alzymologist

Freezing does not help much with life that has any chance of surviving the yeast onslaught; the only thing it probably does - it slows cell development down to about same amount of time it takes dry yeast to wake up, thus with a starter you get more of head start for the good guys, and that’s all that you really need. Freezing also often results in better sugar availability, as some plants (well I suppose berries mostly) trigger sugar conversion on overwintering naturally. D47 is good for fruits, I maintain its descendant in a pure culture and it’s one of my favorites for mead.

Hello and welcome to the club, buddy!

1. I’m all for slow-release nutrients, not mixing it in thoroughly might actually be a good thing; I dump whole almonds as nutrient source, those have no chance of dissolving at all and they work perfectly. Yeast with too easy access to nutrients misbehaves - like any fertilizer, it’s too easy to overdo.
2. Same here; yeast metabolism has nothing on the timescale of overflow event. What often happens, dissolved gas un-dissolves on nutrient addition because of salinity change. Nutrients are fertilizers essentially, common nutrients are something like pretty much inorganic salts that dissolve instantly, smarter products like Fermaid are supposed to be proper large organic molecules or even chunks of dead cells that metabolize slowly and almost do not dissolve, thus no salinity change and no gas evolution. That’s good, rapid salinity changes are harmful for cells too.
3. That really depends on quality of water. In Texas, I used only bottled water; here in Finland I don’t even boil tapwater that goes into mead, room temperature all the way. Besides, sanitationrequirement is connected to yeast health and vigor - it isn’t easy to infect fresh angry starter, yeast population running at full speed would devour all life in its wake given enough energy supply. Especially if it’s good strain (seeing Fermaid I suppose you are Lallemand fan, their yeast is especially good at killing competition). Those fruits in fermentation are not really sterile either, right?

I found herbs often transforming in surprising, unexpected ways upon fermentation. I’m quite certain there is no way to know what you get beforehand without experimenting. I used to make mead with mint and rosemary, it was quite awesome.

Yeah, I’ve planted them last year in Spring; they sure have more water than they could possibly want, on a hugel hill in Finland, and all the sun northern Sun shining non-stop could give them. I hope to see the cones some day.

Wow looks awesome!

I wish I had some cones this year! My vines barely got to 2m height this year, too young and too short growth season, I think.

Moomin vibes?

I’d think it’ll work even better with egg whites? That’s the microbiology cleaning trick based on the same idea or forming protein coacervates, except the eggs are pure protein so they are probably cleaner way to do it.

coconut milk is so much different from regular milk though, it’s fat (somewhat soluble in alcohol, but it still could extract liophilic stuff, if you can separate it, for example, by chilling)