Fermentation is a technique used in various forms of cooking, home brewing and commercial brewing. For green lifestyle enthusiasts and mini or home farmers, the use of fermentation helps build stockpiles of wine, beer and various forms of food preservation supplies. Incorporating fermentation in daily cooking and stockpiling options is vital for families who want to ensure that various foods are available in case of emergency, outbreak or food recall.
Before bringing fermentation into a green lifestyle or organic food plan, there are some aspects of the technique that you should understand. Depending on how fermentation is being used and for what purpose, there may be several techniques or tools involved. There are benefits of different fermentation methods, tips and advice to help with these methods as well as differing processes.
This guide will discuss the benefits of fermentation, tips on fermentation, techniques, the process when home brewing wine, home brewing beer and fermentation products that will help you reach your goals for the fermentation project.
Benefits of Fermentation
Fermentation, regardless of how it is used, has its benefits. These benefits are primarily from after the point the food or beverage has already been fermented. Knowing the benefits of fermentation can help you decide what type of fermentation technique you want to use, how you want to use it and if the benefits will help with your overall lifestyle and nutrition goals. There are four main and popular benefits to eating fermented foods.
Digestive Value
Fermented foods contain probiotics, which are known to aid in digestion. In fact, many people who suffer from issues with IBS choose to ingest probiotic rich foods rather than fiber supplements in order to aid in digestion on a regular basis. Fermented foods such as Kombucha will help with the digestive balance of enzymes in the body and create a balance of bacteria that consistently helps with digestion. This will improve the bowels and also help contribute to healthy weight loss and healthy overall weight.
Preservation of Food
Preserving food is a huge topic of discussion, especially since the late 90s. There are concerns that the way commercially preserved food is created will cause severe issues later. Home canning and preservation has taken over with families as a the number one source of food supplies and emergency food preparation. Fermentation offers the benefit of allowing someone to preserve their food without the use of harmful chemicals that could disrupt the value of the food or make the food inedible too quickly.
Food Absorption
One of the key factors in digestive issues is the way food is absorbed. Fermented foods and the fermentation process helps food absorb easier into the body. This makes digestion easier and allows for a healthier flow of food and nutrients. This is primarily due to the 'good bacteria' found in fermented foods.
Cost Efficiency
Fermentation techniques and creating fermented foods at home is incredibly cost effective. For families on a budget or on a limited food budget, the option of fermentation for food preservation can be beneficial. The food also lasts several months rather than several days and if it is stored on a shelf in a shelf stable environment, it can last even longer.
These are just a few of the benefits to fermented foods and using fermentation in food preservation. Before you get started on fermentation techniques, there are some tips you should consider. These tips will offer help and save time and money over the course of your fermentation endeavors and projects.
Tips on Fermentation
Fermentation is a fairly easy process, but even the simplest of processes and techniques can have their drawbacks when not handled properly. The following are a few tips and tricks to fermentation, fermentation for preserving foods, fermentation for home brewing and other forms of fermentation methods.
Yeast Tips
Yeast is one of the primary ingredients involved with fermentation. When you begin a fermentation project, you want to make sure that you are using the right amount of yeast from the beginning. Using too much yeast can cause issues just like using too little yeast can cause the project to fail. Make sure you do your research and that you have the right proportions before you start. You can reference books or recipes for specific items. Remember, some recipes may call for grams of yeast to be used rather than teaspoons or other common measurements. In these cases, make sure you have a kitchen scale. A digital scale is based and costs less than $30 at most stores.
Make sure to feed your yeast properly and at the appropriate time frames. Depending on what type of project you are handling, you will have different times to feed the yeast mixture and different amounts of feeding required. For wine and other home brewing you may have a special yeast that requires no feeding or little feeding. Just make sure to check the manuals or books you are using as a reference guide.
Temperature
Temperature is a key factor when fermenting foods or beverages. If your temperature is not right, then you can blow the whole project. Your temperature settings will help maintain the food during the fermentation process and offer the stability needed for the food to preserve properly. Some temperature settings may relate to the room temperature or various temperature settings throughout the process. There may be a specific temperature used at the beginning of the project while a totally different setting is required later. Refer to the specific recipe and make sure you have an appropriate thermometer. Many people who take on fermenting projects choose to use a laser thermometer for this due to its accuracy with various foods.
Clean Everything
Sanitizing everything is a must when you are fermenting foods. Some people may want to skip the steps like sanitizing the jars for canning or the rings and lids for canning. There are sanitization procedures used throughout fermenting and it is for safety. If you take no other tip or advice from this section of the guide, at least take away that every step for sterilization and sanitization should be taken and followed to the letter.
These tips and advice can be used with any aspect of the fermentation process and with any technique. It does not matter if you are canning, preserving or home brewing all of these tips and advice can be used and will be used to maintain the right outcome of the project. Now, we can move on to the techniques available in various fermentation projects.
Techniques of Fermentation
There are several techniques that can be used for various fermentation projects. The basic concept of any fermentation project is to covert sugars. That is the essence of what you are doing regardless of the desired outcome. In order to understand the techniques of fermentation, you must first understand the types of fermentation and the food backgrounds of the techniques. Each fermentation technique available is based on of the two following types.
Lactic Acid Fermentation
Lactic acid fermentation can be described in several ways. For someone who is planning on using fermentation for food, which is what this guide focuses on, the basic lactic acid fermentation description is easy. Basically, lactic acid fermentation is a technique used that will result in no carbon dioxide emissions. It is not a common technique that is used with food preservation, but some people will use it for various advanced projects.
Alcohol Fermentation
Alcohol fermentation is the most common form of fermentation is available. This technique is widely used and accepted for basic food fermentation projects. The technique converts the sugars in foods to alcohol. This is used with 95% of the food preservation, fermenting and fermentation projects found today.
Now that you understand the two techniques of fermentation, it is time to discuss the various foods that these techniques use. Fermentation can be done on several types of foods, but there are a few main types that people tend to stick with.
Bean Fermentation
Bean fermentation or fermented bean based foods are probably the most common food based fermentation projects. You may not believe that you have every eaten or thought about eating a bean fermented food. The truth is if you have every had soy sauce or soybean paste, then you have experienced bean fermentation.
Vegetable and Fruit Fermentation
Vegetable and fruit fermentation is common for canning and preservation projects. Sauerkraut is the most common form of vegetable fermentation in the United States. It is a food that most people can identify, even if they have never eaten it before. Pickles and Kimchi are other examples of vegetable based fermented foods.
If you have ever had wine, then you have experienced fruit fermentation at its finest. Vinegar, ciders, brandy and fruit pickling products are also fruit fermented foods.
Meat and Fish Fermentation
Meat and fish fermentation generally are projects that people use when preserving and canning meats for long term storage. For those that have farms or live in cold weather areas such as Alaska, where food stores are vital to survival, the need to understand meat and fish fermentation is necessary. Some types of meat and fish projects include salami, pepperoni, shrimp paste, pickled herring and other meats. This is one of the best ways to use all of the meat from an animal as well.
There are other fermentation methods available. People may choose to use honey fermentation to create mead. This is a quick and easy way of creating alcohol without the use of fruit. Cheese, kefir and various cultured milks will use dairy to create a fermentation process with extremely high nutritional benefits. The two most popular forms of fermentation, however, are found in home brewing. The next two parts of this guide will discuss the fermentation processes of wine and beer with simple recipes to get you started in those projects.
Fermentation Process with Wine
Wine home brewing and the fermentation process is one of two popular forms of fermentation. This is usually a project that people become familiar with fermentation and how the concept of the process works. There are sets for beginners and for more advanced home brewers available from home brewing stores and from online locations. The easiest way to understand the process is to look at a recipe for wine and see how the process comes together.
For the purposes of this guide, we are going to use the easiest wine recipe out there. This wine recipe requires no special kits and only or two items that can be purchased online or through a local brewing store. Ready to get started? Here's what you will need:
' 1 gallon of apple juice. (Make sure it is natural with no preservatives.) ' 2 cups sugar ' 1-1/2 tsp malic acid (may substitute tartaric acid or acid blend) ' 1 tsp pectic enzyme ' 1/4 tsp grape tannin ' 1 tsp yeast nutrient ' 1 tsp bentonite ' 1 cup dried cranberries (optional) ' 1/2 cup raisins (optional) ' 1
campden tablet, crushed ' 1
pkt yeast (Lalvin ICV-D47 or Red Star
C'tes des Blancs recommended)
Note that this ingredient list is a common list appearing all over the Internet. Variations are made depending on the person and any juice can be substituted for apple. Some of the items on the list may look strange. If they do, just check them out online and you will see you can purchase them locally or online at a very low cost.
Now that you have the ingredients, it is time to go over the wine making process.
The following recipe is directly from Steve Kroll of the Purple Foot Wine Making Club. We give full acknowledgement of this recipe and his guide to him as it was listed on the Wine Press forums in 2007.
Add 1/2 cup hot water and bentonite to blender. Blend on high speed for 2 minutes to make a slurry. Leave covered and set aside until needed.
If using dried fruits, put into a bowl and pour just enough boiling water over to cover. Let sit for 30 minutes to allow fruit to rehydrate. After 30 minutes, put fruit and liquid into a blender or food processor. Pulse several times to chop up fruit. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl combine 1 cup warm water, 2 cups sugar, acid, pectic enzyme, tannin, yeast nutrient, and crushed campden. Mix well. In fermenting bucket, combine the apple juice and sugar mixture. Add bentonite slurry. Stir vigorously for two minutes.
Add chopped fruit mixture to bucket. You can also put the fruit into a small muslin straining bag or clean nylon stocking if desired.
Cover primary and allow to sit overnight. The following morning, uncover mixture and give one final stir. Rehydrate yeast according to package directions and pour into juice. Do not stir.
Cover primary loosely with lid or plastic tarp. Once fermentation begins, stir daily. If possible, try to ferment on the cool side; 60-65' F is ideal. After 5-7 days, rack into a carboy, leaving most of the sediment and fruit pieces behind. Do not worry about topping up completely at this stage. Add rubber bung and airlock, and allow fermentation to complete.
Once the SG reaches .996 or less, fermentation is finished. Rack off of the sediment and top up the receiving container (any cheap commercial white wine will work fine for this purpose). Allow wine to finish clearing. If it takes longer than 30 days to clear, Super Kleer KC can be used to accelerate the process. Follow the package directions. It will generally work in 7-10 days.
When wine has finished clearing, rack into a clean container, top up, and add 1 crushed campden tablet. Filtering is recommended if you have the equipment available. At this stage you can also sorbate and sweeten if desired. Sweetening is a matter of personal taste. I prefer apple wine with residual sugar around 3%, but feel free to adjust it to your liking. To sweeten to 3%, mix 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate with 1/4 cup hot water. Mix thoroughly and stir into finished wine. Allow to set two weeks after sweetening to ensure fermentation does not start again, then bottle.
As you can see the procedure uses the fermentation process to create an easy store bought juice to wine mixture that can use any juice. This is a great way to get your feet wet, as it where, in fermentation and home brewing.
Fermentation Process with Beer
The fermentation process with beer is slightly different than that used with wine. The fermentation process for beer is usually done on a very large scale. However, there are home beer brewing kits that can be purchased. This home brewing kits will simplify the brewing and fermenting process and often include everything you need for the project. Here are a few types of home beer brewing kits that can be purchased with everything you need in order to learn the home brewing and beer fermentation techniques.
Mr. Beer
Mr. Beer is probably one of the most popular home brewing kits on the market. The reason is partially due to the reputation of being the most comprehensive beer kits out there. The kits start at $50 and go up depending on the kind of beer and the items included in the kits. Root beer kits and cider kits are also available for those looking at a more toned down fermentation brewing option. These kits also come with a fermenter, bottles, complete instructions, all of the ingredients you will need and an instructional DVD. They are great for the beginner but also work well for advanced home brewing options.
Northern Brewer
Northern Brewer is very similar to the available Mr. Beer options. The difference with Northern Brewer are their advanced technique options. Instead of a small home brewing set up, the people at Northern Brewer offer a full line of advanced brewing options to create your own larger brewery. Though that is for the more advanced brewer, the kits are still impressive and something to work towards.
There are other kits available including wine kits, cider and root beer. If your desire is to get into home brewing with the use of various fermentation techniques, then look at your kit options to help cut costs and teach you the tricks of the trade.
Fermentation Products and Resources
Kits are great options, but there are some items you will need regardless of the type of fermentation techniques you are using. Here is a short list and description of the items used in food fermentation preservation, home brewing and more.
Fermenting Containers and Buckets
Regardless of what you are fermenting, you will need some sort of device to hold the food or beverage being fermented. This is done on foods before they are transported into canning devices and beverages before they move to bottles. The fermenting container may resemble a large five gallon bucket or a more sophisticated containment device. Each home brewing store or canning and preserving store will offer various options. You may even find options online that you already have in your kitchen or home or that you can purchase cheaply locally.
Digital Scale
Though some people may scoff at buying a digital scale, you will need one. Many recipes for fermentation require very specific measurements. A digital scale is the way to go, especially for yeast measurements. Digital scales may be purchased anywhere for around $30 or more depending on how advanced you want the scale to be. Remember, grams and ounces are the most important of the two measurements the scale should have.
Acids, Yeasts and Additives
You will want to create a stockpile of acids, yeasts and additives specifically for your projects. You can get a solid list from your recipe books. You want to make sure that you have the items you need for your project, so buy them separately instead of relying on sets.
Airlocks
Stoppers, airlocks and similar items are necessary for home brewing. Make sure you have the right ones to fit your brewing containers. You can purchase various sizes online and locally.
Cleaning Products
A final set of items you will want to have are cleaning products. Brushes, sanitizers, sanitation devices and more are all part of making sure your items are clean and that no germs get into the food or beverage.