MuteDog

I’m not OP but the best way to deal with things like sulfite or benzoate in juice is to oxygenate the heck out of the juice. Either with an oxygen set up or just stirring a LOT of air into it before you pitch your yeast and then keep on stirring the heck out of it when you have a chance for the first few days of fermentation.

Oxygen will help neutralize the preservatives and the yeast also use it to reproduce.

you can always add a little oxygen now to give the yeast a boost

is that the Suomen Hiiva baking yeast that’s common for Sahti? or something else? I have no idea how that would do with sulfites. Let us know how it goes.

Your yeast will probably be fine, especially if it a wine/cider yeast as they’re more tolerant of sulfites. Ale yeast might struggle a bit but after 12 hours it’s probably fine, especially with an active starter like that.

LOL, I’ll keep that in mind

Awesome! is creamy like in the flavor? the mouthfeel? both? something else?

I’d be interested in those results.

I use Brewfather it works reasonably well for me, it does seem to be more geared toward people with All-In-One or recirculating systems but I successfully use it with a 3 vessel system that doesn’t recirculate, I just don’t bother much with doing fancy stuff with my mash (single infusion and a mash out FTW).

A number of years back someone posted the idea of pumpkin gin to the homebrewing subreddit. Supposedly some senator arguing against prohibition in the early 1900s claimed you could just hollow out a pumpkin, fill it up with sugar and you’d end up with booze. So I gave it a try. One pumpkin I filled up with apple juice and another I filled with brown sugar. The apple juice pumpkin actually fermented and I got a somewhat drinkable hard cider out of the deal. the sugar one just turned to sludge and grew mold.

Another thing I tried was to make my own amylase producing mold using millet and rice cakes and ginger root to inoculate it. They grew mold (some of it white, some of it green) and I used them to inoculate some steamed rice that sort of fermented. It went sour of course, and it ended up tasting a lot like lemon juice, so I must have gotten some citric acid producing mold in the mix as well.

You could probably grow horehound or costmary in pots on a porch or deck, I grow them in my garden but I don’t think their root system is too huge and they don’t get big like mugwort or gigantic like hops. Obviously coriander works in pots, so that’s another option.