Last night I was fairly well zombified, so I didn't have the energy to move the ginger to secondary. Ah well, maybe tonight? We'll see. It sucks to not have limitless energy all the time.
When I moved the Sahara Cherry Cider to bottles the other day, I used a few neat toys borrowed from the Mattster. One was a vinometer, which uses the surface tension characteristics of the fluid, and an insanely small yet still calibrated capillary tube, to determine alcohol content (made less accurate by bubbles, sugars, etc in the fluid). Hard to read at first, subtle... but nifty.
My calculations going into secondary said I had 12%. When I hydrometerized the stuff going to bottles, it looked even LOWER than the 0.980 I got before (how is that even possible?) and the vine meter said 13%... matching expectations. Dang.
The bottling itself was aided by a bottling bucket -- a big plastic bucket with a spigot near the bottom. I think I want a bottling wand to attach still, though; the fat hose left too much head space, and I drained the hose on each bottle to control spillage and stuff, but then I had more air contact than I liked, restarting the flow from scratch each time.
The final toy, er, tool I borrowed was a sanitizer spritzer thingy, very nice, made it very easy to sanitize the insides of the bottles.
I broke a different toy last night -- the blade on my bandsaw. Dangit. Gonna swing by Harbor Fright tonight to buy a few more, this time with reasonable tooth sizes.
Can't do much construction tonight, Taiji classes. Sigh.
I want to build the fire pillar, darn it! Got some great ideas with Matt, an awesome plan in mind, and the hours just slip by.