Fog Harvesting

Posted on by in Current Events

One of my classmates, Shreerang Chhatre, is doing some very impressive work researching methods to harvest fog in regions without reliable supplies of drinking water. From CNN: Let’s say you live in a really dry area and you don’t have much drinking water. Meanwhile, you wake up every morning to the sight of fog floating by. Instead of walking miles and miles to get water from a faraway river, what if you could just extract drinking water from those low-hanging clouds? That’s what a researcher at MIT is trying to make possible with new work to improve “fog harvesting,” the term for the process of getting water out of mist by using giant tarps made out of engineered materials. The art

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Beer With Fusion

Posted on by in Beer

I started playing with Google’s new Fusion Tables application, and it’s surprisingly easy to make those colorful “heat map” charts you see in The Economist all the time. I made this chart showing annual beer consumption per capita by country. It’s nothing original, but why not: Units are in liters per year.

When the What?!

Posted on by in Cartoons

I just discovered ‘When the What?’, a blog that charts mostly useless timelines on graph paper using a black felt pen. It’s great. Creatures Capturing America’s Hearts: Important Internetty Stuff: History of Crime Fighters:

American Craft Beer Week!

Posted on by in Beer

American Craft Beer Week begins next Monday, May 16th. It’s being sponsored by the Brewers Association and CraftBeer.com and, as indicated on the website, “offers an exciting opportunity for small and independent craft brewers and the community of better beer retailers to feature craft beer in their community.” This craft beer celebration week has been around since 2006, but for the first time ever, events will be sponsored in all 50 states, making this the first truly national event. This is a great trend, as the craft beer industry seems to be right on the verge of becoming more than a minor nuisance to the commercial beer giants. US sales reached $7.6 Billion last year, representing just over 7.5% of total beer sales.

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The Most Interesting Man in the World, Part II

Posted on by in Beer

Heineken has a great new beer commercial, giving the Does Equis most interesting man a run for his money: James Fallows thinks “the Most Interesting Man in the World crown has passed from Mexico’s control back to Western Europe.” I think Johnathan Goldsmith keeps the crown. And while I do agree with James that I would take a Dos XX over a Heineken, I’d prefer a craft beer over either of those any day. Regardless, Heineken did a nice job with this. And if you liked the song, it’s by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour from Denmark. Check them out.

Some Links

Posted on by in Links

Here are a few links I found to be interesting: 1. England, My England 2. Canine Commando 3. Sea Urchin Body Is One Big Eye 4. Panorama of Night Sky Stitched Together from 37,000 Images

Vanilla Cream Ale Update

Posted on by in Beer, Homebrew Review

I previously wrote a post about my first time experimenting with vanilla beans in a beer recipe. After about two months of aging, the Vanilla Cream Ale is ready for drinking. And the verdict? It’s delicious. There are, however, a couple things I’d change for the next batch. It has a strong vanilla aroma, but the flavor competes a bit with the hops. Rather than use a distinctive hop like Cascade in the boil, in the future I’d replace it with something a bit more mild, such as Willamette or Kent Golding to compliment the vanilla flavor. It’s also a bit darker than I anticipated, so I’d probably replace the Caramel 60 malt with a Caramel 20 or 40. I’m

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