Roofball - Weeknotes for 2023-02-13

Published: 2023-02-16 12:00 |

Category: Journal | Tags: antarctica, roofball, tesla, syrup


Midwest is best

  • YouTube recommended what is probably the most midwest video I've ever come across. It's the 2008 Roofball World Championships and is just as homey and midwestern as it sounds.
  • Upon further research, Roofball was created in Oregon, which is even more hipster.
  • Tesla recalls 362,000+ vehicles for safety issues like "driving straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane." 👀
  • Chris O'Donnell posted about a great blog from Antarctica with an even more amazing domain: https://brr.fyi.

The Sweetness

My brother-in-law collectes maple sap each year to make maple syrup. This year's sugar flow was so early that it overlapped with a vacation they thought would be well ahead of the main flow. As a result, I spent most of a glorious weekend outside with the family managing sap collection and the initial boil. Some fun facts about maple syrup:

A fireplace with two evaporating pans on top used for reducing maple sap to syrup.

The fireplace has two evaporating pans. The lower is the full boil pan and the upper takes care of preheating. A float valve keeps the bottom pan full.

A woman is packing the fireplace with more wood. Sap is boiling in a pan on top of the wood stove.

The main job - aside from collecting from the buckets attached to taps - is keeping that fire as hot as possible.

  • It takes ~40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
  • Early run syrup is lighter in color and taste while late sap is darker and much more sweet as the tree ramps up sugar production to come out of dormancy.
  • Tea brewed in hot sap is delicious. So is bourbon added to a hot mug of sap.

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com