Maceration (food) Puns

Race Information

• Name: Western States Endurance Run
• Date: June 26th, 2021
• Distance: 100 miles
• Location: Olympic Valley to Auburn, CA
• Website: https://www.wser.org
• Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/5539663047
• Time: 28:32:12

Goals

Splits

Training

Basically, my training was not what I wanted it to be. I went into a lot of detail in my training blog post from a few weeks ago. I didn’t get in as many long runs as I wanted, and they weren’t as long as I would have liked, especially the Sunday runs. I had a decently successful tuneup 50 miler (Quad Rock). For the last few weeks of big training and the majority of my taper, I felt like absolute crap. I was dealing with a persistent cough that wouldn’t go away, I felt exhausted no matter how much sleep I got, and I was stuck in a vicious cycle of feeling stressed because of how crappy I felt, and feeling crappier because of how stressed I was.

The Race Itself

If you’re never heard of Western States and you know anything about ultra running, you might live under at least a small rock. I did a write up all about the race last year, so to save time I’m just going to link it. TL;DR: 100 miles point to point, from Olympic Valley to Auburn in California. Notorious for always being very hot and very competitive. Net downhill (so obviously a cheater course, right?) and usually a quad killer if you don’t race smart. Lottery system for entry, and each year you don’t get in your number of tickets doubles

Howdy Folks,

I played around with an extended maceration this year and was hoping to gather other's experiences with the process.

I ground-up ~8 bushels of Mcintosh and Golden Delicious and stored them covered in food grade plastic tubs for 24hrs at ~50f.

The resulting press gave extremely silky liquid that was lacking in acid. The silkiness is probably explained by extra pectin in the must. The acid is probably a mix of my base apple varieties and the extra oxidation. I was a little surprised to come in at a ph of 4.6 though! I wish I had tested the PH on the two varieties ahead of the process. I expected the Mcintosh to be carrying a bit more acidity.

We'll see how the final product comes out, but I think I might stick to 2-4hrs in the future unless I try to do a keeved batch. Or maybe try this again once my cider trees grow in and I have fruit with more base acid and tannin. I think for dessert apples this might have only accentuated their lacking qualities.

Anyone else played with this? Did you like the results, were they noticeable?

I dumped enough malic acid in to get to 3.7 ph and pitched saison yeast, but I still think this years batch of cider is going to be a bit bland... Let's call it subtle, instead! Fingers crossed for a rich amber color as a consolation prize.

So today my cat killed a poor Robin that lived around my house. I am considering using maceration to decompose the robin but I wanted to ask some things before hand.

1. If I don't skin or pluck the feathers will the Robin still decompose properly?

2. I don't have an outside water heater, and the water will be pretty cold as the temperatures where I am are an average 10°. Do I need one and where could I get one?

3. How big should my container be and do I need a lid?

4. I decomposed a mouse successfully by leaving it outside with a pot over it to protect it from predators, if maceration isn't going to be suitable would this technique work for the Robin too?

(Sorry there's so many questions, I hope these aren't stupid <3)

So I was stupid today when I changed the water for a bird I'm macerating. I took the bird out of the container and put it on the ground in our garden while I go change the water. I made sure that the dog stayed inside while I was gone but when I came back she somehow pushed the door open and peed right on the bird. Is... Is this going to like... Do something to the bone?... Is it bad...? I feel kinda dumb... I mean, at least she didn't eat it

I'm wondering whether anyone has recommendations for detailed resources on strategies to plan and manage cold soaks, punch-downs, and overall maceration times. The books I have (for example, Modern Home Winemaking by Pambianchi) are frustratingly short on details, beyond longer maceration = more color and tannin, etc.

Full story: I'm making my first wine in several years - 50% cab sav, 50% sangiovese, from Washington State grapes. 10 gallon batch fermented all together from about 145 lbs of grapes (no separation of varieties or of free run/press run). Cold soaked for 48 hours, then pitched yeast. Fermentation in stainless steel held steady in the mid-to-upper 70s, three punch downs per day, pressed at 1.010 after 12 days of primary, racked off the gross lees three days later and pitched LAB at that point.

Took my first taste and critical look at it yesterday. It has fermented to dryness and clarified really nicely. My only complaint is that the color is lighter, and the tannic structure less assertive, than what I was shooting for given the cab content. It's a bright and clear ruby color, maybe tending a bit toward garnet. Tannins are subtle. The wine is balanced, and even though MLF still has a little ways to go, it's delicious and crushable. Admittedly, when I say I was "shooting for" a bolder more tannic wine in this case, it is more of a blind stab than anything else. The wine is definitely pleasant, but also definitely more in the mold of a light-bodied Chianti than anything that is 50% cab.

I'd love to do some more reading or YouTube watching about processes that prioritize extraction. Any books or links you know of that you care to share?

Just yesterday I put a deer skull in a maceration bucket and When I checked up on it this morning I noticed that the surface had frozen over a bit. I was wondering if the water freezing over could potentially crack the skull or cause any other damage? If so, what other options are available for me to use?

Thanks for any replies.

I always disinfect afterwards and really have no issues with lingering smell. Should I still reconsider? (I live in the city and have no other places to throw it away)

I have a maceration bucket with a lid but it still stinks really bad even after changing the water every day. Anybody got any tips on how to mask or maybe even get rid of the stench? Thanks in advance for the help :)

This post contains a bit of a math but if you get the grasp of it, you 'll be able to create your own herbal formulas in no time!

Again, this is my true story:

When I started experimenting with herbs I felt especially attracted to nettles. This amazing plant (Urtica Urens) is dominant to where I live, reaching up to 1 m. in mid winter. Nettle is one of the most nutritious herbs of planet earth; it can be of a benefit in cases of anemia, painful muscles and joints, eczema, arthritis. An ethanolic extract has also been applied topically with success, for the treatment of osteoarthritis.

https://preview.redd.it/ioqq0pke0h981.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7419df12d792cc0ec89df0b2187871bc7b675303

So I thought that it would be great if I had some of this herb, always on hand. Tincture is always my product of choice in cases like this. Due to its ethanolic content, a tincture can keep up to shelf for up to 5 years.

So one day I picked carefully two bags full of nettle tops; I let them dry thoroughly and weight them; they were about 120 gr. Before I start any herbal product I always consult my materia medica which suggested for this particular extract, a 1: 5 w/v ratio between my dried herb and alcohol.

What a 1:5 ratio actually means is, that for the 120 gr herb that I had on hand I needed 600ml alcohol by volume. So, I measured my alcohol and started the maceration process.

Imagine my surprise, when I noticed that nettle where absorbing every drop of alcohol! In maceration, it is crucial that the herb is covered by your solvent. The air that’s trapped between your solvent and the top of jar will contaminate your product, causing it to develop mold on top. Alcohol as a medium, not only serves as an extractive agent but as a barrier between your plant and the air.

I kept pouring alcohol. I added 18 parts in total (a 1:18 ratio!) just to find later that the 1:5 ratio of my materia medica corresponds to percolation extracts, where is also calculated the volumetric value of every plant. I also made the terrible mistake of not having powdered my herb carefully, as I owed to from the beginning.

Dry nettle is one of the most absorbent herbs, along with mullein and artichoke leaves.

https://preview.redd.it/m6i7rtdf0h981.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0358f487d50e5593d04f514ce217521bb363794d

I left my herb sub-merged under ethanol determined to find a solution. I searched

Hi guys, I have family business of manufacturing a thick syrup of tobacco known as 'qiwam' here. Its produced by boiling tobacco leaves or macerating tobacco dust of various sizes. And then this tea is concentrated using maize dextrin and boiling. The whole process is quite inefficient. If I am in wrong sub, please suggest me a more suitable one.🙏 Right now, I would like to create/find a way to quantitatively measure strength of tobacco leaves/dust we buy. Strength here is combination of ph and specific gravity of final syrup. Ideal being a ph in range of 5.5 to 6.5(higher is better) and specific gravity in range of 1.2 to 1.24. Also, ph of solution obtained after maceration/first boil has ph in range of 7 to 8.6(higher is better). This ph upon concentration gets reduced to 4.5 to 6.5(higher is better) Will it be correct to assume that specific gravity of solution obtained after boiling/maceration will differ for tobacco leaves/dust of different quality?

Hey! Just popped my defleshed stuff in maceration bins inside, and have added washing powder with enzymes to see what happens to the process + whether it allows me to work with this stuff in a less smelly way, lol.

What are your thoughts/experiences on using washing powder along the way?

So i defleshed my cat who died 3 days ago due to FPV. I put her remains in a plastic bucket and fill the water. So I have some questions here:

1. How regular should I change the water?
2. I didnt clean the skin and fur between her toes very well, will maceration process clean it?
3. I didnt cut the skeleton to parts, just put 2 forelimbs and whole spiral system + pelvis into the bucket. Will they fall apart in the process?
4. How about her nails?

Hello! I recently found my dream skull (a black bear skull!!) and am aiming to macerate it. I have macerated before but that was during the summer when temperatures were consistently in the 90s. It's now cold here and the temperatures range from low 30s to 40s, the skull is in my maceration bucket outside. Since this is my first time trying cold maceration I was hoping people could share their experience or any advice? I am not really looking to spend money on a bucket heater, so I know that I will have to be patient... Is there a temperature that is just TOO cold to macerate? I also am a little concerned about it freezing, not sure if that would damage the skull. And any rough estimate on how long it would take/how often I should be replenishing the water?

It can't fit in my freezer sadly otherwise I would just wait until summer again. Thank you!

Half a year ago a deer died right under my hedge. I live in a very small, rural town so i waited all up until this weekend to retrieve the bones. They were there, almost perfectly clean. One thing worries me however - the spine is intact. As in, it seems to be clean, but the vertebrae are connected.
Is this how its supposed to be? And if not, how long will it take for it to fully decompose?
Id probably put it in a bucket of warm water, but will it be enough?

I've heard that it really smells but I'm not sure how long it lingers. If it's only a few hours with good ventilation then I can just do it before bed but if it's gonna stick around for a few days then I'll have to pour it down the street drain, which is a bit inconvenient. Other details: there isn't any patch of dirt around here, and it's not a lot of liquid (I'm processing a rat)

Once I have macerated my apples, should I leave them, say overnight? Or do I need to press straight away?

Hi! Can i macerate small skull in closed jar? Is cold outside and i want clean those rabbits skulls and full mole(this blind animal that live underground and is black and have big paws,i'm not sure what is called in english). Do anyone tried this?

Hi everyone,

I want to attempt carbonic maceration of a small quantity of grape in a 3L glass jar for experiment.

Has anyone done this in this capacity? Will the jar explode?

Any advice and sharing of experience would be helpful.

TIA :)

Hello!
Was wondering how bad it would smell if I were to macerate a rat or two. I've never done it before, and I'm sure I could stomach it fine, but I've heard it clings to your skin and even hangs around the property when you tip the maceration goo out to change the water. However, would it be just as awful and lingering with smaller creatures?I live on a property with plenty of bush, backyard space, trees, and can easily wander off at least 25-30 metres away from the house but since I live with others I don't want the smell to be present, nor do I want it to linger on me as I work and study and would definitely rather not be offending people with my stench.

Edit:
I would like to clarify that I'm only doing the vertebrae of two rats. So, small amounts of very small bones. It's also winter here, the temperatures average at about 10-11 degrees celsius. Is it too cold to macerate?

Thanks heaps :)

I got 2 fragrances the last 2 days that really surprised me.

I got a 50ml decant of Creed Aventus 19S01 and a 3ml decant of Kilian Paris Straight To Heaven. They both smelled amazing. Super rich, great performance (big thanks to u/soccer76 for the decant. He did an absolutely incredible job on the mag cap bottle).

The crazy part is, I have a bottle of 19S01, but it isn't anywhere near as rich as the decant I received. They smell the same, but my bottle isn't as dense smelling and makes me go ansomic very quickly. Not so with the decant.

It's the exact same situation with Straight To Heaven. I have a bottle of Straight To Heaven Extreme, but it doesn't smell as opulent as the Straight To Heaven decant I received. I also go anosmic to my bottle, not the sample.

The thing both decants have in common is they come from flacons.

Both are pretty much the same age. My bottle of Straight To Heaven Extreme is 2 or 3 years old. The sample of Straight To Heaven is too. My bottle of Aventus and the decant are the exact same batch. Only difference is the bottling.

Has anyone else had experience with this? I'm thinking of airing out some of my bottles, see what happens.

I made up this name for this account as the username, as you can see, but now I found this sub, so I thought I'd post it. It's a reference to how little male baby chicks in factory farms are killed en masse, pretty much the day they're born, or the next day, by chucking them in a big machine that chops and grinds them into pieces, and then they're just thrown away. And the process is called maceration. They kill the male ones and keep the female ones, because the female ones lay eggs, and the male ones don't. They only keep a few specific male chickens for breeding purposes, so they get to have tons of sex over the course of their lives. A lot of countries have banned maceration, so other methods have to be used for the baby chick holocaust, like literally putting them in a gas chamber, which is just...yeah

I eat meat, but yeah, it's fucked up, this whole process.

I’m currently planning my next blueberry melomel. I want it to be in the style of a low water melomel using around 5 lbs / gallon of frozen blueberries. I was thinking I could just dump all the frozen blueberries into the sanitized fermenter along with the recommended dosage of Lallzyme EX-V enzyme and cold macerate for 48-72 hours or so at 45F. Basically allowing them to thaw with the enzyme. I could stir it up after 24 hours or so after they have thawed. Or is it advantageous to first allow the blueberries to thaw, then smash them up a bit and then add the enzyme? Or is crushing them not really necessary or advantageous? It would make my process a little easier if I didn’t need to crush them but don’t want to cut corners if it will hurt quality!

Race Information

• Name: Western States Endurance Run
• Date: June 26th, 2021
• Distance: 100 miles
• Location: Olympic Valley to Auburn, CA
• Website: https://www.wser.org
• Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/5539663047
• Time: 28:32:12

Goals

Splits

Training

Basically, my training was not what I wanted it to be. I went into a lot of detail in my training blog post from a few weeks ago. I didn’t get in as many long runs as I wanted, and they weren’t as long as I would have liked, especially the Sunday runs. I had a decently successful tuneup 50 miler (Quad Rock). For the last few weeks of big training and the majority of my taper, I felt like absolute crap. I was dealing with a persistent cough that wouldn’t go away, I felt exhausted no matter how much sleep I got, and I was stuck in a vicious cycle of feeling stressed because of how crappy I felt, and feeling crappier because of how stressed I was.

The Race Itself

If you’re never heard of Western States and you know anything about ultra running, you might live under at least a small rock. I did a write up all about the race last year, so to save time I’m just going to link it. TL;DR: 100 miles point to point, from Olympic Valley to Auburn in California. Notorious for always being very hot and very competitive. Net downhill (so obviously a cheater course, right?) and usually a quad killer if you don’t race smart. Lottery system for entry, and each year you don’t get in your number of tickets doubles

It’s getting colder where I live and I don’t think the raccoon Im macerating will be done before everything starts to freeze. Will letting it sit outside and freeze damage the bones and if so is there something I can do? He was big and I don’t want to bring him inside. I also don’t want to have to dump the whole thing, advice?