Making a Wort Chiller

You only need to brew once to understand the value of a good old-fashioned heat exchanger!

After boiling all of the ingredients, the wort needs to cool to a temperature that won't kill yeast.  The tricky part is doing this in a truly clean fashion, and many new brewers are forced to use the kettle-in-an-ice-bath method.  The first time we brewed, it took us over an hour to cool our wort, since our bathtub was so huge and we didn't have enough ice.  In our new apartment, our brew kettle fits snuggly in the kitchen sink, which allows for frequent water bath changes and a wort cool down to happen in about 45 minutes instead.

This last month, Ryan took the initiative to fashion a homemade wort chiller.  Time for a science explanation!  A wort chiller is essentially a heat exchanger.  The idea is that the cold pipe and hot fluid will "exchange" energy, thus cooling your fluid and heating up your pipe.  We used a 25-ft copper coil because the more surface area you have, the more heat you can exchange through the pipe.  Additionally, copper has a high thermal conductivity, which means heat transfer occurs at a faster rate than materials with a low thermal conductivity (like air).  To keep the copper pipe at a much lower temperature than the wort, you run cold water through the coil to keep the heat exchange at a high rate.  This homemade chiller brought our wort cool down time to < 20 minutes.

The best part?  Ryan spent ~$30 on materials and a few hours in one day, and I bet we could have spent less if we did some deal-searching online/in town.  If you go to a homebrew store to buy a commercial wort chiller, they can run at least $60.

We purchased our materials from local hardware shops, but I linked some of the materials to Amazon.com so you can see the pictures.  Of course, it is best to have the pieces in hand to make sure everything fits before you go to put it all together.

Materials:

• 25 ft coil of copper pipe, 3/8" outer diameter
• 1 Tubing bender for 3/8" tube
• 6 ft clear plastic tubing, 3/8" inner diameter (you may need more or less, depending on your source of water and dumping sink) 
• 3 worm drive hose clamps + 1 flathead screwdriver
• 1 dual thread faucet to hose adapter (make sure your faucet is threaded and compatible!)
• 1 hose thread to 3/8" barb adapter

Take out your boiling kettle and make sure the copper coil can fit inside.  Slip the tube bender over the pipe, and use your hands to shape a 90-degree bend such that ~8 inches of the tube protrudes over the top of the kettle.  Bend another 90 degree bend at the top of that leg, such that the pipe is parallel to the ground.

Repeat this with the other end of the pipe.

Cut your plastic tubing in half.  Affix each piece to one end of the copper pipe, and secure in place with a worm drive clamp.

 

With one of the plastic tubes, push the hose-to-barb adapter into the tube and secure with another worm drive clamp.

Screw the faucet-to-hose adapter onto the other side of the hose-to-barb adapter.

 Remove any sort of cover from your faucet of choice, and attach the faucet-to-hose adapter to your sink faucet.

Place the wort chiller in your kettle, and route the free plastic tube to a drain (we used our bathtub).

Now turn your faucet as cold as it will get, and watch your wort cool at record speed!  

Food Plushies from Spoonflower.com

In brainstorming gifts for my nephew, I stumbled upon a set of food plushies on Spoonflower.com.  I don't know if he'll love cooking as much as I do, but I can hope and help get him started at an early age.  :)

The fabric comes with shapes of expressive kitchenstuffs, and all you have to do is cut them out, stitch and flip them, stuff full of fiberfill, and close shut with a hand stitch.

You can order the fabric here, and if you order the fat quarter ($11), you get this adorable breakfast set:

For $7 more ($18 total), you can order the full yard, and get a tea time set, food, utensils, and treats!

Pot Holders

I just discovered Spoonflower, which is a magical place where you can custom order your own fabrics!  You can get your designs printed on high-quality quilting cotton, poplin, voile, silk, canvas, knit, and other fibers.  If you're a bit challenged at digital arts like myself, you can purchase prints of other artists' designs, and they get a nice kickback on your order!  Pretty cool, in my opinion.

While shopping for fabrics for clothing, I decided to order a few swatches to get a feel for what kind of textiles would best suit my projects.  The swatches are generous (8x8 inches), and I ordered two: a cotton voile (left) and quilting cotton (right).

I didn't want these beautiful fabrics to go to waste, but I didn't have any patchwork projects in need of additional prints.  I decided the quilting fabric was the perfect size for a pot holder, and decided to use up some spare quilt batting in the process.  

If you haven't quilted before and you're looking for a small-scale project to practice machine quilting and/or sewing a binding, this is a perfect task for you.

Materials Needed:

• 8x8 inch fabric swatch (quilting cotton weight)

• 2 - 8x8 inch light weight quilt batting (I used a cotton-bamboo blend)

• 8x8 inch contrasting color (for the backing)
• 4x36 inch additional color (for the binding)

For the binding, fold the 4x36 strip in half lenghtwise and iron.

Layer your "quilt sandwich": bottom, backing, top.

Leave a 1/4" seam around your edges.  I trimmed my print accordingly.

Pin together, and machine quilt.  If you wanted to get fancy, you could do some freeform shapes or squiggles, but I decided to keep things simple with a diagonal pattern.

Here comes the most difficult part: the binding.  It's tricky to explain in words, and I'd point you to where I learned this technique: the quilting blog, "Oh Fransson."

With the fold facing inward (open edges match the edge of the pot holder), pin the binding around the edges.  When you reach a corner, fold the binding away from the pot holder at a 90 degree angle:

...then fold back in the opposite direction.

Pin in place.

Continue this around the pot holder.  When you reach the edge you started with, give yourself 1/2-1 inch of extra binding.  Fold them where they meet, and press.

Unfold the binding at this point, match the edges, and machine sew along the pressed crease.  

When you are finished, it should look like this:

And when you fold it back, the matched edges will be tucked in.

Now you can begin sewing the binding to the pot holder.  Begin in the middle of a side, and stitch with a 1/4" seam allowance from the edge.  When you reach a corner, stop before sewing the folded fabric:

Undo the pin, fold the triangle flap towards your stitches, and resume sewing:

When you have completed this all the way around, you can now turn the binding outwards.  You should have nice, crisp, lines in your corners.

Flip your pot holder over.  While holding your binding in place, use binder clips to secure.

Use a ladder stitch or other invisible stitch to secure the binding to the back, and sew along the entire perimeter.

Done!  Your new pot holder is ready!

First Quilts and Craft Room

My mother was (and still is) an avid crafter.  She made matching quilts and giant floor pillows for me and my siblings, and there are plenty of instances where she sewed matching dresses and pajamas for me and my best friend.  Since I had an early penchant for crafting alongside her, she taught me how to use a sewing machine when I was in elementary school.  We started out easy: sewing straight lines on fabric scraps, experimenting with different stitches, loading bobbins, learning how to thread the machine.  It wasn't long before I started helping her finish her quilt blocks, making clothing for my stuffed animals, and made my first throw pillows.  Once in high school, sewing fell a little to the wayside.  She helped me make my own prom dress and I experimented making some other pieces of clothing, but without a sewing machine in college, I didn't get much practice.

I purchased my first sewing machine when I moved to Seattle in 2010.  I did little things at first...hemming pants for myself and friends, fixing things, nothing ambitious.  I didn't have much space in the first rental I lived in, so breaking out the sewing machine meant clearing my desk of my laptop, textbooks, and homework and fishing out the giant IKEA bin of random tools.  Ryan came to Seattle and we moved...twice.  The second time, we made sure to have an adequate space for our various hobbies, and for the first time since living with my parents, I had a craft table!

My side of our gloriously spacious office, before the brew station was added.

I was itching to use my machine when a perfect excuse came along: my sister's pregnancy!  She and her husband have lived in Alaska for at least ten years, and I found no better fabrics than a colorful fat quarters collection of woodland creatures.  Here's a sampling of what I found with Fox Trails by Riley Blake Designs:

I needed something easy for my first quilt, so I decided to go with Elizabeth Hartmann's Charm Squares Baby Quilt.  The instructions are available online, and no fancy shapes required!  I followed her tutorials for making a "quilt sandwich" and making and sewing the binding and it came out better than expected.  I machine-quilted some loop-de-loops across the rows, which you can kind of see in the brown sashing fabric.  i forgot to take a picture of the back, but I decided to go easy and did a solid orange fabric.

Digby tests out the first tummy-time quilt!

 With the baby quilt under my belt, I had a boost of confidence and decided to go for a larger one. I bought some (admittedly hipster) Birch fabrics with birds and bikes printed in bright colors, and scaled up the Charm Squares pattern to fit a full-size bed.  The instructions online give adequate detail for scaling to a twin-size bed, so I just added a few more blocks to make the quilt wider.  It wasn't long before I realized that a full-size quilt was much, much harder to handle than a baby-sized one, so I ended up forgetting the fancy machine-quilting pattern and doing an easy square pattern, 1/4" off the seams of the quilt block.  The back I lined with gray flannel with a solid turquoise stripe down the middle...mostly because I mis-measured and didn't have enough flannel for the backing!

It turned out better than I expected, but I think I'll need a break from quilting for a bit.  I'll practice on some other projects before coming back to a task of this scale...overall, though, I'm really happy with the results!

Reusable Snack Bags

Like a good enviro-conscious Seattleite, I've been trying to reduce my usage of plastics and non-compostables.  I realized the majority of Ziploc bags we use are to hold dry snacks, and it seems like an awful waste to keep buying them, using them, and throwing them away.

My friend Eileen stumbled upon some fabric reusable pouches on the internet, and per usual, I decided to try my hand at making a few!

 These bags are lined with rip-stop nylon, which is washable and food-safe.  I eye-balled the size, and you can easily adjust to make these bags bigger or smaller.

Be sure to pre-wash, dry, and iron your fabrics before getting started.

To clean these bags, you can turn them inside out and wipe them with a clean cloth...or, you can throw them in the washing machine with your next load of laundry.

Materials Needed:

• 14 x 6 in rectangle rip-stop nylon fabric (inner liner)
• 14 x 6 in rectangle cotton fabric (main pattern)
• 4 x 6 in rectangle cotton fabric (accent color)
• Two 1.5 in sets of velcro (soft, sewable velcro works best. Do not use adhesive-backed "no-sew" velcro)

 If you look at the finished pouch on the left, you'll see the placement of the velcro straps.  One set will be on the patterned cotton, while the other will be mirrored on the nylon.  Sew velcro in place, allowing a 1 inch border from the edges of the velcro straps and the fabric edge.  Repeat for the nylon block.

Take the accent color block, and press a 1/4 inch seam along the longer side.

 With the "right side" of both the pattern and accent blocks facing up, place the accent block on the opposite side from the velcro straps.  Match the unfinished edges of the two blocks, with the pressed seam at the arrow below.  Sew the block in place, 1/8 inch from the edge.

Place the nylon block above the cotton blocks with the velcro sides facing up on both, like below:

 Bring the nylon block on top of the cotton blocks, as if turning the pages of a book.  The velcro should be sandwiched inside the two blocks (a bit difficult to see in the following picture), so the "right" side of both blocks are touching.  Sew along the perimeter with a 1/4 inch allowance from the edge, leaving a 2 inch gap in the center of the accent block (dotted line below).

From the 2 inch gap, turn the pouch inside out.

 You should have something that looks like this:

 Press the edges, including the gap on the accent block.  Be sure to tuck in the fabric like this:

Lay the fabric such that the nylon side is facing upwards.  Fold the patterned side and match it with the accent block (red arrow below) and sew along the dotted line twice: once with a 1/4 inch allowance, and again with a 1/8 inch allowance from the edge.

Here's a close-up so you can see the 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch seams.  Your reusable bag is now complete!

 Ready to hold some snacks!

 A comparison with a plastic sandwich-sized bag.  If you make it a bit bigger, these pouches could hold your sandwiches, too!

 Digby hopes the snacks are for him.