u/Sebvad

have been making yogurt from years successfully. recently I've had 3 back to back failures, and can't determine why. I always do the same thing - 1 gallon of store bought, whole milk (not ultraprocessed). I use an instant pot and the yogurt setting (the boil never really boils it, so I let it run it's cycle, then use sauté to bring the temp up to 180-185, turn it off, and let it sit there for 30 minutes at 180F). EDIT : I cool to 108F in a water bath. I culture using store bought greek yogurt - chobani or stony farms for 8-12 hours

the past 3 times it's just been super runny. I can tell *something* is happening as there is a thickening that clusters as the bottom of the pot, but when I say runny, it runs right through the cheesecloth, all of it. At this point, it feels like I'm just throwing away gallons of milk. I've bought 3 different lots of milk and 3 different lots of yogurt thinking perhaps it was a batch issue with one of them, but had the same results.

what should I be looking at or doing differently? perhaps it's an issue of antibiotics in the milk supply that weren't there before?

So I'm an early retired R&D guy (ran R&D for companies you'd know, not in cheese) and I've decided to learn this. Today I've commissioned my super sophisticated DIY cheese press (which hasn't fallen apart, so there's that!), and built a tracking tool for me to keep track of what I'm sure will rapidly become thousands of cheeses that I'll shortly forget what I did and how I did it - so I'll want to be able to refer to a log of some sort. This particular log calculates my pressures based on what my top plate, top weight, and mold size are. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but am having a ton of fun learning along the way. Sharing it for no particular reason other than I'm having fun doing it!

https://preview.redd.it/tcq81yp9pneh1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7701d1837b8e8bc8616c3f5de5f4d679030571f7

https://preview.redd.it/0mlnnu9cpneh1.png?width=2758&format=png&auto=webp&s=78fe9bb0e1523a77e18653de0828f7f384e77698

Buddy of mine's wife has chickens, raccoons are feasting. They're in a large lot (5acre) but neighborhood - so they are live trapping and dispatching the raccoons somehow - but not with a gun. I'd suggested a pellet gun as there'd be no report when fired. A web search for what would humanely dispatch a raccoon points me to $800+ guns taht are big bore - and I'm assuming all those are assuming there's a fair bit of distance between the airgun and the raccoon.

In my friends instance, it'd be point blank as it's in a live trap. Any recommendations on something more affordable that would still be humane? Say sub $200? It is absolutely silly to me to spend almost a grand on something like this.

I'm running a RealDebrid setup with Torrentio and Sootio as a backup scraper. I'm not 'deep' into the details, so I'm sure I'll mischaracterize *something* here - be gentle! As I understand it, for sound legal reasons RD has changed how they operate, which has resulted in what seems to be either less choice or less reliability on the customer end. I don't fault them for this, and have chosen to not ask for a refund for many reasons - however my subscription is expiring in the next week, which feels like it's a good time to set something else up. Torrentio always generates a short - but reasonable list of streams for me - but most of them don't work; and sootio almost always takes a long time to load, and sometimes doesn't load or load anything at all.

My (limited) understanding is that it may be as straightforward as switching to AllDebrid, and replacing my RD key with an AD key - and away we go, back on the road of lots of streams that work as well reliably? Is that my best course of action, or would the collective wisdom point me in other directions?

This may be novel for nobody but myself - but in case it helps someone - I've been making greek yogurt for about 2 years in my instant pot - using the yogurt setting. sometimes it'd be great, others it'd be watery - and I've been a scientist for a few decades, so I'm pretty careful and controlled. I couldn't figure out why I was getting such inconsistent results - and my latest theory was that since the instant pot does have a temperature readout, perhaps it's pasteurizing cycle isn't getting hot enough, and it's relying on pressure to pasteurize at a lower temperature than is necessary for full protein denaturation to give me the thickness I'm after. So today I decided to pasteurize in a pot on the stove, old school, and gave it the ol' 180-185 for 30 minutes treatment. inoculated, fermented, and man it was way firmer than any of my instant pot attempts, and the straining of the whey went much faster as well - normally I'd leave it in the fridge overnight to drain, but this drained off in a few hours, and my thickness far exceeds what I'd achieved before.

an N=1 doesn't mean I've cracked the code - but it's definitely something I'm going to repeat and check for consistency.

So I've retired a bit early, and find myself with the time to explore fun and interesting things. I have a VERY strong food science background. What resources might you point me towards to get started? Are there recommended web sites, FAQ's, equipment lists, etc that you'd suggest for new folks?

I'm looking for a very durable, DWR pant that would be 'one pant to rule them all' - hiking, bushwhacking, hunting - but also doesn't look like I stepped out of a mad max movie if I went for a beer. The Stellar Equipment Guide pants look to be quite impressive - but I can't find many reviews on them, and I'm a little concerned they may be more oriented to snow skiing than non-snow uses. Any firsthand experiences here with them?

1.5 years old tv. never been particularly happy with it as it does strange things. Constantly asks me to sign in. Can't remember the last channel it was on. For the past few months, it's begun randomly pausing itself while we're watching. It's not the remote with a stuck button as we've removed the batteries to test that theory. We've reset, disconnected, reset the firmware, and had a shaman into conduct an exorcism.

What's going on here?

I know there's one in Philly, but that's a bit too far. Anything local?

My bridgers are holding up GREAT (Way better than my Merrills) - but my insoles are pretty compressed. Randomly searched for Oboz Replacement Insoles today led me straight to the Oboz page where they sell a number of them.

For those of you who've tried them - any thoughts regarding them? Worth it?

What is happening here? They're the leading news outlet in the viewing area by a long shot, and now every single tease, every single wipe, every show begins with "BREAKING NEWS" - it's nonstop.

Instead of reserving it for meaningful events as it's meant to be, it's coming across as a very, very desperate play for more eyeballs when they already have most of them. I can hardly stand to watch them any more - for some reason they think the vacuums at the car wash in Lebanon are breaking news or the new dog park or whatever nonsense is all breaking news.

Make it stop, lest you lose at least 2 eyeballs. Yes I know what your consultants are tell you. They're morons.