Fermentation Insanity

I have gone off the deep end. When I do things I tend to go overboard but this is a fun crazy new level, even for me.

A few weeks ago I went to Tennessee to see what I could see about eating real food. Well, I came back with a Jun scoby (fancy kombucha scoby) and some just started Mead. Today behold the top of my refrigerator.

It is crazy fun that maybe only I will eat.
From L-R:
Ginger Soda Starter
Blueberry - Cherry Soda (Day 1)
Kombucha
Mead
That is the first row anyway.

A "Very" Simple Quilt

Next month my nephew will celebrate his second birthday. Jacob will move from babydom to childhood and he needs a new quilt to go with his new status.


So what other fabrics to use than the wonderful designs of Eric Carle. There are now three fabric lines from Andover Fabrics showcasing this talented artist & children's author. I used fabric from all three to create this "very" simple quilt. This quilt & a kit with all of the precut fabric will be in at our booth in Knoxville next month. When I break down the show the "very" simple quilt & corresponding books will be on it way West to my delightful nephew. I hope he drags it through the dusty roads of his childhood and loves it dearly.


Eric Carle's newest line is called the Very Series and it has images from:

The Very Busy Spider
The Very Lonely Firefly, 1995

Featured in the panel:
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, 1969
The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, 1999 
The Very Quiet Cricket, 1990





Making Hooch in a Hotel

Okay, I am not actually making hooch. I am making Jun, which, I think, is just fancy Kombucha. I received a mother scoby two weeks ago at the Food for Life event at Sequatchie Valley Institute. As soon as I got home I made a batch of strong Green Tea & added honey. I let the brew sit overnight so that the chlorine would dissipate from the tap water. The next morning I carefully placed the scoby into the room temperature tea / honey mix and thus started my first batch of Jun. I was told that this mother scoby was different from a kombucha mother scoby because it needed honey for food and not white sugar. I can't really speak to that, this is my second experiment in fermented beverage (first is the mead we also made that weekend).

Anywho, I left for the Quilt Symposium of Alabama in Cullman three days later, leaving the Jun to do whatever it did. I arrived home on Sunday, kissed the kids and checked the hooch (the mead and the Jun). The mead looked good, the Jun scoby, which was floating peacefully on the top when I left, was all kattywampus. My beloved stirred the wrong concoction. Oh NO!!!

No fear! I would see what the Jun tasted like after a week and start a new batch. I was happy to discover that even thought the Jun had a rough week, the mother scoby created a daughter scoby and the mixture had a sweetish fermented / vinegary smell. Using CLEAN hands I scooped out the scoby and placed it in a clean container, decanted about 80% of the Jun into another clean plastic container and put it in the fridge.

An example of a slightly higher grade of Chine...Drum Roll Please!!!

After chilling the Jun for a few hours we had a taste test. And the results are:

Daddy - Yum!
Red 1 - Supper Yum, makes her feel as good as an hour of Yoga. Drama much!

Red 2 - Yuck!
Mommy - Hmm... This taste like really tart unsweetened carbonated tea, not sure I can swing it with out some juice mixed in.

From what I have read and what I was told this mixture could be carbonated (ours was), should still be kinda sweet after only a week (ours was not) and should have a very low alcohol level (did not perceive any alcohol reaction).

So you might want to know where I came up with the title of this entry. Well, I am getting there.

Double fermentation, I read an interesting article at Food Renegade that had you pouring some fruit juice into a mason jar, adding your kombucha and closing up the jar for another 48 hours. I figured it might be better for me than adding straight up sugar to the Jun and it should work cause I kinda think that Jun & kombucha are the same basic process. Using a mason jar, I added a cup of Cherry juice and then filled the the jar with Jun. Then I tossed it in the car and drove it to Ohio for a quilt show. My mason jar full of Cherry Jun got an odd reaction from my other mother and super quilt helper. She smelled it and tasted it and promptly decided I was brewing hooch. If you have consumed homemade kombucha or made it yourself you know that once you separate from its mother it get lonely and grews a new mother. Not really, it just continues to do whatever fermenting it was already doing and a scum forms on the top that will become a new mother. Still not a darling image.


How is it that I am fermenting Jun in my hotel room? I had a glass of Jun the first day, on the second day I realized that I would run out of Jun before I returned home to my stash, I mean the new Jun I started before I left. What to do, go without?? Well I have only been drinking it for 3 days so it would not be a super tragedy. OR I could go to the free breakfast buffet and make a cup of super strong green tea and get a glass of cranberry juice (which might have been a bad choice cause I think cranberries are antiseptic) and add it to my mason jar of hooch, I mean Jun.


So we got home from the quilt show this evening and I checked on my Jun, it is well on it way to making a new mother and it is very carbonated. I will check it in the morning and see if it is palatable.

Just for the record, I think I am actually just making carbonated juice and it probably has very few of the esteemed and oft lauded wonders of the miraculous kombucha (maybe aka) Jun.

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