MuteDog

I feel like I'd rather just try this using table sugar instead of (probably) throwing honey down the drain.

It's not illegal in the US for homebrewers, it would be for a commercial brewery (though they can buy vanilla extract which uses alcohol for the extraction and use that with no issues), in reality no one is checking this stuff and there's probably a lot a commercial brewery can get away with that is technically illegal, just put spruce tips on the label, no one cares/asks how it was extracted.

The ultimate extraction would likely be achieved with high proof alcohol. Sugar syrup I think would be less effective than with dry sugar as the dry sugar would exert more osmotic pressure on the tips to draw liquid (and thus flavor) out of the tips.

You can also add them to the boil as you would hops.

I've done similar stuff with fresh evergreen cones, pack em in a jar, fill all the gaps in with sugar, wait for the sugar to suck water out of the cones and produce a syrup. No need to set it in the sun either.

Goes great on pancakes, would probably be a fun addition to a beer as well.

It dissolves into salt water.

Except it doesn't dissolve, this is not the term they should be using, you can't just dry out the water and get the plastic back. It breaks down into other things. I'm pretty sure an ocean full of dissolved plastic would be a way worse ecological disaster than the current microplastic problem...

I've seen like 3-4 articles about this now and they all use the term dissolve and it's pissing me off.

You can reuse those caps, the tamper proof loop literally only exists for showing if the bottle has been opened previously, it does nothing to help hold the cap on the bottle.

Last weekend I brewed some NEIPAish beer (pretty rare for me to make anything resembling an IPA but my sister and family are coming for a visit and they're hop heads) using azacca and strata hops, ten gallons of that so I'll put it in two kegs and dry hop them each differently, I haven't decided on what so any suggestions are welcome. Fermented with Ebbegarden kveik.

I also brewed a hoppy grape ale, loads of Hallertauer Blanc at the end of boil and then fermented with Lallemand/Escarpment Pomona yeast and added moscato wine pomace to the primary ferment. I pressed the beer off the pomace a couple days ago as it seemed like fermentation was slowing down. I like to press these beers off the pomace while there is still yeast activity so that the yeast will take up any oxygen introduced by pressing.

could be a Pichia strain?

This seems like a good place to put this meme I made a couple months ago

I have fermenting a split batch of wild "tripel" both with the same wild yeast culture that is very belgiany, instead of candi sugar, one batch has a kilo of honey from my bee hive and the other has a kilo of palm sugar I got at the asian grocery store. Additionally I also have (from the same mash as the tripel) a split batch of saison to test out two new wild yeast cultures, one harvested from my bee hive (comb, honey and worker bees in the starter), and the other from Juniper berries my wife collected on Granddad's Bluff near LaCrosse, WI when she was there visiting relatives earlier this year. They're all fermenting away together at 75F/24C, initially it was quite sulfury smelling but that has tapered off in the last day or so. Hopefully they turn out well.

More evidence that this is a kveik derived strain. Kveik are well known for needing a lot of nutes, that's part of why they are able to ferment so quickly. As long as your wort is above ~1.050 you probably don't need to add any additional nutrient. If you're making mead or wine with it, then you'll want to add more than normal.

I would bet money that this is a kveik derived strain and not turbo distillers yeast. Probably they just started propping up Lutra from Omega (which is an isolate from the Hornindal culture). It ferments very clean even at high temps, it does not produce a lot of esters, it's non-phenolic and also does not produce a ton of fusels or diacetyl.