Made Salvadorian Chicha, although not quite like how mother made to avoid the chance of getting vinegar haha. Itās made with a brown cane sugar processed in an old fashioned way - a company sells the cones of sugar called mi costeƱita - and pineapple.
Usually you use fresh pineapple and ferment it using the skins and hopefully you get the right yeasts. However, the pineapple sold in Finland is probably not as fresh as one harvested on the spot in El Salvador.
Thanks to Alzymologist here on Lemmy tho (rip Alzymologist Oy), I got an excellent yeast that gave me the smoothest Chicha Iāve ever had. Perfectly sweet, with no sourness. It came out to around 12% alcohol in only 4 days too, even though a traditional Chicha takes at least 8.
I saved some of the raw Chicha with yeast in it and am now in the process of making an apple-hibscus drink with it next.
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz āØ6ā© āØdaysā© ago
Haha, great to see success! Looks inviting to drink.
Be careful with propagation, without the 1-cell steps occasionally, itās certain to get contaminated eventually. This particular strain does not even seem to have a killing feature to suppress other microbiota other than by starvation.
Yeah, the company is over and this was the last shipment. Actually the Posti lost the shipment and this was some informal sample I just made at home as a replacement long after operations stopped (so no fancy labels anymore!). Such an adventure.
But if someone needs the yeast, I still keep the library as a personal project, so DM.
robsteranium@lemmy.world āØ5ā© āØdaysā© ago
Could you elaborate on what you mean by ā1-cellā steps?
I didnāt realise yeasts have ākilling featuresā eitherā¦ I thought the whole idea with fermentation was to create the right conditions for your favoured micro-organism to out compete the rest!
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz āØ5ā© āØdaysā© ago
The pure culture process (pretty much all the stuff invented by Pasteur) is based on isolating a single living cell of yeast and then growing a culture of its genetic clones by natural budding (our brewer yeast lost ability to reproduce by other means some centuries ago). This ensures that chances of mutation are small and there are no other organisms in the culture. It also rejuvenates yeast, as growth conditions in this process are much more favorable and pleasant, so that cells generation can build large energy reserves inside. This is surprisingly low tech, could be done at home (lol thatās what I do), but it takes certain discipline, even more cleaning than brewing.
As of killing feature, Iām not sure exactly what it is, but for some lines they report an ability to efficiently inhibit the activity of competing organisms by means others than just outcompeting them in multiplication and consumption of nutrients. These lines should be better for introducing uncooked stuff to fermentation (fruits, berries, spices, maybe raw honey), although Iād say that really vigorous yeast can outcompete almost anything under common conditions, maybe save for really high pitch rate of acetobacter. I donāt pay much attention to this feature really, but itās a curiosity IMO.