Years ago I was given a lot of apples to change into wine. This presented me with a problem. Apples contain juice but how do you get it?

The answer seemed to be the fruit juicer we had. I started juicing the fruit rather optimistic but that changed rather quick. After only a few kilos the machine was smelling of burning electronics. It did not go very well. I became a little frustrated because a mountain of unprocessed apples was looking at me.

About 15 minutes later my little frustration had turned into a mild rage. I decided that one of us was not surviving this day. So I burnt the puny, sad, incompetent machine. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” was a phrase that came to mind. My lust for destruction was satisfied and the rest of my aggression was ventilated on the poor apples. The apples won and I never made wine from apples again.

This kind of equipment is not really meant to be used for amounts that are required by home wine makers. I decided to keep the broken juicer because in the back of my mind I thought that I could use the parts some day. And finally I did!

It took forever. It was very difficult. And now it is very dangerous! I could give you the advice not to do this at home because all the safeties that were built in this equipment were removed and it was provided with AWESOME, TERRIFYING, POWER!

What you see here is a vacuum cleaner motor mounted on a piece of wood. It is controlled by a adjustable potentiometer and a component that is meant to control speed and power of motors. Don’t ask me how it works because I have no idea. I just connected it. I left the ventilator on the axis so it could cool the motor and would also provide some load. Otherwise the motor would be completely out of control.

It also took forever to make the motor fit in the housing. The diameter of the motor is at least double and it is also taller. But after a lot of cutting it fits.

Then there was the biggest problem. Connecting the motor to the rotating bit of the juicer. It was very difficult to center the part in exactly the right position. At this stage I almost gave up even though I was so close. There is no point in going into the details because you will not have the same parts as me but after a lot of desperate hours I managed to fix it in a “reasonable way”. Reasonable means actually that it is not very accurate and that there is some vibration at certain high rpm’s.

Today is a glorious day. Ha Ha Ha! Today I managed to make juice out of 3 kg apples. It gave me +/- 2 litres of juice which I think is very acceptable. It is working. I feel a little like Dr. Frankenstein because the parts were lying dead in a box for years and I gave life to a juicer.

In fact the new motor has so much power that I can safely say: I created a monster!”

It may look rather innocent but I am sure that it can also make juice out of a tree, or play the lead role in a very cheap horror movie.

Hans

And that is not strange because I am old. 47.

But it is not that bad. I am planning on becoming much older.

This story could have many other titles. For example: The arrogance of youth.

Since I am a technician I am always amazed in this age. Nowadays it is very simple to send a picture from one phone to another.

Let’s say that a picture is 1Mb. That is one megabyte. Which is 1.000.000 bytes. Which is 8.000.000 bits. Each representing a 1 or a 0. All these ones and zero’s are floating through the air and somehow find my phone. How many ones and zeros are surrounding us? In some way it is a bit scary.

It is very easy to look at the past and think that people used to be slow, ignorant, backwards and so on.

We, on the other hand have evolved so much that we are no longer happy with the beers that we can buy from stores. No. We can make beer ourselves. In this modern age you can buy every thing you need and produce your own beer at home. Nicer than the beers from stores and as pure as possible. Just water, malts, hops, and yeast. And I totally agree! Home made beers beat mass production!

But this is not the point of this story. This is!

As I said, I was feeling old. And I sometimes like to watch old movies which were still on television when I was young.

Laurel and Hardy in a 1931 movie. “Pardon us”. They are heading to a store which sells malts, hops and yeasts for the home beer maker!

It made me think of something that a teacher once said to me: We can reach for the sky because we are standing on the shoulders of big men.

Hans

But of course my happiness could not last forever. And the timing was not great. I was making a Münster, the king of stink, and so I needed to keep the temperature at 16 C for a while. The refrigerator was only in use for red wine and seemed to be working fine. But when I placed the cheese in it and switched to 16 C I noticed that there was a problem. Again the motor became very hot and the sides of the machine remained cold. The coolant had leaked out.

At first I was not worried. It worked for 5 months and I can add coolant very easily. If you have to do that every 5 months it is not much of a problem.

So I added coolant and the machine was working again. For 1 day.

I don’t know why the leakage has increased and now I am worried. Every day I have to add coolant. It is not much work and I still have coolant but it is not cool. I tried to fix it with a sealant that is used for car air conditioners but it did not work. (Another 40 euro’s gone)

Since I spent a lot of time and money on it I am “a bit” disappointed. Now I have to face the fact that I am defeated. Another failure. It is a sad day and the refrigerator needs a breathing apparatus to stay alive.

Well, it isn’t all bad. I learned some things and I was happy and proud of my first success.

Would I try it again?

Definitely not!

Hans

When the war began my grandmother called me and told me to buy soap. As much as I could. I thought it was a very strange request so I checked with my mother what I should do. She also did not understand so we decided not to do anything.

About 2 years ago I read a book about a group of Jews living in Amsterdam during WWII. They tried to make a living by starting a soap factory. Since they did not know how to make soap this turned out to be very difficult.

I finally understood why she wanted me to buy soap. I never realized that soap is so important but apparently it is even more important than being able to check your facebook page….

I decided that I wanted to learn a little bit more about it. To my surprise I found that it is very simple to make soap so I wanted to try it.

A small word of caution: One of the ingredients is very aggressive and therefore this is not something that you should try with your children, even though it looks like fun.

Ingredients for 12 pieces of soap:

• 500 gr. Olive oil
• 64 gr. Drain cleaner pellets (Check the label. It should be 100% Sodium hydroxide (NaOH))
• 178 gr. Water

Method:

• Carefully add the drain cleaner to the water. This will become warm.
• Warm the olive oil until it is approximately the same temperature as the water / drain cleaner.
• Add the water / drain cleaner to the oil.
• Mix for about 2 minutes with a blender. The mix becomes a bit creamy.
• Pour the soap in moulds (I used disposable sauce dishes)
• Wait for 4 to 6 weeks.

This is the basic recipe for soap. Could it be more simple? It smells and feels like old fashioned soap. (And it even cleans like soap.) So far this was a great success.

The next step was to add some scent and some health. So I made a second attempt with dried lavender flowers (25 gr.) and a few leaves of my aloe vera. It takes some time but after some months the soap starts smelling more and more like lavender.

The ingredients

The cream starts to smell soapy

Mixing in the lavender and aloe vera

12 pieces of soap

The result after a few months

When they are finished I will definitely make it again. But I think that I have enough soap for a few years now. So no new episodes in the near future.

Hans

Therefore I decided to describe the path of failures that I walked to get where I am today. I will also include stories from others because I did not make all the mistakes there are.

I am not sure whether I should write about my failures because they are actually important to me. I have forgotten about a lot of successes but the failures I remember vividly. And I can laugh about most of them. Especially the biggest ones. I remember the kitchen floor was flooded with boiling beer. My God. At the moment I felt awful about it but now I…. I..

I still hate that moment.

Anyway, I am sure that there are plenty of mistakes left for you to make.

Since I made more than a few failures I cannot write all of them at once so this story will be a living document.

Topping up

Shards bring luck!

Racking can lead to foggy results

How to make white Stilton yellow

Failures in cheese can be magnificent. This attempt to make mozzarella resulted in a much better cheese than I aimed for. Since I did not reach my goal I call it a failure but I consider it a great achievement. The tastiest rubber ball

Why is my cheese not coagulating?

Not really my failure but fermentation stopped?

Oops, Did I add bottling sugar?

Hans