alzymologist
@alzymologist@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on If you can't make it yourself, store bought is fine 2 days ago:
Overpriced dophamine
- Comment on That's not how any of this works. 5 days ago:
That’s awesome, perfect conversation starter. Very smart design (and cute). Art with impact!
- Comment on Spruce tip beer ('tis the season) 6 days ago:
Overcooled sugar syrup (what people usually make by heating sugar in water and then cooling down) would technically be a suspension of sugar nanoparticles in saturated syrup. This should totally be more potent for chemical extraction than pure sugar, even after extraction of fluids into it which could only saturate it into syrup phase.
Throwing alcohol into beer preparation souds like illegal move in Finland an USA afaik, LOL
- Comment on Spruce tip beer ('tis the season) 1 week ago:
Actually, ectraction must be possible with honey then!
- Comment on Spruce tip beer ('tis the season) 1 week ago:
I don’t really think they heated that much, it’s oven temperature, and water was not driven away.
I think you are correct on “melting” part.
- Comment on Spruce tip beer ('tis the season) 1 week ago:
Awesome design! I’ll drop a few thoughts on it.
Darkening is just sugar caramelization accelerated greatly by acidity of tips. Just a small pH drop in moisture - and tips are tart - accelerates the process by orders of magnitude.
With high temperature, you lose some volatile stuff unless you have it all sealed (which itself is explosive). I think you can achieve similar extraction by alcohol groups (that’s what sugar does) by adding tips in secondary. But then you won’t have all this caramel. Caramel could come from specialty malt or sugar caramelized separately. Anyway, overdefined problems are just more refined tools for future experiments!
Was this tips extraction simple? And filtration?
- Comment on Getting serious now 2 weeks ago:
The main use of heaters in this setup is to make the “spring” of oscillatory heat system “stiffer”. This should make temperature oscillations faster and smaller in amplitude thus bringing process to more stable state. This is mostly important when you have set temperature close to ambient outside, otherwise you’ll inevitably leak a few watt through fridge insulation anyway, and if it’s not enough you can always prop the door open. Latter would lead to humidity buildup though. If you set process to 20C, obviously, no leak, huge slow oscillations on heating phase.
Then there is diacetyl rest, I’d just recommend taking that thing out for that.
- Comment on Dont call this number again, we uphold the laws of physics in this home 3 weeks ago:
After hanging out with Veselago I’m not sure I can handle the concept of “reflective-only” elements.
- Comment on Hawaiian volcanic rocks reveal Earth's core contains vast hidden gold reserves 3 weeks ago:
Of all the marvelous implications of proof of origin of hotspot plumes, we have to resort to the dumbest greed inducing clickbait headline. What a sad time we live in
- Comment on Least anticipated game in history 3 weeks ago:
I got this vibe from fridge. One of the reasons I often put some frozen hornets in those, no packaging. Deters people from doing stupid things.
- Comment on Least anticipated game in history 3 weeks ago:
Nah, top left is totally one of them hardcore STEM ladies from Uruguay
- Comment on Least anticipated game in history 3 weeks ago:
They are awful for cooking, believe me, I have a home lab.
Induction hobs are great for lab though, except for glass vessels, of course.
- Comment on What's brewing in May? 4 weeks ago:
I was just thinking of caramelizing very small fraction of honey for flavor this year out of curiosity, but with my small production it will have to be good honey probably, I’m not at scale where waste appears yet. Although there is a risk to suddenly inhetit an empire from my neighbor.
- Comment on What's brewing in May? 4 weeks ago:
Could be, the world is wide, though, and I’ll wait till we have more knowledge about it to place a name. Which does not stop me from culinary experimentation!
- Comment on What's brewing in May? 4 weeks ago:
A fellow beekeeper!
Bochet
TIL proper name for that thing when someone new to the art is being told to “boil your honey really well or mead will spoil”!
How are things done there on the other side of the world? Do you move your bees to fields with these flowers, or is it just arbitrary seasonal labeling that does not really mean you are really collecting that flower dominantly?
Would you want to try my bee sensors that listen to the bees every hour?
- Comment on What's brewing in May? 4 weeks ago:
We’ve got tired of just fermenting standard wort with different yeast strains for comparison, and we are starting full-sized batches of proper styled beer split and inoculated with very similar yet distinct yeast from the same class. The first in line are Belgian wits. Weather permitting it’ll be outdoor brews! Hopefully this would be fun experience, will try to post inspirational results here.
And spruce tips are coming soon as well, but not yet. There is ground elder everywhere, but I’m reluctant to give it a try in brewing, need to learn to ferment it with lactic first and see if it is any good to my taste.
Yesterday we’ve tasted small batches of… some weird yeast caught in some local beer in UK bar, it certainly looks right under microscope, counts to proper population with more or less typical dynamics… and then fails to change the gravity, yet produces quite distinct flavor. 1040 OG beer starters end up too sweet and disgusting, of course, so we’ve tried instead kombucha-style mix of pale wort and tea, to 1010 OG, sterile, of course. The gravity did not change again, but the flavor! It was not quite like kombucha, but along the lines, and definitely the tea flavor was more distinct that in reference non-inoculated sample, that tasted disgustingly sweet and stale. And somehow this “monoculture combucha” hits in the head. What a weird mutant. Something to research now. Maybe we have a 0% beer magic in our hands?
- Comment on First fermented dates honey mead of the season 1 month ago:
Looks like extremely short fermentation in mead, dates should accelerate and improve sedimentation, just how fast was it?
- Comment on Does lemon peel kill fermentation? 1 month ago:
Why do you think it’s stalled? Maybe just lemon peel trapped the gas?
I’ve made lots of mead with citrus peel, including lemon, I’ve used in on secondary though, just to keep more flavor by less gas escape. Maybe you should do the same?
- Comment on All the berries 1 month ago:
Haha, then it always gets reversed, gf drinks brandy and you find yourself enjoying the other thing!
Or maybe I’m just not straight or something lol. Who cares anyway. Just makes me think about it, probably because foamy berries going through the fermenter opening both ways are my fetish.
- Comment on Looking for advice on separating layers from a rear projector TV screen 1 month ago:
They might have switched to diffractive optics to combine lens and diffuser in one structure. I was anticipating to see it in newer small embedded screens, but haven’t encountered anything like this yet. You might peel some of whatever peels off on the side and see if there is periodic pattern underneath or just more of same.
- Comment on Looking for advice on separating layers from a rear projector TV screen 1 month ago:
Awesome! I once (more than 10 years ago, wow) had an idea to attach solar heater to vacuum/gas CVD system to make graphene, but my PI at the time said it’s dumb idea, sure it will work, no novelty there. Now I have no idea why I would want to make graphene, and pass all the free lenses in second hand shops. Now if making the forge is feasible (I had doubts), I’m totally doing it too, in Finland!
- Comment on Happy little bugs 1 month ago:
Ec1118 is a great mead yeast indeed.
I’m estimating og to be more like 1130 with your numbers unless the honey was really wet.
What’s the plan for fermentation time?
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 month ago:
Wait! Don’t throw it all away, I want to know! Can you sample like 50ml of that poison and send it to me?
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 month ago:
A pity I can’t throw you a tube of yeast this fast! Good luck!
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 month ago:
Misread proportion, it’s 1dl/1.5l for starter, quite small sugar content indeed, should be fine even if it was somewhat spoiled
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 month ago:
Now here the most suspicious part is yeast nutrient. Like any fertilizer, it does turn into poison when used excessively, especially in first hours of adaptation when cell machinery is being adjusted to new environment. One hour starter is too short even for 1 budding, but induces extra state transition stress onto yeast. Proper starter time should be at least 6 hours, 24 is recommended, to drive yeast to exponential-plateau transition region. Short starters are useful for rehydration of dry yeast; of course, no budding or multiplication happens there - and thus best medium for dry yeast rehydration is sterile (or boiled) water with no food nor nutrient.
Nutrient dosage might be surprisingly hard problem in small volumes, as many products are powdered mixtures of various compounds, naturally as homogeneous as you’ve mixed them, and with size of particles getting close to size of dose, it’s easy to skew composition just by sampling.
You’ve probably got around 40% sugar in that syrup solution, which is higher than what I use for sweet mead recipes. I’m not sure lager yeast can tolerate this gravity, although it could, I was just planning to explore that dimention this year, mead on beer yeast.
Neither of this explains later yeasts not starting, unless there was enough nutrient to make whole batch salty. Let me know if I can help you troubleshooting this system further, I’m sad and curious now.
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 1 month ago:
Sorry for your loss. I was waiting for this brew too!
Did the starter start though?
What was the grain bill? And in starter?
Let me know if you need another tube! Amount in that package should be enough for typical batch even without starter, although making a starter is always a good idea. This strain usually starts within hours.
- Comment on Adding flavours to extract. 1 month ago:
You can also throw berries, spices into mead quite liberally. Absolutely simplest, stuff, the only catch is long fermentation times. Yet, you can get quite awesome products in half year with tart berries or fruits.
I remember a couple tasting our simple mead once, and wife turned to her husband and said “hey, when you did the brewing, why did not you brew something nice instead, like this stuff?” So I’m pretty sure this is your best guess.
I was wrong many times on the matter. We had an idea to make strawberry beer for ladies, like “chicks like strawberry” - wrong! Dudes were like “honey, try some of this!” and drank bottles after bottles of pink beer, while their gfs gorged on proper imperial and belge style stuff.
But mead is solid option, always. Just make sure spice is not chili, unless she is into it.
- Comment on Hi I just started testing home fermenting to expand the hom cookbook. I have a few questions. 2 months ago:
I mean it certainy looks like fermentation started late and there always are wild things on fruits. No boiling mentioned. There must be at least active lactics and mould seeds. Something might always try to wake up later.
- Comment on Hi I just started testing home fermenting to expand the hom cookbook. I have a few questions. 2 months ago:
Even hydrometer is not safe method to tell that it’s done if you have unknown biology going inside. The safest thing to do is use plastic pressure-resistant bottles that do not shatter.
And yeah, cooling will only slow secondary and make the product taste differently (maybe better, expecially since winter is over). It will not make it safer in any manner.