Happy Anniversary to me!

After six long years of marriage, what better way to celebrate than a six pack of lovely brews, and some candy.  What we have here is:

Anchor Porter

Shmaltz Brown Ale

Abita Mardi Gras Bock

Lost Coast Winterbraun

Shmaltz Dry Hopped Session Ale

New Belgium Trippel

Luckily, the Mrs. know her way to my heart.  Love you Lucy!

Blonde Caliente

I brewed up my Blonde using the Caliente hops I got last week. It is going to be a bit bigger, with a higher OG and higher IBU count. I'll also be dry hopping with Caliente too.

Excellent krausen after only a couple hours.

Caliente Hops Have Arrived

A few of us went in on some hops, and they just arrived. I got some caliente, which is fairly new.

Brewing: Peche Lambic

Since I bottled the Kriek (Cherry Lambic) today, I decided to start another Lambic recipe.  This time, I'm doing a Peche, which is a Peach Lambic.  Like the Kriek, I'm doing a sour mash.

I started a basic mash of 3# of Pilsner malt, 1# honey malt, and 1# crystal 20 malt.  I held back roughly 1/2# of the grain for later.  After the 60 minute mash, I drew off the wort and disposed of the grain, and gave the mash tun a quick rinse.  Then I put the wort back in, and threw in the final 1/2# of crushed grain, and sealed it up tight, with the wort temperature still in the low 130 range.  I'm going to let that sit for 24-48 hours, allowing it to sour.  It will smell like a mixture of old socks and dead hookers.  Or so I'm  led to believe.  Susan would know.

After the appropriate level of sourness, I'll then do a normal 60 minute boil using some old magnum hops I've had set aside since my first year of brewing.  I remember reading that lambics call for old stale hops (more of a preservative than anything) so I had set some aside in a non-sealed container.    

Incredibly exciting photo of the mash starting its souring process:

Scraps - Building a Seat

I wasn't able to find a complete Yamaha YG1-T seat for use on Scraps, so I decided to build a new seat pan and mounts for a seat that could accept a new vinyl cover for the Yamaha seat.  I ended up finding a bunch of scrap metal in the "free" bin at the local steel yard, so I set about cutting, grinding, drilling, and welding.

Then I made a few brackets for mounting the fuel tank, seat, and a luggage rack off a C100.  Nothing is pretty at this point, just raw steel in the correct shape.  I'll need to spend some time rounding off corners and making things much cleaner looking.  the front bracket mounts the rear of the tank, and the front of the seat pan. Like the Yamaha seat, I used slotted brackets up front that slide over a horizontal bar.  Then the rear of the seat bolts to a bracket.

And then this morning, I started fabbing up the exhaust.  I wanted a mid-pipe, and I was able to use a bunch of different curved pipe scraps to build the thing from cylinder head back to where I plan on mounting a simple muffler.  It hugs the frame pretty tight, and I gave it a gentle turn around the rear shock.  The whole thing will likely get wrapped and have a small heat shield in the general leg area.

New seat pan, made from scrap sheet metal

Front bracket mounts tank, and front edge of seat

Start of exhaust build.  Simple mid-pipe

Site Visit

Nice little Advantex project in Felton, just northwest of Santa Cruz. Big redwoods all around.

Scott's Valley

Having lunch in Scott's Valley. Hwy 17 was exactly as I remembered.

Sent from my iPhone

Scraps: Seat Ideas

I'm thinking a solo seat would work great on scraps.  As it happens, the seat off my Yamaha YG1-T had just the right dimensions.  It also has a very simple anchoring mechanism that won't take much to mount to the C110 frame.

Yamaha YG1-T Solo seat seems to fit just right

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any used YG1-T seats on ebay.  I can find new seat covers, but no seat bases.  So I might need to fab up a seat base and carve some foam.  At least I'll have a pattern to go off, with the original seat. Time to pick up some scrap sheet metal and start cutting and welding.

Scraps: Gas Tank Ideas

I got the basic frame of Scraps assembled, complete with the old Trials bike leading link front fork setup, and the rear swingarm with aftermarket shocks.  So it was time to see if any of the spare gas tanks I had sitting around fit, and how they looked.  So here goes:

Bridgestone BS7 Gas Tank.  Bizarre shape, odd fitment to frame, no bueno.

Bridgestone 90 Tank.  Very pointy front, that interferes with the forks.

Honda S90 tank.  Pointy front that hits forks unless moved way back

Honda CL90 Tank.  Just right!  Fits great over tunnel, not pointy, good length

Project Intro: Scraps

Since I've been taking care of so many little loose ends on older projects lately, I thought I would start the process of dreaming up a new project.  This time, I'm going to pull as much from the parts bins as I can, which is why I'm calling it Scraps.  The basic rundown is:

-Honda C110 frame I got for free a couple years ago

-Freshly rebuilt C100 leading link front suspension I had modified for use on the trials bike

-Scrap rear adjustable shocks I got for free when I bought the rear wheel for El Guapo

-Set of lightly used 2.75x17 Trials tires (no longer used by the Trials bike since I went with the 18" setup

-Gas tank from the parts bin

-I'll build up a pushrod 50cc Honda motor, in fact I have a couple runners on the shelf

-handlebars, seat, pegs, brackets etc., all pulled from the parts bin

As with my other recent projects, I'm going to do a complete assembly with the crusty parts, before making everything all pretty with paint and polish.  I've decided to go with a very simple Scramlber type look.  Slightly raised suspension, high-pipe, maybe a solo seat, luggage rack, fairly stripped down.  I have no idea what color I'll paint it.  

Hodaka Time

The Hodaka has always sported an aftermarket white plastic front fender. I thought chrome would look better, to go along with the chrome rear fender.

Handlebars

Yep, I have some spare bars

Ovila sampling

A trio of Ovila beers to sample this weekend.  A quad aged in brandy barrels, a quad brewed with plums, and a dubbel aged in wine barrels.  I've had the dubbel so far, and it was tasty.  You could tell it was in contact with red wine.

American Pale Lager

A bit of homebrew this time.  Since I've been brewing some lagers, I decided to do a combo of a malty lager, with some citrus hop style pale ale character.  And it worked. I lagered it for four weeks, and this is my first taste.  A great balance of rich malt aroma and flavor, with the citra hops poking through.

Basic recipe for a 2.25gal batch:
2# two row
2# munich
1# aromatic
1# crystal 20L
-Magum hops for bittering, and citra hops at 10 minutes to go, and more citra for dry hopping in secondary.
-Saflager S-23 lager yeast I've re-pitched five times from other recipes
-Calcs say 18 IBU, 14 srm, OG was 1.052 with FG of 1.011 for 5.3%

Kawasaki Photos

I never really took any photos of the Kawasaki after I got it together.  So I ran over to the large vacant lot north of us, and snapped a few in the early evening light.

Kawasaki Exhaust Baffle/Silencer

In an effort to reduce the noise coming out the back of the Kawasaki, I wanted to fit a muffler.  Before I just throw $50-100 down for a commercial muffler, I wanted to try something simple.  I extended the tailpipe about 8-inches, and fit a perforated inner pipe made out of copper and two fittings.  This just slides down into the tailpipe, held on with a pair of rivets.  I had just enough muffler packing material leftover from doing the trials bike, to fit around the perf pipe.  So I essentially made a very small muffler insert.

muffler insert made from copper pipe

Extended tailpipe houses muffler insert

And then....I couldn't get the bike to run.  It started up, popped and farted a bit, then just wouldn't run.  It fouled the plug immediately after cleaning it.  Then I realized I had mixed up my fuel way too rich.  Normally I use a little 1oz volume Lucero olive oil bottle, full of 10-30 engine oil and marvel mystery oil, mixed into a 32oz jug of fuel.  For some reason I used 2oz of oil, so I had a very oily 16:1 ratio.  I drained the tank, put in proper mixed fuel.  Then I also realized I was running a NGK B8HS plug, which is listed as the coldest plug for this engine.  I had a brand new B6HS available, which is listed as suitable for hot rod versions of this engine, with a bigger carb and exhaust like my bike has.  

So it fired up instantly, and runs great.  And yes, it is quieter.  Not massively so, but quite a bit of the bark has been taken away.

Kawasaki G3TR - It's Running!

Just like the little Suzuki, the Kawasaki had been fighting me for many months.  It ran initially way back when, but then had a sporadic spark.  Turns out it just needed a condenser.  So after soldering a new one in, and installing a new set of point, it fired up to life.  Awakening the entire neighborhood (it was 1pm) and keeping the mosquitoes at bay for another year.  I forgot how damn loud it is without a muffler.  I guess I know what my next project will be, building a muffler.

Video proof of it running

Suzuki K10P - Running!

After fighting a week spark and a motor that didn't want to come to life, I finally buckled and ordered up an $8 condenser for the Suzuki.  After some soldering and swearing, my weak spark instantly turned bright and fat, and after a little coaxing of the carb settings, I had a running Suzuki K10P for the first time ever.  Likely the first time this bike has run in over twenty years.

One happy man, one smokey bike

Bridgestone 90 Clutch

I have had a spare Birdgestone 90 motor up on the bench, trying to unstick it.  Unfortunately the piston is good and seized no matter what I soak it with, or how much brute force I use.  The least i can do is grab some of the parts off it, such as this clutch mechanism.  

My blue BS90 sport has just a little bit of clutch slippage at high rpm in 3rd and 4th gear, so I plan on cracking it open to inspect.  Usually this means the fiber disc and metal plates just need a bit of cleaning.  But in case the discs are worn, these spares can go in, as they measure out just fine in terms of thickness.

Kriek Trub

During the holiday break, Susan's little sister Wilson and I brewed up a kriek, which is a cherry lambic. We mashed a pretty normal grain bill with two row, wheat, and some crystal 20, then soured it for 48 hours. We ended up with 3 gallons of wort that smelled like bad feet and dead hookers.

Then we went through a normal boil process, cooled, and pitched Belgian abbey yeast. Fermented on some cherries for two weeks, then transferred to secondary today with some additional cherry juice/syrup. I plan on letting that do its thing for a couple months.

The following is a jar of Trub I pulled off the bottom of primary. I'm thinking I could repitch for some sort of Belgian ale recipe, maybe a quad of some sort.