the following is a post I left on alt.vacation.Las.Vegas, cause they
know me there, but then since you guys are in the hobby, I thought
I'd post it here also just in case it turns out I made something
poisonous. If you have time, please read and let me know.

Thanks.
---------------------------

Subj: billb gets into wine


So last year we went into the whole deal of billb's ice machine and
how it requires a drain etc.

This waste water got me to thinking, gee that's good water, how can I
use it for something else before tossing it? I thought, an aquarium
full of plants would be nice. I bought a tank, some PVC and went to
work. Well, the gist of it is, the water from the IM goes to a small
trash can with a pump, and with some float switches (made from old
pinball machine parts and aspirin bottles) and a latching relay water
gets pumped via a tee to one of two places, either the tank or the
drain. If it goes to the tank it goes thru a filter from an old RO
system. When the level in the tank starts to rise, a self filling
siphon deal I hooked up dumps water back to the trash can. It all
goes round and round and out, you get the idea. Plus when the pump
cuts off, the last of the water in the fill hose pushes back thru and
backwashes the filter. Total aquarium water change automation. My
kind of deal.

What does this have to do with wine you ask? Nothing, except this,
in reading about aquarium plants -- on this here internet in general
and Usenet in particular -- I came upon advice suggesting that to get
plants to grow well you need lots of CO2 in the water. This means
spending big bucks. Well, you know me. But they also said you can
make a DIY deal using sugar, yeast and a 2 liter bottle. The CO2 is
then bled off to your tank. You can look all this up yourself. I
improved on this notion by buying one of those action toys, you know
the kind, a doodad, in this case an alligator head -- it was the
cheapest -- (but could be a cannon, treasure chest, sinking ship,
whatever), fills up with gas, rises, the gas disperses and the thing
collapses again. I rigged this up so that the slow forming gas would
get some extra time to disperse into the water. . But the point
is, it didn't take billb long to remember that sugar and yeast make
more than just carbon dioxide, they also make ALCOHOL!! Black gold,
Texas tea. I'd had the CO2 generator for a little over a week before
I worked up the nerve to give this cloudy brownish mix a taste test.
Just out of curiosity mind you.

So I uncapped the messy looking bottle, poured a little of the mess
into a small glass (I had poured off the yeast foam at the start).
Recapped the bottle quickly so as not to disturb too much the -- CO2
for the plants generation process -- and then picked up and looked at
the glass. Cloudy and light brown. I checked the bouquet. All
yeastish. I actually like the smell of baking bread so this was not
a particular turn off, but it didn't look good. I gave it a taste.
Holy shit, this is alcohol no doubt about it! Then, I mixed in some
grape juice I had, and to be honest, I would not be able to tell the
difference between my mix and Gallo Rose. So I went to the library
and read up on wine etc for several hours and it occurred to me that
it would be cool to get slightly drunk off some "home brew" -- just
once.

That was yesterday.

Right now, ten thirty roughly, I've had several of these drinks, and
have a slight buzz on as a result. So, to all you cheapskates out
there, you know who you are, you read newsgroups, if you want to get
drunk for next to nothing, now you know how!


billb