DIY Projects – Page 8 – Farcyde's Stuff

Cider Making, the Preliminaries

April 5, 2021 farcyde

(This is part II of the cider making series. Read part I, part III and part IV here.)

Yeah! Some cidermaking progress! I got some apples from a local shop (a little less than 10 kg) and de-juiced them using my apple press. I’m not going to write a book on cider making here (in fact, I just can’t due to lack of experience…) but I want to give an outline:

At the beginning there’s always sanitizing the equipment. Just like with brewing beer (which I did often in the past), clean and sanitized tools and containers are crucial for a good outcome. A good way to to deep clean things is laundry bleach. Follow the instructions on the bottle and make sure to rinse everything most thoroughly with water after treating.

Apple Press DIY

April 1, 2021 farcyde

(This is part I of the cider making series. Read part II, part III and part IV here.)

I want to make my own apple cider! Years ago, I’ve been brewing beer which was fun, boozy and – well – messy. Now I want to try my luck with apple cider, which is a little easier to make regarding the effort, but nonetheless interesting and promising.

So, you need apple juice for brewing cider and in order not to use store-bought material I’ll need an apple press to make my own. Here it is:

DIY Tabletop Grill

March 21, 2021 farcyde

I don’t have much opportunity to move around and do “real” work these days, so I chose something that I could do standing at one place and with not much strength and mobility required.

I made a new approach to the Tabletop-Indoor-Grill-Thingy I tried last summer (which worked great), but this time I wanted it to be a little more versatile.

They had some wood bbq planks on sale at the hardware store, so of course I had to snatch at the offer. I want to make some flame grilled salmon finnish style (“Loimulohi“) and I’m not willing to spend money on an overpriced plank-holding-contraption. So I had to come up with my own and this here is my shameless copy:

Nice to Know: AC/DC Symbolism

December 11, 2020 farcyde

Got myself a (fairly simple) multimeter for the northern germany refuge lately.

I wonder if I will eventually arrive at a point in my life when I’ve memorized these two simple symbols without having to look them up. Every. Single. Time. 🙂

Edit: Here’s a good explanation on how multimeters work (german language – sorry).

A New Cold Smoke Generator

December 4, 2020 farcyde

I am in the northern germany refuge right now (which I appreciate so very much!) and to my astonishment I realized that I don’t have a cold smoke generator up here… what a shame. So I made one from the materials I had lying around here and it seems to work just fine. I’m planning on smoking some salmon the next days (which somebody promised me to deliver), and I hope it’ll meet my requirements. Here’s the summary.

November 26, 2020 farcyde

I read about this in my doctor’s waiting room in – I shit you not – a women’s magazine. Mediterranean/French style easy homemade butter! They adressed several different seasonings and further uses in the article, but the basic procedure is always the same. All you need is a food processor and half a liter of heavy cream (get the real enchilada: 30% fat). After having my TBE shot, I knew what I had to do…

Firewood Splitter

November 21, 2020 farcyde

Yes, I know. Mankind has invented Axes for a reason. But sometimes, special tools make up for a better solution for certain situations and mine is making kindling. Small, slim pieces of wood, cumbersome to handle when you want to place the blade of your hatchet and simultaneoulsy get your fingers out of the way. So a kindling splitter is a useful tool and it has it’s justification. Here’s mine: