moulds

[JumpedAngel]

I'm interested in moulds, but being a nuts and bolts type of bloke and never having had any real biology/botany schooling, i still struggle with basic things like the differences between mould, yeast, fungi, bacteria, enzymes, etc. the definitions and explanations can be confusing. arn't moulds just the fruiting bodies/structures of a particular bacteria?, arnt enzymes, chemical converters created by the bacteria for a specific job?, arnt fungi and yeasts closly related? arnt yeasts and bacteria closely related?

some interesting links to ponder:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/zymology

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title...&action=history

http://www.accessexcellence.org/LC/SS/ferm...background.html

http://smccd.net/accounts/case/antibiotics.html

i've already written a little bit about molassas conversion through bacterial digestion here and/or at EA (butyric acid), probobly didn't mention the mould floating on the top (i think my last wife left me when she found a tray of this stuff growing in the study?), there was another few of these kitchen tek type recipes for chelating agents that i came across in my research at that time, one of them was for lactic acid, another was for tammarinic? acid (chelating agent => rust converter), the recipe for lactic acid was quite simple, 1 gallon of water, 1 pint of milk and 1 slice of (white toasted) bread, mix together and allow wild bacteria to colonize and convert (few days), this will supposedly produce enough lactic acid to de-rust a large number of metal parts.

rev - citric acid + milk has always been a formula for curdled milk + stomach ache, i dont know if it will 'select' certain bacteria above others and thereby act as a selective firewall also. (checkout the second link above)

some moulds are specific to a given micro-climate/location to the extent that they can not be readily relocated, one of my favourites of these lives in the Tokaji wine-making region in central europe which until not-long-ago was behind the so-called iron curtain, the product being a type of wine, the thing that i enjoyed most about those bad old days was the ridiculous currency conversion rates which made it possible for an average bloke, such as myself, to be able to afford to gargle a bottle of this stuff for breakfast each day, nowadays you could easily spend a couple of hundred bux to sample such an indulgance.

this mould will penetrate the cork of any type of wine stored in those cellars and give it a peculiar flavour irrespective of the grape type used for making the wine, or so i have been told, certain fortified white wines known as 'puttonos' are made which specifically concentrate or strengthen this flavour, up to a maximum of 8 putton, this being the highest grade ie. an 8 'putton' wine is one where 1 barrel of wine was cured in 8 barrels of sultanas in such a cellar under the influence of the said mould, there are the lower grades also, 5, 3 and 1 putton. known for centuries as 'the king of wines and the wine of kings', no-one yet has managed to steal the mould or learn its secrets.

more recently, i was looking at another interesting fermentation process, a traditional dill-pickle recipe in which the whole dill plant is used, i suspect that the particular species of bacteria required to ferment that certain flavour is associated directly with the roots of the plant, toasted white bread is included in the recipe for the first day of fermentation to help 'breed-up' this specific bacteria, the bread is then discarded and fermentation allowed to proceed.

as a note of caution, i would like to urge anyone thinking of expermenting with fermentation processes to extreme caution in using a well ventilated area, in the first place there are often volatile end products involved such as acetone in the case of molassas fermentation, in the second place there are other as yet still unknown volatile by-products involved (possibly in the gaseous phase) as is evidenced by the two great molassas disasters which occured in the U.S. last century.