alzymologist
@alzymologist@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Dont call this number again, we uphold the laws of physics in this home 2 days 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 5 days 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 5 days 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 5 days ago:
Nah, top left is totally one of them hardcore STEM ladies from Uruguay
- Comment on Least anticipated game in history 5 days 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? 1 week 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? 1 week 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? 1 week 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? 1 week 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 4 weeks 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? 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 :( 4 weeks 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 :( 4 weeks ago:
A pity I can’t throw you a tube of yeast this fast! Good luck!
- Comment on I made a killer wort :( 5 weeks 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 :( 5 weeks 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 :( 5 weeks 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. 5 weeks 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. 1 month 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. 1 month 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.
- Comment on Hi I just started testing home fermenting to expand the hom cookbook. I have a few questions. 1 month ago:
It does not seem to be boiled anywhere, and sugar content is relatively low, and it is highly possible that this thing is contaminated by lactics by now with all the date and sesame. Which is probably good thing, it would bring some sourness and - as others here mentioned - might prevent further fermentation at some point, although there is no sure bet, as well as with pretty much everything here. If bubbling in pure sugar mixture started after 3 weeks, that’s very late start, my bets are that yeast is not alone there.
So, if it smells nice, it should be safe according to US government regulations (lol yes), can’t be safer - but keep your toilet paper ready and get a plunger before you need it if you don’t have one, just in case.
- Comment on Brewing with "High Voltage" yeast 1 month ago:
Yes, it does! When it’s crushed, it’s not-so-slow release, mostly of oily matter that just stays inside if they are only cracked. And in the end, the powder could sink, or it could stay on surface, cling to tubing, clog filters, etc. And the regret of actually doing more work to grind on top of that!
There is also small increase of chances to contaminate the product, extra solid surface (negligible area in almost whole nuts versus non0negligible in powder) can harbor and somewhat protect species that are normally intolerant to alcohol.
- Comment on Brewing with "High Voltage" yeast 1 month ago:
Right, it does sound like kveik. Wouldn’t guess which one or even whether it actually is kveik, I doubt that category really exists in a well defined manner lately, but is clearly useful as object property. I should probably start testing yeasts at high temperature as well as on cold, might be gems hidden there.
- Comment on Brewing with "High Voltage" yeast 1 month ago:
I can share an arcane secret here: I don’t do step feeding. After a volume of complex theoretical and experimental science (and mysticism, as it often happens upon consuming statistically meaningful amounts of mead samples, blanks, etc. - fortunately, it’s not distilling, thus no methanol, not even once blind!), we’ve came up with ultimately awesome slow release nutrient: almonds! Just 1g of slightly cracked (not crushed, or you’ll regret it) nuts per liter, let them float, separate on secondary fermentation or on bottling, does not matter much. ABV 14+ easily and reliably.
Other nuts we checked (we’ve looked into quite a lot, hazels included) are nutritious too, but release noticeable amounts of oil. Pine nuts are of special note, they made yeast go crazy overboard, but the product was barely drinkable due to bitterness, oiliness, and general skew.
For nutrition, it seems, nitrogen and vegetable oil are equally important. According to Dr. White, addition of fatty acids to yeast as nutrient promotes cell wall growth, even to the point that it might be possible to achieve efficient exponential growth with very low oxygen content. Nitrogen available from almonds proteins is slowly released and (I suppose) makes yeast adjust cellular machinery to actually process complex materials into its own proteins. So, it’s balanced diet!
And, as another, even more natural approach, - don’t refine honey too much, let some pollen go through. Pollen is pretty much most appropriate protein rich nutrient in existence, and it also imparts lots of flavor, naturally.
There you go. Very simple stuff.
- Comment on Brewing with "High Voltage" yeast 1 month 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 1 month 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 month ago:
It dissolves in cold (tested with 14C) water, just takes a bit more time.