Walnuts, continued

[elainegrey]

I started an attempt at unspiced nocino yesterday with June drop walnuts. I quartered the small nuts and found that most had a brown interior, but some looked quite good. I don't know if i've got an insect (i didn't see the crescent entrance the black walnut pest, the curculio, makes). I'll keep collecting the dropped nuts -- maybe they go brown inside after falling. Other causes are that the embryo didn't form or the tree was stressed. It's possible the long dry spell and then the very wet spell was stressful.

I'm going to still make a batch with the six i can reach: those i will peel as some recipes advise, and then i can see the difference. I'll leave the spices out because i do have a suspicion that the flavor might just be from the spices. So this year, get a sense of the nut flavor in the alcohol. There seem to be plenty of other things people make though, like black walnut ketchup.

Anything other than dealing with the ripened nut's iron shell.