#017

Ph.D

I got some feedback from my supervisor. It was mostly minor changes, but there was one case where I added a new full-page figure. Now it’s back with him.

This week has been firebreak, the week between quarters where people can do whatever they want as long as it’s useful, and I made a tech support rota generator. I wrote up a memo about solving this sort of problem.

The kombucha I started fermenting last week finished its first fermentation, so I split it up into 500ml portions and flavoured it. Unfortunately the earthy taste of the tea had completely disappeared, so I branched out from considering just flavours which would go with that. I went for pineapple, pear, cherry, ginger, strawberry and raspberry, and tea (the same). After two days it had finished flavouring (the second fermentation), so I bottled it and left it for another two days to build up some carbonation (the third fermentation), and then put them in the fridge.

I tried the cherry one, and it was much nicer refrigerated. When I tasted it at the end of the second fermentation, it had a very strong yeasty taste, but that had gone away (though it still had a strong yeasty smell). Unfortunately two days was not enough time to build up the carbonation, so I’ve taken them all out of the fridge again to leave for a few more days.

It seems a common beginner mistake is to not stir the kombucha at the end of the first fermentation, which results in really uneven carbonation when you bottle it, as the yeast sinks to the bottom. I didn’t stir it, so maybe I’ll have one or two really carbonated bottles but the rest will be flat, we’ll see.
I also started making some vinegar, once I freed up some of the containers I was using for kombucha. I’ve started one batch of whisky vinegar and one of red wine vinegar. These will take somewhere between two weeks and two months.