So black teas are a very common thing to add to meads as they contribute tannins which can help with mouthfeel and balancing acidity of the final beverage. This tea in particular (Lapsang Souchong) is a smoked tea and so as well as adding tannins to the mead, also contributes as wonderful smokey flavour. My inspiration for this mead several years ago was to make something that had a similar flavour profile to a nice peated scotch. The maple syrup was allowed to fully ferment out to leave just a subtle woody-ness and it works in conjunction with the tea and oak spirals I aged the mead on to provide a pseudo-barrel aged taste to the final product.

I usually use 88% Lactic Acid. As a second choice I would pick Phosphoric Acid (usually comes as 10%). If you can find a stronger phosphoric acid then it’s probably the better choice as I think it has a lower taste threshold than lactic but it’s really fairly negligible between the 2. Citric acid has an extremely noticeable taste (think sour candy like warheads) and carbonic acid is a weak acid which is usually found in beer as the result of dissolved CO2.

I’ve seen people degas wine in a glass carboy using VacuVin style pumps before so I’m sure you could Jerry-rig something up for a bucket. See here for an example of what I’m talking about.

Yes. You can mash (as in enzymatically convert starches to sugars, not as in mashed-potatoes) any gourd (think pumpkin, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes). They tend not to add too much noticeable flavor to a beer (just a general earthiness and some color contribution) so it’s often recommended to oven roast them a little first to get some caramelization. Here is a recipe that uses sweet potatoes.

So I have previously posted about the two (!) brewdays I had for my entry (a 10+% A.B.V. Oat-Wine) to my Homebrew Club’s annual fundraising event, Brewminaries Present: Cornucopia. Batch 1 accidentally shot up to 89°F overnight but instead of just dumping it, I decided to let it ride to see if it was salvageable and brewed again (batch 2) with a different yeast and an insulated jacket I could add ice packs to. Well batch 1 was still tasting super hot a few weeks into “conditioning” so I decided to throw in a pack of Omega Yeast Brett Blend 3 and just see what happened whilst I added some Biofine to batch 2 and let it cold condition in the keg. The event is still a few weeks away so hopefully batch 1 develops some funk before then and I can serve it alongside batch 2 which I’m actually happy with how it turned out. Regardless, If you are around in NYC on October 14th and want to try this beer (and many many more) come buy tickets to the event!

I would say the reason something like TOSNA goes against the manufacturer’s directions is because the manufacturer just provide a “generic” usage recommendation (e.g. 1.5g per gallon or 1/2 tsp per gallon) when they amount you use should absolutely be customized to the batch you are making. I would argue that the most important part of TOSNA isn’t the fact that the nitrogen sources are “Organic” (although I do firmly believe that organic nitrogen sources (i.e from dead yeast cells) that do not contain DAP lead to fewer temperature spikes from rapid fermentation and therefore produce far fewer fusel alcohols and therefore require less aging time to “mellow”), but that it is the fact that it is a “Tailored” protocol, taking into consideration not only the total volume of must, but the gravity of that must, the nitrogen requirements of the yeast being used for the fermentation, whether there is fruit being added which would reduce the extraneous nitrogen required to be added for healthy fermentation etc.

I would guess YAN is more important because what’s the point of having free nitrogen if the yeast can’t actually utilise it.

I’ve never done experiments between SNA and front loading all the nutrients. I don’t find the staggered additions difficult to do or a burden and I’m typically degassing/oxygenating anyway for the first few days. Plus it gives me an opportunity to take samples and see how fermentation is progressing.

Sure it’s technically more work than the one and done method of front loading but not enough of an added burden that it’s too much effort to bother.

I don’t often use nutrients when I’m brewing beer unless I’m making a big beer (>8% A.B.V.) and I want to ensure a nice healthy fermentation. I do however use nutrients every single time I make cider/wine/mead since the fermentables here do not provide enough FAN (Free Amino Nitrogen) and so without them fermentation is sluggish, throws off a ton of sulfur and often requires a long conditioning/aging time to get to a point where I would want to drink it.

As for the actual nutrients I use, for beers I will use Wyeast Beer Nutrient Blend and for mead I rehydrate dry yeast with Go-Ferm and do a Staggered Nutrient Addition of Fermaid O over the first 4 days of fermentation along with oxygenating/degassing with pure O2 through a sintered stone.

Please crosspost these to !slaythespire@lemmy.ml and !slaythespire@lemmy.ca. Both are Slay the Spire communities that need more content!

Absolutely. I’ve recommended it several times here on Lemmy in various best game/most played game type threads. I honestly cannot recommend Slay the Spire enough. It is an extremely easy game to learn (but like all the best games) tricky to master. Because of its Roguelike(ish) nature, it is infinitely re-playable with each run having a different feel.

This is good advice all round. Just wanted to add that I find that Belle Saison makes a delicious cider with quite a bit more complexity than any of the wine yeasts typically do. Especially if you are going to carbonate the cider

Cascade is a hop that grows well throughout the US (assuming you live there) and can be used in a wide range of american focused styles (APA, American Stout etc) and tends to be fairly high in bound thiols which you can unlock by using a yeast strain that can free them to create extremely tropical, fruity IPAs. It also has a solid AA% making it a fairly good bittering hop.