Category Archives: Homebrew

Homebrew

Make Your Own E85 Biofuel

By Mark | Published: October 6, 2011
With gas prices all the rage these days I want to show some techniques for making your own fuel. In a previous post I showed how to make Homemade Biodiesel by processing vegetable oil with a small motor rig. In this post I’ll explore the other large scale commercial biofuel: Ethanol, and show why ethanol-based [...]
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Booze Hacking: Three Fun and Easy Processes for Homemade Hooch

By Mark | Published: September 8, 2011
Back in November 2010, I made a presentation at Nerd Nite Toronto on alcohol fermentation and I demonstrated three fun and simple processes for brewing a 7% homemade apple cider. Almost a year later, I’m returning to Nerd Nite — this time to demonstrate how to process your homemade hooch into fuel for your car. [...]
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Homemade Biodiesel

By Mark | Published: April 14, 2011
Sorry for another long brutal delay in posting here! I’ve been up to no good, although my recent projects have not been technically legal (thanks to some antiquated Prohibition-era bylaws) so I’m a little thin for content. Back in December I met up with my friend Lee for an experiment in homemade biodiesel production. I never [...]
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Defeating potassium sorbate, pt 1

By Mark | Published: November 18, 2010
It’s fall season here in Toronto and grocery stores are carrying delicious, high grade apple cider that is seasonally pressed at local Ontario farms. I wait every year for the stuff and this time I was determined to brew some delicious hard cider. So I was extremely distraught to find out they use my nemisis, potassium [...]
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MEADBEERWINE

By Mark | Published: August 9, 2010
In tribute to my favourite supervillain of all time I set out to brew a mighty batch of booze. MEADBEERWINE is the terrifying frankenbrau that resulted: one half mead, one half beer, and one half wine. In order to achieve a five gallon batch of this stuff I obtained enough honey to produce a half-batch of [...]
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Apple Mead

By Mark | Published: May 31, 2010
I swear at some point soon I’ll get back to blogging about code and computer programming! At the moment however I’m still finalizing some contracts, so I’ve been killing time by running more crazy homebrew experiments in my kitchen. Fiesta Farms has a sale on gallon jugs of 100% pure apple cider, with zero additives or [...]
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Black Cherry Wine

By Mark | Published: May 24, 2010
My local supermarket, Fiesta Farms, specializes in organic and natural food and they often have good deals on high grade fruit juice. One day I stumbled on an amazing sale for pure black cherry juice ($2.99/L!) and I couldn’t pass it up… I’ve never made wine from cherry juice before so I wasn’t sure how to [...]
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Ontario Spruce Pale Ale

By Mark | Published: May 24, 2010
It’s been a long time since my last entry, I’ve been busy brewing and haven’t had much time for writing! With spring in full bloom here in Ontario I decided to make use of some local flora for my first beer of the season. This is Simon’s recipe and I am unabashedly stealing it… but I [...]
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Viking Mead with Mandy

By Mark | Published: May 10, 2010
Many years ago I tried brewing a traditional honey mead. I made all kinds of calculation errors and used ghetto honey — the end result was watered down, tasteless and thoroughly unsatisfying. Recently a shop around the corner had a good deal on bulk honey so I decided to have another go at it. I got [...]
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Quebec Maple Wine

By Mark | Published: April 8, 2010
I’ve always wanted to make a maple wine. It’s the Canadian spin on a traditional Viking mead — but using maple syrup instead of honey. Maple is full of sucrose and all ready to be fermented into delicious booze. It’s also worth noting that when the zombie apocalypse drops and we’re all living in tree forts [...]
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