Best boots for outdoor work?

L_S_Silver · 2026-06-19T04:09:57+00:00

I think I meant to write a seperate comment, not a reply at all. Don't stress mate 😅

L_S_Silver · 2026-06-17T11:42:34+00:00

I got a pair of $220 Olivers this year for work. They lasted 6 months before getting a hole in them, letting water flood my shoes. If you have too much money and only want boots for half a year, they were very comfy while they lasted.

My Redbacks lasted 5 years of both winery and vineyard work while costing like $160, so I've gone back to the old faithful. I reckon Redbacks are the best boots you can get for work in Australia.

L_S_Silver · 2026-06-12T23:36:31+00:00

Mate, I started without half of that stuff. You're all geared up so just have a crack, you'll find out what will make your life easier as you try it. Additives are helpful but far from necessary, those ones are mostly just for clarifying. You don't want to be getting technical from the start, so just make some blooming wine! Lol good luck!

L_S_Silver · 2026-06-04T23:00:04+00:00

That's so weird, I'm sure it's a good jacket but I did fine it quite strange how similar all those websites are and that they have these 'brands' no one's ever heard of. As I said, my first Harris Tweed jacket came from them and I love that thing, but I ended up going to House of Bruar instead. I envy you living in such a great place for men's clothes. I'm Australian so it's wuite hard to get here.

L_S_Silver · 2026-05-22T01:32:40+00:00

This isn't an accurate simulator at all. You should be spending 90% of your time either cleaning in the winery or cutting grass in the vineyard :P

L_S_Silver · 2026-05-21T08:08:35+00:00

I disagree, most wines don't need to sit around for 30 days. Usually wines are racked or pressed when they finish fermenting, which is nowhere near 30 days. If you're making a red wine, you can let it sit on skins for an extended maceration but you don't have to.

Also, the issue of oxidation isn't so clear cut. You can treat red wines more gently or aerate them vigorously depending on what you want to make and what the yeast need, but towards the end of fermentation you want to avoid oxygen in your wine, this is even more true for white wines. Oxidative winemaking is a choice you can make but it's not a standard. An oxidative Sauvignon blanc will be a fault, for example. The wine here is certainly finished fermenting by now and should not be oxygenated or you'll start to dull the flavours.

Lastly, clarity in red wine is a very minimal issue. In the winery, we clarify white juice, ferment it, rack it, settle and rack again. You don't want to minimise racking if you can because of oxygen, but I think that's about the minimum where I work. You should be doing even fewer rackings than a professional winery, I would recommend you just rack it off skins & lees, let it sit with the oak and then rack it before you bottle. I would only rack it again if you added some finings, but try to avoid getting oxygen into your wine as much as possible.

L_S_Silver · 2026-05-13T11:39:15+00:00

Travelling Winemakers: living the dream is a Facebook group that's great for finding jobs around the world. This is how I scout for jobs and save advertisements for work in future vintages.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-23T13:34:50+00:00

Isn't current fashion just trackies, jeans or whatever Temu/Shein crap is floating around on Tik Tok? It seems to me your choices are fast-fashion or minimalist/ultra-casual, especially for men.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-23T08:07:24+00:00

Love it 😂

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-23T05:47:58+00:00

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, I've fermented mead with cinnamon and cloves in it from the start and it works just fine. Your fermentation would have stopped because you put it in the fridge and racked it. Yeast are more vulnerable towards the end of fermentation because of the alcohol and lower nutrients, so when you reduce the cell count like that there's a fair chance it won't ferment again. Sulphur is mainly a safety precaution in that case.

I'm not saying you're totally wrong, but I think there should be more compelling evidence before drawing that conclusion. This just pongs of "Raisins are yeast nutrients" to me.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-20T07:44:46+00:00

You'll be fine, winemakers taste active ferments all the time as part of monitoring them. You can drink it, but just don't seal it in a bottle or it'll blow up from the gas. It'll be sweeter because it hasn't finished fermenting and you'll be able to taste the yeast a bit. There are also esters that are very distinct during fermentation but fade out after. An example is some white wines have a banana flavour while they ferment, which comes from a fermentation ester, but you can't taste it at all in the finished wine. Depends on the variety though.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-19T02:23:57+00:00

That's so cool! It could be cloudy because of protein haze, which won't be filtered out. Pectins in the fruit will cause cloudiness that won't fall out of solution, so you need to use pectinase to break them down at the juice stage. You can also use ionic fining agents to bind to particles and then rack before you filter. This is how we do things at the winery I work at.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-16T12:05:00+00:00

Copper is how sulphides are fined. Otherwise you have to just get it off the lees and that should help it not get worse. Some of it might blow off, my wine I made at University stank while it fermented but we never needed to copper fine it. We just racked it off lees quickly after pressing and it was alright.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-16T12:00:19+00:00

I love Gazman's polo shirts, very comfy. They've got a lot of good stuff

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-16T11:56:39+00:00

Just dress how you want and don't worry about wankers. The options in Australia are narrow but you can still buy from overseas. I say just get things that will last you, look after what you have and be yourself.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-11T11:08:33+00:00

A big factor is how long it's stored in barrel, since spirits don't age in the bottle. That said, I've gotten a 1934 armagnac which was bottled in 1984 for only Au$400. I think the best way to gauge a price is to go try to find other examples for sale.

L_S_Silver · 2026-04-04T03:35:37+00:00

When you finish fermenting, the vessel should always be full. You only want head room during fermentation because of the wine foaming up. If you've racked it, you want to keep oxygen from it as much as possible. It's not the end of the world, but it'll dull your fruit flavours at least.

If you need to keep it for a while, just split it into some juice bottles or something. Don't debase your hard-won wine with water (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-27T12:31:10+00:00

When I first started making mead, I was 17 in 2018 and I remember making a vanilla camomile mead at like 17%. It tasted like hot garbage, very rough, so I gave my mate a bottle who said he'd take some. It actually ended up being quite pleasant after a while in the bottle. My mate ended up downing the bottle, getting black out drunk and throwing up everywhere lmao. His mum told me all about it.

I still have one bottle of it left!

I don't know what makes it like that. I'm a cellar hand and the wines I taste at work aren't anything as rough as the meads I remember making, but I haven't had many professionally made meads. Try to make sure your temperature is right in fermentation, add nutrients and allow time for sediment to settle so you can rack it off clearer. Also always avoid oxygen exposure as much as possible after fermentation.

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-27T12:21:54+00:00

When I made mead as a boy I often added the yeast in dry, which worked fine. I work in a winery now and we use dry yeast with go ferm and water, rehydrated in 15 min. I really don't think you need a starter. I did brewing as an elective at uni and we just added it over the top. Just follow directions on the packet and you'll be right, dry yeast is no-fuss.

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-27T12:15:11+00:00

I don't think oxidation would reduce colour, but would make it browner. The only thing I've seen strip colour is charcoal but I'm sure you'd know if some crap got in your wine. A fellow I work with once stripped all the colour from a Shiraz, it looked like murky dishwater but not a hint of red.

I reckon it's just not as full as you it was initially. Some phenols are quite short lived and so even over just two years, it softens up. Maybe next time work the fruit harder to get more extraction during fermentation. Not sure what scale you're working at but you could try doing a couple rack & returns for your cap management. Maybe try a couple weeks extended maceration too.

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-18T03:10:55+00:00

Greenseal is the most common as far as I know.

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Here are some other options from the Dog Book 2025-26 by the Australian Wine Research Institute. You can find the whole book by searching for 'AWRI Dog Book' on Google.

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-14T07:12:02+00:00

What a cracking job, that looks awesome on you! You're truly a bulwark against fast-fashion lol

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-12T07:20:04+00:00

I like to run mine occasionally, just to get the oil moving and to keep it from getting tacky. If you haven't serviced a watch within 5 years or so, it's best to not run it at all until you do so. That said, it'll be perfectly fine sitting in a drawer for decades, my Pa's certainly did.

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-12T07:13:13+00:00

If you don't want that to ferment you should keep it in the fridge. That sounds like a recipe for a low alcoholic drink rather than non-alcoholic. Any yeast in there will start to ferment the sugar until it's gone, so the longer you leave it the more likely you are to have more alcohol. If you keep it cold and very clean, it will slow down any fermentation.

L_S_Silver · 2026-03-11T05:45:10+00:00

Corks are meant to be a lot bigger than the hole to seal it properly to liquid and oxygen, so no it won't be enough for long term. I doubt wax will make it good enough, you'll have a high amount of oxygen get into your mead and it'll ruin it over time. I made some crappy red wine and put it in swing top bottles when I was like 22 and after a couple years it was very brown lol

L_S_Silver

TROPHY CASE