I have been making mead since I was 18 (I am 26 now). I use local raw honey and some wine yeast (although I have used just bread yeast at the store and it still turned out decent.) This year I have some lilac mead fermenting in my closet haha. Happy Mead Day!
I love (but am also frustrated by) how different each year can be with the garden harvest. Last year at this time we had a reasonable amount of peas, I was struggling with my hot peppers, and I was overrun with broccoli. This year, I'm overrun with peas and hot peppers and struggling with broccoli!
The big project this coming weekend is yet another batch of apple juice. Last weekend I juiced 150 lbs of apples, giving me about 24 and a half litres of juice. Our friend's parents have a cherry tree (which we raid and I got about 50 pounds of cherries this year) and three apple trees -- two of which we've raided and we're raiding the third one tomorrow.
I was curious about the steam juicer you have. Do you have a post where you talk about it? I juice apples and cucumbers every year and this year I tried juicing cherries for cherry wine and at some point I need to juice some rhubarb for rhubarb lemonade concentrate -- and the juicer I have (one of those ones with the spinning grinder things) isn't the most efficient, especially with cherries. Do you find the steam juicer worth the price? Is it pure (or pretty much pure) juice that comes out or does the steam process make it watered down?
Thanks for your sites and newsletters -- this is the only newsletter I actually read, lol, even though I'm subscribed to a bunch!
The steam juicer is totally worth it for soft fruit! It's amazing for cherries, currants, raspberries and all fruits like that and you get more juice and better quality juice when you use it. Pectin rich fruits like black currants are SO MUCH better done that way then boiled on the stove and jelly bagged. For hard fruits, like apples and pears, it doesn't work well and a crusher with a press is much better.
If you have 50 pounds of cherries to juice, it's totally worth it. You can fit about 10 pounds in a single batch in them, so it'll be a while. It's also about 90ish minutes run time to get full extraction from a batch, so you gotta consider that. The main risk is it running dry in the bottom, so watch that.
And no, believe it or not, the juice isn't watered down at all, if anything it's concentrated by the cook extraction time (though the water you add to the bottom reservoir does all steam off into your house if you're doing it inside...it's not watering down the juice, but it is steaming up your house). They work really well outdoors on a camp stove though.
I have been making mead since I was 18 (I am 26 now). I use local raw honey and some wine yeast (although I have used just bread yeast at the store and it still turned out decent.) This year I have some lilac mead fermenting in my closet haha. Happy Mead Day!
Thank you ever so much love these kinds of cucumbers
i would like to know if you have a recipe for crock dill pickles
Yup, here you go: https://practicalselfreliance.com/lacto-fermented-pickles/
This looks awesome! Thanks.
I love (but am also frustrated by) how different each year can be with the garden harvest. Last year at this time we had a reasonable amount of peas, I was struggling with my hot peppers, and I was overrun with broccoli. This year, I'm overrun with peas and hot peppers and struggling with broccoli!
The big project this coming weekend is yet another batch of apple juice. Last weekend I juiced 150 lbs of apples, giving me about 24 and a half litres of juice. Our friend's parents have a cherry tree (which we raid and I got about 50 pounds of cherries this year) and three apple trees -- two of which we've raided and we're raiding the third one tomorrow.
I was curious about the steam juicer you have. Do you have a post where you talk about it? I juice apples and cucumbers every year and this year I tried juicing cherries for cherry wine and at some point I need to juice some rhubarb for rhubarb lemonade concentrate -- and the juicer I have (one of those ones with the spinning grinder things) isn't the most efficient, especially with cherries. Do you find the steam juicer worth the price? Is it pure (or pretty much pure) juice that comes out or does the steam process make it watered down?
Thanks for your sites and newsletters -- this is the only newsletter I actually read, lol, even though I'm subscribed to a bunch!
The steam juicer is totally worth it for soft fruit! It's amazing for cherries, currants, raspberries and all fruits like that and you get more juice and better quality juice when you use it. Pectin rich fruits like black currants are SO MUCH better done that way then boiled on the stove and jelly bagged. For hard fruits, like apples and pears, it doesn't work well and a crusher with a press is much better.
If you have 50 pounds of cherries to juice, it's totally worth it. You can fit about 10 pounds in a single batch in them, so it'll be a while. It's also about 90ish minutes run time to get full extraction from a batch, so you gotta consider that. The main risk is it running dry in the bottom, so watch that.
And no, believe it or not, the juice isn't watered down at all, if anything it's concentrated by the cook extraction time (though the water you add to the bottom reservoir does all steam off into your house if you're doing it inside...it's not watering down the juice, but it is steaming up your house). They work really well outdoors on a camp stove though.