Fermenting things

[xiphias]

Things are fermenting in my kitchen.

Some of them are deliberate, like the maple beer. Which is going well, but I may have misjudged it. See, I decided to dilute a bunch of maple syrup and ferment it.

It's been bubbling away for, oh, a month, now, and is still cooking. And it's still far too sweet. But it now tastes kind of like, well, beer and maple syrup. I'm hoping that, over time, the sweetness is going to lessen as the alcohol content goes up.

But then there's the bottle of organic grape juice. It was on the discount rack at the supermarket, and I bought it, opened it, had a glass or two of it. It was pretty good.

Then I left it out on the table for a couple days. I just saw it, and decided to have a glass of the stuff, and I opened it, and it started attemping to foam over. So I closed it quickly, then opened it more carefully.

We've now got a sparkling wine. It's a pretty bad sparkling wine, but it's better than some I've had.

Comments

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

How come when I leave stuff out, it never turns into anything as interesting as it would at your house?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Probably because you're not stupid enough to look at a glass of something foaming and bubbling threateningly, and go, "Hmm. I wonder what THAT tastes like . . . "

[geekosaur]

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

When stuff ferments in a room, it prepares the room for other stuff to ferment in similar ways later on. So a kitchen where people have baked a lot of bread has bread yeast available, and if you don't bake bread in your kitchen, you're a lot less likely to have that kind of fermentation.

But I think the most important difference is a matter of perception. When I see my leftovers are starting to ferment, I think, "Oh, too bad. This food is spoiled." Sometimes I'll smell it, or taste a drop to check whether or not it's spoiled, but if it's noticeably *different* from the unfermented food, I throw it away. I don't taste it thinking, "Oh, it's fermenting. I wonder if it will turn into something yummy?"

Part of that is my personal problem, that most fermented foods are migraine triggers, so I've learned to be afraid of them. But some of it is just that I'm too much of a control freak to want my food created by uncontrolled processes. Xiphias is a lot more relaxed that way.

(I'm curious if Xiphias' maple mead turns out to have the overwhelming effects they talk about in the backbeyond of the Dendari mountains.)

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who makes wine. He decided to experiment and went to the store looking for pure grape juice with no added sugar. He found several large jugs of Juicy Juice.

Several months later, when he declared it done, we made sure he referred to the new beverage as Winey Wine.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

* golf clap *

(good icon usage)

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Oh pshaw, that's my default icon. This one's better, but more obscure.

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

I once had some fresh pineapple pieces with accompanying juice ferment... all fizzy and sweet and boozy. Man was that good.

I probably couldn't make it happen on purpose, though!

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

What grade of maple syrup did you start out with? The Dark stuff has a much stronger maple taste than Amber does, so you can dilute it further without losing the distinctive maple flavor. Um. I'm talking Canadian grades here, since I don't know the US grades.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Canadian and US grades are pretty much the same, because so much stuff is sold cross-border. But Dark is also called "Grade B", or occasionally "Grade C". Historically, Grade B and Grade C syrup was significantly cheaper than Grade A, which is the lightest. Of course, people who like maple, like me, prefer Dark/Grade B.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

What kind of yeast are you using with the maple beer? Since the sugar's mostly sucrose, it may be difficult to fully ferment it. Still, a good mead yeast might do the trick.

Did you boil it when thinning it down?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm starting with bread yeast, and I'm going to taste it when the yeast finally dies, and, if it's still too sweet, switch to a champaigne yeast for a second fermentation round.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Bread yeast might be the problem. It's tolerance to alcohol can kill it off before full fermentation. A dry mead yeast might be the best. it's made for higher sugar/alcohol concentrations and makes a nice sparkling wine.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that. I'm expecting the fermentation to stop when the alcohol content is high enough to kill the yeast, which should be at about 4% to 6% ABV. If that's too sweet, I'm going to use the champagne yeast, which should be able to bring it to, oh, 14% ABV. But I didn't want to start with the higher-proof one, because I want significant residual sugar.

[brooksmoses]

A bit ago, I happened across a bottle of blueberry-pomegranite juice at tiger_spot's that had gone all swelled-up. It was actually pretty good slightly-alcoholic fizzy juice, I thought, but that wasn't what I was wanting with my lunch and I couldn't convince her to keep it. :)

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Anything currently fermenting in my house is 1), not intentional and 2) highly unlikely to ever be anything yummy.

Gotta clean the fridge soon. Gggh.

[copperpoint.livejournal.com]

I tried fermenting maple syrup once too. Eventually I came to realize that I need to know more about specific gravities and fermentation rates than I did. Also I think I killed everything by racking it too soon. Best of luck though.