Encore: What Fermented Drinks Can I Make?

Today we’re bringing you an episode of the podcast that originally went out in 2023. It’s one of our favourites, all about fermented drinks. In it, we cover over 20 different fermented drinks, including:

• SCOBY ferments
• whey ferments
• grain ferments
• wild ferments

And we talk to you about how you can incorporate these super health-giving, delicious foods into your life.

So if you’ve ever asked the question, “What fermented drinks can I make?” or “What other fermented drinks can I make?” This episode is for you.

For supporters of the podcast, there is a bonus e-book containing four of our favourite fermented drinks to download from the website.

What we cover:

• Scoby ferments
• Whey ferments, and how you don’t have to use whey
• Grain ferments, including ale and boza
• Wild ferments
• Dairy ferments
• Gluten-free ferments
• Sugar and alcohol content concerns
• Using fermented drinks in smoothies
• Second-ferments

Resources:

Boza course

Sowans course (affiliate link)

DIY proofing box article

Kobo Fermentary (the gingerbug queen)

Andrea’s Kombucha article

Alison Rye Kvass article

 

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Transcript:

Alison:
Good morning, Alison.

Andrea:
Hey, good afternoon. From the middle of a thunderstorm over here.

Alison:
Oh dear.

Andrea:
Hopefully we won’t go kind of down in the middle of the recording.

Alison:
Yeah, I hope not. It has been rainy and cold, but this entire week we’re supposed to be in the 70s and quite sunny and dry.

Andrea:
That’s nice.

Alison:
Yeah, we’re switching weather temperaments from the air.

Andrea:
Indeed, indeed. so have you have you eaten or what was the last thing you ate.

Alison:
Well actually i’m going to tell you the last thing i made um okay because it’s actually for lunch today um and it is out of our new cookbook so i have oat cakes fermenting okay and so i’m going to cook those up on the pan today and then i actually already slow cook to heart i cut it put it into a container in the fridge, strained the broth, fed the spent-vegged dogs that made the dogs meal, like with their other meaty food, and poured the broth into a container, then let it cool, took the fat off. And so now I have a jar of fat, I have a half a gallon of broth, I fed the animals, and I have a heart in the fridge.

Andrea:
Wonderful, wonderful.

Alison:
So that was…

Andrea:
You’re going to put it in the pancakes, are you?

Alison:
Well, what I was thinking was I’m going to – lunchtime, we just don’t have much time to make food. So, like, cooking it for lunch was kind of unrealistic for me. So, I wanted it already cooked. And then, yeah, I can sort of shred it up and heat it on the pan while the oat cakes are cooking. And then the oat cakes go on the plates. I can pile – sing and sort of, like, pile the meat on top. Maybe I’ll even scramble an egg or fry an egg or something like that. And I got a little bit of sauerkraut left but I do need to start more and that recipe’s in the cookbook too actually yeah yeah so yeah so it’s really going to be an ancestral kitchen cookbook lunch

Andrea:
So if listeners haven’t um don’t know about the cookbook go back and listen to episode 56 which is all about um the way we cook and the cookbook and you can go find the cookbook there’ll be a link in the show notes or you can go just to andrea’s site farm and hearth.com forward slash shop and you will see it there.

Alison:
And if you are a patron, you’re going to get it. You already have it. So it’s our gift to the patrons as well. So if you are a patron, go hop into your, you know, where your treasure trove is, where you’ve got all your links of all the downloadables we create for you. So go grab it in there. Speaking of patrons, Alison, no, wait, no, you have to tell me what you ate. I was going to say.

Andrea:
Okay. Hold on. I was all excited about the patrons.

Alison:
I know, me too.

Andrea:
Gabriel’s off school. It’s a holiday here in Italy today. And so he joined us for lunch, which was nice. And we had something called Goethe. Now, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that properly. It’s spelt G-O-E-T-T-A. And it’s a dish from Cincinnati that the German immigrants to Cincinnati created. A lot of people think it’s actually from Germany, but it’s not. And I made it two, three days ago in the slow cooker. So i put a pork shoulder in the slow cooker with lots of water and onions and celery chopped up and i cooked it overnight and then i shredded it all, i poured in a ton of um grope oats so whole oats before they’d been you know rolled or anything they’re just whole oats, and then i did that about seven o’clock in the morning the next morning, and let those cook and soak up all of the stock that come out of that meat and then I added the shredded pork back in stirred it around put some bay leaves in and some salt and pepper.

Andrea:
And that cooked for about another five hours. And then we had it fresh kind of that day. But then the rest of it I put into loaf tins, let cool, put in the fridge. And then you can slice it and fry it. So that’s what we did today. Oh, that’s nice. We sliced it and fried it in lard. And before I put that in the pan, I’d fried a load of mushrooms for a long time. I really like mushrooms when you fry them for ages, you know.

Alison:
Yeah. Oh, me too.

Andrea:
So that was with some sage. So we had mushrooms that had been fried in sage that I kept warm with the slices of goethe that I’d fried. And then there was some salad in the fridge, which I made a couple of days ago. Put that on the plate with some sauerkraut. And the last of our ancestral ale, we made a batch five days ago, we bottled it. And it’s still really good. It’s like the best. I mean, we’re honing our recipe each time and it’s the best version really that we’ve made. And it’s still really good five days in. and it’s not tasting like it’s getting overrun by bacteria that sour it. And so we all had a glass of that, too. It was a lovely dinner.

Alison:
Really nice. No, I love that. Yeah, that sounds great.

Andrea:
Unfortunately, I’m in the cookbook, yeah. We have to do another cookbook now. We need to put all those recipes in.

Alison:
It’s going to have to happen. Yeah. I love dishes like that, like the goethe, where you said you can slice it.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
You know, head cheese would be one of those. Even the heart kind of falls in that category, I guess. You know, something you can make, have cold, shred it. You could eat it cold, but, you know, kind of nice to have it hot. And do you know how Kitty always talks about how you, when you boil the mushrooms or something like that, aren’t they like endocrine absorbers or something?

Andrea:
I don’t know.

Alison:
But you have to boil them for a really long time or whatever. So maybe cooking mushrooms for a long time causes some kind of a transition that you’re sensitive to. I don’t know.

Andrea:
That’s interesting. I just, I really like them that way. I don’t, I just, the flavors concentrate. I think that’s why I like them.

Alison:
Yeah, I agree. They’re like 90% water.

Andrea:
Yeah, exactly. And they’re delicious like that. I like them cold as well. If you’ve done too many, I put them in the fridge and then I just eat them the next day cold.

Alison:
Really yummy. You can take this if you want. Okay. All right.

Andrea:
We talked food? Yeah.

Alison:
We talked weather.

Andrea:
Yeah, we got to talk patrons. We’ve got some new patrons since the last time we spoke. Um i don’t know when the last time we spoke was it was so long ago it was quite a while ago so anyway we have three new patrons who’ve come on to our monthly companionship level, um so welcome kay clifton welcome jennyah i hope i pronounced your name right and welcome andre and andre is on the discord definitely we’ve had a chat with her great um, If I’m not sure Janiya and Kay aren’t yet, but hopefully they will be soon. And we’ve had some patrons sign up for the annual option. You get a discount if you want to support us for a whole year. And then you get all those benefits at a slightly reduced price. And we’ve got over 30 patrons now. It’s a wonderful community. And as you said earlier, they’ve got our cookbook and they get our exclusive podcast and they get tons of other stuff. And they’re just wonderful people and we love interacting with them. So thank you all and thank you to those three new ones since the last time we talked.

Alison:
It’s so fun to see that there are other people doing this and other people interested, you know. I mean, obviously people are listening to the podcast, so we know that. And then when you have a conversation with someone and they say, you know, wow, look what this did for my husband or look what this did for, you know, my health or whatever. And you’re thinking, wow, this is really making a difference. And that’s really exciting.

Andrea:
Yeah, that’s completely. And not only does it taste wonderful, but it does all that too, which is just wonderful. You’ve got some reviews, haven’t you?

Alison:
Yeah, I was going to say, another way you can support the podcast is leaving us a review. It makes a huge difference. And that’s something you and I are learning more about. But without reviews, podcasts are never shown to other listeners. So, thank you all for leaving reviews. And if you haven’t left a review yet, or actually think sometimes you can leave them more than once, go on and leave your most honest five-star review. I’ve got two reviews here to read. One is from… Christy hal and she gave five stars and said simply the best i am a huge fan of this podcast the information really is simple and the steps given are so helpful it makes me strive to be better in my own kitchen in the ways of the world i so enjoy listening to this it is like a comforting chat with old friends so cool that they’re literally halfway around the world from each other the information and practical steps show how attainable this lifestyle can be and doing some of the practices is better than doing none exactly right my guess is once you start it just keeps on rolling from there even if it takes time that is completely okay wonderful show and content ladies please keep it up thank you 100 yeah thank you for saying that thank you yeah once you start it does keep on rolling. You just kind of get sucked in. And it is better. Just even if you did one thing, it’s better than doing none of them.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And we also have a comment from Nataloo87. And they said, like family, I love this podcast. Even though I’m on the beginning of my ancestral health journey, I really love listening. I often feel like I’m sitting down for a chat with my sisters. Well, I hope your sisters are nice. It’s a good comparison. Yes, I love that. Oh, thank you.

Andrea:
It’s nice that so many people who reach out to us do feel as if we’re kind of friends and we’re sitting around a table together chatting. Because, I mean, that’s what you and I do. And despite being, as Christy said, halfway around the world, you know, we’ve never met. And yet we do feel like sisters, or I do anyway. And that’s really nice to hear that vibe.

Alison:
Is that weird? We’ve actually never met each other in person. Yeah. It doesn’t even seem.

Andrea:
Not yet.

Alison:
I’m just an AI, Alison. You have no idea. Yeah, this is really, really good AI.

Andrea:
Yeah, oh dear, that’s scary.

Alison:
Made to interact with your personality.

Andrea:
It works. So oh today goodness we are doing a podcast we’ve been meaning to do for about two years and finally we got to it um, and we thought quite a long time about what the title would be and the title

Andrea:
is just so obvious what fermented drink can i make because.

Alison:
How could you be

Andrea:
More clear than that we’re both super fans of fermented drinks and i didn’t really realize quite how many i did until i sat down and we planned this episode together um, and there are tons of them and they are wonderful a lot each each of them is different and will bring different things and uses different produce so, we are going to dive into them.

Alison:
Yeah yeah yeah my guess is allison there’s so many different drinks and probably most families will settle into a few favorites Yeah, that’s what you and I did. Like, I tried a lot. And we sort of got our rhythms set up with a couple that we really love. And then you can whip out some of them every once in a while. Like, not all of them really need this long, continuous process. Some of them can just literally be made up on the spot and left to ferment for a couple days with no, you know, year-long anticipation or maintenance of anything. So…

Alison:
Also, I have this theory, Allison. Tell me if you think it’s true. But I don’t know if it’s the same over there in Europe. But there’s such an obsession over here, not with mineral water, but with sparkling water, sparkling drinks, fizzy drinks, carbonated drinks. There’s a huge obsession with them. You know bottled like glass bottled water and over here was brought out as a sort of response to the temperance okay temperance push where people were not drinking alcohol but they wanted a bottle so they would get like bottled water and mineral waters and things like that um now there’s these you know like all the cans of sodas and things that you can get that aren’t really soda but they’re sparkling and my theory is that we’re so obsessed with them because we’re desperately craving fermentation and we know that like our body knows that that fizzy feeling is the result of yeast consuming carbohydrates and so it feels like it scratches an itch but it doesn’t totally because you have to come back for more and more and like there’s really no satisfying like people need a lot of it so that’s my theory

Andrea:
Yeah no that makes sense that our bodies would have some kind of instinct towards bubbles because naturally they are a produce of fermentation which brings a lot of other goodies along with it so i i don’t refute your theory i think it’s it’s potentially spot on yeah, So we’re going to sort these.

Alison:
Well, I also have a theory about straws, Alison.

Andrea:
Do you want to tell us that one or not?

Alison:
My theory about straws is, okay, I have to tell you, Alison. My theory about straws, because everyone’s obsessed with straws, is that it’s this like primal breastfeeding need.

Andrea:
So you have to pop your mouth.

Alison:
Why would you be so obsessed with straws?

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And why do you want your drink to go all the way to the back of your throat? I don’t know. What do you think?

Andrea:
Yeah, no, I can understand that.

Alison:
I’m just going to try to think ancestrally and think what ancient tradition is pulling us back. Okay, let’s move on. Let’s talk about drink.

Andrea:
So you divided our fermented drinks into sections to try, because we have so many of them, we thought we’ve got to put them in some sort of order. So we’ve got kind of, we split them up into the type of ferment they are. So we’re going to start with scoby ferments. Andrew, what’s scoby mean? Yeah. Do you know what SCOBY means?

Alison:
A symbiotic culture or colony of bacteria and yeast.

Andrea:
Right, there we go. I knew you knew that, you see.

Alison:
It’s just an acronym.

Andrea:
So the first one that we’ve got under here is water kefir, which we make every single day. And in our house, Gabriel makes it. And he’s just turned nine. So really, that explains to you, once you get into the swing of it, how simple it is that my nine-year-old can do it. It has water kefir grains, which are distinct from milk kefir grains. and it eats sugar. You can use many different types of sugar and we tend to use a mix of a golden sugar and a very dark sugar, which changes the flavour of the kefir, you know, what type of sugar you use. And then we do a second fermentation. Once those grains have done some of the fermenting, we bottle it, sift the grains out, bottle it and put extra things in the bottle. So perhaps pieces of fruit or some dried fruit, some raisins pretty much always ginger, which helps give extra fizz and that really the set the point of that second fermentation is to give you that fizz which makes the drink such fun for children you know to have that fizz it’s like a soda um, There is. Lots of people have asked me questions about water kefir. And we were just talking about the cookbook a few moments ago. There is a water kefir 101 in.

Andrea:
The Ancestral Kitchen podcast cookbook, which goes through all the questions I’ve had like, you know, can I use my water kefir grains for other things? Can I use different sugars? My water kefir isn’t fizzy. What can I do? All the kind of questions that come up. But really, I mean, I love water kefir. We’ve been drinking it right back since when we first got Nourishing Traditions, like so over a decade ago. Yeah. And absolutely, Gable loves it. And he’s had friends around here who’ve never had it before. Some of them don’t like it, but some of them really do like it, you know, and they’re not used to it at all. So it’s a great one to introduce people to. And it’s a great one for just experimenting with, putting whatever flavors you want in that second ferment. And it’s just it’s pleasing really pleasing that’s that’s my two cents or more to keep here which I love sure.

Alison:
Yeah. And if it seems like we refer to the book a lot, it’s because we made it out of the things we were asked the most about. So it’s joined. The more it comes up, the more you know we hit the nail on the head.

Alison:
The milk kefir, why don’t you do that one too?

Andrea:
Yeah, okay. Milk kefir is another SCOBY ferment and the grains look similar to water kefir grains. There can be a similar size, but water kefir grains are usually transparent, whereas milk kefir grains are kind of creamy white. And really, I think the best way to make milk kefir is with raw milk because it’s so bioactive. Pasteurized milk has been white, you know its slate of bacteria and yeast has been wiped clean, whereas if you work with raw milk you’re working with a real life product do go back and listen to the raw milk episode that we did a few episodes back if you haven’t because it’s a wonderful episode, milk kefir is stronger than water kefir when they’ve done you know scientists have done analysis on it and it has more strains, of probiotics in it. So if you are sensitive to probiotics, it’s one that you have to take quite slowly.

Andrea:
But again, it’s just a wonderful ferment and so simple. You have your milk, you put the kefir grains in, you stir them around, and then you just leave it kind of in a warm place for a couple of days, keep tasting it, take the grains out when it’s the consistency that you like. You could have just a very light ferment or you can take it to the point where it’s separating and and it’s really kind of strong, and it’s it’s wonderful to drink it’s wonderful to put in smoothies it’s wonderful to put on top of fruit it’s really really versatile, um i know, that people say that milk kefir grains and water kefir grains aren’t interchangeable and generally that is true though I do know.

Andrea:
Kirsten Shockey has a course called 30 Days of Fermentation which we talked about in the interview we did with her in January this year, you can get a 10% discount on that course with the link that’s in our show notes and in that she does make a fruit ferment with milk kefir grains, so although generally you you keep them separately you know you put water kefir grains in water kefir, and you put milk kefir grains in milk kefir, um you can experiment with them to some extent and i’ve done that with water kefir grains as well i’ve done water kefir grains in watermelon juice in fruit juice in other types of sugary ferments um, so yeah that you you You make milk kefir a lot, don’t you, Andrea? I mean, because you have so much milk.

Alison:
Yeah, we do. We make a lot of it. Well, I don’t have so much milk right now since the cow’s dry, but that’s why I was making so much of it, maybe a half a gallon a day, and I think we have about six half gallons left. So we’ll see how long it lasts us.

Andrea:
How long does it keep in your fridge?

Alison:
It’s great in the cultured milk smoothie in nourishing traditions. Oh, gosh, a long time. I’ve kept it months, like months and months.

Andrea:
So it’s a way of preserving milk as well.

Alison:
I fill the jars really full, so there’s, yeah, yeah, that was my goal, was to not have zero dairy products the whole time the cow has dried up. And then I’ve been cobbling together here and there between friends that have cows if they have a little extra milk, I’m grabbing some. And so that sort of combined is helping us mind the gap, as it were.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Kombucha is the next SCOBY ferment on here, probably the most popularly known as a SCOBY. And that’s the one I would say we made the most of. I started making that years ago. And… I, I did not like the store bought ones, but I already knew the principle that if I, if I knew a food was good, but I didn’t like it from the store, store probably just messed it up. So that was true.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
So I started making it and then I was making like a lot as in my batches were 20 gallons at a time because I was serving everybody on the farm that I was working on and I did the lunches. So I would make like huge containers and ferment them and always have them rolling. And then we started teaching classes making kombucha out there. That was really fun. And you can see some of those pictures on my blog at farmandhearth.com. If you just search kombucha, there’s two that should pull up two posts or whatever. One is just my basic kombucha recipe, which I’m just, I’m not bragging. I’m just saying it’s the best kombucha you’ve ever had. And I’m saying that honestly, because that’s what everybody tells me, but that’s also my opinion. But then the other one that pulls up will just be different flavors of kombucha that I enjoy. So kombucha is kind of like water kefir, where it has a sort of neutral flavor of its own. You can totally drink it as is, but then you can also go back and flavor it. You can make it more fizzy by adding, I think dried fruits do the best for trying to make it fizzy versus sweet or fresh fruit. But you can bottle it. You can store it for quite a while. You can also use it to make a kombucha, sort of a kombucha vinegar if it gets really, really sour.

Andrea:
Do you keep yours in the fridge after you’ve put it in a second ferment?

Alison:
Yeah. Yes. So I don’t typically actually do a second ferment on kombucha. Okay. This is in the blog post, but what I typically do is once I’ve fermented the kombucha, I put in, like, I like the flavors of the fruits to be really strong. And if I ferment it for that long, then it would turn into a strawberry vinegar or something. So I will fill a half-gallon jar, say, maybe three-quarters or halfway full with fruit if it’s fresh or less if it’s dried. I know, a lot. And then I pour in the kombucha. I cap it really tightly, and I put it in the back of the fridge, and I go on with my life for almost a month. And then when I pull it out and strain it, I mean, I’ve had people tell me how much I’ll pay you anything. It’s so good. and the flavors are and I’ve also had people who told me I’ll tell you right now that kombucha is disgusting I’m never going to drink it and then they drink it and they’re like give me the recipe I’m not going home without it

Andrea:
It’s amazing that these little details can make all the difference you know someone at Gabriel’s school, I gave them some kefir grains they were just like oh it’s just it’s really it’s not fizzy it’s not very nice and I just was able to tell her two or three things and it completely transformed her kefir just those small, little attention to details can make a difference between a drink that’s kind of bland and boring and something that people absolutely love. Buy the cookbook to know what they are. I wanted to ask you about kombucha. Have you ever made kind of fruit things with the scoby? You know, have you ever dried out the scoby and made things with it? Oh yeah, 100%.

Alison:
That’s all in that file that you can download off of my blog. It’s actually a whole packet with a bunch of different recipes i’ve used it to make um like what we would think of as jello you would call it jelly um like gelatin desserts or just gelatin treats. You can use kombucha. Kombucha and bone broth are two things that can kind of run around your kitchen and show up in a bunch of different dishes. So if there’s somewhere where you just need water but it’s a sweet something or it’s going to be cold, you know, you can throw the kombucha in. Although you can also cook kombucha as like a reduction and make a sweet syrup. Yeah, I’ve seen that. It doesn’t even have to be sweet, but you can make a tart or savory.

Alison:
Sort of a syrup for beets or something and you can ferment it with vegetables too if you wanted and then the finished um The fermented things you take out, like I would put tons of strawberries in, in the strawberry season in Virginia, which is pretty short, but I’d make the most of it. And I would make strawberry soda. And, oh my goodness, once the strawberry soda was done, I would either add a drop of lavender essential oil to the bottle. And so it was a strawberry laughter soda, which, I mean, you just can’t beat that. Or I would add a little bit of lemon and then you had a strawberry lemonade and that was over the top too. But then there’s actually restaurants around me that wanted those fermented strawberries and they were using them for these really boutique salads and things. So then you can take them, like all the colors kind of sucked out of them. Your drink is dark red, but then you’ve got these pale sort of strawberries and you can dice them into things and you just have a fermented strawberry. And they’ll last in your fridge for a bazillion years.

Andrea:
Yeah, I agree. the other thing about these scoby ferments is that they’re a really good way to make friends because, all of a sudden the scoby keeps growing and you can then you have all these things that you just want to give to someone else yeah so you know you can ask around you ask in health food stores does anyone want them if you haven’t got anyone you know and they’re a really good way to make friends i think that that’s a nice thing to do we have so many key water kefir grains i mean, we eat them as well Rob has them with his breakfast so you can eat totally eat water kefir grains and you can put them into smoothies and kind of you know blend them up in a smoothie but we also give a lot away, to pass on the love. Yeah.

Alison:
I’m excited to make use of your one-on-one because actually one of the questions you answered in there was mine, Alison, where I said, how come I’m not getting many grains? And, you know, you’re talking about eating them and giving them away. And I’m like, no, nobody touched these. Mine. So I’m excited to see if that helps solve my problem. And with the kombucha, then it was years, I was making it for years before I ever saw people start selling them so you can actually buy them online now if you want to okay and and that’s probably fine sometimes they come dehydrated sometimes they already come like liquidy ready to use right away I don’t necessarily know if one’s better or worse I do know that the scoby I have I got from somebody I don’t know 10 plus years ago and she had got it from somebody else years ago and it is a hardy scoby i have tried to kill it like i’ve actually taken portions off of it and i’ve tried leaving it in a bowl on the deck for years i’ve let it get infested with maggots i’ve tried not the one i’m using not the one i’m using um i’ve dried it i’ve like put it in sealed containers you should be putting

Andrea:
This on youtube because you’ll get a viral video can i just throw.

Alison:
Away i just wanted to see what it could take you know like how and then i would take it back and try to ferment it and gosh darn it if it didn’t work every single time so okay but if you make a scoby from a grocery store kombucha i’m just going to warn you it’s not going to do that it will not tolerate that kind of torture um because because they have been modified yeah um they the uh FDA, maybe it was, here in the United States, maybe nine, yeah, I know, here we go, seven years ago, maybe a decade-ish ago, I don’t remember how long, but they… Found that people were fermenting these bottles at home and making them boozy. And so they went to the companies and said, you have to actually change, like you have to go in and change the yeast content of your SCOBY. So they’re different now, the ones you get from the store, and they’re not quite as tolerant of the torments that a home usage can put them through.

Andrea:
But you can make your own. You can. You can make your own.

Alison:
Yeah, you can. You can make one off of one of those. See if you can find a really sturdy one from someone. Okay. All right.

Andrea:
Let’s move on.

Alison:
What’s next?

Andrea:
Way ferments. So do you want to talk about punch first? That’s the first one we’ve got here.

Alison:
Sure. Don’t punch people. It’s not nice. That’s it. Okay. No. There we go. All right. Moving on. Punch is… Sally Fallon says in here that in the Nourishing Traditions book that it is a traditional…

Alison:
Hindu word meaning five because it was made with five ingredients so yeah so the punch and nourishing traditions is one of our most favorite summer drinks because it takes zero percent effort so you talked allison about the milk kefir how it kind of separates if you leave it sit so i actually leave my kefir in the fridge and it will separate you know the kind of thick curd-ish

Alison:
Milk will sink down and then you’ll have this liquid yellow sort of whey on top. You can ladle that right off the top and use it to make your whey ferments. And sometimes I’ll strain out my milk kefir like through a cheesecloth or something, just pour it in a cheesecloth over a bowl and let it sit for a couple hours or in the fridge overnight or something. And then you have like labneh, which is a thick sort of a cheese made out of kefir, but then you have all the whey on the bottom. And I pour that into ice cube trays and I freeze those. And then I transfer those into gallon jars in the freezer. So then I’ve got these jars filled with whey ice cubes. And then when I want to make a fermented drink, I just pull out like maybe two whey cubes and throw them into my beverage. So it is literally very low impact to my day, but big impact when you’re eating it.

Alison:
The punch in nourishing traditions has about uh, like a cup of lemon juice, a half a cup of rapidura or sucanut or another, um, like the same sugar you would use for water kefir, a half a cup of whey, a half teaspoon of grated nutmeg and two quarts of filtered water. I don’t really measure it at this point. I just pour everything into a half gallon jar and I kind of know where the line needs to be. Add the whey and then put your cap on and leave it on the counter for a couple of days. And you could, one, you could drink it right away. It’s definitely a tolerable drink right away. It’s sweet. It’s going to be a little probiotic because of the whey. But when you let it sit, you know that it’s going to consume more of that sugar. I don’t think it consumes all of it because it’s still pretty sweet when you drink it. But then you can also dilute it down further if you want to. But it’s, I mean, we make this for picnics or if I go anywhere I make it and everybody I’ve never brought any home and one time I made a whole bunch for a family picnic and I still didn’t bring any home because everybody was like can I please take some of that home with me

Andrea:
It’s really good nice nice yeah and I think that sounds like a kind of a blank slate for you to put kind of whatever you want in I mean you can follow Sally’s recipe or you can put in whatever fruit that you happen to have yeah the same thing.

Alison:
I make it with lime. I make it with lemon and lime. You can make it with berries or you could do it with that watermelon that you make, Allison, where you blend it and strain it. I mean, there’s really no limit. You need some sort of a… Like carby sort of a fruit and then you can put in you know whatever you want

Andrea:
So what’s the difference between punch and root beer because root beer is like an american thing it’s not something that i grew up with so it’s not american yeah yeah well i know i think it is i mean just look here disclaimer i’m only me i could be wrong but um, yeah there’s not so much of a tradition But you’re Allison.

Alison:
So you’re probably not. Okay. Well, look at you, Allison. Sassafras was one of America’s first export crops, a bigger seller than tobacco in the 17th century. American colonists and Europeans used it to treat a long list of complaints. So probably worth noting that sodas, has anybody ever heard of a drugstore? And you know how the drugstore has a soda fountain. It’s because sodas historically have always been tonics. They were always healing something in you. It’s only our modern, very, very modern, like super recent. Like healing tonics is as recent as just Allison, like our parents’ childhood. Like it’s very recent. So it’s only in the modern day that we’ve taken, well, I guess we’re reverse engineering that crave. We’ve taken them from the nourishing healing tonic stage and just made them into literally the icon of evil food is soda pop. And they should be the icon of the central feature of your nourishing table. But here we go. You know, everything’s turned on its head. So root beer is, as the name infers, it’s a ferment made with roots. And you can use all different kinds based on your personal preference.

Alison:
Traditional root beer has i want to say at least seven roots um if you’re a patron go check out the summer 2021 cook up that allison and i did we demonstrated three different recipes for from nourishing traditions and i made the root beer on camera and we also put the recipe for it in we had permission to put the recipe in a pdf for you guys that you can download so definitely check that out in your patron links um but basically the way you make root beer is you take whatever roots are your preference and you’re going to simmer them in a pan until you have a concentrate

Alison:
Then once it cools um well i actually add the let’s see some i always feel like if i add the sugar with the roots that i’m going to strain some of the sugar out with the roots does that make sense so i add the sugar after it’s completely um yeah well no not cooled but just after i strain it okay so i simmer the roots strain it add the sugar any any other flavors i like to put in vanilla because hello vanilla let’s just be happy all around um you can put in other um

Alison:
Spices like coriander of course um you could put in anise you could put in um black pepper um uh sally puts lime juice in which i think is really good it rounds out the flavor kind of could be whatever is around you maybe whatever you have in your garden whatever you love whatever you need the healing benefits of maybe you want energy and better blood flow So you are putting in black pepper just for that reason alone. And then, so you add in your sweetener as well, which could be molasses. It could be rapadura or sucanut. It probably could be honey, but I’ve never tried that. I tend to use my sugar in ferments so that it can be consumed quickly and easily without getting super sour. And then you just put it on the counter and ferment it again, like the punch. Yep. So it’s the same thing, except instead of using juice, you’re making a syrup out of roots first.

Andrea:
Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Okay, let’s carry on on our way. The next thing we’ve got down underway for this is haymakers. Talk to us about that.

Alison:
Yeah, okay. Haymakers is, as the name implies, it was used by farmers when they’re making hay because it’s rich in electrolytes. It’s another recipe from Sally Fallon’s. Though Allison maybe we should do a little bit of digging into it and see if it has a history and a context that makes it worth the oat book because it’s made out of water oats and lemon juice or cider vinegar and then you can add a sweetener like molasses which I think if you are literally making hay you should definitely put the molasses in there and then you just mix it and uh let it ferment again so simple um tasty that it’s actually basically just a uh soaked oats really yeah like it’s just soaked oats and then you kind of drink in the water out of it i don’t know if you’re supposed to drink the oats out of it i don’t i strain them out but then you can cook them yeah and you can still use them obviously not throwing them away

Andrea:
Yeah exactly exactly okay well if you.

Alison:
Had a sick cow you could actually make this for the cow allison use the vinegar instead of the lemon juice and you literally feed this to your cow

Andrea:
Yeah and if she was um feeding a little calf the oats might be really beneficial for her as well.

Alison:
Yeah how funny

Andrea:
Okay i want to talk about beekvas next so i’m going to jump in yeah i want.

Alison:
To hear this

Andrea:
I love beekvas it’s um it’s color that’s why i like it the most i think because it just looks incredible it comes from um ukraine russia poland area all of those countries make it, and it’s got a really long history as a health tonic we’re talking about health tonics just now it’s good for your blood it’s good for your liver and it aids your digestion, now you can make it with whey or without whey if you make it um without whey you’re going to put more salt in it because what you want to do at the very beginning of the ferment you want to control the bacteria and make sure that the lactic acid bacteria have a chance to establish themselves in your drink so if you put whey in you’re giving it a kickstart already and there’s lactic acid bacteria in that if you’re not then add more salt because salt inhibits other bacteria and then you’ll have that lactic acid bacteria growing naturally.

Andrea:
Um, you don’t have to just use your beets once. So, um, after you’ve left it to ferment, and you like the flavor of it, you strain it out and then you can fill up the jar again with water and get a kind of a second runnings of it, which is a bit weaker, but still got loads of goodies in it.

Andrea:
And it’s not one that necessarily is sweet. I have made it sweet because what I have done is I’ve taken I’ve not put anything extra in the original ferment I’ve just done beets and then I’ve taken that, and I’ve put it in a bottle, and I’ve put something a little bit sweet in it like a little bit of honey and I’ve closed the bottle and I’ve left it to ferment on the room you know on the counter room temperature, and that makes it kind of fizzy because the fermentation is still going on aided with a little bit of extra sweetness so you can have fizzy beet kvass but traditionally it’s not a sweet drink and it’s not fizzy you know lots of cultures, just you know they when they put those beets in the jar for the ferment with the water and the whey or the salt, they will add garlic for example or coriander seeds or bay leaves or all three, to that fermentation and you can add lots of garlic to it literally so it becomes even more of a health tonic you know you’re not just getting the benefits of the beets but you’re getting the benefits of fermented garlic as well which is just a powerhouse, um oh yeah so it’s not necessarily something you’re going to kind of glug back like you might do water kefir or root beer it’s, it’s something that you just want a shot of yeah um okay.

Andrea:
One one thing i’ve learned from making it is that afterwards the beets are wonderful particularly if you don’t do that filling up the jar again for a second time, if you take the beets out after they’ve just been in for a four or five day fermentation that’s how long I usually leave it, You can roast those beets afterwards. And if you’ve put garlic and coriander and bay all in with them as well, they’ve got the kind of edge of the fermentation on them, and yet they’re still a bit sweet. And they’ve got all those spices on them, and you put them in the oven, and they are delicious.

Alison:
Really, really good. Would like that on my oat cakes,

Andrea:
Please. Just give me five days and I’ll do it for you.

Alison:
All of these drinks really produce amazing byproducts as well.

Andrea:
Yeah, indeed.

Alison:
Most of them do.

Andrea:
So we’re going to move now from talking about whey ferments to talking about wild ferments.

Alison:
Maybe I should, I just want to throw in there, I’m not going to say any more drinks, but I’m going to say that with whey drinks, there are endless numbers of whey drinks you can make. And if you just need to spark your imagination, jump into the beverages section in the end of Nourishing Traditions. And Sally Fallon has brought in a really good collection of whey ferments from around the world. And that might spark your imagination and give you other ideas as well.

Andrea:
Yeah, I’ve forgotten about sweet potato. We didn’t put sweet potato fly down here, did we? I’ve just forgotten.

Alison:
No, no, we didn’t. And we didn’t do like the rice milk or anything. But that’s all things that you can investigate in that book.

Andrea:
There’s so many of them. You think you’ve got them all and then another one comes up. None. I know. So do you want to talk a little bit about making punch with sugar if you don’t want to make it with whey and you’re going to do a wild for mint?

Alison:
Well, I will, but I’m going to look at you for this, too, because I always make it with whey. So I always make it with whey. But then when you said Kvass could be made with whey, I did not know that. I always just thought you had to make it without. So then that works on the wild ferments, too, with the punch and things like you said. You probably put a little salt in there because, well, I don’t know. I guess it depends. The lemon juice is pretty acidic, so you might not actually need any salt.

Andrea:
So when I do kind of, I wouldn’t call it a punch, I’d maybe call it a soda or a naturally fermented soda or something. I generally don’t use whey. I would use sugar. I would make sure the sugar content was enough in there to have enough yeast on it. The way that I do that is by making sure that, you know, you’ve got a solid sugar content in there, but also you’ve got something in there which has got some natural yeasts on it. So you’ve got a skin of some fruits or you’ve got lemon in there that’s been, you know, this organic lemon that you can leave the rind on it. You’ve got some herbs in there, maybe some rosemary that you’ve taken from the garden. And all of those things are going to have a kind of a natural covering of yeasts. Combine that with the sugar that you put in there and wow, it just, it does its thing generally. If it doesn’t, try upping the temperature or try putting more sugar in it. Um, we’ll talk in a minute about sugar content, but, um, that’s the way, just like I was talking about with the beak of ass where, you know, you use, you can use the way if you want, but if you don’t want, you’ve got to put more salt in with punches. You’ve just got to make sure you’ve got that sugar and source of natural yeasts and it will just do its thing naturally.

Alison:
So you would definitely want some lemon skins or something in here than others. Or maybe just like honestly shred in some ginger with the skin. That would probably do it.

Andrea:
So what I did for the patrons for this episode, we’re going to do a bonus. So we’ve done a bonus that we’ll have some of our favorite fermented drinks in. And I put a recipe in there for a raisin and lemon wild fermented punch, which just basically is made in the way that I’ve explained now and, all the specifics are in there and then you can drink that or I often use it to make a starter with and will then make bread with it, so you know these things are kind of like you said with the kombucha they’re multi-purpose you can drink that or you can use it and combine it with flour and make a starter and make a bread using those, harnessing those yeasts in your bread. So that will be up on the treasure trove and we’ll have other recipes and bits and goodies in for the patrons to dive into when they’re ready.

Alison:
You mentioned just oh so briefly something that’s really important and I’ll add a friend of mine, hello Becca, she was making sourdough and I said, you know, she was like, oh, what is going on here? And I said, Why don’t you go take Allison’s free course, the 10 steps for your sourdough starter? Literally, like, who steps in? You had solved her problem. I got that. I know. So she was so excited. And she keeps telling me, she’s like, look at it now. Look, it’s doing so well. And it was that her house was too cold. And so she moved the starter to her laundry room where it’s warm. And she said, oh, my gosh, it went from just sort of this insipid little limp thing to foaming over. She had to split it into two jars. And now she’s able to share it with her mom. And it’s working so well. She just showed me that she made hamburger buns. Um yeah so if your drinks like if you’re saying oh i put milk cafe on the counter and it’s three days and it’s well your house is probably too cold and you can find somewhere warm to put it my favorite now that i can’t run my dehydrator all the time like i used to because of the power my favorite is i take a cooler

Alison:
And I put my containers of ferment, whatever it is, could be your punch, it could be water kefir, milk kefir, whatever. I put them in the cooler and then I put in my hot water bottles, like the same ones that we sleep with at night. I put those in there and close it up. And the next morning, everything’s fermented really nicely. The only thing is, I think you’re supposed to separate yeast ferments. So I don’t put something like sourdough typically in at the same time. I have never either separated. But since I don’t have room in the cooler to put the sourdough in, it doesn’t go in. But I should say, actually, the other day, Chloe and I made yogurt and then we both made sourdough bread. And my small cooler was full of eggs ready to go somewhere. So I just used a big cooler. So we’re like, ah, so we shoved our sourdoughs in there, too. So I guess we do actually

Andrea:
Mix it up. So I have a space which has a DIY proofing set up in it, which I will link in the show notes to the article that I’ve written about it, which basically Rob made for me. But it’s our oven. When we use that as our DIY proofing box and we have an equipment that we put in there. And then when I want to cook something, I have to take it out and use it as an oven and then wait for it to cool down and put it all back in. But it works. But it’s such a big space. And that’s the reason why I love it. Because I always have like, you know, like some days I have like four breads going on and I’ve got a beer and I’ve got all these other things.

Alison:
Another rye book.

Andrea:
And everything just goes in together. It just does. And I’ve never had a problem.

Alison:
I don’t have molds either. I don’t know if it’s because our ferments are always in motion. I don’t know if it’s because they’re really sturdy ones. I don’t know really why. But yeah, mine don’t mold either. There’s something else. Oh, I was just going to say, it’s not you fighting against the cold house. This is why our ancestors fermented beverages, because they would last so long during the cold seasons. And also because… You could make beverages out of things like I’m doing with the milk, for instance, and sustain yourself over winter. A lot of people, historically, they weren’t milking cows in winter. So the only thing you would have would be any sort of fermented dairies or hard cheeses and things like that. So then in the summer, you also tend to drink more. I feel like at least I do because we’re working outside a lot and you’re sweating a lot more. Which is not to say you can’t get dehydrated in the winter, but certainly in the summer, you can just go through the electrolytes a lot faster. So, yeah, just think like an ancestor.

Andrea:
Do you want to talk a little bit about cider? Because we’ve still got tons to do and we’ve been talking for ages. Okay.

Alison:
Okay, well, there’s not much to say for me to say on cider because I don’t have a huge experience. I will just say that I’ve done wild fermented cider and I put it in a carboy with an oxygen. What’s it called? Oxygen exchange on the top. And it was the best cider I’ve ever had. And then I tried fermenting some with an inoculation, I think champagne or something like that. It was terrible. I poured it all out. And yeah and everybody had raved about how good it was going to be so I was like okay this is going to be good but I think I just prefer the wild ferment flavors and the inoculation tasted I mean Allison it was I was like how do you make cider bland like how do you do that well it did

Andrea:
That just go into a laboratory and make one yeast and dry it and put it in a packet and sell it to people yeah.

Alison:
Yeah um you can also add honey to your cider when you ferment it i have not done that but i would like to try so if anybody’s done that let me know how you liked

Andrea:
It okay so i’ve got a lot more wild ferments to talk about so i’m just gonna um dive into this so ginger beer the first one, i learned how to make ginger beer from pale who runs kobo fermentary she is on instagram you can go to her profile and she has a highlight about ginger beer she absolutely raves about ginger beer the smell of the.

Andrea:
Bug which is what the kind of um the bit that you keep is she loves that, it’s so easy to make ginger beer you can keep the bug that you make which is where you kind of culture the yeast and bacteria on the ginger with sugar, you can keep that in the fridge for like ever literally so you can use it much much later I mean we’ve got our bug at the back of the fridge and generally we make more, ginger beer in the winter because of ginger and how that’s really good for your immune system. And then during the summer, it just stays in the back of the fridge. Every couple of months, I get it out and feed it some more sugar, put a bit more fresh ginger in, and then it goes back in. But also I use that bug that’s in the fridge to start other ferments. I’ve started beer with it. I’ve helped put it in water kefir. I’ve used the actual ginger root itself in cooking. So I’ll take some of the grated ginger out that’s in the bag and I’ll put it in a curry I’m making or some other kind of dish that I’m making to give that ginger flavour with a bit of extra kind of zing. It’s a really wonderful ferment and again I usually second ferment it so I will do one litre or two litres in a jar and then put it in a bottle and let it fizz up.

Andrea:
Beak kvass like we talked about earlier can be a wild ferment, doesn’t have to be whey. I wanted to talk about shrubs a little bit, which I don’t have much experience with, but I know a little bit about. And the word apparently comes from Arabic. The word shurb in Arabic means to drink. And it is a fermented drink. It’s a mix of fermented fruit and vinegar. So it’s pretty much like a drinking vinegar. So you can imagine there’s some complex flavors going on in there. And basically you crush your fruit, you put it with sugar, plush whatever herbs or spices you want to do leave it to ferment for a couple of days then you add vinegar and you leave it to mature until you’ve got the flavor that you want, it’s quite strong and often quite sour because of vinegar so you can water it down with tonic water or fizzy water as you can any of the recipes i wanted to kind of say that um, One of the patrons, Michelle, was talking to me about her rye bread kvass and saying how it’s a bit strong for her, as in a bit too sugary. She doesn’t like it that sugary, but her husband does. So she gives her husband it full on and she mixes hers with half fizzy water. So any of the ferments, if you feel like they’re too sugary or too strong for you, you can just water them down.

Andrea:
So, shrubs are an interesting one and ones that I haven’t played with much, but I’d like two more. And one I have played with is wine.

Andrea:
And I mean, I think wines have been made simply from fruit and drunken fresh for absolutely millennia. And in Wild Fermentation, the book by Sandor Katz, which is in our bookstore, which is linked in our show notes, there’s a couple of really good templates for making your own wild wine.

Andrea:
I’ve made strawberry wine quite a lot and it is absolutely wonderful thing to do um to kind of watch it fermenting and then to taste it i drink it young i don’t have any um airlocks or carboys to ferment something for a long time, um and i’ve put the details for that one in the document for the patrons as well how I do it, you could age it if you want to like a lot of the other ferments we talked about here, but then you need that equipment that I was talking about and just to drink it young it’s fizzy it’s a little bit alcoholic it’s still sweet and you can use those strawberries like you said um from your kombucha you could use the strawberry the whatever fruit you’re using to make, um wild wine in, in things afterwards you can just eat it that’s how long you leave it for really because the longer you leave it, like you said, Andrea, the color comes out of the strawberries and the sweetness goes into the wine. So the wild wine is a wonderful thing to make. And if anyone has a glut of fruit, I would say consider just making a wild wine with them. You just need water, sugar and your fruit. There’s so much yeast on that fruit skin. It will surprise you. And it’s such a fun thing to do.

Andrea:
Um, tapache is another example of a fruit wine. I’ve not ever made it because it is made with pineapples. And I live in Europe, which is miles away from where pineapples are cultivated. Um, but it’s a similar kind of idea. You know, the skin is used and it’s fermented. It is in a course over at the fermentation school, which we will link in the show notes, which is actually a really good course if you want a general overview of fermented beverages, because it covers kombucha, it covers kefir, it covers fermented sodas, it’s got an orangina in there, it’s got kvass in there, it’s got milk kefir, tetapé is in there as well. And as I did mention briefly earlier, we’ve got a 10% discount that we extend to patrons. So if you wanted to get hold of that, which I think is $40, then you would get 10% off it.

Andrea:
So the last one in my section on wild ferments is mead and mead, such a historic drink. If you have read Stephen Harabuna’s wonderful Sacred Herbal and Healing Beers, there’s a really big section on mead in there, which is kind of historical. And you just never look at bees the same way again after you’ve read that. Just like the wild wine, I drink my mead young. I’ve never aged it. And if you go online you find a lot of recipes for mead have packeted yeast in them just like Andrea’s side did.

Andrea:
I have never done that but I have had mixed results so I find the more active the honey is the more success and the quicker your mead is going to go. So for example I have made mead with acacia honey and it’s taken a very long time and it’s not been, um particularly bubbly or fizzy acacia produces a really light honey i’ve also made it with dark honeys like in italy would be a chestnut honey and that i find is much more active and produces a more successful, mead so look for an unpasteurized honey you know go and find a local beekeeper who’s making honey and then just putting their honey in a jar that’s clean, not sending it into machines to be sterilized. And make sure you use enough honey in the ferment. You need to water it down because honey doesn’t ferment on its own because it’s not liquidy enough. But make sure you use enough honey to make sure there’s enough sugar in that ferment to keep it going. And again, the same rules apply. Keep it warm because if it’s not warm enough, it won’t ferment. And it’s a wonderful drink. You know, most people are used to mead that’s been aged, but mead young is just fizzy and wonderful.

Andrea:
Really, really wonderful. Before we get onto grain ferments, Andrew, I just wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of questions that I’ve had about ferments. The first one is sugar. A lot of people say to me, but there’s this sugar in this ferment. I’m sugar sensitive or I don’t want to eat this sugar. And a lot of people with water kefir have tried to use other sugars in their water kefir. I had someone here who was using stevia, which isn’t a sugar. Um it’s not gonna work so i would say at the beginning of making ferments like 10 years ago i was a bit concerned about it but what i’ve learned is really that, you are in charge of these ferments and you get to say when you stop the, shorter that you ferment any of these ferments with sugar in them the more sugary they will be because the less action there’s been between the yeasts and the sugar to convert that sugar into byproducts and give you fizz right um.

Andrea:
The longer you leave them the more the sweet taste will be removed because it’s been transformed and it’s a balance because you know drinking vinegar unless you’re doing it consciously in a shrub, isn’t necessarily a pleasant thing to do if you want to drink so you you you know you can leave any of ferments forever and they will end up being vinegar um, but you don’t necessarily want to drink that but it’s up to you and you totally can can learn as you do these ferments okay two days at this temperature gives me just a little bit of sweetness left so it tastes really nice, but you know i know that i’m not going to be imbibing that much sugar and if you’re making it for kids and you want to give them more sugar then you know you can say okay i’ll only ferment it for one day, Um, but the end result generally, it does not equal the sugar that you put in. So I would say there’s no need to be overly concerned about sugar. The other question I get a lot is alcohol content because any yeast ferment that you’re doing is going to produce alcohol as a by-product. Um, wild ferments, um, it’s, it’s difficult to tell how much alcohol is in them because, you know there’s no one with a with a, with a science lab who’s going to go and be testing all these wild ferments and say well how much alcohol is in it because they’re off doing things that um chemical companies and medical companies are paying them to do things that.

Alison:
Make money exactly

Andrea:
Um but with alcohol if you’re wild fermenting you’re not going to get as much alcohol as if you’re fermenting with a yeast from a packet because you’ve got such a different mix of yeast and bacteria, and there’s so many different things going there, you get a mix of byproducts. And frankly, you get more interesting flavors. If you’re buying a packet of yeast that is designed to do one particular thing, and it’s probably going to produce more alcohol. I know that some people have tested alcohol in kefir, and it’s very low. Usually, it’s about half to 1%. But I would say if you’re worried about alcohol content, go slowly with your ferments just try a little bit you know just have like a shot glass or you know 15-20 mils of that ferment a day, and also do what we said earlier which is water your ferments down so you’re just you’re going to be having more hydration from the water and you’re going to be having less alcohol, right do you have anything you want to add to that andrea.

Alison:
You covered it.

Andrea:
I feel like I’m talking really fast to try and get all the rest of the content.

Alison:
People are probably on there slowing the audio down like, what?

Andrea:
Okay, so let’s go to grain perments. And I think probably I’m going to talk a lot here as well.

Alison:
So this is, I think you could write a book on this.

Andrea:
One day, one day. So I’ve got four grain perments to share with you. The first one is Bosa. Bosa is from the area around Turkey. It’s something that we have all the time in our house. Literally, I’m either making it or I’ve just made it. We drink it straight. Sometimes we make it more liquidy and we drink it. Sometimes we eat it with a spoon. It is an absolutely wonderful drink to ferment. I think it is the favourite drink in our household because of the flavour.

Andrea:
It is sweet, it is sour, but it is fizzy in a way that isn’t like bubbles in kefir. So you don’t feel the physical bubbles on your tongue, but it just fizzes. The flavor fizzes in your mouth. It is just amazing. And the reason I started making it is because I wanted something for Gabriel, who at that time was not eating any dairy and was lectin-free. So it’s made with millet. You can make it with other grains and other areas of the Balkans around Turkey have made it with other grains, but I make it with millet, which makes it lectin-free, gluten-free and dairy-free. And Gable absolutely adores it. Um historically it’s got a really um, a good pedigree you know it was made in turkey and until very recently, there were sellers who went around the streets and in turkey selling boza kind of in milk on a you know kind of a milk yoke around the neck with jars of boza either side there are still, um shops in um istanbul that sell boza and you can go there and buy it I have a course on Bose, which I made a couple of years ago. It is 25 euros, which I think is about $20, isn’t it? Kind of similar at the moment, about $20.

Alison:
It’s changing every day.

Andrea:
It’s a video course and it will take you through the whole process through creating the starter to making the actual drink to how you can use it to troubleshooting to how you can keep it going to how you can put it in the fridge and stop it if you want to. Just absolutely everything to do with Bose. It is just an amazing ferment. Do you have anything you want to ask about Boza that I’ve forgotten in my love of Boza to put across, Andrea?

Alison:
I just think if, I don’t think I ever heard of it before you talked about it here. I’ve never been to Turkey and I don’t know many people from Turkey. So it had never come up. But I did look it up after you first started talking about it. And you’re right, they do sell it. But I don’t think it’s really the same as what you’re making anymore. It’s a more modern version, like inspired by, and then you can get all these toppings and stuff. So I think really the way to get the experience would be find somebody there who was, you know, traditionally making it or take Alison’s course and traditionally make it yourself. But what a great option for people who want. I’ve seen the boys come home one time when you and I were on video. They chucked themselves right down in the chair and started sucking down cups of that. I know that Gabriel loves it.

Andrea:
It’s like, where’s the poster? What’s the poster?

Alison:
Out of my way.

Andrea:
It’s a wonderful, wonderful ferment.

Alison:
And it doesn’t give you any, this and the water kefir I wanted to ask, they don’t give you that kind of effect that too much like sauerkraut and things can do?

Andrea:
They are not as, they’re not so much of a problem for me as sauerkraut. Okay. There are various different strains that yeast and bacteria give off and some of them I have a problem with histamine with. So some of them give off more histamine producing bacteria. some of them don’t have those systamine producing bacteria and some of them affect me in different ways but Bosa and Waterkeith here I find less, potent in that way for me so that I think for me particularly they don’t have the strains in that cause me problems with sleeping and with histamine issues so do you.

Alison:
You think it’s possibly then, since we haven’t had yours tested and everybody’s in their home might be different, but you think possibly that indicates it’s a lower histamine drink?

Andrea:
Yes, I would say so. I mean, everyone reacts differently and I don’t actually know because I haven’t tested them and I haven’t tested the effect they have on my body. But, you know, I’ve got 10 years experience of drinking these foments, so I kind of know how my body reacts through experience. And really the main thing is you know if you if you can’t have dairy and you can’t have gluten, and maybe even you can’t have lectins you can still make this and it will taste amazing and kids will love it and you can put it in smoothies you don’t have to use milk kefir in smoothies you can use boza, and even if you you aren’t dairy free and you aren’t gluten free you know if you want something that’s unusual and interesting and so good it’s a wonderful wonderful drink okay Perfect.

Andrea:
Okay, let’s move on to my other love in terms of grain ferments. I’ve got so many of them, which is suins and swats. Suins and swats are a traditional Scottish oat ferment. And they are something that, again, I have a course on, which is over at the fermentation school. Yeah.

Andrea:
Sueins is a wild ferment made with traditionally the husks that came back from the miller after the Scottish had their oats ground into oatmeal. So they’d get the oatmeal back, which they’d use to make porridge and oat cakes and all those other good stuff. And then they’d have the husks, which have bits of the white, endosperm of the grain still clinging to them, you know, little minute bits and rather than throw them away they fermented them and they made two products with it um a porridge which is suins and a drink which is the fermenting water which is called swats, and we cook up the suins mainly as porridge but you can also drink the suins by watering it down and making kind of a thick wintery sort of you know put your hands around a mug drink, But generally, we drink the Swats, which is the wild fermented liquid that those oats have been in. And we drink that straight. It’s got a kind of a tart, lemony flavour. We drink it cold in the summer because it’s really refreshing. A bit like the Haymaker’s water, I think, that we were talking about earlier.

Alison:
I was just going to say that.

Andrea:
Yeah, it’s similar, really similar. and we also um drink it warm in the winter, and i love to put spices in it so i put like anise cardamom um nutmeg, all those lovely warming spices and and heat it up in the winter, i also use it in breads and to kickstart other ferments, just it’s a really versatile thing and the good thing about it is you get your porridge as well so you’ve got this porridge which is really easily digestible because it doesn’t have any oat bran in it which is where most of the phytates are, it’s been fermented right so it’s going to be lower in phytates anyway and then you get this drink as well which you can just keep in your fridge and you know have cold have warm warm up used as a starter, it’s absolutely wonderful yeah really and i’ve been when you yeah go on.

Alison:
Oh, no, you finish.

Andrea:
I was just going to say, I’ve been doing Suez and Swats now for nearly three years. Yeah. A lot, you know, almost continuously. And I just can’t get bored of them. They are the flavor of the oats and the flavor of the wild ferment. And the fact that you have this porridge and a drink and the many ways you can drink and eat both of those things. I just, I absolutely love them. I really do. And I think that comes across in my course. You know, so many people have taken that suins course. It’s one of the most popular courses at the fermentation school. And I’m just so enthusiastic about it. It’s a wonderful way to use oats in a way that people don’t know about. And it will surprise you and then you will get hooked if you’re anything like me. What were you going to ask me? Yeah.

Alison:
Um, oats are gluten-free, they grow gluten-free, correct, and the only reason I think you said that they might not be gluten-free is due to being processed on equipment.

Andrea:
Yeah, that’s right. That also.

Alison:
Okay, so we get our oats from a mill, it’s actually literally across the highway from us, a farm and a mill out here, and they only do oats.

Andrea:
Okay.

Alison:
So they are all labeled gluten-free.

Andrea:
Yeah. Completely.

Alison:
Um and do you so put the your put the links for these courses in the show notes for sure but also which one okay adriana upgraded her patreon account to the next level that’s right which was the one that so

Andrea:
She got the bosa course free so adriana came up to our stewardship level on our patreon and because of that she, we we gifted her my bosa course for free she also So then gets a 30% discount, on my suins course and my sourdough rye bread course over at the fermentation school.

Alison:
Jeez, that’s awesome. I love it. And that is something she can make for the rest of her life.

Andrea:
Yeah, exactly.

Alison:
Literally, the rest of her life, she can make her grandkids,

Alison:
you know. What an awesome gift you’re giving us. Okay, let’s hear about the rye.

Andrea:
Yeah, so rye kovas is next. So rye kovas is another grain ferment because it’s made with bread. It’s absolutely delicious. And in Russia, basically, it’s a traditional beer, I would say. It uses rye bread that you toast to start with to bring out the flavor of the rye bread, you know, to have some of those reactions go on. And also sugar as well as the rye bread. And I’ve made it two ways. One, which I have an article on my blog for, just uses bread and sugar. And when you’ve done that first ferment, that bread then becomes a starter because it becomes inhabited by all the yeasts that have been in that starter. And you use it again and again and again.

Andrea:
The recipe for that is on my website. I will try and remember to link it in the show notes. Does bread just become like a soup in the bottom of the thing? No, it does break down a little bit. So you cube it to toast it. But as you use it more and more, it does break down. But it’s kind of like crumbs, wet crumbs. You know, you can imagine bread crumbs. Oh, okay. And I use a sieve to strain it each time into a second ferment into a bottle. And then you take what’s in the top of the sieve, which is the starter. You put it back in a clean jar. More sugar. Start again. That’s the way I do it. The other way you can do it is by just using that bread once. So you do the same thing. You cube the bread. You toast it. You put it in a jar with sugar and any other flavorings you want to do. Then you put sourdough starter in there. Oh, so unheated. Yeah. Ellie from Ellie’s Everyday does that. And I know that Michelle, the patron I was talking about earlier, does that too. I’ve done it both ways. I kind of like the first way because you don’t have to keep saving bread and using it again and again. And also there’s a difference in flavor. You know, if you put a sourdough starter in there, you’re inoculating that ferment with a certain profile and therefore the ferment will have a certain flavor. If you do just the rye bread and sugar, it’s more kind of wild yeast going on and it’s a bit more varied in the flavor. But both ways are good.

Alison:
If you were only going to make it like once a year, maybe the sourdough starter and bread one would be the easiest. That’s correct. But if you were planning to refresh it constantly, then probably the bread one that you reuse would make sense.

Andrea:
Yeah, completely. Okay. And it’s got a really deep flavor. It’s known as the Russian cola because it does actually taste a bit like Coca-Cola. Not that I’ve tasted Coca-Cola for like 15 years. But it does taste like Coca-Cola. Sometimes in the second ferment, I will put mint, which is a traditional kind of flavor for the second ferment. But I know that if you put zest in there, like lemon zest or orange zest, they both go really, really well. And it’s really nice with orange zest.

Alison:
Do you ever heat this one?

Andrea:
No, I’ve never heated it. But you could, I imagine. Mine tends to be quite fizzy because I second ferment it. And so if you heat it, you lose that fizz. And I miss that, you know?

Alison:
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
So, yeah. Okay. We’re getting towards the end. Wow. The end of grains, anyway.

Alison:
Are we, though?

Andrea:
No, we’re not. So, the last one on grains is beer. So, go back and listen to our episode that we dedicated to beer. A few episodes back if you’re interested in this because it’s a real.

Alison:
Such a good one

Andrea:
Kind of education in it so my journey into beer started with boozer which is not bozer it’s boozer it’s got a U in it which is in wild fermentation boozer is an ancient is that where we.

Alison:
Get our word

Andrea:
Booze? I think so I don’t know so it’s like boozer, bozer, booze, beer it’s already similar etymology.

Alison:
It’s all right in the

Andrea:
Same indeed boozer is an ancient Egyptian beer which involves malting half the grains and cooking half your grains into a little bread and then fermenting them and leaving the grains in the ferment. I’ve kind of moved on in exploration since then. I’m now making a kitchen-based, home-cultured, home-malted ale that’s free from hops and doesn’t taste bitter like our modern beer has become. And as you heard at the top of the episode we had some for lunch and it’s just I had it and I said to Rob I’m, I could serve this to anyone who comes in here. You know, sometimes I do my ferments and they’re really sour or they’re really kind of tart or they’re really kind of got some weird old flavor in or, I do recipes with not much sugar in because I’m not a fan of sugar and sugar affects me kind of health-wise. But this beer, we’ve got it to a point now where I just, if anyone came in, I would just say, try this and I would explain what it is. And I would be really proud of the flavor and the texture. It just is a wonderful drink, and I hope that as time moves on, I can have a course like I do for the Boza and the Suins and show it to people.

Alison:
Oh, yeah. That would be really great because beverages are just a little bit harder to get the information on. And I think kind of like what you found with the Boza, part of the reason is because people aren’t making them day in and day out, year over year, like they historically were. So there’s a lot of people out there who have made one or two a few times, or maybe even for a couple months or a year, but they haven’t been making it for years on end. And so they don’t have as many… Iterations or you know they can’t say well you know when you use this bread for after two years it does this you know that

Andrea:
That’s what i need to do with the beer you know people have asked me for a course but i need to just do it again and again and again with different starters different different grains different and learn everything about it before i’m prepared to, go and you know show people because i i want to be able to help with everything that goes wrong and be ready for questions so.

Alison:
Well that is something i would say if anybody’s considering getting allison’s courses that’s something you’ll notice is that i know because i’ve watched you work on them but the depth of i i don’t i mean i don’t think i’ve ever seen a course as detailed as yours are because you go so far down the road of you know pushing the envelope and then well what happens if this And then, like, I know things, you’re like, well, I made it for five years and then I decided that I would try to make the course on it instead of, well, this weekend I learned how to make kombucha, so I’m going to write a, you know, documentary on it or whatever. So, yeah, your courses are actually quite thorough, which I think is in this era of courses being so popular, I think that is something that’s very hard to come by.

Andrea:
Thank you.

Alison:
Yeah, your courses are excellent.

Andrea:
Okay, so that is the end of the grain section. I could go on for several days about those drinks, but we have a podcast to finish. So let’s talk about smoothies. Do you want to do some talking so I can rest my voice for a bit?

Alison:
Okay, you can have a break. Well, I would say smoothies is a… It’s one of those things that can be made with the byproduct of your ferments or just with your ferments incorporated in with other things. And especially, I feel like, especially in the summertime, we’ll do a lot more smoothies because the kids want cold things. So, if you make a lot of, like, I’ll make a lot of milk kefir or you can make fermented almond drink.

Alison:
Excuse me, that’s in Sally Fallon’s book. I’ve made that and fermented it. You can pour those all into ice cube trays. If you have a lot of fermented drink, I would even say something like beer, although I haven’t done that. But say you think, oh, I’m just not going to go through this, or maybe we’re going out of town or whatever. Pour it into ice cube trays and freeze it if you have the room. And those can turn up in all kinds of fun drinks over the next couple months. And we’ve come up with some really fun ones. I’ve even frozen coffee that we’ve made. And like i said i freeze away i’ve made i’ve blended the ginger and lemon and made concentrates i’ve made just ginger concentrated ginger water that is actually you can use it to start ferments as well because it’s i blend it with the skin on and everything and then i strain the ginger out and then i pour that water into ice cube trays and then i’ll use it for either just making drinks or

Alison:
Or making ferments with so there’s lots of things you can do by freezing your beverages and then also I know a lot of people say you know when it rains it pours you either have no way and this you can’t buy way or you have a gallon at a time and you don’t know what to do with it so if you can freeze it I think you did it too right Allison you tried freezing it

Andrea:
Yeah And I’ve still got some in my.

Alison:
Freezer. It’s brilliant. Fantastically. Yeah. It ferments things really well. I remember we had sort of questioned, is it still going to ferment the drinks? But no, honestly, maybe even faster. Like they just dried up.

Andrea:
Yeah, I often freeze my Bose starter and then you can get it out and you can make Bose with it again. So if you’re going away for like a month, just put the Bose in the freezer and it works fine. Yeah.

Alison:
Based on your advice, I also froze some milk kefir grains in water, I think you said to do. Yeah. And you can freeze your water kefir grains as well. So I have little jars of those in the freezer because you just never know what could happen. Maybe somebody babysits your ferment. It doesn’t survive or you forget about it or you have a baby and you just don’t pay attention to anything other than the baby for a couple months. I’m just saying things that I’ve done in the past. And it’s nice to be able to get that frozen starter out. And then, of course, Allison, you said starters are a good way to make friends, but it’s also a good way to have. It’s like filing investments in a diversified portfolio. So leave starters with people all over the place. And then if something happens to your sourdough starter, say, then you can call up a list of friends that you know have your starter and see who’s got some to share. So it can go around and come around. Smoothies includes the lassi, which I think actually there might be a recipe for that in nursing traditions. I have never made that. I have been served it. It’s a fermented drink. Or a fermented milk drink. I’m just looking to see if she has it in here. No, I don’t see it. Made with fermented yogurt. And then there’s the cultured milk smoothie and nourishing traditions, which I think I talked about that, Allison, on one of our very earliest episodes where we said three of our favorite recipes.

Andrea:
Yeah, the first nourishing traditions episode. I don’t know what number it is, but the first one.

Alison:
It’s like number four or something, like three or four. It’s way early. That is one of my staples. and it’s a great one for everybody but I would say especially nursing moms it’s great for the kids love it and it’s so filling it has egg yolk in it has fat and it has the fermented milk and then Alison you said you could put both in smoothies

Andrea:
Exactly in the same way you know you can put fruit in you can put greens in you can put whatever you want in with it you can put it with anything nut milk, with anything yeah it’s really a wonderful base for smoothies yeah.

Alison:
Okay. And then you can also make clobbered milk, which there’s a lot of different ways to do that. You need very fresh, very clean, raw milk for that. And… You can clabber it to different thicknesses. And so you can clabber it where Beatrice, who did one of our first videos in the Patreon treasure trove where she demonstrated how she prepares Tsukuma, then she told me, maybe not in that video, I don’t remember if it was then or after, how they made ghee and different things like that. But I know that they’ll pour milk into gourds and then it was her job to shake it constantly. So you can put clabber or the milk in a container on the counter and just jostle it every once in a while and get almost like a yogurt-like ferment. Or you can let it separate completely into curds and whey and use it for like schmearcus or different things.

Andrea:
We could go on and on.

Alison:
But you could, yeah, there’s really no limit. Anywhere there’s, you know, every region of the world, every village, every mountaintop, every culture has versions of dairy ferments and grain ferments and whey ferments. And there, I mean, there are thousands of them.

Andrea:
So what recipes are you going to put in the Patreon document with my wild wine and my lemon raisin? I was thinking about putting in.

Alison:
The summer punch because… Okay. Um… Because we make it so much, it just seems like I should. I was also thinking about putting in the blueberry vanilla kombucha.

Andrea:
That sounds nice.

Alison:
Just because it’s such a popular one over here. And it’s such a seasonal one, and this will be going out around when blueberries are going to be coming forward.

Andrea:
Forward thinking.

Alison:
Yeah. That’s me.

Andrea:
Okay.

Alison:
And you’ve got the strawberry wine in there, and you put in your rosemary, lemon, raisin.

Andrea:
Yeah, indeed.

Alison:
Okay, great.

Andrea:
Wonderful. Well, I think we could just carry on and probably we will have more, episodes on fermented drinks in the future because we could go into so much more depth in virtually all the ones that we’ve talked about. But I feel like that was a, well, I think we did justice to a kind of an overview of it there.

Alison:
Yeah. I hope this leaves you feeling like you have lots of options, but that you can, I don’t want somebody to think you have to do all the beverages. But look at what sort of suits your lifestyle. If maybe you’ve never done any ferments whatsoever, maybe just a wild ferment, like the juices and things on the countertop would be the easiest or a whey ferment if you can get your hands on whey. But I hope that this leaves you feeling like it’s attainable to have fermented drinks on hand all the time. It’s actually quite simple.

Andrea:
Nice. That’s a nice thing to end with. Thank you very much, Andrea.

Alison:
All right. Till next time. It will do. Bye.