Other projects update

Has been a while since I put out an update on the other projects I'm working on, mostly because there's not much else that's been happening anyway. But today I skipped out on the walk, so there was ample time to get caught up with the other projects I used to work on but haven't had the chance to look into as of yet.

Some updates now.

So first, the biggest, most disappointing failure of this season came to a very low-key and anti-climactic end. The mushroom farming I was working on to get myself all the fungi to feed myself with, failed as we've talked about before, but I was still a little hopeful for the last three plastic bags. I checked up on them, nothing. Several things went wrong there, from the weather that caused the temperatures to fluctuate quite a bit to the fact I was over-eager and kept checking up on the bags, leading to potential contam through air, to the fact that it's possible I didn't get it right to begin with due to not using syringe tips, to the long time the bags were opened, to the fact that maybe I didn't use the syrince plunger right, to the possibility that I shouldn't have 'shaken up' the packages, to the small chance that the spots themselves were bad. Too many variables that were not controlled. Now I'm much more equipped, unfortunately it's far too cold to be viable at this point, so will have to wait for the spring at least. There goes my hard work and determination to have something out by september-october. The three packets were all gloopy and liquidy, so there was at least a standard mode of failure, unlike my attempts in previous years when multiple things went wrong across the batches.

Second, I took out the kombucha bottles from the fridge, put them in the carboy, hit them up with ec1118c and some of that DAP, and let them rest. They're going to be turnt to booze now because they're so sweet one cannot drink them even after cutting them with 60% water. My fear is that even the turbo yeast may fail to turn the sugar into alchohol due to osmotic pressure and die instead, but that's something I'm betting against. Two thirds of my batch of the plum wine too were mixed with the remaining bottle of kombucha and left to ferment futher. I put in a little less yeast in that mixture because the plum wine hopefully already had some. I'm a little more optimistic about that, but who knows how that's going to turn out.

I checked up on the two wines that have been chilling out for several months now...the banana and the carrot one. The banana one's ripened really well, it's smooth and boozy, and yet not as sweet as it was originally. It should be ready to bottle were I to decide toward that direction. The carrot one tastes a bit too boozy, and doesn't have the smoothness of a good drink, but it's gonna make somebody veryy drunk. I'm not yet sure why the batches differed, but I'm going to keep an eye on them. I'm thinking of bottling them soonish, perhaps beforenew years or sometime around, and take it to friends and family for tasting. Should have bought an auto-starting siphon, the siphon pipe I bought is too long, it's a little annoying for so little liquid, specially if I'm going to be doing this all by myself.

Finally, this shouldn't be a big deal really but it is now, I transferred the pickles from the large jar to a small mason jar, so the gallon jar from costco is ready to be used for fermentation purposes. Makkoli here I come! I've got all the equipment and raw material for makkoli making, just need to get the volumes right, that's probably going to be the next project in the foreseeable future.