Last Days of Summer

gurkha berserka

gurkha berserka

Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
1,602
I thought it might be nice to put some pictures up to represent the last days of summer. Please contribute flowers, sunsets, beach shots, or what ever else comes to mind when you think about summer...
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We wont be seeing anymore of these fuzzy friends for awhile...
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End of summer for me means one thing! American Beauty Berry harvest! This year I have enough to make 15 gallons of wine! Best haul in a long time. My hands are raw from stripping berries and my Sirus even got a workout.

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Heres my setup. Plastic collection tub, screen, and a few Sirus. Stainless milk can is my fermentation vessel but since I had so many berries this year it spilled over to another five gallon bucket.

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Whack em all up and bust the skins open so the yeast can find the sugar and do its thang. Next you add 27 pounds of sugar to get the gravity right and also add some yeast nutrient to make them critters happy so they make a bunch of alkeehol:D

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Yep all good!

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Mix up sample batch of yeast to add to the main batch once it starts to ferment then add it to the big batch. Now just stuff it in the utility room and watch it ferment for a few weeks at least.

Great thread Gurkha! Hope im not taking too much bandwidth off your thread but thats what ends the dog days of summer for me. Celebration for my efforts soon to follow. Hic.:very_drunk:

Howard: What a cool place! Looks like a heck of a lot of fun on a bicycle!
 
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Awesome addition ndoghouse! Those are the types of pics I am talking about. Anything that reminds anyone of summer please share. Those are the most vibrant purple berries I have ever seen. Oh... I love the kukri in the picture too, now that's a true kukri collector. I try and use mine for everything I can think of too. Thanks for the pictures, those berries brightened up my morning! Man I would love to try and glass of that concoction.
 
When its ready ill send you a bottle! Theres no mistaken to them berries for sure. They are easy to spot. I use the big Siru when the ants are bad underneath the bush. I just cut the whole bush down and drag it off to a better place. Otherwise I use my 11.5" siru and snap off the clusters. The leaves contain some chemical that repels mosquitoes, ants, ticks, and many other bugs. I can attest to this myself. I crush up a few leaves in my hands and rub them until you get some juice liberated then rub it all over. Keeps my wife away too sometimes. I havent tried it on ants...Hmmm? I just noticed that in this article.
http://www.hsu.edu/pictures.aspx?id=1344
If you drink enough of the wine I guess you wont care about the bugs anyway:D
 
ndog! I was meaning to ask you for your wife's beauty berry jam recipe!

Got lots of them on my property this year. Not as many as you've got there but enough for a couple jars of jam.
 
Thanks for the link bro, those are the most vibrant colored berries I have ever seen. I can almost taste them.
 
philllll said:
ndog! I was meaning to ask you for your wife's beauty berry jam recipe!

Got lots of them on my property this year. Not as many as you've got there but enough for a couple jars of jam.
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No problem man! When I get home ill look it up and compile something. My wife dont mess with the beauty berries because she thinks they dont have any taste. It is a subtle taste but i love them right off the bush. I may have enough berries left on the bushes to make some jam so i may work on that recipe as well. Till then ill give you my recipe as it is. My last batch was pretty good but i think it needed just a bit more gel because it didnt set up as hard as i like.
 
So the end result of all these smashed berries is Wine I presume? I had a bad experience with a large bottle of Annie Greensprings in my youth and I've not been able to handle the grapes ever since.
I think it was more a quantity issue (I lost the cap) as much as a poor quality issue but I can still feel the bed a spinning like the wings on Bookie's Chopper. The nightmares persist to this day.
 
WHOA! Ndog... we are even more alike than I thought :) Those are some very delectable looking berries, wow,,, imna get me some of that wine....

Well for me end of summer means cleaner waves to ride with less people around so that's good... no more kook hunting till next summer I guess
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Bawanna said:
So the end result of all these smashed berries is Wine I presume? I had a bad experience with a large bottle of Annie Greensprings in my youth and I've not been able to handle the grapes ever since.
I think it was more a quantity issue (I lost the cap) as much as a poor quality issue but I can still feel the bed a spinning like the wings on Bookie's Chopper. The nightmares persist to this day.
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I have similar hellish nightmares whenever I see a billboard or read a magazine with Tequila in it. OMG...The taste, smell, or even thought of it makes my stomach turn in foul displeasure. I feel your pain brotha, I have actually lost my taste for alcohol a few years back. I haven't had even a sip in the last six years or so. I was a scotch drinker for years, I would drink Chivas Regal by the bottle...smoothhhhh. The thought of it now is foul to me, but that doesn't mean I hate booze. Its just not for me anymore. I don't look down upon people who drink and I still like to hand out with them. My wife enjoys the occasional glass of wine unless she is at my parents house. They corrupt my poor woman and get her all boozed up, which I really don't mind cause she lets me do stuff to her when we get back home that she wouldn't do sober hahahah. PLEASE don't tell her I told you :D
 
dmcintyrelee said:
WHOA! Ndog... we are even more alike than I thought :) Those are some very delectable looking berries, wow,,, imna get me some of that wine....

Well for me end of summer means cleaner waves to ride with less people around so that's good... no more kook hunting till next summer I guess
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Awesome F'in picture mang! Is that a 18in WWII or are you just happy to see me. That's one of those shots you can show your grandkids to show how cool you are/where lol. Thanks for that sic pic brah!
 
Is that a cool picture or what? I bet even if there was folks around they'd cut a wide berth after seeing that.

And woah the poor shark that tries for a bite too.
 
If you look closely at that picture it's one of them that can fool ya. You look once and it looks like its in the right hand held high, but look again and it looks like it's in the left hand held out towards the camera.

Kind of tricky.
 
dmcintyrelee said:
WHOA! Ndog... we are even more alike than I thought :) Those are some very delectable looking berries, wow,,, imna get me some of that wine....

Well for me end of summer means cleaner waves to ride with less people around so that's good... no more kook hunting till next summer I guess
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Ha! Thats Great dmc! Classic! That gives new meaning to "b...hole surfer"? I just blew water out my ears to save my keyboard :thumbup: Ouch! OK I gotta go clean up my desk now:D
Man yall have a seaweed problem too. We get Sargasm from Mexico so thick it keeps the waves from building. Dang near waist high on the beach. Annoying stuff. Damn what a cool pic! Ill save you a bottle of wine brother! You deserve it!

You didnt cut your nips off getting out there did ya?
 
Bit of family property

Taken with 18-55mm and stacked extension tubes. Breeze was moving the flower in and out of focus.

Bottom hole of a sand dollar that was around the size of a quarter. Taken with 65mm macro.

May post some others later.
 
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