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Good Brewing Company Taproom

“My neighbor brews beer in his garage.” When I say that, people usually have a picture in their head that doesn’t equate to what is really happening. Five houses down from me, Kevin is making some epic beer. He has over a dozen taps in his garage and some fancy brewing equipment. He’s had his license for a little over a year and he’s already won second place at the Washington Beer Awards for his Pink Boots Double IPA. He makes a lot of great beers, but that one is my favorite.

His garage is a very convenient walk from my house and Elijah loves taking bike rides to see “Mr. Kevin”, but now his garage door is closed a lot more frequently. That’s because he has taken a big step and opened his first taproom! It’s located northwest of the Woodinville Costco and we headed there for the grand opening. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it certainly was NOT what we actually witnessed. There were well over 100 people there with live music, a BBQ trailer and tons of people in line for beer. Kevin seemed happily in awe of the turnout.

I’ve been back a couple times since then and he always seems to have a good crowd on hand. In addition to a big variety of beers on tap, he also has some limited food (pizza and pretzel bread) available for sale. I’ll have to see if I can convince Tyla that this is a viable dinner location. Pizza, beer and cornhole? How could she say no?

Congrats to Kevin for an incredible start to his taproom. I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing what the next year brings!

Web: https://goodbrewingco.com
Instagram: @goodbrewingco
Facebook: facebook.com/goodbrewingco

benmartens July 13, 2018 Commentary No Comments

Four Sheets

I first stumbled across Zane Lamprey when he had his Three Sheets show on a now-defunct cable channel called MojoHD. If you’re a Hulu subscriber, you can still watch the whole series and I highly recommend it. After Three Sheets, he had a show called Drinking Made Easy and then a Kickstarter show called Chug. All of them are travel/alcohol shows that mix comedy and learning about other cultures and their drinking customs. It’s a great formula that never seems to quite stick with the people writing the checks.

Now he’s off filming again for something he’s referring to as Four Sheets.There’s a Facebook page for it, but I can’t find a lot of other details. I know a few of you are fans as well, so you might want to follow that page and his Instagram account in hopes of finding out how we’ll be able to watch these new episodes.

Cheers!

benmartens July 11, 2018 Links No Comments

Wooden Pixel Mario

A couple years ago, David Picciuto made a Super Mario picture using 1″ square “pixels” cut out of three types of wood. That has stuck in my head as a fun idea and it ended up being the first project that I completed since April. (My shop has been used for storage during the siding and window project on our house.)

I chose maple, walnut and paduk for the white, brown and red pieces. The key to this project is getting all ~150 squares to be totally identical in size so that when you build them into Mario, the lines stay straight. The next trick was getting a chamfer cut on all four sides of the squares. This helps to define the edges and made each square look more like a pixel. I cut two of the sides with a router when the wood was still in 1″ strips. After cross cutting those strips into squares, I set the table on my small disc sander to a 45 degree angle and sanded the rest. Then I had to hand sand each square to clean them up.

David put his on to a square piece of plywood and made a frame for it, but I wanted to make mine frameless. I cut out a piece of plywood on the bandsaw that would be just smaller than the assembled Mario. I picked a row near the center and carefully glued it as straight as I could. From there I glued two or three rows at a time working out toward the top and bottom. I took my time and let the various rows dry before getting too far so that I could make sure I was staying straight.

I love this project! Thank you David for the inspiration!

benmartens July 9, 2018 Woodworking No Comments

Elijah’s Birthday Photos

Every year Tyla has convinced me that we should take birthday photos of Elijah and every year I’ve been happy that we have done it. She usually gets a giant number for him to hold. The last two years I’ve cut one out on a laser cutter, mostly because I’m too cheap to pay $10 for one from the craft store. Here are some of the better shots from this year. He loves climbing he magnolia tree in our back yard so it seemed like a natural spot to take the photos… especially because the rest of the house is a wreck from the big siding project.

benmartens July 2, 2018 Family No Comments

Fantasy Football 2018-19

Only 79 days left until kickoff of the 2018-19 NFL season. This year we had two managers leave our fantasy league. Thanks to Jim for playing with us the last 10 years and Austin for the last 5! You guys were great additions to the league and you will be missed.

Since we have some new members, I thought I’d introduce everyone:

  • Andy lives near Green Lake and his dog has more Instagram followers than I do.
  • Dad is one of my parental units. He lives in Indiana and has three tractors.
  • Logan is my brother-in-law (Tyla’s brother). He started off pretty bad in the league but somehow seems to be winning too much lately. He lives in Kirkland.
  • Luke is my brother-in-law (my sister’s husband.) He lives in Toledo and just built a fence.
  • Nick currently inhabits half of my office at work. We say that together we make a pretty average software developer. He lives in Woodinville.
  • Tim is my brother-in-law’s (Luke’s) brother. He was also my roommate for a few years.  He lives in Monroe.
  • Tyler lives all the way across the cul-de-sac from me. He has a bigger garden than me and one more MG than I do.

Now that you’ve all been introduced, let’s refresh our memories of the standings for the last 10 seasons.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2008 Ben Tim Jim Luke Dad Ryan Andy Ed
2009 Luke Dad Kyle Tim Andy Jim Ryan Ben
2010 Luke Time Ben Dad Andy Jim Logan Kyle
2011 Luke Time Ben Dad Andy Jim Logan Kyle
2012 Andy Micah Ben Tim Jim Dad Logan Ryan
2013 Logan Andy Dad Ben Jim Tim Luke Austin
2014 Austin Jim Tim Ben Luke Logan Andy Dad
2015 Austin Logan Ben Dad Luke Andy Tim Jim
2016 Logan Austin Andy Ben Tim Jim Dad Luke
2017 Logan Ben Luke Austin Andy Dad Tim Jim

And if you take that chart and calculate average finish, here’s what you get:

Name Average Finish
Logan 3.2
Ben 3.5
Luke 3.5
Tim 3.8
Andy 4.6
Dad 4.9

The first piece of business is picking a date for our draft. We’ll do a live draft party at my house again, but as always, you’re welcome to autodraft if you prefer. I don’t think there’s much correlation between the people that the draft method you prefer and your finishing position in the league so don’t sweat it. Watch your email for a link to a poll for picking the draft date/time. You don’t want to miss out on your chance to pick Kaepernick. I mean, surely some team will pick him up before the start of the season, right?

benmartens June 18, 2018 Fantasy Sports No Comments