Making Beer in Plain Language

...home brew shop and found the process relatively simple, but the thought of making an all grain batch (extracting our own fermentable sugars from the grain rather than using the extracted syrup in a kit) seemed intimidating. Thankfully comrades Ben, Scott and Eddie showed us how to do an all grain batch a few weeks ago. Here, in plain language and crappy pictures is how it works. To the possible horror of beer aficionados, we’ll substitute plain En...

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Saturday Tweets: Eating Crickets and Making Coffee

.../t.co/JoT6NiV3x8 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) October 15, 2015 We love this book by @ThomasRainerDC – the very best book on landscape design! https://t.co/cCIJ2a99mJ — Root Simple (@rootsimple) October 14, 2015 Architectural Cast Concrete: Wall Caps, Column Caps, and Fireplace Hearth and Mantel http://t.co/2vkxERYxbq — Root Simple (@rootsimple) October 14, 2015 Kelly declares that–thanks to global warming–pants are now completely optional. #glassis...

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News From Nowhere

...his moving introduction to the Victoria and Albert Museum edition of this book, “to make a beautiful object is not to ice an otherwise dull and tasteless cake but to do something that is in its way as straightforwardly necessary to human beings as any machine-made convenience.” Speaking of beauty, my dear neighbors, you should definitely read this book in the facsimile edition that reproduces Morris’ impossibly beautiful printing. Reading it this...

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Everything Must Go: Tidying Up at the Root Simple Compound

...s. Our new mantra became Everything Must Go. At this point we remembered a book one of our readers mentioned, and which has been making the publicity rounds of late, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by the tidying consultant Marie Kondo (aka KonMari–her method is called the KonMari Method). She’s from Japan, where people have the same hearty consumerist impulses as we do here in the U.S., but considerably less space for storage. When I first...

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Meet our book & web designer: Roman Jaster

Roman Jaster is the gifted designer who designed both Making It and this very website for us. He recently gave a Visiting Designer talk about his work at his alma mater, CalArts and made that lecture public on YouTube. In it, he talks about his childhood in East Germany, the decisions he made early-on which determined his career, his working methods (which are really interesting, combining coding with design) and talks about the concepts behind s...

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