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[BigDaveK]

I bought one of those hormel and somehow ate almost half before giving up.

On the other hand, I had some spam sushi from a food truck that was fantastic!

 

[bstnh1]

Yes, COVID, the "supply chain crisis," the weather...these are "get out of jail free" cards for corporate executives. They can justify everything, including poor management, because of them and it gives them a pass. The challenge to management is to MANAGE when things are not going perfectly. That is why they get the big bucks. Anyone can take the reins and move the company forward in good times. They will blame everything on these events from the Kennedy assassination to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

You have to remember ........ the first and foremost job for corporate executives is to maximize profits for shareholders.

 

[Vic Frohmeyer]

Well, the Skeeter Pee was the first to get bottled.

Now it's time to make some custom labels.

The lighting is not favorable. They are a very light pink due to the raspberry slurry.
View attachment 84759

I just bottled a similar Skeeter pee as well. I can send you the native format file to play with for yours if you want. I use Avery Design and Print Online, template for Avery 22826 Labels to make gift bottles. I made two labels as the whole "Skeeter Pee" thing is not for everyone. Same wine though!

 

[Darrell Hawley]

I just bottled a similar Skeeter pee as well. I can send you the native format file to play with for yours if you want. I use Avery Design and Print Online, template for Avery 22826 Labels to make gift bottles. I made two labels as the whole "Skeeter Pee" thing is not for everyone. Same wine though!
View attachment 84779View attachment 84778

Nice job on the labels.

 

[jswordy]

The calm before the storm. Severe weather is on its way, I am stuck at the office on the university campus, which has already had its northern half lose electricity, and I hope all hell doesn't break loose before I can get this Zoom meeting over at about 3 p.m. and scoot 25 miles north after that! Supposed to rock and roll between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. here near the TN-AL state line. This might be a whole bottle night – if I can make it to the farm!

 

[jswordy]

Now under a tornado watch.

 

[Darrell Hawley]

The calm before the storm. Severe weather is on its way, I am stuck at the office on the university campus, which has already had its northern half lose electricity, and I hope all hell doesn't break loose before I can get this Zoom meeting over at about 3 p.m. and scoot 25 miles north after that! Supposed to rock and roll between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. here near the TN-AL state line. This might be a whole bottle night – if I can make it to the farm!

View attachment 84780

Do you have an emergency bottle kept in the car in case you don't make it home ?

 

[heatherd]

I don't eat either of those, Spam or fast food. 300 calories, 28 grams carbs, 700 mg sodium AND it never needs refrigeration with meat in there, is all I need to know. Save it for the end days.

I am with you there - the New York Times did an article on climate change due to factory farming and the extent of the Farm Lobbying, so now I have a list of the really bad ones I won't eat:
Tyson
Smithfield
Dean
Hormel
Cargill
Perdue
Koch foods

Here's a link if you are a subscriber: Opinion | Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet

 

[jswordy]

You have to remember ........ the first and foremost job for corporate executives is to maximize profits for shareholders.

That's kinda quaint and old-skool, the way it used to be. Today, their first job is to make sure their stock-based bonus compensation kicks in. Shareholders are secondary. That's why I vote NO reflexively on every compensation package put before a shareholder vote in the firms I own. Rarely are the shareholders in primary consideration in those agreements, which are after all designed by the executives. Rather, other metrics like sales growth, ROI and CAGR (compound annual growth rate) are often used, and those can be totally divorced from profit.

 

[jswordy]

I am with you there - the New York Times did an article on climate change due to factory farming and the extent of the Farm Lobbying, so now I have a list of the really bad ones I won't eat:
Tyson
Smithfield
Dean
Hormel
Cargill
Perdue
Koch foods

Here's a link if you are a subscriber: Opinion | Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet

You just replied to a farmer. I am part of the problem that those NYC writers – who would all die without us – wrote about. The real problem is the population explosion globally. Too many humans on Earth, like too many bacteria in a petri dish. That's why my wife and I had no kids. We did our part.

 

[heatherd]

You just replied to a farmer.

The article is all about how "factory farms" are growing and private family farms (like I assume yours) are shrinking.

 

[ChuckD]

You just replied to a farmer. I am part of the problem that those NYC writers – who would all die without us – wrote about. The real problem is the population explosion globally. Too many humans on Earth, like too many bacteria in a petri dish. That's why my wife and I had no kids. We did our part.

I’m pretty sure you have posted some pics of your farm. Unless you’re keeping 10,000 head of beef cattle at your other farm I don’t think you qualify as a “factory farm”.

I may be thinking of someone else but since you seem to have a day job I’ll bet you fall into the small farm category…. Hobby farm even?

 

[vinny]

I can send you the native format file to play with for yours if you want.

I very much appreciate the offer, but I never miss an opportunity to geek out on something. I want to make up a brand.

My property was bare land when I bought it. It just had an old cabin on it. There is a claw mark scratched in the siding from a bear. When asked what our property was called, not being people who name things, we came up with Bearclaw. I want to play around with that a little. Bearclaw wines. Bearclaw Winery.. I'll make a template so I can just add the wine to the label and print.

 

[hounddawg]

I bought one of those hormel and somehow ate almost half before giving up.

On the other hand, I had some spam sushi from a food truck that was fantastic!

Gawd i had forgotten all about them roach coaches
Dawg

 

[vinny]

I goofed!

So, when making my wine kits I asked my phone how many litres to 6 gallons. My fermenters only have litres on them. It chose us gallons, not imperial. 22.7 litres as opposed to 27.2.

In all the used stuff I bought, their fermenter had 23 litres marked on it, so that made sense. However, I just racked, I'm only up to the shoulder of the carboys.

Am I ok to just top up with water?

 

[Ohio Bob]

No. You will adversely affect the SG, acid, flavor, all of the above. Chalk this one up to one of those “I’ll never do that again” lessons.

If you have 3 gallon carboys, rack into that with any excess going into 1g jugs.
Or you could add store-bought of a similar style.

Your goal should be to minimize the air volume in the filled vessel, typically one or two inches of space.

Good luck.

 

[winemaker81]

So, when making my wine kits I asked my phone how many litres to 6 gallons. My fermenters only have litres on them. It chose us gallons, not imperial. 22.7 litres as opposed to 27.2.

what was the OG on the wines? If the volume was off by 4.5 liters, the SG should have been sky high.

Originally I agreed with @Ohio Bob ... but ... if the water was shorted that much, the acid is out of balance. I'd be tempted to add 1 bottle of a compatible wine (typical loss from racking), then topup with water to make up for the shortage.

EDIT: given an OG of 1.090, don't add water. At this time I don't know what's going on, but with the OG in a good starting place, adding water is probably a bad idea.

However -- don't do that yet, in case I'm looking at this wrong. You DO NOT need to make an immediate action. The wine will not suddenly go bad.

Repost this in a new thread in Kit Winemaking, to get more folks looking at this.

For future reference, when doing mental math, treat 1 liter = 1 quart. This is not correct, as a liter is 33.8 US ounces, which is why a 6 US gallon / 24 quart carboy is 23 liters. But when doing the math, if the number is off by more than 1, you need to re-do the math as it may be wrong. This works for kit-sized batches.

In the last few months I've been training myself to think in liters, as it doesn't need a qualifier, whereas gallons needs to be specified US or Imperial.

 

[vinny]

Well that's unfortunate, and annoying. I have a carboy in a box still, labelled 23 litre carboy. The 23 litre mark on the fermenting buckets I have are obviously not accurate to that measurement.

I was VERY careful not to mess these up.

Guess I'll top up the shiraz with wine, but then I don't get to know what it would have tasted like without.

The Pinot Gris I can move to a 3 gallon and jugs.

Will this negatively effect flavors.

 

[vinny]

However -- don't do that yet, in case I'm looking at this wrong. You DO NOT need to make an immediate action. The wine will not suddenly go bad.

OK, not doing anything, yet.

Both batches were 1.090. The instructions say these kits should be within 1.080-1.100

 

[jswordy]

The article is all about how "factory farms" are growing and private family farms (like I assume yours) are shrinking.

And also @ChuckD

That is directly the result of having too many mouths to feed. If ya don't like it and you are of childbearing age, do the right thing for the planet and don't have kids! We didn't.

My farm is NOT a hobby. If you think it is, I invite you to step into my shoes and do the work I do every day. I sell my calves into the so-called "factory farm" system. Have done it for 32 years. You think food is high now? If it was all small farms, food would be a helluva lot more expensive (think multiples of 10), and then maybe more people would hold off on having the kids we need absolutely no more of, globally. They could not possibly afford them. That would be a silver lining. But the only way to affordably feed all these mouths we keep breeding is the intensive way we are doing it. Those New York writers wouldn't last more than 2 weeks, and violence would break out across the city, if the "factory farms" were closed down. Let's not kid ourselves

Also, I might point out that most so-called "factory farms" ARE indeed family owned. It takes a large operation in a low return on investment business to support a family. For example, it takes 300 mama cows and 90% live deliveries to return $30,000 to the farmhouse. Keeping those cows is HARD WORK. That's why you see these Midwestern farmers planting 2,000 acres – and still hauling their butts out of bed every day to drive truck or work in town.

These family farms are incorporated, and so the activists label them as factory farms. The activists also label any farm using modern intensive production methods for maximum efficiency as "factory farms." Would I prefer a bucolic landscape dotted with thousands of small farms? Sure. But that is not realistic. The way we do it is how you feed 7 billion people who are rapidly breeding their way to 9 billion. Most of the activists have never worked with animals at scale or planted at scale, never even set foot on a farm – and would never deem to soil their hands in hard work.

I have been in ag for 32 years and I know one thing for certain: City folks who have no idea what it takes to feed the world are easily duped by marketing and false information. Ag is not perfect, but in my 32 years I have seen it improve a whole lot, and we are feeding the world. In the USA, one average-sized farm feeds an average of 166 people. I personally am responsible for the births and rearing of hundreds of calves over 32 years that fed a lot of people. That's how 3% of our population who are farmers feed the other 97%, and then feed the world beyond with the leftovers.

Don't cuss the farmer with your mouth full, is my advice.