How would I log this out? Laravel 5.2

So consider for a moment the following code:

<?php

namespace App\Console\Commands;

use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Inspiring;
use App\Etis\Domain\Services\TwitterService;
use \Twitter;
use Log;

class FetchTweets extends Command
{
    /**
     * The name and signature of the console command.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $signature = 'fetch_tweets';

    /**
     * The console command description.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description = 'fetches the latest ten tweets';

    /**
     * Execute the console command.
     *
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle()
    {
        $tweets = Twitter::getUserTimeline([
            'screen_name' => env('TWITTER_USER_NAME'),
            'count'       => env('TWITTER_TWEET_AMOUNT'),
            'format'      => 'json'
        ]);

        Log::info('Tweet Json: ' + $tweets);

        $twitterService = new TwitterService();
        $twitterService->processTweets(json_decode($tweets, true));
    }
}

Really basic command, nothing fancy at all. So lets see how I have called this:

$schedule->command('fetch_tweets')
   ->everyMinute()
   ->withoutOverlapping()
   ->appendOutputTo('storage/logs/tweets.log');

Super simple. Lets look at the underlying code of how we get tweets every minute. Also note that we are logging output to a storage/logs/tweets.log

<?php

namespace App\Etis\Domain\Services;

use App\Etis\Domain\Entities\TweetsEntity;
use \Twitter;

class TwitterService {

    public function processTweets(array $tweets) {
        foreach ($tweets as $tweet) {
            $tweetsEntity = new TweetsEntity();

            if (is_null($tweetsEntity::where('tweet', Twitter::linkify($tweet['text'])))) {
                $tweetsEntity->user_name            = $tweet['user']['screen_name'];
                $tweetsEntity->time_ago             = Twitter::ago($tweet['created_at']);
                $tweetsEntity->tweet                = Twitter::linkify($tweet['text']);

                $tweetsEntity->save();
            }
        }
    }
}

Super simple. Nothing fancy. We get some tweets, we loop over, we save them. Now The issue is with this line:

Log::info('Tweet Json: ' + $tweets);

A) It does not print out out anything in the log file:

[2015-12-23 00:05:02] local.INFO: 0  

This is not helpful at all. I specifically told it what to log (no?)

B) It logs to laravel.log, not to where I told it to append output too ???

via Chebli Mohamed