Kombucha and Kefir

[anthropositor]

I made myself more fermented beverages than I could readily responsibly consume.  Same with cheese.  I have been drinking the ferments and eating the cheese.  Soon I will be making some more wine and incorporating some new ideas.

[LIGA girl]

My goats cheese making has been going well, until now when my supplier of rennet tabs has stopped stocking them. I tried lemon juice as a substitute but it hasnt worked. Any ideas?

[anthropositor]

Well I certainly don't want to discourage careful and thoughtful experimentation, and there are certainly other things which can be used as curdling agents.  But rennet is pretty useful.  I would locate another vendor.  It really shouldn't be much trouble.  I live less than ten miles from a town of twenty-five thousand.  I have found three places that carry it there.  (All of them carry the same brand).

[LIGA girl]

Yesterday I rang a few places and they have all stopped stocking it - the last one I spoke to said that they are trying to get it in and the supply has dried up, so that is the reason for it. So at least for now there is no rennet. I have a cheese recipe that consists of making yoghurt then straining it so the cheese ends up being a solid yoghurty thing. Do you think that is worth a try? I ended up discarding the milk from this week as it just went off and the lemon didnt curdle it - I dont know why not. Maybe I didnt use enough lemon juice as I was just guessing at the quantity.

[anthropositor]

Well LG,
Let's assume you are going to have some trouble for a while getting rennet.  Trying various combinations of acidic curdling agents like lemon juice and/or vinegar in various amounts is another way to go.  Be prepared for differing amounts and combinations to change the taste somewhat.

Of course it is possible to hurt yourself with a pathological organism like listeria, particularly when dealing with raw goat or sheep milk.  So it is important to pasteurize any such raw milk you may be using.

But under normal circumstances, when regular commercial milk has soured in the refrigerator and we accidentally drank some, I don't think we need to go rushing off to the emergency room or poison control center.  ( I am not saying to ignore overt symptoms of food poisoning.)

I have only been making cheese for several months.  I don't really KNOW what I am doing.  I am learning.  And I have been fairly experimental in my production, including using wild organisms which could easily have included organisms like those that cause listeriosis.  During this time I have shown no signs of illness or digestive upset.

The point is, when you conclude that milk has "gone off," it may just be in an early stage of becoming cheese and we just don't know it and think of it as yucky.  I exercise what I regard as "reasonable care" without letting it become the kind of overwhelming fear that causes many people to throw yogurt away because it has reached it's expiration date.  I have been known to eat yogurt a month or two after the expiration date.  I'm going to stop now before this turns into a rant about starving people and wasting monumental amounts of food because it is "contaminated" with a lethal date stamp.

[LIGA girl]

Thanks Anthro for your reply. I think I was too precipitate in discarding the milk .... and I am not usually like that , but as you say it wasnt pasteurised or anything and I am wary of listeria and suchlike. I havent previously done any boiling but had better from now on while I dont have rennet tabs. I have some digestive enzyme supplements that I got but they dont agree with me and I was thinking of using them... they would presumably curdle the milk by digesting it.

How is your goats cheese coming along by the way? Mine is really good, I find, and I have given pieces of it to lots of people to try. I find that after a week of ageing it gets a distinctive flavour that is really nice and which continues to develop. I have flavoured it with fresh herbs, pepper, raisins soaked in brandy, and plain unflavoured. The longest I have kept my goats cheese is for about 2 weeks. I'm not sure about how long I could keep it for and what it would age like if I did keep it longer. I'm not really a cheese afficionado, but enjoy making and trying my own cheese ....

[anthropositor]

Enzymes are pretty specific in their catalytic actions and yours are probably a mix of three to six of them.  I don't know if you are going to get any curdling from them but I doubt you will hurt yourself.  I think if I were fooling around with them I would add a gram of crushed ascorbic acid per pint of milk to start with and see what the results were.  Just make your first tastes small ones, followed by a healthy serving of yogurt.  Bon Apetite!

[LIGA girl]

good thinking Anthro, I'll do some experimenting this week ....Thanks!

[LIGA girl]

The thing that has worked in my cheesemaking has been fermenting yoghurt, then straining and pressing it as per the other method. Rennet tablet production has stopped here! I am so disappointed as the rennet makes a lovely firm curd that is easily workable and I dont need to boil the milk which I do with the yoghurt process. I hope the end product is improved though - it may be as it is a more natural process I think .... in the early stages, there seems to be a stronger flavour to the cheese. I will post further later ...

[anthropositor]

There are two new threads in the Nutrition section (child board) of General Health.  One is Cheesemaking and the other is Natural Wines and Other Ferments.

There is also further information on my blog
Eureka Ideas Unlimited at
eurekaideasunlimited.blogspot.com

[anthropositor]

Felice, my king cat, who was severely critically injured with a fractured skull, jaw, and orbit(with one eye in front of the orbit, unblinkable) two years ago, recovered well from his injuries.  (For further details, see back to post #17 and after on this thread.)  Felice died in his sleep after having a fine day.  He was in no pain or discomfort.  He lived two years after I removed his eye, and he sired many exceptional kittens.  My wife and I miss him greatly.

[itchychick]

He was a lucky cat indeed, anthro, to have as caring and committed owner as you...

[totalfolly]

Anthro, I'm so sorry to hear that Felice has died.  He was, as Itchy has said, a very lucky kitty who will, I know, be sadly missed. 

totalfolly

[anthropositor]

He was a singularly rewarding, courageous and loving cat.  He had recovered quite well from his injuries.  Had it not been for the heat wave and the failure of our cooling system at the same time, he would still be with us.  He refused to tolerate the ice bottles we were using to get cool, and water was his least favorite thing.  Can't say I blame him.  I considered shaving him, but with fall approaching and the cold winters we have, his fur would not have returned in time to keep him warm.  And he did so love his freedom when I ultimately allowed him back outside.  Sometimes there are no perfect answers.

We lost some humans to the heat wave as well, who didn't have the imagination to stay alive.

[Aquababe241]

Kefir is absolutely great....You can take it anywhere with you as long as you've got fresh milk in it, it'll thrive.  I took mine camping when I went to Wales for the Brecon Jazz Festival for 12 days.  It was great and my kefir was marvellous to drink every day...

Now I'm back in London, I make sure I have 3 cupfuls of it every day (mug size cupfuls) as it's so delicious.  If I want to make it moorish, I add YeoValley yoghurt to fresh milk and the kefir grains and let sit overnight...It makes for an extra creamy kefir.  My skin loves it anyways!!

[anthropositor]

I have a bottle of pomegranate juice which I fermented using the last of some Kombucha style tea my wife had mistakenly poured out, thinking it was bad because of the growth on top (which was what I was looking for).  I am so glad the last few tablespoons did not get rinsed and the bottle thrown away.  The several things I have fermented with this particular wild culture has imparted a very nice finish to the things fermented with it.

But I left only maybe a tablespoon of airspace in the bottle, figuring these organisms have been previously slow to develop, so I did not need much space for pressure containment.  Wrong.  When I cracked the top slightly, it foamed instantly so I lost a bit of foam in the second it took to tighten the top down again.  Apparently the organisms have adjusted back to wine fermentation instead of tea fermentation, but by taste, you can still tell that tea was the original medium.

I will be making a new variety of tea today, using black tea. combined with Shmooo and the dried leaves of Bitter Melon, because of its' good reputation for both diabetes and blood pressure regulation.  I am still not quite done tweaking my blood pressure, even though it is usually down where I want it most of the time.

Unlike the Shmooo, which I am still consuming in voluminous amounts, I will have to get creative if I am going to get the Bitter Melon leaves in my daily diet in quantities greater than a pinch or two a day.

It will be interesting to find out if the Shmooo extends or amplifies the taste of the Bitter Mellon in the same way it seems to do with the other spices I have combined it with.  But in a gallon jug, I intend to use six teabags, half a cup of dried Shmooo, and no more than a tablespoon of dried Bitter Melon leaves, just in case the Shmooo amplifies it

I am still undecided about whether to add some sugar and some fermenting organisms and try fermenting it at the same time.  If I do that, I really need to initially boil the tea and let it cool first, as opposed to just making sun tea.  I'll cool it to room temperature before adding a little dollop of this pomegranate wine as the yeast culture.  I'll be using a glass jug, so I think I will let it ferment outside, just in case of an overpressure incident.

[anthropositor]

I started the tea about a month and a half ago.  I was conservative with the sugar.  Maybe half a cup, just to slow the yeast down and keep the pressure low, reducing the chance of shattering the bottle.
Lack of abundant food supply slowed but did not stop the fermentation.  I just drank a few ounces.  Lightly carbonated, nice taste, even with the touch of Bitter Melon.  Not very complex to the palate,  I may add a half cup of mollasses.

The Pomegranate wine foams actively as soon as the pressure is relieved.  No added sugar, which implies a lot about the carb content of the juice.  Flavor of the tea culture is still there, but not obtrusive.

[anthropositor]

It seems to me that with the advent of the New Great Depression, there should eventually be a wider spread practical realization of the value of natural fermentation of beverages.  In the last Depression, the emphasis was not just on natural fermentation, but because of the opportunities for great profits provided by Prohibition, on strongly concentrated alcohol content of distilled spirits.

In the absence of Prohibition, and with the considerably greater variety of other illicit mood and mind altering substances widely available to the general public, I expect that this time, we will not see the same trend.  This time, many more people will be focusing on natural fermentation of healthful juices into wine.  I do not expect that, outside of Russia, Kombucha will become very popular.  I just drank a glass from a bottle which has been fermenting for perhaps six months.  Just the fain bite of carbonation.  I doubt it was over 1 or 2% alcohol.  Even an unfortified wine would have been at 6% in far less time and literally foaming with carbonation.

Another factor to consider is that distillation is a process high in added energy.  In conventional distillation, a great deal of heat is used.  Fermentation on the other hand, is simply the metabolic conversion of sugars to alcohol. 

I strongly suspect, but cannot prove, that home fermented wine is considerably higher in nutrition than commercial wines, in which the live and viable yeasts have been filtered and pasteurized, with sulfite's added to assure that new airborne yeasts do not get going again.

In virtually every respect, wine is the best drink to make or to drink and allows the greatest latitude for variety, providing the least risks.  90% of the wine I drink is now produced by myself.  The money saved is substantial.  Even the most expensive of it probably does not exceed $5 per liter.  Most of it is in the $3 range.  If I were to fortify it, making it stronger, I could probably produce some for $2 per liter, net cost.  Labor is negligible.  The yeast does all the work, and I get that for nothing, right out of the air.