More nose trusting - Citrus lactic-fermented drink

As I posted a few weeks ago, I've been trying some fermented food recipes, but its been a nerve-wracking experience due to not knowing what these foods are supposed to taste like, I've just been trying to "trust my nose" and only eat things that don't smell bad!

We tried "lemon wine" at the cheese-making course, so at least I'd tried a fermented beverage. We will go to another course to learn how to make this kind of fermented food when it comes to Murgon in Feb/March 2012, but I decided to try a recipe in Nourishing Traditions in the meantime. Of course I also tried to modify it, as there wasn't exactly a recipe for lemon wine, more orange wine, but we had heaps of lemons from the neighbour's tree (two shopping bags) and a few mandarins that were on sale.

I juiced all the lemons and mandarins and ended up with:

1.5 L lemon juice
0.5 L mandarin juice

I added 1/2 cup of raw sugar to 1.5 L warm water and 0.5 L whey from cottage cheese and stirred it all into the lemon/orange juice.

Left it for a few days and.....

hmmm looks fermented......

I bottled the brew into old Grolsch bottles (knew I was hoarding them for a reason) and put them in the beer fridge. I think I should have added more sugar, this is seriously sour! But ok mixed with water, a bit like drinking apple cider vinegar! They should be nice as a refreshing drink over summer......

Have you tried to make fermented beverage?

See other fermented beverages that I've made since.

Comments

Cooking and eating beans

When I was growing up, my family never ate many dried beans, they just weren't something that was used much in NZ cuisine. If I did eat beans, it was always from a can (and most likely baked beans). And until recently I was still using beans from a can, but it can be difficult to get organic beans, and to find cans not lined with BPA. Then I had an opportunity to buy some organic dry goods in bulk, so I bought 5kg of kidney beans, 5kg of adzuki beans and 5kg of chickpea (garbanzo beans). I know, that is a lot of beans. And then I didn't really know what to do with them! Not just what dishes to put them in, but how to prepare them, I just didn't know what method to use. So I decided it was time to learn how to use all these beans that I bought, here's what I found out. I started with an excellent ebook called The Everything Beans Book , from Katie at Kitchen Stewardship, which has lots of bean recipes, but more importantly, an explanation of h...

Guest post: Is there a place for power tools in the garden?

One of my regular readers and commenters offered to write a guest post about a horticulture course, its quite a funny read, with some serious insights into our technology obsession. If you'd like to submit a guest post, email me at eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com. While I am always happy to share links back to your blog or website, this contributor preferred to remain anonymous. I hope you enjoy their story.... -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- Just a few days ago our daily horticulture classes were interrupted by an invitation to review some new gardening gadgets. The idea was to open half a dozen of electric hand trimmers , test them and fill in some review about their goods and bads. As nothing is more dear to a student – even a “hort “ one - to escape routine and mess around till lunchtime, we opened the boxes and got down to business. What did we...

Making tallow soap

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... For some reason I've always thought that making soap seemed too hard. For a start the number of ingredients required was confusing and all the safety warnings about using the alkali put me off. The worst part for me was that most of the ingredients had to be purchased, and some even imported (palm oil and coconut oil), which never seemed very self-sufficient. I can definitely see the benefits of using homemade soap instead of mass produced soap (that often contains synthetic fragrance, colour, preservatives, and has had the glycerine removed), but it seemed to me that if I was going to buy all the ingredients I may as well just buy the soap and save myself all the hassle. For the past several years I have bought homemade soap from various market stalls and websites, and that...

Eight Acres

Search This Blog