Recent content by NoVa Hothead

Culled my seedlings today down to one per rockwool cube, trying to keep the healthiest. One of them is still quite leggy, but soon I'll be starting the fan cycling, which will solve for that. I moved the container to get a better photo, but you can see that I'm still using my germination...

Gave up on the last two cubes, so it's an even dozen for me this year. My growbox is in the basement, which is a bit chilly this time of year. So, I've taken my germination heatpad and have my seedlings on top of it, and am presently keeping the cubes at 78F. Some of the first cubes to...

Still waiting on last two cubes, rest of seedlings now under lights and getting nutes.

No, I went ahead and cut them down when we got a surprise snowfall in October. Might try to keep one or two this season.

Two more cubes germinated yesterday, so only waiting on two more. Cleaned out the growbox yesterday, have the first 7 seedlings under lights, and getting light nutes.

After two unusual seasons in which I started this hobby, I think I've found my sweet spot, and started my seedlings two weeks ago. One of the biggest lessons for me was to scale down my number of plants. Two years ago, my bro-in-law and I started out with ~100 plants split between our houses...

It isn't "something in the cooking process" that lowers the mash pH, it is the boiling off of water as I cook the mash. If you take two gallons of a liquid with a pH of 4 and cook it down to a gallon, what do you think happens as that gallon of water is distilled off in the form of steam? You...

Beer yeast doesn't affect the ph to the same degree as LB, it allows you to use ingredients with low flavor impact that affect the ph. For example, apple juice is a primary component of my mash. You can't taste the apples in the sauce, but when cooking peppers down in apple juice, it lowers...

Yeast works differently. LB produces acids, which creates additional ph impacts as a preservative. I use beer yeasts, which allow you to use ingredients that will decrease ph, but not produce a sour flavor like LB does. I make sauces that are perfectly safe from a ph standpoint, but taste...

Alcohol has nothing to do with it, and the amount of sugars being processed doesn't produce that much alcohol. Mashing is about preserving for future use, and yeast does very similar things as LB, WITHOUT the sour taste.

So, Pablo, I'll ask you a third time, what's wrong with using yeast?

Again, what's wrong with yeast? Been using yeast for a couple years now, learned it from my father in law who was doing it for a couple years before that. Great sauce, no off flavors like you get with lactobacillus. In my experience, yeast is FAR superior to LB.

I usually pull them out of the germinator once they point straight up, and move them into a small food storage container that I add weak hydro solution to it twice a day until I start seeing multiple roots coming out of the bottom. Once there's a root structure evident, I move them into an...

I'm about two weeks away from starting my seeds, will probably get my grow box cleaned and ready next weekend.

Don't recall where, but I read somewhere that the heat of a pepper is 50% genetics and 50% growing conditions. So, if your backyard and methodology mimics the growing conditions for a specific type of pepper, you might be able to achieve the upper bound of its heat capability.