New Kombucha, injured hen repaired..

Just moved my Kombucha mother culture into a new jar with new tea and sugar mix. I'm just tasting the smoked Kombucha now for the first time, uncarbed, straight from the jar. The smoke is fairly evident on the nose when you first approach it, but it's not really coming through in the flavor. The sour attack is so prevalent, I think it washes out any smokiness that might be there. After you swallow that sip, however, the smoke comes back, and is faint, but is definately there in the finish. Quite balanced, all things considered! Here's a pic of me swapping the mother culture over:

Sick, isn't it? ;-D

I think this tea has a slightly too sweet taste to it too, much like the last one.. which surprises me, cause I thought for sure this bigger, stronger culture would overpower more of the sugars. I just did some rough and dirty calculations with QBrew, which tells me that if I mix 100 grams of white sugar into 1 liter of water, I'll get a 1.050-ish solution. When I measured this new Kombucha out of the jar, it was like 1.042 on the dial, so I don't think this stuff is very alcohol tolerant. If this new tea is this sweet, the Kombucha must be running into a wall somewhere along the way. I think maybe next time (It's too late for the new batch..) I'll dial it back to 75 grams and see how the stuff tastes there. Should dry it out a bit, I think. I've also just started pondering a 5 gallon batch of the stuff, and putting it on gas in the beer fridge. Heheheh.. wouldn't that be sick?

So, here's the big hen that got injured the other day..

In this photo, I had jsut finished building the temporary pen for her in the garage out of a cardboard box and some netting. The very top of her comb you might be able to see is almost black.. that's a result of putting the hydrogen peroxide on there. I have no idea why it did that, but it did. She was bleeding pretty good prior to that, but that stuff and some gentle pressure put that to a stop. She spent the night in this Taj Mahal (with a suspended heat lamp that you can't see in the pic..)..

And was fairly happy about it, really. Heck, it was *9* degrees F outside, and a sweet 50-ish in this box. With that said, the other chicks were bright and chipper the next morning.. 9 degrees is the lowest we've had so far this year, and I was somewhat concerned about them, but everything I've read said they'd be fine. And, so, they were. I got 4 eggs today, which is normal, and then I let the beauties out for a run, where they promptly began rolling in the dirt again. The injured chick was returned to the flock outside the coop where she immediately asserted her dominance over the first challenger to approach, and then things were back to normal. She's out there now with the rest, perched on the post for the night.

I also scored a small plastic walled pet carrier from the dump this afternoon for $5. Way better than a cardboard box, and will allow any future injured chicken to be much more secure when in segregation.

Speaking of eggs..

That's the Balsamic vinegar pickled eggs I made up last week.. this is the first one I had, after 7 days in the jar. I hear you can age 'em in there for up to a month with better and better results, so, since I did 6 eggs, I'll try one a week or so to see the progression. Ugly though, eh?