Trevor mentioned these little metal beasts in a previous post, but I wanted to take the time to give them their own mention as well. I picked up a set of RocknRon’s Stage 3 Ballistech Missiles to pair with my Rainskates Killer Bees and have found an unwieldy and powerful adversary for pool riding. Between the hard grippyness of the Rainskates and RocknRon’s praeter natural spin cycle on the Ballistech’s I’m getting twice the return on my pool carving with about a third of the effort.

RocknRon is apparently a NASA bearing engineer who runs a small, but active sex & death cult in the jungles of Malaysia and utilizes both the space age technology he has honed at NASA and dark secrets of the physical world he has been offered in drug induced visions after being worked into a sexual frenzy by one of his three pet pumas that he lives with in his thatch hut. After shaking a bogus murder rap thrown at him by local authorities in the early ’90s he swore himself to a life of the ascetic pursuit of precision and perversion by way of skateboarding and rocket science and only surfaces for a short time annually when a new bearing or sick fucking wheel has been completed and is ready for the public.

Seriously, this is wizardry at it’s darkest and most effective.

Here’s a review of the Deckcrafter’s Blood Diamond from our Senior Golden Years Correspondant, Trevor:

I’ve spent many, many years snowboarding and riding a 42inch longboard around town. When I decided to get back into pool/park skateboarding last year I didn’t know much about it at all anymore.

I started my newest venture down the proverbial skate path on a 8 1/2 inch Creature with 139 indy’s and 58mm OP’s, but I kept finding myself wanting more and more width and stance. I researched, and researched, finally widdling my choices down to a 9 5/8 inch Deckcrafter Blood Diamond. I picked the Blood Diamond because it’s get tons of concave, it’s nice and long (34 inches) and has 2 choices for wheel base (16 3/4 and 17 1/2), which I like because I ride with a real open stance, plus the extended wheel base is great for pool carving and taller folk such as myself.

The deck is gorgeous out of the box, they use something called monococh finishing which, to my best guess, is a real shiny poly coating. It’s been incredibly easy to get used to with plenty of tail and nose rise which helps me with my biggest problem, being able to feel my foot placement. The width helped my confidence in dropping in and getting up and hugging those walls. I’ve been riding the Blood Diamond for 1 month now and I don’t think I could be any happier. I added 169 indy’s to it along with the insanely fast and smooth Rock n Rons Ballistic bearings, and 64mm 99a Speed Demon Shit Fires hitting the pavement.

This is my ideal skateboard.

I made the whole purchase from Denver Skate Shop online and have been very impressed with the costumer service and shipping (he even sent me a mess of stickers and two badass shop t-shirts). When I had a problem with one of my bearings from Rock n Ron, Paul at Denver Skate Shop replaced it right away.

I will definitely be supporting this shop whenever possible.

I wanted to tip my proverbial hat to the Seattle Snowboard Connection for being some real nice folks running a great shop. We were both knuckleheads and packed our pads in our checked bags for our return flight meaning, once we were stranded in Seattle, we needed to pick up new gear in order to skate while stuck. The nice people at Seattle Snowboard Connection gave us 10% off our gear out of sympathy for being in a bummer situation.

When I bought my Ray Barbee re-issue last July I bought it with the sole interest in learning to ride pools. Ever since I was a 12 year-old kid riding around the suburbs bombing hills, eating shit off launch ramps and doing acid drops off park benches the pool was this amazing and unattainable grail, the kind of thing we watched VHS tapes of kids from California do, not the kind of thing us nice, corn-fed kids from suburban Chicago could ever do. So when I saw the pool at Wilson last summer I knew instantly it was time for me to make good on a fantasy that had been lingering around my shrinking brain far too long. Like most things I do these days, I needed to make good on my 12-year old self.

The Ray Barbee deck was ideal as far as I could tell, nice concave, plenty wide at 9.5″ and a little longer than most rides. I ordered it as a complete with 64mm G-Bones thinking those would be my best choice. I was definitely ignorant, thinking you’d want softer, larger wheels for better grab while riding the walls of the pool.

Lately, I’ve been getting frustrated having to put so much work in getting around the pool. So I started hunting around on several forums looking for threads on the best wheels for pool riding. Based on what I read I narrowed my choice down to two different kinds of wheels: RockNRon’s Black Holes and Rainskate’s Yellow Jackets. Contrary to what I believed, both of these wheels came with high praise because they were hard and fast, but still had great grip.

I was most drawn to RockNRon’s mostly because of the cultish air of mystery with which people spoke of him and his wheels. I’m still not totally sure what the deal is with RockNRon, but it sounds like he’s some kind of NASA engineer who lives in Malaysia and makes his wheels and bearings only in his spare time when he has it. Awesome. Unfortunately, the same things that drew me to RockNRon may be the reason I can’t find his wheels anywhere. And I’ve looked. The few places that carried them, including Ron’s own site, are sold out with little indication when they may be available again. I sent Ron an email the other day inquiring, but haven’t heard anything back.

My runner up was the Rainskate 62mm 98A Yellow Jacket. Apparently durometer measurements mean next to nothing, changing from manufacturer to manufacturer. In some cases, like RockNRon, manufacturers will list fictional measurements to illustrate a differentiation that is not really able to be articulated in the A scale of durometer measurements (Ron lists his as 101A when in fact they are like 99.8s). This point was only driven further home when my order arrived from SoCal Skates. The difference between my 97A G-Bones and my 98A Yellow Jackets is like night and day. Not only are the Yellow Jackets noticeably harder, but they are clearly made from a different kind of polymer than the G-Bones. I put them on my board and kicked around the wood floor of my apartment feeling a bit sketched as my board rode like it was setting on ice. I was assured they would react differently to pavement, but I was skeptical.

Hitting the pool this morning was a revelation. I used so much less effort to get up the walls and across the flats and there was no slippage at all on any of my turns. And to hear the growl of a harder wheel while climbing up a wall is pretty great.

There’s so much noise and garbage out there regarding gear, it’s always exciting to find a piece of equipment that delivers on it’s promise of making your experience better, and the Yellow Jacket does just that. From now on Rainskate Yellow Jackets are an essential part of any pool riding I do.

Remember that feeling you had the first time you fell in love??? Mmmm, I got that right now.

I’ve been hunting around for a new pool board, leaning heavily towards an Old Man Army, possibly an Earthwing Thruster, but most likely a Pool King Dogstar or Hyper Kick.

But in my searches I came across Witchcraft Skateboards and, while these are definitely more of a freestyle board there is something within my easily marketed enthusiasm for the iconography of the evil that is tugging my sleeve for this little beauty.

I am being compelled beyond what I know is good for me. I got my D&D boner fully unsheathed.

After returning from two weeks in the beer-puddled paradise of Belgium, coming back to the well worn grooves of my ‘real’ life, I’ve found myself in a very real and tangible depression.

I’ve had to stop drinking due to some unsurprising health concerns (‘stop drinking’ = only drink 3 days a week, though this will probably become full time for a spell very shortly) leaving my pleasure centers very thirsty and equally furious at me. Aside from the gaping maw of my empty and angry opiate receptors, or perhaps because of them, my attention span resembles that of one of these 20-year olds running around today, you know the ones, they breast fed on Mountain Dew, came of age after 9/11, think Nirvana is classic rock and have never even heard of Minor Threat.

I feel like a neon, self-reflecting bug zapper, like a rave toy reconditioned for evil. This is a grim prognosis, my friends, these waters are indeed very deep.

So, as I fill my face with pizza and chocolate and cigarettes and sleep, and as I continue to sit inappropriately close to friends while they drink their beer, hoping, in vein, to smell the sweet serpents kiss of effervescent excellence that is my beloved barley beverage, I’ve been trying to come up with new ways to bide my time until death envelopes me in it’s sweet, forgiving embrace. I thought, off hand, I might take some melodrama classes being offered by the local summer stock theater here in the city, but, upon further reflection, it’s probably no use.

Instead I think I may return to a source near to my heart, one that has not been properly dipped into in far too long. Yes, long distance bicycling. Sure, I ride my Jamis to work everyday and occassionally use it as transport to weekend activities. But I miss the days of 30, 40, 60 mile rides. I even miss the centuries now and again. To this day – and I’ve involved myself in many strange and memorable acts – few memories hold as much water for me as the times I’ve travelled between cities and towns with only my bike and what I could carry on it.

And instead of continuing to wait for my lazy and cross-eyed friends to get into bicycling, I do believe it’s time for me to reach out to a group of people already into cycling, people I don’t know, people I can learn from. It’s time to step a little outside my comfort zone and be a stranger amongst humans once again. It’s time I push myself out of this mid-life malaise and rediscover activities to make my nervous system sing once again.

In service of that I’ve found the Chicago Cycling Club. Their website describes them as a varied group of bicycle enthusiasts who participate in 3-4 rides per week of varying intensity. Everything from social rides at a 12-14 mph pace to training rides at a brisk 16-18 mph for 60 miles or more. Their site features a nice scheduling page allowing you to search by dates and types of rides. They offer a decent description of each ride, the average speed and the level of difficulty.

I’ll report back after actually participating in their ride, but right now, that mess of tangled christmas lights laying around upstairs in my head is glowering a little lighter at the prospect of clocking in some real hours on my bike once again.

While the brew master is away the minions must work and occasionally make important decisions. This past weekend I took Brian’s usual spot as captain of our brew team and brewed a couple fresh batches of IPA. As usual there was some good, some bad and some real weird. The good and the bad were directly correlative to the level of intoxication affecting the ersatz brew master.
The weird was the new yeast I tried. My hand was forced because our local brew supply store was out of the Rogue Pac Man that we had been using for our IPA’s. On the advice of a fellow brewer I gave – American Ale Yeast – 1272 a shot, and man was that wild. I made a starter a couple of days before hand, so it had been sitting for about 48 hours before I pitched it. After pitching it I cleaned up the brew shop and headed home to sleep it off.
What I returned to the next morning was the aftermath of a yeast bomb. The yeast had popped up through the airlock, covered everything in a yeasty, beery mixture and left about a quarter inch of beer in the bottom of the kettle that the carboy was resting in. Certainly we expect some overflow. As a rule it happens with the Pac – Man but nothing like this. This was a different animal all together and it made a damn mess.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens with the beer. I moved it to the secondary fermenter yesterday and it attenuated perfectly although it was not as clear as I would have liked. Time will tell but I think we’ll likely play around with this yeast some more.

Here’s what Wyeast Labs has to say about it:

With many of the best qualities that brewers look for when brewing American styles of beer, this strain’s performance is consistent and it makes great beer. Fruitier and more flocculent than Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast, slightly nutty, soft, clean with a slightly tart finish. Ferment at warmer temperatures to accentuate hop character with intense fruitiness, or ferment cool for clean, light citrus character. Expect good attenuation, but this will vary with grist makeup, mashing protocol, or other wort characteristics. Reliably flocculent, producing bright beer without filtration.

Matt and I have been pretty blessed to have access to an industrial kitchen. It’s made the processing of learning and improving our homebrewing incredibly comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that I can’t believe anybody actually brews in their kitchens at home. Besides trashing your kitchen, 95% of kitchens just aren’t equipped with decent enough gas or cleaning tools to manage the process. Add to that being cramped and risking spillage and it seems like just a deal breaker to me. I suppose that’s why you meet so many people who “used to homebrew” as opposed to people who actively do it.

But just because we’re blessed doesn’t mean we’re not greedy, and restless, and curious, and thirsty. Where brewing in an industrial kitchen with 10 gallon kettles sufficed for the first six months of our investigation, we’ve now run up against the limitations of our set up. In short the limitations of our present system are:

• 10 gallon kettles can only yield 5 gallons of brewed beer on a good day, hardly enough to last two (ahem) big-boned alcoholics.
• Guessing at volumes of water is ultimately hampering us from getting the repeatability we’re shooting for.
• I just can’t get comfortable with the continued danger of having to carry and pour multiple gallons of boiling hot water across a slick floor and into a small bucket. Odds are, sooner or later, there will be an accident.

To solve this we decided to build a 3-tier keggle system.

We just built our first keggle last weekend and found the process to be fairly simple. I’ve got some experience with metal work and am modestly competant with some DIY tasks, though I am by no stretch of the imagination terribly capable. Even so I found the keggle conversion to be quite simple.

The biggest decision you need to make when doing this is whether to use welded or weldless fittings for your keggle. After some deliberation and research I chose to use weldless fittings which I purchased from the appropriately named weldlessfittings.com. The weldless fittings relieved me of the need to travel to Michigan to use my friend’s welder, it allowed me to avoid having to weld with aluminum which is a tricky task, and I was curious to see if these weldless attachments were as effective as a welded keggle. Also, with weldless fittings you have the added advantage of being able to completely disassemble and clean your keggle when ever you are compelled to do so.

There’s plenty of sites to find directions on how proceed with your keggle conversion. Here are the two that I used predominantly:

http://www.homebrewing.com/articles/keggle.php

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Keggle

We used an angle grinder to remove the top of the keg and I’m glad we did. We still went through probably 4-5 blades per keg so I can’t even imagine trying to use a dremel for this job.

The fittings from weldlessfittings.com seem to have worked great once we properly wrapped them with teflon. We’ve had some issues with the swagelok on the dip tube though I’ve contacted Dave at weldlessfittings.com and really without much questioning he’s sent me a new kit to try out. We’ll see if that solves the problem, but either way I was impressed with his responsiveness.

The one criticism I have for weldlessfittings.com is that their instructions are either pretty vague and lousy on some items and just plain on non-existent on others. However, with some digging around the internet we found the instructions we needed fairly easy (boy, I can’t find those instructions now to save my life). Other than that weldlessfittings.com is great and their prices are really hard to beat.

For our false bottom we went to the unfortunately named Climax Homebrew. They’ve got a 16 gauge stainless steel false bottom for half the price of anywhere else on these here tubes of internuttiness.

This is a fairly low-stress project that yields satisfying and helpful results. I’ll post some updates when we build our sculpture and also when we add our hot water heating elements which we’ve decided to use instead of propane for several reasons. We’ll be adding a March 809 pump eventually as well.

We had a big weekend this weekend. We finished construction on our first keggle in effort to expand our brewing system (I’ll post about that later). I got a chance to try some AMAZING beers – Dogfish Head 120 Minute, Jolly Pumpkin’s Lambicus Dexterious, Hansen’s Oudbietje Lambic among others. We brewed our first Saison ever. And Matt’s picking up a full size fridge converted to a kegerator tonight.

On Friday, I picked up a Dog Fish Head half barrel and I was thinking to help Matt properly inaugurate his new kegerator I might try and figure out how to get some of that delicious 60 minute from my sankey keg into a corney for him to put in his fridge. I was worried that this might cause unwanted agitation and ultimately oxidize the beer and ruin it, but then I found the above video on line that makes the process totally clear and frees up concerns I had about damaging the quality.

Below is a video of Sam Calagione talking about the appropriately revered 120 Minute IPA.

And, last but definitely not least, here is evil beer wizard Ron Jeffries talking about what may be the finest spontaneously fermented beverage made this side of the english channel, the Lambicus Dextrious:

Can anybody – other than my wife, my landlord or my neighbors – give a a good reason not to build this bad mammy jammy?