air and a COMPRESSOR which is turned by the turbine to provide air to the combustor. I knew that a common turbocharger from a car engine has two of these three things, the compressor and the turbine. All I needed to add was the third, the combustor. After much investigating and designing and building and dodgy welding I built my engine.

Here it is after an early test run.
<center></center> You can see the cooling effect on the gas tank by the layer of ice that forms on it.
<center></center> All that was necessary now was to place the tank in a container holding a quantity of water and add the cans of beer and fire this baby up!
<center></center> The more observant of you may notice the air hose joining the compressor to the combustor was replaced with a PVC pipe. This was a very, very bad idea as PVC gets soft when it gets hot and it tends to part company with the engine at the most inopportune moments!

And now the results.

The experiment was a complete success (apart from that PVC thing). Here is the LPG tank in water before an engine run with the beer at 11 C. The rubber cord over the tank is to stop it bobbing about in the water (as the beer cans do).
<center></center> And here is the final result after running the engine for about 5 minutes. The engine itself will run at up to 100000 rpm with exhaust temperatures of around 500 C and noise levels in excess of 125 dBA. The beer is successfully chilled to a nice cool 2 C.
<center></center> Which is a very good thing because a cold beer is just what you need when you're standing in shed with a jet engine running in the middle of it heating things up!


<center> COMING SOON - Kerosene fuelled afterburner/sausage sizzler! </center>

 

No wonder you haven't answered your phone this morning. Your still drunk!

 

Partly true sir Bard.

We also lost power last night so I got to put the Melbo_portable_heater_network to the test.

I made a lot of noise, got everything hooked up and lit and the power came back on just before Sharon woke up at 2:14.

I'm sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor with large propane cans, heaters and a Surefire hanging out of my mouth and a Golden nest to me... with the lights on.

Was fun

 

Ok. I am in Chicago for a few days on business. Planning on having a few "probably not so beer like beverages" to post in the beer tent.

Thanks for the liquid thoughts falcon dance...hot buttered rum is great on a -30 Wind Chill day!

 

Tonight is "Open that Bottle" night.

~where you get to open that special bottle you've been saving~

 

Melbo has homebrewed.

In accordance with page 201 section 5 of the Bard Code of Conduct:

All meetings should be preceeded by 3-4 Guiness Pints, served at the proper termperture. This helps because:

1) Give one the opportunity to get up in the middle of the meeting to "get some air."

2) Guiness leaves no after taste or alcoholic smell, therefore, it can even help one prepare for a meeting at church.

3) It can make one be smarter than they actually are.

Signing off,
Clyde the Bard

 

and I'm stuck with a room temperature Bud Light in a can tonight.
Yes, I once made some fabulous homebrews.
Best ever was Uckleduckfay Stout. Both Beer and a Breakfast

 

March 8, 2007

Dear Beer Diary,

I drank guiness last night and listened to this song at the bar. I love beer:

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<table style="width: 511px; height: 2098px;" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="70%">Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah
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I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you;
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
She broke your throne, she cut your hair,
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's real and going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you,
The Holy Dark was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you;
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah


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all posts about beer are too short. Welcome to the beer tent.

Guiness is one of the best beers for paced imbiding. It actually is one of the original low carb beers and it has a fairly low alcohol content compared to other beers. I can drink about 2 pints an hour for 8 or so hours and still feel just fine. One can never go wrong with Guiness.

 

I bought a 6 pack of Guinness and a 6 of Bass today. Going to try my habd at pouring bottled black and tans today.

 

Anyone tried this?
I tried it the other night while chatting with Melbo from a Lounge, Not bad, smooth light and easy for those who dont like beer.