alzymologist

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.

Nah, top left is totally one of them hardcore STEM ladies from Uruguay

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.

I had this story when we've picked peaches on pick-your-own farm near Dallas, to make melomel (turned out awesome), and while we were busy, some flies ate skin on our ankles, that took almost a year to heal. Now we moved to Finland and some similar gnats are trying to eat all the skin, this season starts now. Well, skin adopts and learns to heal faster.

There was another pick your own farm in Arkansas, we went there for strawberries (to - you guess it, make melomel!) And when we told the farmer what we are up to, he was like "that's cool, but you know, be careful telling this to people. You know, this is baptist country" - which made us make jokes about baptist spray. We had a barrel of mead at the end of first stage of fermentation to throw berries in right away reducing contaminant growth time and made sure we leave before a local school kids arrive to pick more berries. Good times. In the morning the fog was so heavy, I detuned radio and pretended it's Silent Hill.

But there is another story I heard from a friend. Her granddad retired after a career of chemical factory boss. So he bought a hectare of land and decided to grow black currants. You can take chem engineer out of factory, but... He got hundreds of bushes, and assigned them to family members. They had KPI, deadlines, whole deal turned into awful grind with corporate stench. And what would one do with some cubic meters of rapidly decaying berries anyway? They ate it, canned it, made wine (not very good one), needless to say, nobody in the family could stand black currants anymore. How did this surface? I took her bf to get some beer for the party in store and there was this single blackcurrant ipa. I was like - here, she'll like it, it's sure bet. Well, it wasn't, lol.

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.

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!

There is no "expired", only "improperly fermented". Sure, it could be very bad, but then you should've paid attention to it in advance, respect the nutrient and all living things who brought it about.

Do you know you can actually buy predatory mites and nematodes to enjoy your aphids? This is what worked in my situation somewhat, although it does not help if the plant is already heavily afflicted. These guys sure will not fly away.

long low narrow planter along the front

had this balcony setup just on the sea coast in Finland, not much benefit. In the end, terrace shelves against the wall and planters on the floor are different only in aesthetics. Just had a lot of plants and birds - make sure you have some attractors to those (scatter some food, leave nest building material, place a cat behind the window to be mocked) - still lost plants quite often to elements and larvae.

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?

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?

Just old farts being naturally (not without covid help though) replaced with people with demand for future, I wish brexit voting was delayed.