Tofu Misozuke experiment

In my last post I alluded to a possibly life changing tofu experiment. It didn’t turn out perfectly, but then, I didn’t really do everything perfectly either. Here is my inspiration http://www.rauom.com/goodies/tofu-misozuke/ . I can’t remember how I stumbled upon it, maybe on Vegansaurus or something. It looked right up my street. These people have clearly done a lot of research into the techniques for making Tofu Misozuke, and they admit to still being somewhat unsure that their method is the best it can be. But obviously I wanted to give it a shot myself. They do kindly share their current recipe and method, here http://www.rauom.com/2011/05/24/tofu-misozuke-recipe/. They describe (if you can’t be arsed clicking on the link ) Making a marinade from yellow miso, sake and sugar, then wrapping up some blocks of tofu in cheesecloth and spreading the marinade on the outside of the cloth. The purpose of the cloth is so that you can remove the marinade (which is actually a very thick paste) without partially destroying the tofu. Because in the months while the tofu is buried in the miso, it should soften considerably, so if you were to try to just dig out these pieces of tofu from a bed of miso paste, the tofu would probably just fall apart. Cool. I searched for yellow miso but couldn’t find it, so I made do with a mixture of white miso and hatcho. I also didn’t get around to buying sake, so I put in a few drops of lemon juice and some water instead. Probably not ideal, but I thought I’d still get some idea of how it’s supposed to be. The wrapping and marinating of the tofu in the miso mixture was really hard. It’s so fiddly! But maybe if I had real cheesecloth instead of the much thicker cloth I was making do with, it might have been easier. Oh and maybe yellow miso is less thick than the hatcho/white mix I used? Because it was really hard to spread, too thick. But eventually, after much mess, I got a satisfactory covering on the tofu blocks. I put some paper towels under the miso covered blocks, and thought maybe it would be better to do two layers of cheesecloth, one layer in contact with the tofu, then the miso over that then another layer of cloth, just to keep it neater and cleaner? But I also couldn’t be bothered, after half an hour of fiddling with the stuff I just wanted to be done with it. I put it in a plastic box and put it in the fridge, wondering what my housemates would think of this poo-y looking mess in a box.
The Rau-Om people say AT LEAST two months. Unfortunately about one month in, the electricity went for at least a few hours, nobody was in the house so who knows, but that may have affected the misozuke, because shortly afterwards, I noticed mould. I scraped it off and left it for a while longer, but the mould returned, so I unwrapped the ‘fu, and washed it under the tap a bit, until I was pretty satisfied it was mould free. I was pretty annoyed, but then I ate it and was pretty damn impressed. It does taste quite a lot like the miso, like, I wouldn’t say there was any massive change in flavour, but the texture was gorgeous already. I had it on toast for the next few mornings and really enjoyed it. So, I’m trying it again, but this time I made a looser, more liquid marinade, and just plopped the tofu blocks straight in there, with no cheesecloth. It might not work so well, but I’m sure it will still be edible and probably rather tasty. I hope it won’t grow mould, because it’s liquid, I’m able to stir and agitate it once in a while, and that usually stops mould from being able to thrive, that’s the case with other ferments anyway. Probably some day soon I’ll try doing it exactly the way Rau Om suggest, I’ll just have to try to find some yellow miso somewhere.

Natto I made Natto

I made it out of mung beans, I didn’t think it was working but then it did, and it smelled so gross I didn’t want to eat it but I stared at it for a long time and then tried some and it was ok. Natto is so weird. It really isn’t what you would call tasty. But I’m just a glutton for punishment I guess.

I’m about to start making something involving tofu which could be seriously completely amazing.

Dun dun duuuuunnnnn….

Tempeh revisited!

Hopefully I’ve made better tempeh this time than described in the previous post. I’m not sure yet though. It’s just out of the incubator, after taking something like 30 hours instead of the 24 that the Gem Cultures instructions say. I rather think if 24 hours is not always long enough, they should probably mention it, a lot of people would take those instructions more literally than me. Oh well, not to slag off the nice people at Gem.

The whole point of this post is more to show you a picture of my DIY as fuck incubator than anything else. I discovered just how low tech it can be! All over the internet, if you are researching tempeh making, you will see people’s suggestions of using a broken fridge, into which you just have to put a 17.45 watt lightbulb and a thermostat or somesuch nonsense. It always seemed much too hard to me. And I imagine to lots of others too, cos who has broken fridges and thermostats lying around? Well, I did happen to have a cooler lying around, you know, like a picnic box that’s insulated and keeps shit cold. I also have, as most people do…some lamps. Pictcha!

Oh god yes and of course the other bits of high tech equipment that I had are some kind of rack that I found in a bin, and a fridge thermometer that you can buy in a pound shop or kitchen shop or on the internet.

I did an experiment first where I left the lamp on pointing into the box with the thermometer in it for a while, until I was pretty confident about the right position to have the lamp in, how close to the box it should be etc. I would suggest doing the same.

I’m now tempted to try it with NO BOX! Maverick that I am. Because if I’m only doing a block of tempeh the size of your average book, I’m not sure I need much more than a lamp pointing at it…?

So it took about 24 hours for there to be any sign of mycelium, I got a bit worried that I’d done something wrong, but after 30 hours I took it out, all nicely bound with mouldymould, mostly white, with a couple of little black spots. Smelled good, looked furry, just like last time.

I’m now writing post the eating of the tempeh, and I can confirm that this batch was muuuch better than last time.

Things I did differently this time:

I didn’t add vinegar. Somewhere on the internet advised me to do so and I did the first time, this time, not.

I steamed the tempeh in blocks and then soaked it in brine (salt water) over night. I reckon that might help it keep quite a bit longer, as it quite probably kills the spores that would otherwise keep growing and growing until you were left with black slimey beans.

Damn when tempeh is good, it is GOOD!

I still think it’s a bit of a kerfuffle to make, but I’ll definitely make more of it until my culture powder is used up. I’d like to try a version with chickpeas, cos them there are one of my favourite beans, and I could probably even just crack open a can of chickpeas to make it. Eee Zee.

Natto! And tempeh of disappointment.

Yes! It is I. Back again with a disappointingly picture-light post. I have stolen a couple of pics from other internet people though. Hopefully they won’t mind. I bought some starter cultures from the lovely people at Gem. I recommend them highly. Along with a similarly excited housemate, I embarked upon a quest to make tempeh in our highly DIY kitchen. I wasn’t at all sure it would be possible. I borrowed a fridge thermometer from work to test our electric oven’s temperature capabilities. We discovered that YES! It was capable of maintaining 50 degrees Celcius! Well, that blew my doubts out of the water.

To make the tempeh, we basically just followed the instructions that came with the culture. You can find those instructions elsewhere on the web too. It was less of a pain in the ass than I had predicted it would be, what with having to hull each bean and all that. They came off easier than I thought.

On to the disappointment part. The tempeh did indeed grow mould, and that was very exciting. But it took about twice as long as I had thought it would, almost 48 hours until I just turned the oven off,  if I remember correctly. Even then it wasn’t entirely sliceable, like commercially made tempeh, which is really firm and doesn’t crumble. Ours…crumbled. Fried it…not so amazing taste-wise either. I mean…sigh…nothing wrong with it. Just blander than any tempeh I had ever had before. And even more disappointing was that it developed quite a lot of black spots quite quickly in the fridge, and I didn’t get through the whole lot of it before it went seriously slimy and gross. If anyone has any sage advice I’d love to hear it! I have considered that potentially the thermometer lied to me and that the temperature wasn’t high enough? Maybs?

 

Speaking of slimy foods! NATTOOOOOOOOOOH! Dun dun duuuuuunnnnn…..

No wait, that’s catto. I’m just kiddin’ y’all, I just wanted to throw this picture in cos I love it. I love that cat. I don’t even know that cat, it’s just from the internet, but how handsome is he? <3

And I have decided that in the future when I get a cat I will call it CATTOOOOOOOOH!

Back to Natto.

 

That’s right, that shit is disgusting, and tasty at the same time. Look at it! It looks fucked up!!! Really easy to make though, quicker than most ferments, and the gross factor is really a bonus if you ask me. It’s not easy to find natto to purchase here in London unless you’re near a Japanese food shop, which I am not. And when I have had occasion to visit a Japanese shop, I was disappointed to discover that all the natto they had in those cute little pots in the freezer, had bonito in them. Bonito contains fish. Or like…is mainly fish? I don’t know. But it’s not vegan. So I was very pleased to discover how easy and quick it was to make this. By the way, I didn’t personally make the natto, my housie did. I was away at work and he couldn’t wait. Gonna have a crack at it myself soon I reckon.

 

I really want to make miso! Anyone have any spare aspergillus oryzae hanging around that they want to give/sell me/exchange for baked goods? Pleez?

 

This blog has proven useful to me once again, I had forgotten when I made the three litres of apple wine that have been aging in my room, but I can see from my last post that they were started about a year ago. Hm. Ready to drink me think? I suspect they need more time, I tasted it a few weeks ago and it was kinda…meh…and I have found in the past that meh wine turns into delicious wine if you just forget about it for a while. Wait, that’s not really news to anyone is it. I’m going to sleep now!

Beansprouts, beancurds and booze.

I’ve been doing plenty of fermentation lately but not writing about any of it! Shame on me. I also haven’t been taking photos of it, because I have no camera. But a pictureless post must be better than no post at all.

We dumpstered about six bags of beansprouts about three weeks ago. You know how fast those things get gross and slimy and inedible? Pretty fast. I had fermented mung bean sprouts that I had sprouted myself in the past. They were just little tiddly things, I never make the effort to make the sprouts grow big, I really like them small and young anyway. These packaged ones were the kind that are common in Chinese cookery. So I naturally wondered if they would keep well in brine.
There was no reason not to try it. I had recently been given about 15 really nice big jars (they hold at least two pints), so I filled three jars with sprouts, prepared a plain salty brine for one and poured it on. Added garlic and ginger to another. And the last one was the most experimental for me, with sake, miso and soy sauce. They fermented just fine and I used them a little bit over the first two weeks.
But then I went away for 12 days. Came back and they smelled like ass. The one with sake smelled slightly less like ass. And I mean, I am used to fermentation smells by now, they are an acquired taste, but this was pretty minging. There was also a good layer of kahm yeast on top, but that’s not worrying. I scooped that off and tentatively tasted one of the sprouts, praying that I wasn’t about to poison myself, but they actually tasted fine. Bit fizzy maybe? But again, that’s not worrying. I’ve eaten fruit kimchee me.
I didn’t really know what to do, but I really wanted to get rid of the gross smell and see if I could fix it. I poured off some of the brine on each batch, topped it up with more, with a bit of extra salt this time. And poured a shot of distilled vinegar into each too. It’s now five days later and they’re all doing well, the ass smell is gone, and they just smell a bit fermenty and vinegary now. I’m not planning on keeping these for much longer, I’d prefer to use them up than let them get super old. If anyone has any light to shed on the horrible smell, please do let me know! It’s a bit hard to research such a thing. Googling ‘why does my ferment smell of ass’ just doesn’t really work…

I also recently packed some cubed tofu in brine with some bay leaves, peppercorns and coriander seeds. That’s turning out fine too, I added some vinegar to that just in case too, and to be honest, the flavour isn’t changing much, it just tastes like lightly marinated tofu. But that’s pretty awesome actually, because otherwise I’d have frozen it, and I don’t really like frozen/defrosted tofu half as much as I like it when it’s fresh, the texture changes so much. With brining it, it retains that smoothness I like.

And the saddest fermentation news of all, at the moment I’m having massive trouble with my Kombucha. It just keeps growing mould! I’ve been brewing this stuff for ages now and never had any mould issues, but all of a sudden…sigh! I can’t really understand it. I’m currently brewing some green tea to try out, just in case it’s my black tea that’s the problem. But I fear my culture might have somehow died. And even more strangely, I recently heard from a woman to whom I gave a SCoBY maybe six months or more ago, she was wondering about getting a new SCoBY from me, because hers were going mouldy. Maybe there’s something in the atmosphere lately…killing all our SCoBYs!!!

Ooh! One more thing. Booze. I’ve got a few batches on the go at the moment, a carrot wine, a carrot and parsnip wine, a satsuma wine, and the latest one, an apple wine. I’m using a recipe from the very cool Self Sufficient-ish website http://www.selfsufficientish.com/ciderish.htm. The directions don’t call for using a demijohn with an airlock, just doing the ferment start to finish in a bucket. But since I do have all the gear, after two weeks in a bucket, I stuck it in a demijohn (ok, not an actual demijohn, it’s a 5 litre water bottle) with an airlock, and it’s happily bubbling away. It tasted awesome on the way out of the bucket and into the demijohn, and it turned out there was about six litres there, so I was able to chug one litre of bubbly appley sugary slightly boozey goodness and still have a full fermenting vessel. Delish, highly recommended so far, let’s see what the finished product is like.

The Kim Chee Project

Kimchee is an acquired taste. I’ve always liked tastes that have to be acquired. I’m still working on it. I prefer it when it’s young, unlike sauerkraut, which I say gets better and better with age. Also, I prefer it with white cabbage, the same as I’d use for kraut, rather than the proper traditional Chinese/Napa cabbage. A couple of my housemates are much more hardcore about their kimchee than I am, and here is a barrage of photos taken during the making of the latest batch to hit our household. This batch has SEAWEED in. Very exciting. There will be more photos soon, it’s been about 10 days now I think so it’s almost ready.

Vegetables awaiting the chopping block.

Garlic about to get blitzed.

Ginger about to be pulverised.

Chillies for choppin’

Cabbage, looking handsome.

“I’m ready for my close up…”

So, all these things get chopped up finely and mixed together with a handful of salt. Packed into a bucket, and covered with water. A clean plate is placed over the top of the cabbage and something to weigh it down with, in this case, a plastic container but you can use whatever you want within reason.

God that looks tasty.

Not quite wine

I dumpstered a whole bin-bag full of grapes from a local supermarket. It’s a regular occurance. And there’s only so many grapes you can eat, so the natural conclusion in my household is to drink ‘em. It was the start of summer and tasty beverages were in demand, kombucha and kefir were going like hotcakes. We’d quaffed litres of elderflower champagne. So I decided to make a slightly fermented grape juice, hoping it would be nicely fizzy too.

Gave ‘em a wash. But not too vigourously, I didn’t want to wash off the natural yeasts found on the skin of grapes, which is one of the things that makes them so ideal for wine making. They contain enough sugar, yeast and tannin, that you don’t need to add anything to them to make wine.

I thought about freezing them, that was recommended in a couple of places on the internet, and it seemed sensible in one way, in that it would make them much easier to crush. When they thawed the fibres would be broken down quite a lot. But I didn’t in the end, due to a mix of impatience, and being a bit worried about damaging the yeasts with the low temperature.

I sat there crushing grapes into a bucket for…oh…an hour or two. I thought it sounded like fun, but it got pretty boring pretty soon and my hands got tired, so I started employing utensils of various kinds to mash them. Anyway, the job got done in the end. I chucked in a few elderflower heads just to be fancy, and then covered the top of the bucket with fabric, and tied it tightly with string.

It took a couple of days to get going. But get going it did.

Looks a bit like the contents of a septic tank doesn’t it? Mmmm.

After a few more days of bubbling action I strained off the liquid from the crushed grapes. Squeezed out the grapes as much as possible and discarded them. At this point, the juice was fizzy and absolutely delicious. I bottled a few litres and chilled it for us to quaff at leisure. The rest, I put into a big recycled water bottle (as in, I found it in a neighbour’s recycling box), with an airlock, simply cos there’s not that much room in my fridge, and I thought I’d like to see how the flavour keeps changing as it turns more alcoholic.

Horrible picture, I know. Sorry. Technically, if I wanted to make wine properly, I definitely shouldn’t have had that much air in the bottle. Having that much air in there is likely to make it spoil or turn to vinegar. Although on the other hand, while something is quite actively fermenting, the gases being produced would displace the air anyway. Whatever,  I wasn’t planning to keep this beverage for very long.

To be honest, I much much preferred it in the first few days, before it started getting boozy. It was a really lovely refreshing drink, and I would highly recommend making it if you ever have an excess of grapes. As it became alcoholic, it was still totally drinkable, and drink it I did. I bottled about two litres of it and let it sit around for a while, wondering how long it would last. It did eventually start to grow white yeasty stuff on top, and I panicked, so I skimmed that off and drank it asap. Oh what a burden!

Fruit Kimchee

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the book Wild Fermentation so far. It’s great. I think most people who are into fermentation at all have heard of it if not read it. Written by Sandor Ellix Katz, it’s a mine of information about all things fermenty. Written with a playful tone, the only thing I wish it had on top of everything else, is photographs. Normally if a recipe book doesn’t have photographs, I’m not really interested, but since this is much more than just a recipe book, it definitely passes muster even without them.

So, fruit kimchee was something I doubt I would have ever dreamed up on my own. Sandor mentions it as something described to him by a friend who had lived in Korea, the home of kimchee. I love that in Korea, employers used to (maybe still do) give employees a ‘kimchee bonus’ in autumn, so that they could buy all their cabbage, chili, garlic, ginger and start their kimchee for the coming year. It’s considered part of the Korean identity, to a degree I can’t entirely relate to. I mean…Guinness? Maybe? Potatoes? I dunno. Anyway, kimchee’s awesome. I’m a bit unorthodox with mine anyway in that I like it better when it’s made with a white cabbage, or a savoy, rather than a napa cabbage. The texture of the napa when it’s fermented, isn’t my favourite. Bit slimy, bit too insubstantial. Whereas the tougher cabbages seem to cope better with the strooong flavours involved.

Fruit kimchee interested me. I often have lots of fruit lying around, since me and my housemates dumpster dive a lot. And one day we came across two big buckets of ready prepped fruit salad. A weird find! Chunks of melon, red  and green apple and grapes bobbing around in acidulated water. No sugar or owt. It was too much for us to eat just like it was, so I thought, here’s m’chance!

I looked around on the internet and found practically NOTHing referencing fruit kimchee. Which leads me to believe that it doesn’t really exist in Korea, or…like…anywhere, outside of those who have tried it from reading Wild Fermentation. I reckon, either Sandor’s friend imagined the whole thing, or else Sandor interpreted it a bit wrong. There are definitely versions of Kimchee that include fruit, but they are always mostly cabbage. Nonetheless, I decided to crack on and try it out.

Apples, melon, grapes, chili, garlic, ginger, and a little white onion. Salt salt salt. Jar. Cover with water. Pop lid on top but don’t screw shut. Leave somewhere out of the way for a couple of weeks.

This ferments a bit faster than a veg ferment would, presumably because fruit contains more sugar, which encourages yeasts and bacteria and stuff. Sandor mentions that after some time, six weeks or so, it’ll start becoming a bit alcoholic. So I got it down off the top shelf after about two weeks days for a taste.

INTERESTING!

Fizzy grapes! Hmm! Yeah. Not so sure about that. Feels a bit wrong. Yep…you bite into a grape and…it fizzes on your tongue. Ok. The taste is pretty nice though. The apples are definitely good. The melon…err…not outstanding. A bit mushy round the edges. But I didn’t expect it to be amazing. Out of the five or six people who tried it that day, nobody was totally grossed out. I think two people loved it, but they’re the type of people who love a good challenge. The others found it palatable but not something they’d be dying to eat again.

I enjoyed making it, and I’m thinking of doing an apple kimchee if I get lots of apples sometime, because the texture of the apple was the nicest. Or maybe just a cabbage based chee with lots of apple in the mix. mmm.

Kombucha Recipes

I don’t play around as much with Kombucha recipes as I do with Kefir, there isn’t really as much flexibility I guess. Like, you don’t really wanna add fruit into a Kombucha ferment, although you can add things when you’re bottling, but I guess maybe Kombucha scobies are a bit more sensitive than Kefir grains.

Here’s what I normally do:

2 litres of tap water
Half a cup of sugar
2 Black Chai teabags, 1 Rooibos teabag.
1 Scoby
1 cup or so of old kombucha

Boil about a quarter of the water, or less. Brew the tea in that, and also dissolve the sugar in there. I leave it til it’s cold so the tea is superstrong. Take out the teabags, pour the sugary tea into the jar you’re going to use for fermenting. Top up with the rest of the water. Lay your scoby on top of the tea and cover loosely, either with a lid, or, the best thing to use is a piece of material stretched over the top of the jar and fastened with an elastic band or a piece of string. The scoby will probably sink, but in a few days time you’ll probably notice a bit of a skin developing on top of the brew, that’s the beginnings of your new scoby! Depending on the temperature, it’ll take one or two or maybe even three weeks for the brew to be ready. You should taste it every once in a while, and when it’s getting to a sourness that you like, you should drink it and make more!

Just in the last few days I’ve started trying the continuous brewing method. I’ve always done the ‘one fell swoop’ method before, where I ferment my brew, remove the scoby, put it in a jar with all my other scobies, and start an entirely new brew.
Now, I’m trying out the method where I ferment my brew, then daily or every two days I’m going to take out about 25%, bottle it, add more fresh sugary tea into the jar and repeat…

Let’s see how it goes. I’m interested to see how the scoby does with this method, as constantly being disturbed is going to significantly mess with the way it grows and looks.

Kefir Recipes

I’m gonna update this every once in a while with new combinations. Water Kefir is a flexible thing, it seems. I’ve been changing it up quite a bit and have liked some results much more than others, but everything’s been drank in the end anyway, either by me or my housemates. Eventually I’ll probably have a ‘best of’ to work with.

This was the first recipe I used, adapted from Dom’s Kefir website, because when I first got the grains I was really keen to make ginger beer.

6 cups finest London tap water
1/2 cup white sugar.
1 Tsp molasses
About 50gm/2oz/two thumbs ginger
About 5 raisins
1 cup Kefir-Grains
1/8 to 1/4 Tsp baking soda

I boiled some of the water and dissolved the sugar and molasses in it, added the rest of the water (cold, so the whole lot cools faster), waited til it was about body temperature, then chucked in the grains and the rest of the stuff. Put a lid on the jar, loosely and let it hang out.
This produced a fairly boring kefir, a bit weak and watery tasting, not really fizzy.

Next time I boiled the ginger in a pan with some of the water for the recipe, and also let the kefir brew with the ginger in it. This was much better, but I still haven’t ever produced something really comparable to commercial ginger-beer, or homemade ginger-beer made with yeast. I’ll let you know when I do!

Here was another recipe I adapted from here http://webpages.charter.net/rhamley/bread/kefirsecrets.htm
6 cups water
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup kefir grains
1/2 cup pineapple juice
about 1 inch of banana cut into thin slices

I really liked this. I expected it to be kind of gross, because letting bits of banana float around in something, then drinking it? Doesn’t sound that appetising to me. But it’s one of my favourites, it doesn’t taste all that much like banana, it actually reminded me much more of cider. Hurrah.

As an aside, I’m not sure what the hell the bicarb of soda in some recipes is supposed to be for. Also, some recipes suggest throwing in an eggshell. I don’t tend to have eggshells around, and it doesn’t seem that necessary so I really don’t know why. Maybe for calcium, but blackstrap molasses has calcium anyway.

My other favourite recipe so far is this:
6 cups finest London tap water
1/2 cup white sugar.
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
About one thumb ginger
About 5 raisins
1 cup Kefir-Grains
1/8 to 1/4 Tsp baking soda

That was amazing, pomegranate molasses is awesome, if you can get your hands on the stuff. My housemates said it tasted like raspberries, before they knew what was in it.

Here’s one that didn’t work very well, not entirely sure why. I gave some kefir grains away, so I used much less than I had before, but I still had loads, and anyway the amount of water was proportionate.

4 Cups tap water

5 Raisins

Half a cup of kefir grains

Half a cup of sugar

a handful of crushed red grapes

I mean, it worked, but it’s refusing to get fizzy. I’ve stuck it back into the jar now with some grains to maybe get it moving again. Possibly the lack of molasses and bicarb is actually having an effect.

Exciting new development! I measured everything in pints this time. Stay calm!

Half a pint of kefir grains

Quarter of a pint of sugar (used soft brown sugar this time, usually white)

Four pints of water

A pinch of bicarb

Five cloves

A cinnamon stick, broken up a bit.

I boiled a pint of the water, let the sugar dissolve in that, and added the spices.

The clovey flavour came through! I’m v happy about that, I love clove. Next brew I set up was the same except with added ginger, about 2 thumbs worth, chopped and let to soak in the hot water as with the other spices.

New one,

Four pints water

Three quarters of a pint of kefir grains (because they’ve grown that much)

Two thumbs of ginger

Two cardamom pods

Three cloves

Half a banana, sliced thinly

Half a cup (quarter of a pint) of sugar.

Three quarters of a teaspoon of molasses

A pinch of bicarb

A few raisins.

Still having fizz issues! Sigh.

New Recipe! Have been very lazy with my brewing lately, the heat is making me sluggish, but I put a batch of kefir together just now, a very very simple one. I also got a nice new glass jar, a massive one that came from a chip shop. Lovely jubbly.

Two pints of warm tap water

1/4 pint of light brown sugar

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 Tbsp pomegranate molasses

1/2 pint kefir grains

Oh and the other week I kefirated some ribena, which was very very nice indeed. I added a few spoonfuls of extra sugar into it and left it for two days, nice and fizzy and just the right level of sweet/sour for me.

New recipe! It’s Mojito Kefir! I haven’t tried it with rum yet, but I reckon it’d be hella good. It’s probably obvious, but here’s the recipe anyway.

2 Litres of London’s finest tap water

Half a cup of sugar

A touch of molasses (like, not more than half a teaspoon)

A pinch of bicarb

Two limes

A good handful of mint leaves

Kefir grains

Wash yer mint, and yer limes. I didn’t wash my mint one time with this recipe, and yeast developed on the surface of my kefir, for the first time. I didn’t like the look of it, drank it anyway, didn’t die (yet) and so I reckon it was fine, but still. Dissolve sugar in water, add the other stuff, tear up the mint leaves a little bit, or just ‘bruise them’ cocktail style. Cut limes in half, squeeze them into the mix and then chuck the whole things in. Leave for two days, stirring once in a while. Take out the green matter, and squeeze the limes again, as they’ll have soaked up some of the kefir mixture. Bottle and leave to develop fizz for a couple of days. Chill, drink, with or without rum and ice.

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Hai, it’s several days later, and I’m still not dead! A week or so ago I tried Fentimans Rose Lemonade, sceptical, because I’m not a fan of rose generally, or any floral tastes for that matter. But I do like to acquire tastes, so I gave it a bash, and it was yummy. Just a tiny hint of rose, and mostly a lovely sour lemonyness. Lemonicity? Anyway, I had some rose water at home that someone had given me, and I decided to try to make a lemon rose kefir.

 

2 Litres of London’s finest tap water

Half a cup of sugar

A touch of molasses

A pinch of bicarb

2 Lemons

A teaspoon or so of rosewater

Ok, but something totally wierd happened on this batch that has never happened before. I was straining it for bottling today, and it’s really…thick. And it’s not like syrup, it’s more viscous than that. Welp. I bottled it anyway, will wait and see if it fizzes up or just turns into some kind of even stranger scoby than it already is. Or both. It tastes nice! But the ‘mouthfeel’ isn’t amazing. It’s reminiscent of getting a wisp of kombucha scoby in your gob as you swig.