sethoflagos

Some time in the mid-sixties, my mother visited a woman in a neighbouring village, taking me along with her. For a while, I was left alone sitting in this exquisitely decorated sitting room too scared to move for fear of knocking over some precious ornament or other. So I just sat there listing to the ticking of an expensive looking carriage clock that had pride of place on the mantlepiece. I began counting the ticks. For some reason, that experience embedded itself so deeply in my memory that I can recall it at will. And I do, even now sixty years on whenever I need to time some activity. Shortly, I'll be making some rotis. They need 40 seconds each side in a dry pan on a medium high gas flame. I'll just put myself back in that room and count the ticking of that carriage clock. Am I really a six or seven year- old boy in some suburban bungalow in Copmanthorpe or wherever it was? No, of course not. It's just a figment of my imagination rekindled by circumstance and amplified by emotional association and habit. Is it 'right' or 'wrong'? Wrong question. It just works for me.

Lifted lock stock and barrel from Gilgamesh. It's someone else's mythology.

Metal screw caps don't work here as corrosion makes them jam fast. I've got a bunch of small (1 litre-ish) wide-necked jars with cork stoppers which I find very handy. But otherwise it's the Kilners. They're wonderful devices really. And burping them each morning during the ferment isn't much of a chore. Actually, it would be a doddle to fit a length of 5 mm flexible pipe on those cork stoppers. Loop it with a couple of cable ties for an airlock and Bob's your uncle. Bet I could make them fit the Kilners too. Why didn't this occur to me months ago? Of course, 4 mm OD silicone air hose would be perfect! Now all I need to do is find someone who services pneumatic equipment and cadge some of their stock. How much can a couple of metres of that cost? Bottle of Jack Daniels?

Or just let the float rise and fall as necessary, like a floating roof tank for storage of flammable liquids. Add a smaller diameter insert inside the base of the pipe, drop in a suitably sized ball bearing and hey presto, we have a pretty good non-return valve to let the CO2 out without letting any O2 in. Should work very well.

As with @Sensei 's fermentation airlock (as if I wasn't using them 50 years ago for brewing my own beer🙄), I'm not going to blow a month's pension trying to DHL alcohol related merchandise into the Islamic end of a country with a customs service that makes the orange one look like a novice street corner hustler. Look, I know it's difficult for people who've not lived in a place like this to understand, but many things you take for granted, and don't even consider not being available when you want them, just aren't available here. So bear with me. When I say something is a 'logistical challenge', I mean that it may as well be fabricated from unobtainium ⚒️ PS Did that sound a bit rantish? Actually, I'm just chilling out on the balcony with a ciggie or two and a little nightcap to see me off to the Land of Nod. In late October, wearing just shorts and sandals. Life's good. No issues at all with you just pipping me to the post at the last minute in yesterday's rep race. I'm way above that kind of pettiness. Honestly. Pleased for you actually. 😉

I've just discovered that those glass cups fit my small 1 litre Kilner jars as well, so I've evicted some lime pickle elsewhere and used one to ferment some okra I've been unsure of what to do with. Okra floats so for sure, the vegetable oil barrier is going to be less effective. So +1 for steering me towards a workable solution for that one.

Really? I was under the impression that 500,000 Scoville was lethal to Lactobacilli etc.

I've something rather like stemless brandy glasses that match the throat of one of my Kilner sizes leaving an annulus of 1 or 2 mm for gas to escape. They work quite well, at keeping the stuff submerged. I'm not knocking the principle, or any of the alternative solutions. Rather I'm asking if anyone can think of an issue with the oil seal method described that I might have missed. I'm curious as to why no one else seems to use it. It is cheap, and does appear quite effective.

So silly of me to place more trust in my own personal experience than online sources... Seriously, while you can stop fermentation by refrigeration after 7 days, you can also allow fermentation to continue for longer, developing more acidity and more complex flavour. By 'rapid fermenters' I mean those that degas almost explosively when I pop open the lid each morning. I don't get that with carrots or radishes (or Scotch bonnets, or jalapenos, or Ethiopian nightshade etc). I can't see onions helping as they have a high sugar content that would encourage yeast growth. Regarding the rest, don't you find that their strong taste overpowers the subtle flavours you're trying(?) to develop? I'm using a 6.5% brine for my Scotch bonnets/habaneros/ata rodo peppers. The yeast will still have a go at any floaters even at that strength. I've never had any hypertension issues (touchwood) and don't share the rampant online salt phobia. But there are limits.

When it starts issuing proclamations of 'death to all infidels' and stuff of similar murderous nature. As evidenced even in this thread, the word has become so diluted through misuse as to be almost worthless in serious discussion. To me, it usually flags a bad actor simply badmouthing some school of thought he happens not to agree with. Apologies if some find this viewpoint a tad extreme.

Back when I lived in Huddersfield, I used to grow many Alpines and species rhododendron simply because they didn't mind the odd sharp frost in late May. They survived the local conditions where faster growing but less cold adapted plants would wither. It isn't the actual altitude that matters afaik, but the ability to survive local conditions that potential competing species cannot.

Well that explains it then.

Doubt it. Crete's quite a long trek from Tibet.

First tell me why you chose a username that celebrates a man who sent many thousands of allied naval crew and civilian seamen to their graves in WWII. Well 'Silent Otto'?

What? She flogs aliens? Perhaps we need an intergalactic court of sentient being's rights. I vote for the Dalai Lama to preside.

Ha! How deftly you shame my AmericaniSed spelling disorder! (I'm blaming the auto spelling 'correction' tool) Yes, I took the kids there in the late '90s, and we all pulled faces at the smell of the fumaroles, and a little later, gazed down into the depths of the Vesuvius crater. But when I ask them now what they remember, it's mainly what proper Neapolitan pizzas should taste like. This particular system began its current trajectory in the late Mesozoic. It saw the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) come and go. The current climate trend will have some impact on local erosion rates one way or another, but the overall tectonic path is controlled by far greater forces.

To be honest, I think this paper is more about publicising their satellite radar filtering techniques than notification of any serious imminent hazard. The ballpark figures for ground deformation are a little on the tame side. Compare and contrast the current deformation rates around Pozzuoli (Phlegrean Fields west of Naples). They are a bit scary. https://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/neue-erkenntnisse-zur-vulkanischen-struktur-der-phlegraeischen-felder-bei-neapelhttps://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/neue-erkenntnisse-zur-vulkanischen-struktur-der-phlegraeischen-felder-bei-neapel Working on it

Thanks for (almost!) confirming that. Which points a finger towards... A thought occurs to me. While fermentation is active, the CO2 bubbles evolved are highly unsaturated with regard to all other volatiles and therefore should make an effective stripping gas removing dissolved O2 from both the aqueous and oil phases. This is a convective (ie orders of magnitude faster) process so even a modest diffusion barrier is going to act as pretty much a one way valve isn't it? Hope so. Otherwise @TheVat would have to drink the brine to get his vitamins. (I assume it was lipophilic there) Me too. The diet change was instrumental in bringing me back from a bad place early in the year. Freshly made fennel roti, egg and fermented tomato. A great start to every morning. For about 25c in ingredient cost. Guess that's a whole-wheat taco to you lot.

Makes sense. Do you know which of the vitamins may strongly prefer the oil phase? I imagine most stay locked within the plant cells? And there should be minimal contact between the oil and veggies. Yes, I usually add some sauerkraut juice to be sure, but I've yet to have a fermentation stall on me. Because... climate. Even my 'cool room' will rarely drop below 25oC. (I don't do aircon). Those local logistical issues I mentioned? I had to ask my wife to obtain and hand-carry champagne yeast when she flew here a couple of months ago. The stuff just isn't available. Trouble is with US sites on this topic, they all use Mason jars, and the accessories are designed for that. I have a very strong preference for Kilner jars. Chalk and cheese. Mainly plain lactic ferments. I do vinegar pickling as well (onion, beetroot, gherkins etc). In some concoctions, I suspect there's a bit of both going on. Not 100% clear on what a 'vinegar ferment' is exactly. 🤯

I've been fermenting all sorts of vegetables recently to reduce spoilage waste in our hot, humid climate with a highly erratic power grid. No issues with the rapid fermenters like cabbage and tomatoes, but the slower ones, like carrots, peppers, radishes etc are becoming susceptible to Kahm yeast. Putting together the full sterilisation/oxygen exclusion kit out here is logistically challenged. I've not come across anyone doing this, but it occurred to me that floating a 1 cm layer of vegetable oil on top of the brew might be a fair substitute for airlocks etc and keep it sufficiently anaerobic underneath while allowing the CO2 to escape. It appears to work a treat, but I'm unsure of how insoluble oxygen is in vegetable oil, and whether it might strip necessary components of the brew (eg lactic acid etc) out of the aqueous phase. I pretty sure it will scoff a fair bit of capsaicin for example. Any thoughts?

Exactly my understanding too. These are the normal English transcriptions of the Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu scripts respectively.

How does one determine the path of least action if one does not know the destination?

An interesting framing. On first impressions, I read his 'big C' Communism as maybe typified by Fourierism, a utopian viewpoint that greatly influenced Proudhon's libertarian socialism. Traditionally, the foundational split in communist ranks stems from the breakup of the previously close collaboration between Proudhon and Marx over a petty matter seemingly unconnected with their significant differences in realpolitik approach. Ultimately, this lead to the fracturing of the International Workingmen's Association into what I internally label 'French' and 'German' schools (albeit with slightly different terms best not divulged). However, Graeber lumps the F & Gs together and adds in the religious communists for good measure. So who are the 'small c' communists? Graeber begins with those happy to play for the team in the workplace, and extends this to a more general grouping of good Samaritans, generally decent sociable folk, and Roger Waters' 'bleeding hearts and artists'. Critique? What's the way forward? Off the top of my head, he ignores the social policy liberal-authoritarian axis. The 'German' school in its Leninist form offers armed insurrection leading to a monolithic, authoritarian single-party state that rather than 'withering away' slips inevitable into corruption and the surplus value that should be returned to the labourer in the form of services and infrastructure is trousered by the apparatchiks due to the lack of democratic controls and independent judiciary. The @MigL scenario. State capitalism. No better, often worse than what it replaced. Proudhon's version, progressing peacefully though democratic social evolution has had much better results, but only if the word 'communism' is avoided. Amongst Anglicans and other British Protestants, the word is indelibly connected with the Catholic rite of communion and therefore utterly non grata. Achieving the half-way house of a fully democratic, liberal, social democracy is not a utopian pipedream. It works. Albeit with a powerful, unexterminated opposition to contend with. So I'm sort of more comfortable working with the traditional taxonomy of the socialist movement, but Graeber's identification of potential recruits is, as I say, an interesting framing.

Aha! One of those subtle transatlantic differences in shades of meaning. Heartfelt apologies for the misunderstanding.