How To Not Blow A Lid

Welcome back to this ninth installment in my essay series about fermentation – and what it has to offer you, both in edible and in non-edible ways…

Last time, we started to explore the Big In-Between, i.e. that which happens to turn an unassuming base product like cabbage, flour or milk into a wonderful, healthy and exiting ferment. Courageously wading into this black box pool, we first encountered the thing which drives this process, namely the food available to the wee fermentation critters.

As you might remember, much to our amusement we realized that fermentation is, in some way, the digestive process of said wee fermentation critters – and certain changes in the ferment are due to their excretions (to use a neutral term… 😉 ).

Today, we’re going to continue our exploration with a closer look at something else which comes out their other end, so to speak. But that’s not all which today’s essay has to offer!

We will also talk about the most dangerous aspect of fermentation (hint: it’s not what most people think!), and there will even be explosions (no car chases, though – sorry!). And last but not least, I will have to fess up and correct some detail of the very first essay’s story – something which is technically wrong, but which I sneaked past you nonetheless (purely for dramaturgical reasons!).

Before we get to all these exciting and thrilling issues, though, we need to revert back to one of the earlier essays again…

A couple of months ago, we explored the question of “Why?”, as in “Why is fermentation important, useful, and interesting?” (and, by extension “Why should you read this essay series and follow along?”). Exploring why people have fermented goodies throughout all ages and cultures, we stumbled upon some age-old Proto-Indo-European roots of some words related to fermentation.

These old roots of contemporary words brought home to us just how old humanity’s relationship with fermentation must be. But they also gave us some interesting insights into another important topic: the connection between fermentation and the four elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.

Since then, we have encountered the elements time and again, in various forms, and in the most likely and the most unlikely of places. No matter which fermentation-related stone we have turned, there always seems to be at least one element, and sometimes more than one, peaking out from under it with a toothless grin, waving at us enthusiastically.

It seems that these four elements are so deeply and intricately woven into it that fermentation wouldn’t even be a thing without them, doesn’t it?

(For those of you with an inclination towards discursive meditation, why, yes, this would happen to make for an awesome series of meditation themes! 😉 )

But while I have pointed out connections to one or the other element time and again, we’ve never talked about what those elements actually are – something we’re going to remedy now…

In modern Western societies, we’ve somehow been inclined to view everything through a psychological lense. In particular, whenever we encounter some “higher forces” of any kind, the correct (as in: societally acceptable) label to use for them is “archetype”. Whatever is out there, be it deities, spirits, or all other sorts of unembodied power and beings, they are all archetypes.

This concept of archetypes can be extremely useful for us in understanding the world – and especially in understanding ourselves. We can view ourselves (i.e. us personally, other human beings, but also groups and societies) through such archetypal lenses, and thus learn a lot about us.

The downside is that by using “archetype” as a default label, this also makes us prone to seing all these immaterial powers and beings through a human lense, and in particular through the lense of human psychology.

There are two issues with this (or rather, two I want to raise today):

The first is that even if you should be a die-hard materialist, it’s rather evident that such a human-centered worldview has its issues. Is it really good for us to only ever put ourselves first, and to assume we are the linchpin of the universe? Without going into detail: Look around at the world into which this worldview has brought us. Is this really the world you want your (living or future) grandchildren to live in?

As humanity, as societies and communities, it would serve the whole world with all its creatures and features, and by extension also us, well if we occasionally adopteded another, less human-centered point of view.

The second issue is that not everybody is a die-hard materialst. And for the people who aren’t, no matter what their spiritual beliefs, worldviews, or personal experiences are, the world is a much vaster place, with more beings (and sometimes a lot more) than psychology could ever dream of.

The four elements are part of this vaster cosmos, at least for those who are open to seeing them in this way.

(If you’re not, that’s fine, too, and you can simply continue to watch them through the archetypal glasses and enjoy the rest of this essay series. The next few paragraphs might not be your thing, though – although I’d encourage you to keep an open mind and open heart nonetheless.)

In such a view, an element like Earth or Fire isn’t just an archetype (although it’s that, too!). Instead, it has a life of its own, with associated divine and spiritual beings, energies, effects and expressions on non-material levels, and all sorts of other non-tangible related things. And what we experience as these elements here on earth, like a stone or a campfire, are only expressions of this much vaster and more intricate life of the elements.

We’re not going to go into much detail here, simply because this is an essay series about fermentation and not about the elements – and I do have to watch my word count (even if sometimes it might not seem that I do… 😉 ).

Still, I find it important to at least raise this topic once. Being aware that “Air” isn’t just an archetype, but that there might be actual beings of Air with their own life and consciouslness, that Air has effects not just here in the material world e.g. through wind, and that it can be possible to get in touch with Air and its various associated meanings, implications, and beings… all of this will vastly broaden and enhance what you can take away from this essay series.

Oh, and if you’ve been wondering why I keep writing the elements with capital first letters – well, it’s to stress the difference between “Water” as in the sense above and the “water” which flows from your faucet…

For today, though, we’re going to focus (mostly) on one of the elements, one which was (quite literally) raised before in the aforementioned earlier essay.

If you have done your Hands-On Homeworks (which I sincerely hope you have!), you will have noticed that something happens very reliably during fermentation of all sorts, whether it’s mead or sourdough you’re fermenting. In fact, it happens so reliably that you can use it to gauge the state of fermentation (coming in handily e.g. in today’s Homework further below).

This something are… bubbles. Nice, cute, innocent little bubbles.

They appear at the surface of your sourdough as little craters of popped bubbles. They bubble up when you stir your mead – and if the fermentation is going really strongly, it doesn’t even require any stirring for them to foam up.

And if you listen closely, you can sometimes even hear these tiny bubbles. Well, granted, not the bubbles themselves, but their popping.

(At least I’ve never heard bubbles yodling or singing a song from the latest charts. Your mileage may vary, of course!)

Bubbles and fermentation are best buddies – where there is fermentation, bubbles are never far away.

Now, this is all nice and well, but it raises an obvious question: Why? And with this, I don’t primarily mean “why do ferments produce bubbles?” (although that, too), but mainly “why is this important to us?”.

Well, it’s a good thing you asked, as I intended to answer this question anyway! 😉 Buckle up for the ride, please, will ya?

First, though, let me stress again that this isn’t a lecture in biochemistry or so. If you’re interested in what exactly happens during fermentation on the biological and chemical level, you’ll need to read up on it elsewhere.

For the purposes of our essays, suffices it to say that during fermentation, the little critters which do the fermenting for us via their digestion of sugar don’t just poop excrete things like alcohol or acidity – they also pass gases.

(Hey, all that gross stuff ain’t my fault! I’m just reporting things as they are. Don’t shoot the messenger, ok?)

As you probably noted last time, the digestion of fermentation critters is somewhat different from ours. While too much sugar isn’t good for us, they thrive on a diet of sugar. And while for us, breaking wind usually means something hasn’t gone quite ideally in our digestion, for them it’s a normal and healthy thing.

I.e. from the point of the little guys doing all the work, the bubbles are a healthy and welcome feature, and not a gross bug.

Which, in turn, means that when you see loads of bubbles, your fermentation is well underway – a very reliable yardstick for judging the development of your ferment!

Of course, all that bubbling also comes in handily in another regard: If you want to produce bubbly ferments, especially bubbly drinks, you need something which bubbles, right? It’s a good thing then that fermentation gives us the bubbling for free, just as a side product.

(And again, this is something today’s Hands-On Homework will pick up on…)

Thus while you could perfectly well produce (still) wine even if there was no bubbling involved in fermentation, you couldn’t produce beer or sparkling wine.

Well, at least not with home-producing means. Nowadays, commercial products more often than not are artifically carbonated. But as for earlier times… It seems that our forebears put a natural trait of fermentation to very good and tingling use there, doesn’t it?

So what’s the difference between wine and sparkling wine (the kind with a naturally-bubbling sparkle), then?

It’s a simple thing: In one case, the gases are left to evaporate in a suitable vessel. And in the other, they’re kept inside the ferment e.g. in an airtight bottle.

Consider my pot of sauerkraut which we admired together in the very first essay, down in my basement:

I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen an old-fashioned kraut pot before? They are earthenware pots with a heavy earthenware lid. The pot itself has a double rim at the top, with an intendation between the two ridges. This intendation is filled with water, and the lid sits in it, between the ridges of the double rim. The water prevents oxygen from entering the pot.

During fermentation, my kraut does what any self-respecting ferment does during fermentation: It passes gas. But this gas has to go somewhere – after all, the pot is already full with fermenting kraut and with air.

Over time, as more gas accumulates, pressure builds inside the pot. And the easiest way out is as bubbles, through the water-filled rim.

What we’ve heard down there in the basement, these tiny noises of plopping and bubbling, were the happy sounds of gases escaping from the kraut pot, by bubbling through the water.

And this, folks, is where I have to repent. 🙂

Back then, in the made-up tour into my basement, I described the bubbling and the associated noises – only to then immediately grab some of the (presumably ready) kraut and sit down with you to eat it.

But of course, as we have just discussed at length, the bubbling happens during fermentation, and not afterwards! Once the ferment is ready, the bubbling has subsided.

Or, in terms of “markers to gauge the fermentation process”: Once the bubbling subsides, the fermentation process is slowing down.

Thus, strictly speaking, what we’ve been eating back then has been half-fermented cabbage.

(Sorry about this! I admit I went for dramaturgy over reality, hoping none of you would notice. 😉 )

Anyway, once fermentation has started, unless you interrupt it from the outside (something we’ll talk about later), it will continue until the fermentation critters run out of food. And during this time, it will produce gases.

If, during this process, your ferment is stuck in an airthight vessel, pressure will build up.

This can be a desired thing, e.g. if you home-brew beer, as stale beer isn’t a pleasure to drink.

It can be also be dangerous, though. In fact, this is where the biggest danger of fermentation comes from.

You see, when you close the lids on your ferments real tight, so that no gases can get out, pressure will build during the process of fermentation. And depending on how much pressure builds up (i.e. on the amount of food the critters can turn into gases), and on how sturdy your closed vessel is…

… things might blow up on you.

I’m not making this up, btw, and I’m also not exaggerating. This really is the biggest danger of fermentation. Having to clean up the mess of an exploding glass vessel in your kitchen is a major nuisance. Having to clean up the mess of an exploding glass vessel with a colourful ferment like redcurrant wine is a MAJOR nuisance. And having the same explosion happen while you, or your kids, are in the kitchen…

You get the idea, I hope.

There are two ways to avoid this – and another way to put it to good use.

The first way is simple: Use dedicated fermenation vessels, like kraut pots with water-filled rims, or mason jars with a rubber band, or vessels with airlocks. Their purpose is to keep air out, while letting gases escape.

While such vessels work very well, they are also not cheap. Hence the second option:

Use “normal” vessels, like re-used jam jars or wine bottles, but do not fully close their lids! Instead, just close them very lightly, so that overpressure can escape.

(Pro tip: If you have to transport such a ferment, you might have to close the lid tightly in order to prevent things from spilling. In such a case, make sure you do remember to open it again. Also, if you pass ferments on to others in such vessels, please stress this issue to them. Not everybody is aware of this danger!)

So this is why I keep stressing for you to not fully close the lids on your ferments – unless you enjoy dramatic explosions, of course! 😀

But there is a third way to deal with this issue… Instead of avoiding it by different means, you can put it to good use. By keeping the accruing gases within your ferment, you can raise the pressure there and create a sparkling, bubbling ferment.

In order to do this, you need suitable vessels. For liquid ferments (where this is most relevant), standard bottles e.g. from wine will not do the trick, as they aren’t sturdy enough. Any bottles you use for building up pressure need to be constructed such that they can withstand said pressure, and then a bit more, just in case! And yep, that’s why sparkling wine bottles are made of much thicker glass than wine bottles.

One simple option for home-brewing are the thick kind of bottles with flip-on lids which are used for some kinds of beer (at least over here in Germany). I.e. you could buy that commercial beer, enjoy it, and then re-use the bottles.

Whatever you go with, never use a bottle with a chink or any other kind of obvious damage for pressure-building fermentation, as it is already structurally weakened – unless you want to explain to the ER why you look like a pin cushion stuffed with glass slivers!

There are also some common sense things you can do to lower any risks even further. Long-time storage of bottled live ferments in a basement room, a closet with closed door, or elsewhere out of sight, for example. This way, if any of them should ever blow up on you, at least nobody will be harmed.

Another smart thing to do is to gauge the pressure state of your bottled ferments from time to time, or even to relieve pressure if necessary. This will also give you a better idea of how your ferment is developing – and sometimes it can be quite surprising how different the various bottles of the same ferment build up pressure.

In order to do this, you pop the lid of your flip-on bottles just a little bit, and only very shortly. The point is not to have all the pressure and bubbles escape, but for you to get a feeling for the amount of pressure inside (and to relieve some if it should be too much). And do this only for a very short moment, because once your bottle is open for too long, thus lowering the pressure, the gases in the ferment will rise up.

It’s best to do this outside or over a sink, btw. If the pressure is really high inside any bottle, you might not be able to close the lid again anymore. In this case, do not fall prey to the first impulse, namely to press the lid back on again – once a ferment foams up heavily, you won’t be able to stop it anyway. Instead, open the lid fully, let things spill for however long they want, either catching it or letting it drain away (that’s why you do it over a sink or outside).

(As a kid, have you ever opened up a garden hose to the max and then pressed your fingers over the opening? That’s what will happen if you try to close an overfoaming bottle again, only that your fermenting liquid is a lot more sticky and less fun to clean afterwards… 😉 )

So. There have been a lot of cautions, warnings and practical advice in this essay, a lot more so than usual. I feel that this is justified, as such an explosion really is the biggest danger of fermentation.

Which is funny, come to think of. If I asked 100 people what they think the biggest danger of home-fermentation is, I’d bet that 99 will say something along the lines of “mold” or “spoilage” or “food poisoning”.

In reality, though, these things aren’t a biggie. We’re going to talk about ferments gone wrong in more detail in a later essay, but in all brevity: You’ve got eyes, a nose, and (one should hope) common sense. If you use them, you shall be fine!

Also, I may have overstressed the danger of an exploding bottle in this essay. I’ve stored quite a few fermented drinks in bottles over the years, and none of them have exploded on me yet. Although, to be fair, I don’t usually push the pressurization to the hilt.

If you’re e.g. after highly pressurized, truly “sparkling” and bubbling drinks, you will need to bottle your ferments while they still contain a fair amount of sugar (or add some more sugar while bottling), which, of course, raises not just the pressure, but also the risk.

Still, people have been fermenting bubbling things for ages, and with a bit of care, it’s not a big deal in most cases. And if you have a bottle where you’re really in doubt, do not shake it, keep a towel wrapped around it until it’s open, and if at all possible open it outside or over a sink…

Thus I hope that by giving both the cautions and some practical advice, I have actually encouraged you to give bottling fermented drinks a try! 🙂 But even if not, you now know which vessels to use in order to deal with the gases created by fermentation, and how to use them – and why.

We’ve talked about a lot of things today, but not about the element I promised you I’d talk about. Well, that’s not quite true either: We’ve talked a lot about it, but only ever implicitly. 😉

I’m sure you can guess which one it is, with all this talk about bubbles and foaming and airlocks and overpressure, can’t you?

You’re right, of course: Today has been a course in both the joys and productive qualities of Air, and in one of its dangers and downsides.

In fermentation, as the old roots of the words suggest, Air is what expands the ferment, what lets it (and us) rise. It pushes outward, and upward.

And if your ferment is really happy and well-fed, Air transitions into Fire, with its heavy boiling and its explosive qualities of fast transformation and abrupt changes.

How all of this can be relevant for your own life? Well, do your Homeworks to find out… 😉

Inner Fermentation Homework

Fermentation has an expanding and explosive quality. And just like Hands-On Fermentation can foam up and boil over, so can Inner Fermentation – but even if it doesn’t, it’s at least accompanied by a pleasant bubbling. Thus your Inner Fermentation Homework today is to explore this side of yourself:

1. When your Inner Fermentation boils over, how does this manifest? And how could you catch it while it is starting to foam up, and before it spills over?
2. When your Inner Fermentation excretes a lot of gases with no airlock to let them escape, how does this manifest? How could you catch it before it blows a lid? And how could you release the overpressure in a productive or controlled way?
3. Fermentation builds up gases, and these gases allow us to create even more delicious, sparkling and bubbly ferments! In your Inner Fermentation processes, how could you deliberately use these gases, in a controlled fashion, to build up just the right amount of pressure to improve the end product?
4. If, for whatever reason, you don’t want to let the pressure rise in any process of Inner Fermentation, what would be a pleasant kind of bubbly state, one in which you’d be happy to let things ferment for a while? How could you reach it? And how could you keep it?

And of course, there is also another Hands-On Homework for you to explore this week – although I’m afraid to say it’s a drink again… But it happened to be such a good fit here! 🙂

Hands-On Fermentation Homework: Herbal Wine (Beer?)

I hope you fondly remember the herbal beer we had back in medieval Nürnberg! Today’s Hands-On Homework is not quite such a beer, I’m afraid (sorry!). Instead, you’re going to ferment a much simplified herbal drink – simplified enough to not be the same thing at all, but close enough to give you some inkling of what could be possible if you wanted to do more along these lines…

Some background first: Traditional herbal ales or beers oftentimes contained more than just one kind of herb, and sometimes a lot more. The recipes were also highly individual, depending on what was available to the brewers, on people’s personal tastes and preferences, and also on the effects one wanted to achieve.

(Have you ever tried making a record of “the” Mac’n’Cheese recipe? Or “the” apple pie recipe? Good luck with that – there are about as many of these recipes in circulation as there are people making them…)

This means that there isn’t the one recipe for herbal beer. It also means that whatever herbal drink you ferment is just fine, and fully within a tradition of fermenters who all did their individiaul thing!

Secondly, nowadays we have access to ingredients which would have been hard to come by for most, if not all, people back then: exotic spices, for example, or any kind of fruit at any time of the year, and ingredients from very far away.

On the other hand, people back then had stuff people nowadays usually don’t have. Not in terms of uncommon or imported ingredients, of course, but e.g. in terms of knowledge and skills. They knew their local plants and their effects, for example. And they knew how to do stuff themselves, including processing home-grown or freshly harvested foodstuffs, and thus were miles ahead of the mass-processed stuff we can buy in supermarkets.

So could you brew a truly “medieval” herbal beer nowadays? Well, I’m not saying it’s impossible – but whatever you brew will most likely not be the “real” stuff anyway. Thus why not turn lemons into lemonade and apply some creative liberty to old recipes to create something new right away?

And thirdly, there is the issue of simplicity. After all, these recipes should be fun, and this (well, to me) includes that they are doable for all my readers.

Thus today’s Homework is a much simplified version of such a herbal beer. Or rather, it’s more akin to a herbal wine…

The inspiration for such a drink comes from Stephen Harrod Buhner’s absolutely excellent and highly recommended book “Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers”.

(Seriously, if you’re into this kind of thing at all, the book is well worth the investment. Although I do have one issue with it, but it belongs into a later essay.)

However, in most of his recipes, Buhner suggests things like malted barley as “food” for the fermentation critters. While this would certainly make this drink more beer-like, I doubt many of you happen to just have a heap of malted barley at hand! 😉

I’ve thus opted for simple sugar instead, as you can see below.

For simplicity’s sake, there will also be the same three options you already know from the mead Homework:

You can drink this herbal wine very young, while it’s still very sweet, i.e. right after the “hot” boiling phase is over.

Or you can bottle it and enjoy it a few weeks later after a comparably short fermentation phase. It’ll still be a rather young herbal wine and thus on the sweetish end (which, as for the mead, can easily be remedied with a dash of tonic or by adding to sparkling wine), but a lot less so than before.

Or, option 3, you can invest in a vessel with airlock, do the whole racking and letting mature routine, and drink it several months later as a mature herbal wine.

In this last case, you also have the added choice of either leaving your ferment to mature in its airlocked vessel (with no pressure build-up, i.e. wine-like), or to pull it into bottles after the second round of vessel-based fermentation.

Racked into tightly closed bottles, you will get something a bit more beer-like – since the gases can’t escape, pressure is going to build up, and your final drink will have some sparkle. (Still no beer, but closer to it.)

The latter is a lot more involved and requires more time and more utensils – and it’s entirely up to you which route you take. Of course, nobody says you can’t do different batches and experiment with different methods over time! 😉

So on we go, to your (probably) first batch of herbal wine or beer!

Stuff you need

What you’ll need for an intriguing and exhilarating young herbal wine is:

• a litre of water (scale the recipe to get an amount which you can comfortably store in your existing bottles or fermentation jars, unless you want to go with option 1 and drink it very young)
• 100 to 150 grams of brown or cane sugar (see notes below)
• a handful of herbs (see notes below)
• optional: a cup of strong black tea (see notes below)
• a wide-mouthed bowl or pot, large enough to hold the ingredients and for you to stir them without things spilling over
• a tea towel or other cloth to cover the bowl (plus potentially a stick or long wooden spoon to lay over the opening, for propping up the tea towel if it sags)
• fine-meshed sieve
• bottles or airlocked vessel (for option 2 or 3, respectively), plus funnel to fill them if needed

Herbs

Apart from the (rather obvious) fact that they should be edible and you should like their taste, the world is your oyster!

Try any herb (or herbs – you can certainly mix!) you like. See how the result turns out, and try something else next time.

Candidates could, e.g., be kitchen herbs like rosemary or thyme. Or how about something a bit wilder, like yarrow? Or a bit milder, like lemon balm? Tea herbs are also excellent choices, sage maybe or chamomille. And of course, there are all sorts of spices, like juniper or cardamom…

Also, keep in mind that different herbs have different effects. You can use this to brew tonic “wines” as home remedies if you’re so inclined. Or you can simply do different batches, and compare their effects.

Ideally, your herbs should have grown outside. This way, they are packed full with all sorts of little critters, including the ones to start your fermentation culture.

If you can’t get any freshly grown herbs at all, neither from a garden nor from harvesting wild, use dried ones instead. By now, you know how to raise a fermentation culture from scratch.

(If you still happen to have either the pot with your mead culture, or some of the mead, you can use it for this purpose – simply re-use the pot, and/or add some of the mead as a “starter”.)

As to the amount of herbs… Well. I have to admit I hardly ever weigh them anymore, I just grab what looks like a reasonable amount. And of course, it very much depends on the kind of herbs and spices. What might be way too much for Juniper could still be pleasant for oregano, for example.

Thus if in doubt, just do something as a first try, note down what you did, and learn from your results… 😉

Tea

Actual wine contains some rather tart components like tannic acids from the grapes. While we don’t try to emulate a wine here, if you enjoy tart tastes, you can add a cup of strong black tea to give your drink a bit more of this flavour, thus also off-setting its sweetness while it’s still young.

This is optional, though – I sometimes do, sometimes don’t.

Sugar

In theory, you could use any sugar source for this, although I don’t recommend honey, as we’ve already had the mead, after all.

I usually use raw cane sugar, but any sugar will work, although the taste will differ (more room for experimentation! 😀 ).

The amount of sugar is a deliberate spread. Remember that the more sugar, the more alcohol in your end ferment.

On the other hand, if you intend to drink this as very young or young wine (i.e. options 1 – right away, or 2 – after a few weeks in a bottle), there will still be a considerable amount of sugar left in it. This might be a good reason to go lighter on the sugar, and pick the lower amount or even a bit less.

Instructions

If you’ve done your homework and fermented some young mead, all of this will be rather familiar to you…

1. Put sugar and water into your bowl or pot, and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the herbs and/or spices, and the tea (optional), and stir in well. Cover with the cloth.
2. You know the drill by now: Whenever you pass by, give it a good stir, and lick the spoon. 🙂
3. Your ferment will start to bubble and foam. Once this boiling subsides again, sieve out any herbs and spices. As usual, the actual timing will depend on the temperature, the kind of herbs etc you have used, … Be prepared for this phase to take a few days, though.
4. Proceed to option 1 (drink right away, but will still be sweet), option 2 (bottle and wait for a few weeks – but don’t close bottles tightly!), or option 3 (go the full monty with airlocks, racking, etc).

That’s it – simple as that. No, it’s not a medieval herbal beer – but it’s a simple and easy way to ferment your own herbal drink.

What if you don’t like the taste of your drink?

Well, that’s why you start with a small batch until you have found a recipe you like! 😉

Seriuosly, though, if you don’t like your resulting herbal wine, it’s most likely due to one (or both) of two things:

It’s still too sweet. I get it – this can be unpleasant. Unfortunately, if you don’t want to go the full way by using airlocks etc, there is only so-and-so much you can do about this.

The rest of the sugar will only be fermented away over time, i.e. when you let your drink mature. This requires time and equipment, though.

If you serve it at the very young or young stages, you can certainly play with the amount of sugar you add at the start. However, this is a trade-off – add too little, and it won’t be a “wine” anymore, but something closer to last Homeworks’s flower lemonade.

The second reason could be that you don’t like the flavour of one or more ingredients, most likely the herbs or spices you used.

This can be hard to predict in advance, unfortunately. For example, I love the taste of rue, but my (so far one and only) attempt at a rue wine turned out “meh” at best.

Sometimes it helps to let such ferments rest and give them more time, as the flavour really comes together and matures over time (and can change quite a bit!). But again, if you don’t want to go with option 3, then this isn’t of much help to you.

Either way, your best bet is to try different versions with different ingredients, and to compare the tastes to settle on something you enjoy…

Conclusions and Outlook

We’ve covered a lot of ground today (yet again), and I hope this has been useful to you in different ways.

First, there was a lot of practical advice and background knowledge in the essay, and I hope this will come in handy in your own fermention journey.

Secondly, and I didn’t cover this as extensively as I’d have liked due to running long already, there is also a lot of material for contemplation and reflection in this seemingly innocent looking topic of bubbles and gases, and all their potential effects.

And thirdly, I do hope you’ll give the herbal wine a try. I have to admit I’d been a bit torn about including it. Ideally, it would take time to let it mature, as this really makes a huge difference in flavour, not just in sweetness – but on the other hand, these Homeworks are supposed to be simple and accessible.

Thus a Homework of very young or young wine (i.e. a few weeks in losely-capped standard bottles max) would be the way to go in terms of simplicity – but a properly matured herbal wine with months in air-locked vessels, or the same properly matured drink with a finishing touch in bottles for carbonization as herbal beer, would be the way to go in terms of taste and fermentation experience…

I’ve compromised by adding it as a Homework, but giving everybody the choice of when and how mature to drink the drinks they brew – and I hope this works for you!

Anyway, next time we’re still going to explore the territory of Air, but with focus on a completely different issue…

The next essay will go up on on Sunday, June 7th. And as usual, I’m looking forward to your thoughts, questions and comments below! 🙂

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Image: Isaac Quesada on Unsplash