Fermentation Chronicles 1: Sober Fun for Everyone, Sort of...
Introduction
There comes a time in musician’s life when you pick up a hobby or two, that is both fun, and helps gain a new skillset on the side. I have enlisted the help of home expert fermenter Josh Yazbeck, and assistant Juliana Adema, to explore a series of new ferments for the summer of 2021.
In this instalment, we are going to look at the two hot sauce ferments, and the ginger beer ferment we have cooking up! If you read until the end, you can also read a prologue of some of my previous ferments, which includes sourdough, honey mead, and wild strawberry wine.
Hope you enjoy!
Two Tale of two Hot Sauces:
Latin, and Asian inspired
When me and Josh were brainstorming things to ferment, we were baffled that it took us so long to come to the idea of making a hot sauce. We are both spice fiends in our own rights, and it was only appropriate that we do this. When you go to make a hot sauce, you have one of two choices: go for a vinegar-based sauce (ie. Frank’s Red), or a fermented hot sauce. Although we plan on doing a vinegar-based hot sauce in the future, we were more interested in going for a couple of fermented hot sauces this time around.
“Latin” Pepper Sauce
- Grilled Poblano Pepper
-Jalapeño
-Shallots
-Garlic
“Asian” Pepper Sauce
-Thai Chili Pepper
-Sweet Pepper
-Roasted Shallots
-Garlic
The process for this is pretty simple, as far as food-based ferments go. With the addition of grilling the poblanos and roasting the shallots, your steps pretty much just include cleaning all of the food and storage devices, stuffing the ingredients into two mason jars (per hot sauce), and filling it with a 3-5% salt brine. We did 4%, which amounted to 80 grams of salt, and 2 litres of boiling water (cooled down to room temperature, before bottling). After the peppers sit in this brine and ferment for two weeks, you simply blend the ingredients and get your hot sauce!
Hot Sauce Update coming soon 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Ginger Beer:
Lets just call it 1% …
Similar to making a loaf of sourdough bread, we have to create a starter before we can begin, in this case it is called a “ginger bug”. Josh cultivated the ginger bug by mixing sugar, ginger, and water, which is aided by a daily feeding of water and ginger. Once it is active, we can go on to preparation of the beer.
For the ginger beer we used:
juice of two lemons
three finger peppers
a few heads of large ginger
a handful of tumeric
a tablespoon of whole peppercorns
All we have to do is make sure that all the ingredients are chopped up, and are ready to get boiled for 20 minutes. After this has all boiled for 20 minutes or so, you add sugar (cane sugar in our case). Then, you can filter out the solid ingredients and pour the liquid into a gallon jug. You will then add the filtered ginger bug once the temperature has cooled, followed by some water to fill the jug. And with that, we’ve made ginger beer.
Conclusion
In this first edition of the fermentation chronicles, we looked at two separate fermants I have attempted with Josh Yazbeck and Juliana Adema: the two hot sauce ferments, and a ginger beer ferment. Next time, we will be going through the process of beer and wine making from the perspective of couple modest home fermenters.
If you keep reading until the end, you will be able to view some of my most favorite ferments, from the summer in which I began fermentation.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. It is always nice to find new avenues in which we can flourish, and this cooking environment is a much needed change from the daily music practice.
Prologue:
Strawberry Wine, Sour Dough, and Honey Mead
Last summer, I started my fermentation journey for real. This included my three favorite projects:
Strawberry Wine, Honey Mead, and Sour Dough.
In the “covid summer of 2020”, my journey into the world of fermentation began with sourdough bread. I then went on to make honey mead, and a wild strawberry wine afterwards.
If you want to start the journey of fermentation, I would recommend starting with sourdough. If you are not used to ferments, it is a great way to get you accustomed to feeding and maintenance required for a basic ferment. For this, you need need to create a sourdough starter, which includes dry yeast, flour, and water. You basically feed this mixture with 1 cup of flour, and a half cup of water everyday, after discarding a large portion of the starter. After seven days of close examination and feeding, you should be able to start making sourdough bread. What you are essentially doing is covering the starter container so all of the yeasts mingle with the flour and water mixture to create a fermentable environment where bubbly bread yeasts are born. You need to make sure when doing this that you don’t overfeed, or underfeed your starter. You want your starter to be thriving so that it can produce an optimal loaf of bread. After you have obtained a healthily fermented starter, you go on to making the bread, which is a days-long process of folding, shaping, and resting bread until it’s ready to bake.
For number two on my fermentation picks from the summer of 2020, I have to go with honey mead. Honey mead is one of my absolute favorite fermentable drinks, as it is one of the oldest known ferments, and one of the tastiest, in my opinion. This is a beverage ferment rather than a food ferment, so the process is slightly different. For this, you need a lot more tools than just a bowl and some flour/water. You are going to need a gallon jug, airlock, funnel, cooking pot, and bottles which all need to be sanitized (I recommend Star San). The entire cooking process consists of combining hot-warm water, 12 cups of water with roughly three pounds of honey. After these have mixed in a pot and are dissolved, you can pour it into jug with a funnel, and fill it to the top with cold water. After this you top it with an airlock, and in a month or so’s time, you’ll get past the main stage of fermentation before bottling. It is an easy recipe, and is relatively cheap if you can find a good deal on honey. In my case I picked Greek honey, which, while it was more expensive, resulted in a delicious product nonetheless.
Last but not yeast, we have my personal favourite project, which is the wild strawberry wine. The reason for this certified top pick is because it is a really risky ferment, which is more adventurous than a wine created from juice. For this ferment, I picked four large baskets of strawberries in season, which I then washed, and picked the greens off. You then squash and mix the berries, adding water and mixing daily. You then add sugar, and allow for the mixture to ferment for 3 months, which is then bottled for at least a year. This recipe is a nice one if you are willing to see the fruits of your labor in at least a year and a half, which I am still waiting on! In the above image you can see us rebottling and fermenting this, from roughly 8 months ago.
Thank you for reading, hope to catch you on the next blog!
-Nick A.