yarrow- defintiely, everything in moderation is always a good practice.
I am going ot try to start some kombucha culture myself… does anyone know if it would travel by mail well? I have a friend in Portland that grows it and would love to just get some from here, since I know her and have seen her kombucha growing…
dream of stars,
Yay! Just found this thread. I want to try this fermented gundru stuff! I am also familiar with goitrogens, as I have hypothyroidism and am supposed to not eat brassica family veggies raw (supposedly cooking/steaming kills most of the goitrogens). And I used to be vegan but am no longer because, well, I ate a lot of soy, like almost all my diet was based on it, so I think it contributed to my thyroid condition! Booo for soy!! Coconut oil is the best for thyroid support! I used to use it for all my oil needs, but haven't for a while because I just haven't gotten to a grocery store that has it!
i know its been a while since you’ve posted this, but i thought i would mention that i too have thyroid disease. just wondering, have you found any alternative/complimentary treatments for thyroid disease? i’ve been trying to figure out what people did when they had thyroid problems before there was synthroid. i’m a little concerned that one day (like collapse-time) i won’t be able to get medicine anymore and that’ll be the end of me.
So ai went to the wikipedia article on kefir and it says that you cant make kefir, you have to get the stuff from someone else. So how was it created in the first place? Did someone just find it in some random place in the woods one day and decide it would make a good drink?
a great mystery, chase! the only story i’ve heard on that–it somehow fell from the sky like “manna from heaven” somewhere in the ural mountains. i think they carry it around in bladders or something while it ferments. . . could it have grown from the local yeasts and micro-air creatures combined with whoever already lives in the milk and the container materials?
i think miso came about from storing rice inside a lot of straw. . . someone told me he captured the miso culture from the air in north america using cooked rice wrapped in corn husk, hung outdoors under the eaves in hot humid weather–apparently corn leaves make good hosts for aspergillus orrhyzae.
Has any body heard of the term “burping” in the use of fermentation by the means of opening the lid so to “burp” it which lets in air (growing things like yeast in the atmosphere)? I ask because I don’t know much about it and would like to have your thoughts as well.
The other day I made my first fermentation followed up by like 3 more. The first sat with the lid on for five days, the second, for two weeks, the third for a week, and the fourth still grows and capped and roosting.
The first tasted tangy, delicious, nourishing, refreshing and soothing, with a bite and enough alcohol flavor for my taste and my 83 grandmother whom I shared it with. The second had a lot of alcohol flavor for my taste, it made me feel like I had a beer on the bus as I went to practice someplace. I never tested the alcohol percentage of it, and when I open it lots of fizz came out like a thick bear. Weird, I thought as my lips puckered downing the liquid ferments.
The third tasted sort of like the first one and second one however it had less alcohol and tangy fruitiness (I don’t know for sure about if it had less alcohol or not because I didn’t test it nor do I know of to test alcohol but it sure did ‘taste’ like it to me).
The fourth and final one (not really final, I plan on starting another one Tuesday), I “burpedâ€Â, I took off the lid of it for a minute or two and “burped†it…ert (whoa), I just realized with that sentence that I think I burped it for too long, oh well. Next time I burp it I’ll try if I may to open it only just enough to let out the pressure-gas-build-up inside and then instantly there after return the lid on and set it away for another two weeks. What do you think? Put another way, instead of letting in air like I did about a week ago I hope to release the pressure created by gases the next time and then quickly return the lid on before placing it forward into its roost.
So far I have kind of cheated by reusing the kombucha juice jars I’ve bought at the grocery market place. The little left over kombucha, fruit juice remnants and residues in the jar I think grow cultures again with agave nectar, orange and pears flesh, lemon juice, raspberries, huckleberries, water and love that I add.
I’ve been making ginger beer for a little over a year, so have some experience with short (soda) fermentation, but not much with anything over 1%abv.
On the burping, I think the primary purpose is to release just enough co2 to prevent explosions in a sealed brewing environment. Too much burping will make your brew go flat, so I try to only do it when something is really ready to pop. Brewing equipment has ways around this, but one good way to do it without the expense is to brew in 2 liter plastic bottles, leaving a couple inches at the top, and squeezing out any remaining air before sealing. As co2 builds up, the bottle expands, showing you how far along you are. Plus, soda bottles are built to take the pressure. My current brew is in very sturdy glass flip-top bottles, so I’m burping them just to see how they’re coming along.
If your making something more alcoholic, feed your yeasts for a week or so at a fairly high temperature in something that can breathe a bit, like a quart jar with muslin tied over the top, to give it a ‘head’ start (harhar) and then transfer to bottles later for carbonation, as above, at a lower temperature. If you’re wild fermenting, ignore the muslin 
One thing about reusing store-bought juices, is they have preservatives that your culture might not be happy about (they don’t want to be preserved against!)
~
I just went to a site a couple days ago, and ordered Ginger Beer Plant, a yeast and bacteria culture that loooves ginger. They also have Water kefir (tibicos), milk kefir, sourdough and yogurt cultures. Not too expensive. http://fermentedtreasures.com/
I’m in the GingerBeerPlant yahoo group, and they talk about kefir and tibicos all the time… its a pretty good source for peoples experience with brewing all kinds of things in many ways.
Ginger beer plant is the same way as milk kefir in that you can’t really make it from scratch. The different cultures are rather delicate, and I don’t think human intervention was responsible at first. The little guys may not like to go together on their own without ideal situations. They probably found a place to get together at some time in the past, and established a solid symbiosis over the years that you can’t duplicate easily in the kitchen or lab.
we make a lot of beer and other ferments round here. we don’t ‘burp’ our beers, we use air locks (the store ones or rigged ones). we also let them ferment atleast 2 weeks or until they are not actively fermenting anymore. then we add a bit of extra sweetener for carbonation and bottle them.
you don’t want your yeasts fermenting at a high temperature. about 80F or a bit less. i usually let my wort sit over night and pitch the yeast in the morning.
Might I ask if any body has gotton sick…excuse me.
I have never gotten sick :)… It is possible to have a bacteria that you don’t want in your brews, but generally the longer you ferment the brew (higher proof) the longer bacterias have to develop if they find something in there they like and find a way in…
you don't want your yeasts fermenting at a high temperature. about 80F or a bit less.What I meant by 'high temperature' is right around 80f, which is pretty warm for january around here. :)
Just as an update, ginger beer with ‘ginger beer plant’ is really really tasty. Lots of lacto-fermented fizz, and not nearly as yeasty a taste as my prior methods. My grains are growing slowly, but growing nevertheless. Maybe I should sing to them in a soft and soothing tone.
Next step is to try to find some wild ginger and make it with that, and maybe use a local honey as the sugar source, although that is supposed to take much longer than sugar cane due to the anti-microbial properties in honey.
How are everyone else’s brews doing? I trust y’all aren’t getting loaded.
Please collect wild ginger responsibly. It’s getting pretty rare in many parts of the country.
Ah, I didn’t realize… Maybe I’ll try something more plentiful.
Naw, what you really need to do is play them something sung by Robert Plant. ;D
SOUNDS DELICIOUS. I’m experimenting w/ kombucha this spring, and then might graduate to ginger beer.
Naw, what you really need to do is play them something sung by Robert Plant.Nuhuh, you [i]didn't[/i] :)
I’ve never had kombucha, but I do love tea (too much considering how its grown and the distance it has to travel.) If you ever get started on ginger beer, let me know and we’ll dish. I may even be able to send you some plant if its grown enough by then…
My plant has been quite feisty lately. Its mostly very tasty, and I’m getting a lot of growth, but every so often, the brew comes out wrong… At least wrong for me to drink. I think the bacteria gets ahead of the yeast on occasion, and needs a good rinse. I’m learning a lot about the little critters, and try to treat them with the respect they deserve.
Vinegar…
A quick Wikipedia search reveals that it is in fact fermented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar).
Has anyone tried making it at home?
ha, only by accident! Had some bottles of wine turn on me. Probably not what you meant, though!
Hmm, bet it tasted good on nettle salad. 
I was actually thinking more of white vinegar or apple cider vinegar than culinary vinegar… but it might be worth asking you what the circumstances were surrounding your accident. Could you describe the temperature, bottle conditions (was it completely airtight? any impurities?), length of time it took, type of wine, exposure to sunlight, etc?
My mother used to make vinegars quite a bit, although I never have.
As far as I know, yeasts don’t like sunlight very much, and should have some way of letting out the co2, or your bottles will probably explode between the alcohol and vinegar stage if they can’t breathe. You could use brewers yeast I suppose, or just let it catch wild yeast in the air that want some nummy sugars. Adding yeast at the beginning might help keep bacteria in check, as the two often compete for sugar (unless they’re in symbiosis already.) Smelling it and a light taste on the finger will reveal if its vinegar or something else that you wouldn’t want in your body. Boiling your bottles or jars for a for a few minutes will take care of anything that may be there before the fact.
Something I didn’t know about it till I looked up that wikipedia link is that vinegar is essentially acetic acid, which is used in concentrate as a photographic stop bath. I caught a whiff of a super-concetrate when I used to have a dark room and it gave my whole respiratory tract a nice chemical burn. Ahh, I don’t my darkroom one bit.
When I was about 12 my friends and I used to get grape juice concentrate and add yeast and sugar, put a baloon on top of the bottle instead of a lid and make our own wine so we could have our own booze instead of trying to get someone to boot for us. Sometimes it would turn to vinegar. I always thought it was too much yeast that did that but I’m not sure really.
We also had some old apple trees that produced these green cooking apples when I was a kid. In the fall there would be big piles of them all over and I was supposed to clean them up. They would often smell real vinegary.
A friend of mine was taught how to make his own wine from grape juice by a high-school teacher. Apparently he taught some of the class how so they do it right and not poison themselves when they found out on their own ‘on the streets.’
Lots of critters love fermented fruits. Every so often I see a news story of a cow, goat or some wild turkeys dipping into the ‘extra ripe stuff’ and having themselves a bit of a bender. My family has plenty of stories passed down on the subject, as well, but they’re known for some tightly spun yarns. We have a few apple trees scattered about, and I may look into wild-fermenting some cider this autumn, if we’re still here.