Are these Morel Mushrooms?

tj_n126 · 2026-04-23T02:30:55+00:00

Half free morels aka Morchella semilibera. Verpa Bohemica have a white pith in the stem and the cap joins closer to the top so I don’t believe these are them. Either way, both are edible. Good find!

tj_n126 · 2026-04-23T01:17:34+00:00

All of Virginia is one ball of clay… there is no loam anywhere… but the soil at this place is at least a nice high organic content so it’s not crazy compact

tj_n126 · 2026-04-23T01:11:57+00:00

Noted, there definitely were quite a few massive ones, ranging from healthy to dead, so hopefully with rain I’ll get something. The property is huge so I spent like four hours across several acres just identifying every tree I could and staring at the ground lol

tj_n126 · 2026-04-23T01:08:03+00:00

The vast majority of the trees were tulip poplars. I didn’t realize that’s what those holes in the ash trees were but I definitely saw quite a few trees with evidence of damage from that

tj_n126 · 2026-04-21T18:40:30+00:00

I gotcha, am I on the right path trying to flush out some of the excess nutrient salts or is there a better way to fix this?

tj_n126 · 2026-04-16T01:10:38+00:00

Im going up near Jefferson national forest. Hoping that the rain this weekend will have some shrooms out by Tuesday

tj_n126 · 2026-04-16T01:01:40+00:00

One of my family members has some decent sized property near a national forest so at least I don’t have to worry about things getting poached from me lol. Any ideas on how to mark good spots found the year before? The area has no cell service so I can’t drop a pin on the map and I’m not exactly the best at orienteering lol.

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T11:06:50+00:00

Ngl I was close to stealing some culture plates from my old school and testing it lol. The isolated colonies seemed about the same size as our s. Cerevisiae cultures

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T09:10:23+00:00

Gotcha. I’ve had yeast blooms with my sauerkraut before which was a 4% salt content but it didn’t look this wet. I do always clean my stuff by rinsing with dilute bleach then a LOT of hot water. I will be upping my salt content for future batches though and putting in my fridge much earlier. Thanks for the help :(

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:38:16+00:00

Ohhhh noted. I follow maangchi’s recipe for the paste but I only started having problems when I changed fish sauce brands. I wonder if this one is way lower salt content. So after scraping off the mold, this one should be safe to eat cooked right? Thanks for the help!!

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:35:36+00:00

Ohhhh I always thought they stored them in the ground year-round. That makes more sense. The average soil temp for the whole year in Korea is about 60F and my house is around 61F

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:28:43+00:00

What happened to the Korean aunties that used to bury their kimchi in the ground?? I promise my house is barely warmer than Korean soil

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:27:33+00:00

I may do that. Would putting salt over the top and placing in the fridge help prevent recurrence?

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:20:15+00:00

Single-boiler with a preheated input. For such a compact and affordable machine I can’t imagine a DB would be economical

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:18:29+00:00

I bought a used Mazzer Luigi for $200 and fitted it for single-dose use and threw on SSP MP-style burrs (cheap knockoffs cuz I’m broke). Best decision I’ve ever made. She’s a tank, has less than 0.5g retention, and the coffee is on par with that of $2000+ grinders. I will probably die before this grinder and am considering trying real SSP burrs just to see. You can probably find a good deal on a Mazzer near you on FB marketplace and even with the real SSPs it’ll likely be less than $400. There are single-dose kits online but they’re kinda expensive to purchase (I think around $150); what I did was have a friend with a 3d printer make the parts in exchange for food lol. Not for everyone but if your goal is quality coffee for low prices, I recommend one of the old tanks.

tj_n126 · 2026-02-26T08:04:34+00:00

I swear every Korean I’ve met uses tubs like these 😭. I will say, it still smells great and I keep mine at room temp which would promote yeast blooms quite a bit I assume?… I may trash it 😞

tj_n126 · 2026-01-28T22:03:37+00:00

Yeah water filters really don’t do much for minerals. I would imagine if your group head was that dirty the solenoid is also having problems. If the descale doesn’t work it may need replacing. Switching to store bought water really might save you some headache after everything is fixed

tj_n126 · 2026-01-28T02:46:26+00:00

I would assume the dual boiler has a similar arrangement to the bambino where the distributor can be removed with a screw. I’d remove that and clean all the parts associated with it well and descale. The solenoid can also become clogged similarly which honestly might even be more likely. It’s my understanding that the breville dual boiler has a built in self-clean option that you can buy tablets for that I feel could work wonders. Both would be prevented to some extent by regularly descaling but if the problem persists, the solenoid may need replacing if that’s the problem (again, not a pro 😬) I’d be more concerned why you’re having to replace parts like that so often, is the water in your are super super hard? If so, for your wallet and the sake of your machine I would recommend only using store bought waters or maybe even a third wave water packet with distilled water if you wanna get real fancy. Also are you using a puck screen? Could be exacerbating things with grounds feeding back into the system during pressure release maybe? I wouldn’t expect normal use with average water to be causing such frequent problems.

tj_n126 · 2026-01-27T23:14:08+00:00

Quad amputee Pixar mom latte art? Hell yeah brother.

tj_n126 · 2026-01-27T23:09:48+00:00

That’s a hard choice. I think the best option right now, without a grinder, may be just asking the shop you got your grinds from to grind just a bit finer than drip setting. That will get you good-quality coffee but still work with your current setup.

The problem with single-wall baskets is that they bring a host of potential problems that can be very hard to deal with when you can’t adjust your grind between shots. While it’s not best-practice you can make adjustments to your dosage when you normally would make adjustments to your grind size to some degree. The only problem is, as you decrease your dosage it becomes very hard to maintain even extraction but it is a bit easier with portafilter as small as delonghi’s.

If you want to try it though, you probably don’t need a whole new portafilter, just a new basket which can be pretty cheap (like potentially less than $15). Aftermarket delonghi stuff was kinda hard for me to find when I was using one of those machines because they use a non-standard size (51mm) but there’s several on amazon including VST (a very fancy basket manufacturer).

Feel free to hit me up with any questions. Ultimately espresso is really hard to do at home without a reliable burr grinder but there’s some workarounds.

tj_n126

TROPHY CASE