Category Archives: Fermentation

Full of Beans!

April 11, 2015 Munchkin

Gnome was full of beans this morning and brimming with energy right from the get go. He was out of the house by 5.30am with the brush-mower clearing the back of the farm. I started cleaning buckets and basins, started a big pot of beans on the stove and washed sheets for koji making. It was bean mania and the various bean preparations continued to exude beaniness into every square inch of the house.

When we finally met up again, Gnome had grated coconuts and I proceeded to squeeze the cream out of them. I then laid out the coconut meal in the sun for the making of flour.

After this, it was back to the beans. The night before we had decided upon making a “meatier” hatcho miso and so today we made Beef Jerky Hatcho Miso or as Gnome has coined it “Meat Lover’s Hatcho Miso.” This involved putting 20 cups of fresh black bean koji and 2 lbs (1kg) of beef jerky through a meat grinder.

There was a few cups of black bean koji left over so we decided to make a small batch of Taosi which is a Filipino fermented black bean preparation, made by soaking the koji in brine.

Next we took the freshly cooked beans from this morning and added more Aspergillus spores to start a continuous batch of black bean koji. Our goal is to fill a 55 gallon drum with hatcho miso…more about that in a later post!

We then had a brief intermission for food and refreshments. For those interested, we still think that it is important to sit down and eat two proper meals a day, despite all the frenzy and excitement. We had Chinese roast pork, pumpkins and shiitake mushrooms cooked in mead and sweet potato cakes.

Anyway, the next task was making Shinshu miso with the mountain of bungle beans from the freezer. This was Gnome’s idea since I had been giving him such a hard time about the bungle. Yes, we used up all the beans so problem has been solved. We made 2 and 1/2 gallons of this…ready in one year!

Phew, it has been a bean marathon. We were done by 2pm.

Munchkin and Gnome: Mad About the Beans!

Belize, Fermentation

Rice-Banana-Coffee Beer Tasting.

April 9, 2015 Munchkin

Do you remember the Mystery Beer which was made about 2 months ago? Yes, the one that involved lilac sheets! This was bottled last Wednesday and at that time, I had a quick taste and I have to admit that I just noted the “burnt” flavour from the coffee but nothing to get overly excited about.

Well, here is the tasting after one week of bottling:

Colour is red amber and very effervescent; small sized bubbles with moderate fizz. Clear with good head.

Smells like strawberries! Lovely fresh strawberry smell, like walking through a strawberry field. There is a lingering berry sweetness.

With the first sip, there is an immediate delicate and distinct taste of strawberries! There is a mild sourness and the last flavour component is the coffee taste which compliments the whole experience.

Wow, this tasting is truly amazing! I can not believe that a beer can develop such complex taste components in just 7 days. It has captured the taste of delectable strawberries even although this fruit is not an ingredient. The rice and banana combined has given this unique and fruity taste.

After this tasting, I thanked Gnome for his love and discipline in making beer (and his general practices in life). It is quite interesting to note that Gnome does not drink much and in fact, makes fermented beverages because he actually enjoys the whole making process.

Thank-you Gnome For Your Fermentation Magic!

Belize, Fermentation, Our Products, Saving Money, Soap

Hatcho Miso Belize Style.

April 9, 2015 Munchkin

Miso Madness is almost over as the Munchkin is starting to feel twitchy over our dwindling supply of soap…

…which means that our run of frenzied fermentation is coming to an end and the previously, prematurely terminated Soap Marathon is going to have to resume (yeah, our soaps are really popular and people just can’t get enough of them; this is A Good Thing, she tells me ;-P).

After the frenzy of rice koji making and the resulting shinshu and shiro misos, we are ending our run with a couple of pig tail buckets of hatcho miso. The first bucket was made two days ago, however, it turned out to be about a gallon short because I held back some of the black bean koji to reinoculate the next batch of beans. There was a slight set-back with that particular batch (yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Great Bean Bungle…let’s move on…) and to make a long story short, another batch had to be introduced into the equation. Anyway, back to the short bucket: I just “happened” to have a gallon batch of miso from last year which was made with cacao beans and while very aromatic, the chocolate taste was just too overpowering (yes, chocolate-lovers, this is actually possible!). So, we emptied all of the containers, mixed them together again with the addition of bird peppers (Korean-style??) and a generous handful of black peppercorns.

Mixing Black Beans, Last Year's Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns. — Mixing Black Beans, Last Year’s Chocolate Miso, Chilli Peppers and Black Peppercorns.

And voila’, the first full bucket of Belizean Style Chocolate (Cacao Bean) Hatcho Miso (with chilli and black pepper) was born:

Time to start thinking about soap…

Amusing, Belize, Fermentation

Beef Jerky and Chilli Mead.

April 7, 2015 Munchkin

Brewing has come to an end…boo-hoo! After completion of the Resurrection Metheglin there was one last brew bucket to be used and alas, this is what has happened, the final fermentation: Black Pepper Beef Jerky and Chilli Metheglin.

All Buckets have been used. — My collection of trigeminal buckets.

The idea for this unusual mead had its inception from reading an old article on Cock Ale. Apparently, an old, parboiled cock (a rooster, you sick folk ;-P) that has been flayed, stamped in a stone mortar and put in a sack with other aromatic goodies can be steeped into ale to add just a little bit more body! Well, with a leap of tangential thinking, derailment and frank thought disorder, I took Cock Ale and got…ta-da…Beef Jerky Mead with Chilli!

Black Pepper Seasoned Beef Jerky Ready to be Simmered.

Extrapolating (or intrapolating or just plain guesstimating) from the original recipe of one cock for 10 gallons of ale…and making some assumptions as to the size of your average Belizean cock; and, also, considering the difference in flavour between fowl and beef…we settled on 250g of beef jerky for five gallons of mead.

This is the amount of chilli pepper we used:

…a nice, wild hybrid of jalapeno (sorry, no tilde) and bird pepper that turns purple before red.

I aimed for a slightly higher strength of alcohol than usual (6-7% alcohol) in order to better hold the expected heaviness from the beef and chilli; which in this case, was achieved with four and a half “quarts” of Belizean Rainforest Honey…

Belize Honey "Quarts." — Belize Honey “Quarts.”

The beef jerky was simmered with half the chilli for about an hour without the honey, making a nice and spicy beef broth. After which, the honey was added and brought to the boil for a second before cooling and pouring into the brew bucket. The yeast used was my standard “evolving” lager yeast.

Let’s see how it turns out!

Belize, Fermentation

Resurrection Metheglin.

April 5, 2015 Munchkin

As l contemplate the Miracle of the Resurrection, like all good Catholic Gnomes do, I decided to dedicate and make a gesture in Celebration of this Time by humbly naming my latest fermentation effort: Resurrection Metheglin. As all mead drinkers know, a metheglin is a type of mead that has herbs and spices added to it in order to alter the taste and/or properties of the basic honey and water ferment.

In this particular case, I have used liquorice root, star anise and Ligusticum wallichi, also known as Chuanxiong Rhizoma in Traditional Chinese Medicine and also as Szechuan Lovage. The star anise and liquorice root add that sweetish, unctuous and mouth-coating flavour while the Rhizoma adds a more earthy, complex and spicy aroma that has hints of fennel and celery.

Licorice Root, Star Anise and Ligusticum wallichi used to make this year's Resurrection Metheglin. — Liquorice Root, Star Anise and Ligusticum wallichi used to make this year’s Resurrection Metheglin.

The rest of the recipe is made with our usual Rainforest Honey and Toledo Rainwater adjusted to our (mild) preferred strength of 4-5% alcohol content, the final intention being to have a sparkling product closer in character to beer rather than champagne. Oh yes, I’ve used the lager yeast that I have been babying along all these months in an attempt to “evolve” and adapt to our local honey and high temperature mead conditions.

May we all find some measure of Enlightenment at this time.

Belize, Fermentation

First Active Blub from Melomel.

April 3, 2015 Munchkin

Good Friday to all and a Good Fermentation Friday too! We just got our first active blub from the melomel…this is when it starts bubbling through the air lock. It is a very important milestone in childhood…oh no, I mean fermentation development (another Doctor joke)! With experience, the Blub Blub comes in different pitches and this one is rather tinkling, melodic and rather loquacious. Gnome says it sounds like it wants another sibling…oh no, he means another fermenting bucket for company!

Anyway, let us get give you an update on our fermentation adventures: Firstly, we had to sadly dump the two gallons of coconut shiro miso, which we had so joyfully made up last week. This was on account of the dreaded Bongkrek. Last week, we read an article on Tempeh Bongkrek which is a variety of tempeh prepared with coconut. This food has now been banned because it can get contaminated with Burkholderia gladioli which leads to the release of bongkrek acid which is lethal to humans. Being doctors, we started thinking about this a whole lot and wondered if we had made Bongkrek Miso! And Gnome said that it would be really embarrassing for the demise of two doctors in Belize to be attributed to coconut miso (death by coconut)! After that comment, I decided to use the coconut miso as compost around the farm!

Gnome wants to ask a question to any microbiologist out there: is there any risk of bongkrek with miso (made with coconut) which has already been innoculated with Aspergillus oryzae?

To make up for this unfortunate mishap, we made some shiro miso today…just with regular black beans…nothing too exotic.

We had a look at our bucket of soya sauce which was started in July 2014 and gave it a whizz with the paint stirrer:

We felt that the soya sauce was rather thick and paste-like in texture and therefore we made an executive decision to just use it as miso. It tastes similar to miso, a bit more acidic and fruity but nonetheless palatable. This solves the problem with the miso shortage until the new shiro miso is ready in June.

Belize, Fermentation

Making Melomel.

April 2, 2015 Munchkin

Another jam-packed day of fermentation!! This is really a Gnome post but I will make a serious attempt to chronicle the day in the same enthused manner as Gnome.

Well, we started the day off by bottling the mead, which never cleared. Gnome gave me a glass to sample and I promptly scoffed it all down and told him that it was very palatable.

Next, Gnome attended to his Rice Koji in between all the bottling and brewing. He is trying to develop a new system of inoculating cooked rice with previously made rice koji. That way he doesn’t need to use up Koji starter and he can feel assured that he can keep on making rice koji without the headache of bringing in the starter from overseas. This experimental batch is going really well and the Aspergillus oryzae seems to have colonised well and formed a lattice network. This new system is called: Special Care Koji Unit (SCKU)…this is a bit of a Doctor joke so please bear with our awful sense of humour! As you can see from the picture, Gnome has fashioned incubators for his koji babies:

And yes, we are making melomel which is mead which contains fruit; in this case sapodilla and carrot were added.

I won’t go into the technical parts of making melomel because this is going to be a Bored-in-Belize project (Gnome: I’ve added the recipe right HERE) so I will just give you a brief run-down of what we did. Firstly, sapodilla fruit was placed in a heated pot of water and allowed to partially breakdown. Next, the mixture was filtered and the pulp was squeezed through muslin.

Straining Sapodilla Pulp. — Straining Sapodilla Pulp (Gnome feet prove that this really happened!)..

This part was a Munchkin job:

After the liquid was procured, Gnome measured the specific gravity and added 6 quarts of honey to make up the alcohol content to about 12%. As we speak, Gnome is re-heating the whole mixture including the added honey; he will allow it to cool down overnight and then add yeast in the morning. More fermenting tomorrow…

Amusing, Belize, Fermentation

Washing Machine On A Car, Iguanas and Mystery Beer.

April 1, 2015 Munchkin

This title sums up up the last three days since we have missed a couple of daily posts. Firstly, we have been on the road again and as usual played our “Fridge on a Pick-em Up” game in which there is a points system allocated to various white goods, and assorted loads spotted on the back of pick-up trucks. The fridge gives the highest score of 1000 points hence the given name. Well, look what we managed to find on our travels!! Gnome says, “This Changes Everything.”

This is white goods on a car…not a pick-em up! With the eye of faith, the driver who is on the left-hand side has his arm up to help secure the load…we know that because we overtook him (but, I was in too much of a tizz to get another drive-by shot) and he had no free hands to give the customary cordial wave.

Gnome commented rather blandly,” We are going to have to change the points system.”

Hmmm…yes, indeed we do!

Onto the next thing: It has been pouring down the last 5 days in Toledo. This sudden, unexpected wet spurt during the dry season is called “The Iguana Rains” because the rain is supposed to soften the earth for the iguanas to lay their eggs. This happens every year without fail…but we have noticed that every year, people forget about this anomaly and scratch their head wondering why it is wet during the dry season. And, as if by magic, we had a lovely iguana appear on our water tank today; I am sure he/she knows what the rains are for!

He was nice enough to pose for a second picture since I saved him from our Shaneeka-Doggie:

And, last but not least: do you remember when Gnome was making a mysterious fermented drink that required my nice lilac sheets?

The mystery beer was unveiled today with a tasting and bottling:

Gnome is happy with the clarity:

The Beer is Rice-Banana-Coffee all rolled into one! Who would have thunk it!! Still tastes very young with a roasted aroma from the coffee.

Belize, Fermentation, Food, Saving Money

Miso Madness V…The Next Generation.

March 27, 2015 Munchkin

On this day the Miso Mission has been accomplished. The rice koji was ready and properly colonised and both of us were in the right frame of mind, with only a mild attack of filibustering on Munchkin’s part (she had very specific plans as to what she expected to do this morning), to tackle the mountain of beans and gallons of purple-black bean juice (from boiling said beans) required for the making of our Belizean-Style Black Bean Shinshu Miso.

The black beans were defrosted, boiled to tenderness (which thankfully doesn’t take too long with black beans), drained and then mashed. The use of words makes things appear so easy but while doing, it certainly seemed that there was a veritable mountain of beans. I left the temperature probe out of the rice koji and room temperature was 36C, so the mashing built up a bit of a sweat.

In the mean time, Munchkin, while muttering to herself that she needed to do other stuff, mixed the bean juice with sea salt, cooled it and added some commercial miso to the mix (for extra lots of beneficial microorganisms). Thank you, Adriana Guzman for giving us some for this purpose.

Black Bean Juice, Sea Salt and Old Miso to Make the Liquid Portion.

The rice koji had to be added to the beans and mixed well. Using a spoon did not work and I had to resort to using my hands…you can see the excitement that was gripping me at the time!

Adding the Rice Koji to the Mashed Beans.

My hands convulse with excitement as I mix everything together!

After adding the liquid portion and mixing again, it was time to fill the prepared 5 gallon pig-tail bucket. This accomplished, a nice layer of salt was added on the top for protection against undesirable microorganisms.

Sealed Bucket...only have to wait 12-18 months now. — Sealed Bucket…only have to wait 12-18 months now!!

What happened next was a total, super bonus for me, though it earned me this look from the Munchkin…

…there was still a whole lot of rice koji left and in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think of the 28-day Miso Countdown before we run out…the solution…shiro miso. This type of miso is made up mostly of rice koji, only half the salt and a little bit of beans (compared to shinshu). The beauty of it and the reason why it is of critical importance right now, is that it only takes four to eight weeks to mature. Bonsa…we have the answer to our miso shortage!

So, I figured we could make a test gallon of this sweet miso but after measuring out the required koji, realised that we used up all the beans in making the monster bucket; we still had bean juice left-over but no beans. Resolution: fortunately I had already grated the day’s quota of coconuts and Munchkin had already squeezed out the cream from them (for selling in town to people that don’t want to buy cans or powdered coconut cream) and we were left with the meal. We decided to experiment and replace the bean portion of the miso with de-creamed coconut meal. Once the cream is removed, what is left is actually quite high in protein and while not a legume, it might make a good replacement for beans (it also makes things Belizean and exotic!). We still used the left over bean juice though.

The bean juice gave everything a slight purple tinge (pretty cool, actually!)…

Here it is packed into a gallon jar:

You would think that this was enough…hee…hee…hee…but I got another look shot my way…

…there was still another lot of koji left to make another batch…so we did…

Five gallons of shinshu miso and two gallons of shiro miso…not bad for a day’s work!!

Belize, Fermentation, Saving Money

Day Four of Miso Madness.

March 26, 2015 Munchkin

It is hot yet again, slightly more humid though, perhaps. Munchkin is keeping herself busy and has left me to my own devices. I was excited that today was THE day for transformation of the rice koji into miso; afterall, we did soak black beans in preparation and the big pressure cooker was cleaned and readied for action. However, upon close examination of the inoculated rice grains, I made an executive decision and decided to go for another twenty-four hours. The soaked black beans have been transferred into the freezer until the time is right.

While nicely colonised, cracking the rice grain open showed that the mold could still penetrate the grain a bit further. Also, deep inside my gnomish heart, that mad, self-sufficiency streak wants the Aspergillus mold to start fruiting (ie. make spores) so that I can collect the yellow-green spores and replenish my supply for future batches. While not impossible to bring into Belize, the starter cultures are difficult to order and then ship into the country without some hoops having to be jumped through (I’ve got a friend in Japan who feels like he owes me a favour but I don’t want to collect on his good will yet!). Being able to harvest my own spores would free me from this dependency on factors that I don’t have control over. Let’s see if I can pull it off…the plot thickens…

Colonised Rice Grains...not quite ready. — Colonised Rice Grains…not quite ready.

It is hard to assuage Fermentation Frenzy once it grabs hold of you so I had to find something to still my trembling nerves while waiting for the koji to continue its colonisation. I finally decided to rack some mead that has been sitting around settling and aging…I had been dissatisfied with the way this batch has been clearing and decided to do something I usually don’t do: use some gelatin finings to try and clear it a bit more. I was concerned that perhaps it had not cleared well because of contamination and doing this would also afford the opportunity to have a quick taste.

This accomplished, the moment of truth arrived: the presentation of a slightly cloudy glass of non-carbonated mead to the tasting expert, Munchkin. Fortunately and happily (for both of us) the sampling test was passed and I received a smile of approval from Missus Munchkin! Yosh!

Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow! Cheers to all!

Casa Mascia Apothecary

Category Archives: Fermentation

Full of Beans!

Rice-Banana-Coffee Beer Tasting.

Hatcho Miso Belize Style.

Beef Jerky and Chilli Mead.

Resurrection Metheglin.

First Active Blub from Melomel.

Making Melomel.

Washing Machine On A Car, Iguanas and Mystery Beer.

Miso Madness V…The Next Generation.

Day Four of Miso Madness.

Everything Handmade in Belize.