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.