Here goes nothing. I haven’t brewed in nearly 3 years. And when I find spare time, there are like 8 other things I’d rather do first. So I’m selling the full Rooftop Brewery in it’s complete glory. If you’re in the market, now might be the time to pick up a brewery capable of brewing 10 gallons of god’s pure nectar. Not to brag, but it has made some stellar beers. Beers that are better on average than the mediocre stuff you tend to get at McMenamins for like $6 a pint. You can do better.
I’ve not brewed in 2 years. It’s not that I’ve stopped drinking beer, it’s just that I’ve seen the 6 hours it takes to brew a batch of beer and decided to use my time in some other way. Kids, Fishing, Camping, etc. I’m dragging my feet, but I’m prepping to sell my brewing gear at some point. Just need to pull the cord. It takes up a ton of room and someone could be making wonderful beer with it.
I’m not going to shut down the site just yet. The ads pay for the hosting, and I’m fairly proud of the content and time I spent on it over the years. The process of reflection (posting) is incredibly important to learning. And I really enjoyed the DIY aspects of brewing and setting up my brewery. So I’ll keep that online for some other prospective brewer to find and hopefully get some use out of.
From the hop desk at Brewpublic: Yakima Chief and Hop Union to combine operations.
This is probably of limited interest to most, but I’ve been a fan of the work of both for several years and have posters from each with hop varietals (including storability) and cone pictures that have adorned previous office walls, the garage, etc. I’m hopeful that this means that Yakima Chief will pick up some of the cult marketing acumen that Hop Union has created, and that I’ll be able to one day order a ball cap or a beer koozie with the Yakima Chief logo on it. Or maybe just a big ‘ol Simcoe hop cone. Yup, Simcoes are awesome.
I wonder if they’ll use the opportunity to change their name to Yakama? (i to a – it’s a tribal thing)
I successfully defended my masters thesis yesterday. My celebration beer was a small bottle of Maredsous. It tasted all kinds of good. I hope this means that more of my weekends will be free to brew again. I’ve got a Jasmine IPA recipe ready to go.
The Rager IBU calculator was giving  incorrect info, and was failing to adjust the hop utilization based on changes in wort gravity. Thanks to Arpit for catching that. I’ve fixed the variable call and it now shows changes in hop utilization when the gravity is above 1.050.
The gregarious and entertaining Jonathan Baker at Monday Night Brewery sent me a note that he’d been contacted by a domain squater to see if he would like to by my old rooftopbrew.com domain. The e-mail made me laugh since the domain has both been dormant and increasing in value since Dotster tried to extort me for it several years ago, and other squatters have tried the same.
from the e-mail:
My name is David Williams, a website developer from Queensland, Australia. I am writing to let you know that I am currently offering the domain name rooftopbrew.com for purchase.
I would be willing to offer you complete ownership of rooftopbrew.com for only $870 USD. This domain could be used for email purposes, to redirect to your current website or even to track specific marketing campaigns. It could also be extremely helpful in building search engine rankings for this specific keyword. This would be a powerful marketing tool while also creating valuable type-in traffic to your existing website.
If you would like to purchase this domain name or have any questions please reply to this message as soon as possible to avoid losing this rare opportunity to a competitor as it will be sold in the next 48 hours.
An escrow service can be used for the transaction to give you complete peace of mind and provide protection for both parties involved.
Thanks for sharing Jonathan. I’d tell you to go for it, but that’s really too much to pay for the domain. I think my next beer might be a DSSIPA: Domain Squatters Suck India Pale Ale.
Yes, it’ll be quite bitter.
After 4 years on a wordpress installation, I’ve decided to reinstall. I’m not sure what happened, but I was having perpetual mysql connect issues again and the db cache reloaded and hyper-cache didn’t seem to be helping.
EDIT: looks like I was hacked at some point. I’m reviewing things now, but it appears I was hosting a forum for someone.
I finally had a chance to sit down and work on the calculators tonight without a baby, cat, or toddler wanting something. Sorry for the delay, it was a pretty simple fix, just needed to replace global variables since the host updated from PHP 4.1 to PHP 5.2. While reading around, I was struck with the temptation to get all AJAXy on them so they do live updating. Given how long the fix took, don’t expect anything soon.
I’m pinch hitting for this month’s Fermentation Friday.
It’s time to start thinking about the new year, and I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on starting a new beer. Specifically, the yeast. There are dozens of ways to inoculate your beer, and I’m sure everyone has some story behind their method. Are you a smack-packer, a pitchable vial user, a dry yeast re-hydrator, or do you let nature take it’s course? Do you make a starter, or do you pitch from the package? Do you cultivate your own strain of yeast that you salvaged from some special bottle smuggled from some distant land? Is there any dogma attached to your methods, or do you go where the wind carries you?
Please share by the last Friday of the month, December 26th. Don’t let November happen to you – post early and post often!
Today is the 5th anniversary of my first post to rooftopbrew. Some of the site (ingredients, process, etc.) is slightly old and leftovers from a class project I was doing while learning Dreamweaver, but I’d recently started using blogging software for a different site and saw the supreme usefulness for brewing. As tends to happen, the site started to include other brewerina; gear talk, exploration of techniques, comments about beer and events, and complaints about domain registrars and squatters. I lost the .com name a few years back and have been trying to get it back since. I added google ads a few months back (and have made $1.70!) from ad clicks. Not really enough to buy the domain back from the squatters. Oh well.
The name Rooftop Brew dates back to 2000 when I started brewing on my own with a kit Michelle got me for my birthday. Thanks. As mentioned in the State of the Brewnion, quality and quafability has been steadily improving since.
An apology to the site and it’s 3 readers – I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately with work, thesis writing, home repairs and child, so I’ve not brewed since October, and doubt I’ll have time to for a few weeks. I didn’t get to brew a spiced Christmas ale, so I’m now trying to figure out what to brew for a 5th anniversary special. Maybe a Belgian Pentuple?