Fermenting cacao! An experiment

[ThunderIdeal]

On 13/07/2017 at 5:07 PM, waterboy 2.0 said:

It wasnt me....lol...didnt do it

https://libgen.pw/view.php?id=767939 (just in case)

 

Good work Sall

 

Im willing to bet it was an American bloke (now disappeared) by the name FM (felonious monk)

[Alchemica]

Update:

WB-06 cacao paste smells less like an estery fruity nice wine scent, now developing some sharp phenolic? notes. Smells a bit yeasty. Not sure if we have the right brewing yeast selection for my cacao brew. I'll gobble a bit and see whats happening on the flavour level:

Well the WB-06 tastes fine, rich cacao good flavour... no off-putting stuff, dark chocolatey taste, slight tolerable bitterness. Palatable and enjoyable, moreso than the raw cacao powder I'd say.
 

L. acidophilus cacao paste smells delightful. Super chocolatey. Considering my cacao powder wasn't olfactorily top notch before use going for raw and unprocessed, ethical etc over taste and smell, this one's impressive!
 

The broad spectrum probiotic cacao paste, having had less time to do it's alchemy, is pleasant. Not real chocolately, just niceish cacao smell.

 

[Anodyne]

On 13/07/2017 at 7:40 AM, Sallubrious said:

Another way would be to try a water kefir ferment. Dom's Kefir has a good overview of using water kefir grains to enhance bio availabilty of ginseng and chinese angelica. Milk kefir was traditionally ferment with snow rose to enhance its medicinal value as well.

I didn't suggest water kefir becuase I wondered if the cacao flavour would work. Milk kefir I could get on board with, coconut-milk-kefir even more so...that sounds delicious...why is this not a thing that exists already?!

 

On 14/07/2017 at 3:21 AM, Alchemica said:

@Anodyne I'm whipping up a batch of kombucha, too, following a tea-sugar-commercial kombucha base to grab me a scoby...

I really want to try a simple kombucha ascorbic acid tea modification, just as an experiment which means people can buy one bottle of quality kombucha and culture up litres of probiotic rich tasty tea goodness, do their own planty flavours, bit of ginseng/turmeric etc at home on the cheap without the scoby. Just while I'm waiting for the scoby. Out of interest!
 

What are your thoughts on such? If I just use a sterile 5L brew environment, a load of tea, some sugar, ascorbic acid to preserve tea polyphenols (I could do cacao flavonols) and minimise chances for pathological bacterial growth and add a bottle of commercial kombucha... Let it brew for a week? Might get some probiotic goodness happening on the easy-to-do level?

Or you could let it brew for a month, and you'll have a scoby. Like Sally said, this is how I have gotten all of mine going.

 

I think the downside to trying an "easy" non-scoby-containing kombucha is that it might make contamination more likely. As I understand it the scoby (in combination with some starter-tea) serves the dual functions of being a home for lots of starter-material which gets your brew going quickly (i.e. before it can be contaminated), and just being a physical barrier to stuff falling into the brew. If you don't have a scoby you'll have to worry about artificially acidifying it (eg. by adding ascorbic acid...ah, I see what's going on here!), or artificially protecting it from contamination by using complex apparatus... like lids...and who can be bothered with all that?

 

Two serious comments: one, I'm not sure this is actually easier, just quicker - you could convince me, but I'm not there yet. Two: I vaguely remember reading that the critter profile in kombuchas changes around the 4-week mark as some of the slower-developing strains come into play. Whether or not they are actually beneficial is up for debate, but they are something that would be absent from any brew where you favour single-batch over continuous fermentation.

 

And a question: why are you adding the rooibos at the start? Are you just using rooibos tea and no camellia-type tea at all? If you're aiming to get a culture going that thrives in a non-caffeinated tea-like environment, then ok, I see the point (I had a nice kombucha recently that was grown only in hops, no tea). But if you're just adding herbs & things (whether for flavour &/or medicine) to a regular tea-kombucha, then why not add them during secondary fermentation? It is quicker & avoids the risk of upsetting your primary culture - and if a flavour works really well for you, you can always work on getting a primary culture of it going later, like those hops guys. As another plus for mad-science, adding flavours during secondary ferments means that you can try a lot of them: from a 4L brew (minus a bit for starting the next batch) you could try ~10x 330ml bottle with different combinations.

 

 

[Alchemica]

Quote

And a question: why are you adding the rooibos at the start? Are you just using rooibos tea and no camellia-type tea at all? If you're aiming to get a culture going that thrives in a non-caffeinated tea-like environment, then ok, I see the point (I had a nice kombucha recently that was grown only in hops, no tea). But if you're just adding herbs & things (whether for flavour &/or medicine) to a regular tea-kombucha, then why not add them during secondary fermentation? It is quicker & avoids the risk of upsetting your primary culture - and if a flavour works really well for you, you can always work on getting a primary culture of it going later, like those hops guys.

 

Thanks for your help, much appreciated. Yeah I was trying to see if I could induce a 'protected' environment for culturing to get a clean scoby eventually with that one, to also see if there was inhibition of growth of the good stuff, too.

 

Trying a few ideas as they come in my head just as initial experiments, then I'll follow a method! I now have a friend that will soon scoby me up.

 

Leaving lots of notes, just a bit of experimentation that's external and not going on to me is at times healthy!

 

Polyphenols in their aglycone form inhibit the growth of many microbial species. Whereas, their related glycosides did not affect bacterial viability. In addition, the catechin, which is which is available only as an aglycone, did not have an inhibitory effect in contrast to other selected polyphenols. Will rooibos tea totally inhibit desired B. coagulans growth or simply be protective against pathological bacterial growth? See what degree of notable fermentation starts and see if I get scoby formation at all.

 

If I get good clean stuff happening, it may be something I can use for secondary fermentation. Or as a polyphenol protector for scobyless kombucha manufacture. Just wild ideas. Plus I wanted to see what colour rooibos went with vitamin c

 

I've done hardly any reading on any of this... so yeah they are mad science which hopefully will one day become an art for me.

[Sallubrious]

8 hours ago, Anodyne said:

 Milk kefir I could get on board with, coconut-milk-kefir even more so...that sounds delicious...why is this not a thing that exists already?!

 

That sounds like a good idea. I was doing milk kefir as a primary ferment and then adding 25% coconut cream and 25% fresh milk  for a secondary ferment in the fridge (most of the coconut milk I found was just diluted or less concentrated cream).  I did the normal one day ferment with the grains and then when I strained them off I added more milk & coconut cream and added fresh ground turmeric and or ginger and then threw it in the fridge for about a week for secondary ferment and to ripen a bit.

 

I've added all sorts of stuff to milk kefir over the last twenty years and some things can stain and bog up the grains if they are added to the initial ferment. It's normally not much of an issue and the grains just change colour a bit, but sometimes prolonged use of additives can cause the grains to lose vigour and not perform as well. So any additives I put in now go into a secondary ferment either with 50% milk, coconut milk or coconut cream or a mixture of milk and coconut milk or cream

 

 

[Anodyne]

Oh, I actually meant doing the primary ferment with coconut cream - I have seen this sold (Living Coconut Kefir), so I know it is possible. Not sure what kind of culture they use for it though - whether it's more similar to a milk-kefir or water-kefir colony in composition - I gather it's some homegrown adaptation of one of them.

 

I realise now that my comment was ambiguous, but I didn't mean "why doesn't coconut-milk-kefir exist?", I meant "why isn't a cacao-flavoured version available?"

 

 

[Sallubrious]

I didn't think it was ambiguous, I got what you were saying.

 

I was just pointing out that kefir is very efficient when used as a secondary ferment. I used to add sorts of stuff to the primary ferment and I've ruined more than one batch of grains doing that way, coconut millk and cream are fine. Some other things not so much.

 

So now I prefer to do my experimentation in a secondary ferment sans the grains and keep the grains going in pure milk to preserve their vigour and health.

[Sallubrious]

& I forgot to add, if you dilute your fermented kefir down 50% and do a secondary fermentation you get double the output in the same time frame.

[Alchemica]

Special moment. First bottle of Cacao Brew bottled...
 

How's it taste? Technically I can't tell you. I'm doing Dry July. Nonetheless, I tried ~10mL, a negligible dose of alcohol. You get a strong alcohol taste that is in between beer and wine, bit of beeriness with wine notes, followed by subtle cacao flavour. Interesting but I don't know? I always used to drink for effects...

Getting some friends to try it.

[ThunderIdeal]

Looks like jenkem!

[Alchemica]

Well the feedback on cacao brew is really promising! I don't think it brewed to 10% alcohol but it's nicely spiritual and anxiolytic and sends you to a rather good place from the feedback I've received. Taste OK.

Not only is cacao brew spiritual but also way more likely to be healthy for you than plain neurotoxic alcohol brews: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/5/477
 

So hypothetically, why does brewing cacao make it superior in spiritualness?
 

As I suspected, from looking at it, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid positively allosterically modulates GABA(A) receptors [http://waset.org/pdf/books/?id=38143&pageNumber=3]. It's likely the degradation of the cacao flavonols by yeast forms high concentrations of things like substituted 4-hydroxybenzoic acids.
 

Plain cinnamon metabolite, benzoic acid, is psychotropic. It, through CREB, BDNF etc is neuroprotective, antioxidant, pro-neurogenic etc, through DAAO modulates VTA dopamine and frontal cortical dopamine etc. The 4-methoxybenzoic acid, p-anisic acid, is said to be active: when p-anisic acid is locally perfused into the PFC, it induces DA and 5-HT release... I can't find anything for the activity of vanillic acid (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzoic). Maybe protocatechuic acid (3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid) from flavonol yeast degradation does something cool, too ;)
 

Add the 5-HT1A-mediated, NO modulating effects of the parent flavonols and the hearty stimulant methylxanthines, plus ethanol and the synergism, spiritualness and anxiolysis just seems to cascade!
 

Then add the formation of biogenic amines, spermidine-type alkaloids that modulate the NMDA receptor and bioactive Trp/Phe metabolism alkaloids, that form when yeast acts on cacao and it's a party for your spirit!
 

For a similar guide on using lactic acid bacteria (the bioconversions should extend to yeasts) Bioconversion Using Lactic Acid Bacteria: Ginsenosides, GABA, and Phenolic Compounds https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28297748

Edited August 1, 2017 by Alchemica