alzymologist
@alzymologist@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Brewing with "High Voltage" yeast 3 hours ago:
I’m doubtful of turbo yeast, I’ve seen a lot of really powerful soviet strains that go to 20%+ abv (above 30 if you are willing to mess with substrate) in matter of days. But at a dire cost of flavor, product is often only good for distilling (which, obviously, was design goal).
Of course, any lager strain can ferment below 36 and the hotter it is, faster the process, and ale strains go even above that. Result is often heavy fusel off-flavor, diacetyl, phenols. Often could be desired part of profile, but you’ve got to know where you plan to end up. Some lager strains advertized as “super crisp clean” explode with complexity at 27C.
And timing reported is quite typical for many liquid strains if they are prepared properly (I often bottle within a week), although it is indeed impressive for dry yeast. I wonder if they just used gentler liophilization? There are many techniques that are known, just not implemented commercially. Yet, I feel reluctant to try, conforming myself to locality feels more environmentally conscious and ethical. Although we’ve made the basic tools for that already…
- Comment on Brewing with "High Voltage" yeast 3 hours ago:
At least fullgrain brewers should not worry about nitrogen demand ever, unless some explicit nitrogen removal was done. There is usually saturation amount of bioavailable amine groups in wort.
- Comment on Some bitter again 1 day ago:
It dissolves in cold (tested with 14C) water, just takes a bit more time.
- Comment on Some bitter again 2 days ago:
When it comes to mead, questions like “why” are outside of scope! Magic is magic.
- Comment on Some bitter again 2 days ago:
Other than finesse from literature, meadmaking is very simple - start with something like 300g honey diluted to 1L with clean water, try not to heat at any stage (I tried centrifuging frames - works, obviously - and I tried just dumping honeycomb wax and all into water - this is yet simpler and you get amazing propolis flavor in mead), pitch wine/mead yeast (for example those from store.zymologia.fi, that’s my store, very much affiliated, but it’s what I use), lock and leave for about a year, longer is better.
- Comment on Some bitter again 2 days ago:
It’s “compleat”! Totally best book on topic.
- Comment on Going to try birch sap sparkly wine 1 week ago:
If you inoculate it with vigorous yeast and add a bit sugar, you can just pour new bottles into active fermenter with minimal spoilage risk, certainly safer than storing non inoculated medium.
- Comment on NZ Birbs 1 month ago:
I’ve read kiwis are forest floor bullies, isn’t that true?
- Comment on using regular agricultural barley for making malt 1 month ago:
Yeah, I wanted to move to Alberta many years ago to join your university and have fun with bitumen. But I’m in Finland now, so winter is ok, and now summers are intense and hot everywhere. I don’t know why exactlt anybody would crop grow these grains south of here, where other things thrive. Leave hardy grasses for arctic steppes.
- Comment on using regular agricultural barley for making malt 1 month ago:
Malting it for base malt is probably not worth the effort indeed (kind of weird that there are a few small-scale enterprises around where I live who try to make small batches of malt - and it’s base malt. Of course it’s inferior to large scale, sadly, I had sad experience trying to use super-local. Why don’t they see the real market potential for weird stuff? Maybe I should take that space when I set the process?), but there are limitless potential specialty varieties you can try. Roast it differently? Skip toasting altogether and use it asap to see what happens? Reproduce some historical process? So much fun (probably).
- Comment on using regular agricultural barley for making malt 1 month ago:
But at the same time remember, that scaling (both ways) is the toughest task in chemical technology. Small masher has very different heat and matter exchange properties than large one, just take it into account. Expect efficiency to drop 2x or even more on first try.
- Comment on using regular agricultural barley for making malt 1 month ago:
I have similar situation (but right now I have ~20 kg of oats, there are other stuffs around too, I just happened to take oats), so I’m trying to build some decent malting equipment. Unfortunately, doing it outdoors in winter is sad enterprise, but I’m totally just giving it a try when I can! (Doing it indoors would be either stinky or loud, and I already have too many microbiological stuff going in same space) I do not believe I’ll lose much except for conversion rate and sugar content, but might discover some new flavor tones. When I’m done, I’ll be posting here and trying to share the product.
So I urge you to do the same!
There is no reason to expect that something will not ferment well just because it was not purebred for brewing. Even random yeasts mostly yield good results. Well, yeast is much more definitive in final profile and you CAN screw up by using some really stinky or low fermenting yeast. Grain, on the other hand, is just yeast food and grain flavour mostly (yes, there are other things to fine tune, but first order approximations is what we should care about in experimentation). Does it smell and taste good? Then go for it!
- Comment on Making large quantities of iron oxide by electrolysis 1 month ago:
Just to be safe you might consider replasing chloride with sulfate.
Sure this is great way to make thermite or anything that does not exactly care about oxidation state, that part I can confirm.
Furthermore, you are close to iron(6) synthesis here using drain cleaner. Yield would be even lower, but fun is worth it. Be careful though, when literature states it blows up, they mean it.
- Comment on Making large quantities of iron oxide by electrolysis 1 month ago:
This is a mixture of oxides, hydroxides, and nonoxidized iron chunks and who knows what else. Also probably some chlorine gas to breath in.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 2 months ago:
Sure it is not, grain is not fruit after all. I think grain will turn into angry shoggoth if threated with metabisulfite. At least it would be a mess.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 2 months ago:
Well, it’s bad news, all those super-processed products almost always are treated with metabisulfite or something close enough, and only wine and a few other products require it to be listed on the label. It’s pretty much treated as part of detergent for washing fruits. Completely unjustified as product is sterilized later in turning it into extract, but it is simpler to keep buying this historically accepted mild bleach and treating all fruits with it anyway. Maybe increases their storage time in shipping pipeline. Something I do not wish to think about in great detail, for my first lab in Finland was in a rented fruit storage bunker and I washed it and dismantled control equipment myself. Could have been WW2 nazi camp facility for what it was worth.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 2 months ago:
In my childhood, we had these kinds of root vegetables sliced and caved in on one end, and a spoonful of honey was placed on top and in the cavity. Somehow this sped up conversion to overnight, and it was a treat. I guess, similar process could be used to convert them for brewing.
Although the whole idea sounds a bit like potato for vodka. Nothing wrong with that too, but the flavor might me less than interesting in the end. Worth trying I guess. I wish I had some of those now, not unripe ones from the store.
- Comment on What are you brewing? 2 months ago:
One of the biggest suspects in this cyser story is metabisulfite treatment that might have happened to apples. I do not know the exact mechanism, but lots of people complained about headache if that was used with apples (and many recipes call for its use, IMO totally unjustified) or in apple juice in factory. Same thing about grapes. Differential is quite clear.
- Comment on Mead - what type of bottles 2 months ago:
Steamings damage corks, especially sterilizing ones. Their number should be minimized. Now for bottling, I do not think it is important for corks to be sterile, as anything worth of corking will kill whatever might be living on cork surface. Sanitized is enough.
Now repackaging is another beast. Once packaged, corks are left for indefinite time, and if inoculated with something that might survive on bare cork (pretty much this means fungi), it might become a nice growth media. Then, steaming might kill it (and if it is not pressurized, that would not kill spores), but it will not clean it from the cork.
So, on small scale, it is not very important, some corks might get spoiled occasionally. But 6000 is no small scale lol.
- Comment on Mead - what type of bottles 2 months ago:
Only proper wine corks are good for proper mead. I mean, yeah, there is place in our life for fermented honey solution that is consumed fast, but proper mead should age like expensive wine. It’s more noble than wine, after all!
Bottling mead thus is always a challenge. I’ve tried all kinds of methods, or course beer caps - and especially swingtops - just start leaking at best in few years. Compouns corks too, and, being low grade stuff, they are often stinky themselves. The only exception are belge bottles and fat compound corks for braggots, if corked belge way, they occasionally leak some liquid at first, but then seal themselves for good.
Even higher grade corks tend to degrade over the years. Highest grade does not degrade. I’ve just negotiated a sample of fancy corks from Portugal, about 1eur/cork, highest grade. They look really good and will probably work, but min order is 6000 and they have to be repackaged sterile. Good thung I have sterile line, but 6000? It’s 10x more than all bottles I have now! I could place them in my webstore in small bags? Would someone be buying them?
I was looking into alternatives, but nothing so far looks promising. I’m thinking about turning other wood types on a lathe, but that will probably result in a disaster.
- Comment on Calculating or measuring grams of suger per bottle/can like how it's printed on the label 2 months ago:
Usually not worth it; you’ll need to gently distill (in proper glass, this is important) the beer like it is done for ABV measurement and measure density of leftovers. Or do quantitative chromatography. You’ve got to know hands-on chemistry real well for this. Let me know if you need the procedure.
- Comment on Lemon wine and orange wine 2 months ago:
Only once I’ve got yeast staggered by lemon juice addition, and that happened in secondary fermentation. If there is enough sugar (and, if I recall correctlt, there was added sugar in these ferments), they’ll keep going. Acidity that slows them down for real is much higher, like what acetobacteria do. Yeast still thrives in bread starters and combucha, and those are sour!
- Comment on What is it about pineapple juice that's so foamy? 2 months ago:
Was it pulpy? Particles tend to stabilize liquid interfaces.
- Comment on Something has gone awry 2 months ago:
Then it’s effectively braggot. Embrace the froth, you are cookin!
- Comment on Something has gone awry 2 months ago:
Yeast does this if they are in really sweet spot for sugar, nitrogen, microelements, temperature, and pH. Almost always happens in braggot (once shot into ceiling with lock, was quite a mess), also if you add yeast fertilizer. I think I saw this reported reproducively for slightly over 23C lager yeast. And, well, insufficient headspace might be a problem. Don’t worry, at least yet.
- Comment on Orange you glad to see me 2 months ago:
Are you boiling them? Why?
- Comment on New year new brew 2 months ago:
Then it’ll totally ferment like crazy, I did this with honey and quartered oranges.
- Comment on New year new brew 2 months ago:
So are you adding sugar this time or not?
- Comment on Why the sour face? 3 months ago:
Indeed, I had a stall once in a melomel with just a few lemons in secondary. Not a big deal since it was secondary, and residual sweetness counterbalanced the tartness nicely. Got really quickly really clean though.
I would say using just the skins for flavor is much more feasible. Also I quarter citrus, slicing them like this is just asking for lots of mush at cost of laborous slicing.
- Comment on How your Christmas specials turned out? 3 months ago:
Ciders and cysers are perfect drinks for Gravmas celebration! Although myself I’m planning citrus melomel for the evening, brings up childhood memories. Tried to share photos of 3x decoction weisen from the eve, but lost fight to foam miserably, for it was not the first bottle for the evening.
My wife said that Christmas specials should be made on Christmas for the next one. Sounds legit. I think that’d be my plan for now.