opening fermented beverages

Tutorial on how to  open naturally carbonated lacto fermented beverages such as jun, kombucha or even water kefir without t them exploding and going all over your kitchen/living room but more importantly  without wasting any.

sparkford with kate magic

We had a wonderful time with such a great crowd at Kate's Sparkford retreat.  Kate invited us to talk about fermented foods: kefir, fermented vegetables and jun.  Thank you to everyone for your welcome and wonderful enthusiasm.  We were so taken with the venue and beautiful grounds that we may well do retreats there ourselves.  And also hoping to come to Jersey to do a class soon!

wild floral jun

This is our new jun, the traditional healing fermented beverage made with honey and herbs.  This variety was inspired by the profuse elderflowers in our neighbourhood this summer, childhood memories of drinking my Welsh father's traditional elder beer and Stephen Harrod Buhner's writings on sacred indigenous brews of these islands.  It includes heather, a traditional ingredient which becomes psychotropic upon fermentation.  The other ingredients are : spring water, wild poly floral honey,  Mayan lily, blue lily, sacred lotus, wild fennel, guayusa, Sage and lapsang souchong.  It's interesting that the guayusa feeds the jun culture itself, one of our main reasons for including it.

http://www.foodforconsciousness.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=51&products_id=295

traditional brewing

I was brought up on the euphoric effects of traditional elderflower beer and elderberry wine, brewed by my Welsh father.  When, as a teenager, I began to drink out in pubs and clubs I was shocked by how different the impact was on me and also by the ensuing hangovers. Traditional alcoholic beverages have far more than the one dimensional effect of modern commercial alcoholic drinks.   Although these brews were very much part of my growing up I had stopped thinking about my  experiences with them until recently, when we began our  project with jun, the traditional herbal honey brew.  My youthful experiences, which I never really began to explain to anyone, are now making sense.

In 'Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers' Stephen Harrod Buhner explains how fermenting many herbs actually makes them psychotropic i.e. effecting the mind or mood. Of course, in our current cerebrally (left hemisphere) dominated state psychotropic herbs can help stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain and connect us to our creative, intuitive, spiritually connected state. Thus the word 'spirits' for alcoholic drinks which traditionally were a psychoactive experience.

Recently I have been asking my Dad for more details about his experiences growing up in South Wales more than eighty years ago.  He recalls how it was his father's job each morning to go out and collect water running off the hillsides at a convenient place where it ran over  a rock to supply the day's water needs for the family.  They had no electricity and used oil lamps.  The wireless was a recent introduction.  He explained how he learnt to brew these elder beers and wines from his parents who were following the example of many generations before, going back hundreds of years.  Living in remote areas, purchasing alcoholic drinks would have been out of the question.  He recalled with a glint in his eye the effects of these brews.

Elder is one of the plants traditionally used in Britain for brewing. Earlier in the summer we gathered elderflowers in the lanes and by the river Brue where we live in rural Somerset. The brew we made was so delicious we just knew it had to become our sixth variety of jun and on reading about the use of heather in traditional ancient and sacred British brews we decided to combine the two for a delicious new flower beverage also with Mayan Lily, Blue Lily, Sacred Lotus, wild fennel, guayusa, yerba mate, sage and lapsang souchong and made the most delicious brew, Wild Floral Working with the spirits of the plants reminds us about the real meaning of the word 'spirit' in connection to alcoholic drinks. I have very much felt the spirits of the ancestors around whilst we have been doing this, in particular that of my father, now an elderly man and in a dreamy state.

xocolatl dream

This is our new flavour of jun. Made with two of my favourite herbal teas tulsi (holy basil) and passionflower and the inspiration to add raw cacao powder to it.  With the spices of rooibosch chai also it turned into this amazing flavoured drink that you could not guess the taste of from the ingredients.  The cacao creates extra fizz, compared by some to the taste of coca cola, it's now my favourite flavour. The name is inspired by Aztec culture.  When the Spanish first encountered the Aztecs, who were immersed in some kind of frenzied chocolate culture, it is said that they felt like they were entering some kind of dream.  The Aztecs are remembered particularly for their appreciation of beauty combined with a warrior spirit.  they saw reality as oneric...coming through a dream.

http://www.foodforconsciousness.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=51&products_id=278

http://gaiaspora.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Nav-Briefing-116-The-Omen-of-War-15-March-2014.mp3

fermented foods ~ instant energy for the brain

kefir with yacon, a prebiotic

We have been finding from experience that fermented foods such as kefir and kraut and jun give us a particular instant energy boost that we don't experience from other foods.  This intrigues us and we have been wondering what is the explanation.  With the question about what is the ideal fuel for the brain on my mind I came across the information below.

First thing to mention is that while glucose is an oxidative fuel for our bodies and brains,  it is actually used to make ATP or adenosine triphosphate which is a  usable form of energy for cells - "the energy is "trapped" in a chemical bond that can be released and used to drive other reactions that require energy. (endergonic reactions)."   http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2254


So how do we go from glucose to ATP? "This is achieved through the process of "oxidation" - and this is carried out through a series of metabolic pathways. Complex chemical transformations in the cell occur in a series of separate reactions to form each pathway, and each reaction is catalyzed by a specific enzyme. Interestingly, metabolic pathways are similar in all organisms, from bacteria to humans. In eukaryotes (plants and animals) many of the metabolic pathways are compartmentalized, with certain reactions occurring in specific organelles. Basically, cells trap free energy released from the breakdown (metabolism) of glucose. This energy gets trapped in the ATP as it converts from ADP to ATP by the addition of phosphate.
There are 3 main pathways for harvesting energy from glucose:
Glycolysis - begins glucose metabolism in all cells to produce 2 molecules of pyruvate. Occurs outside of mitochondria, usually in cytoplasm.
Cellular Respiration - uses oxygen from the environment and converts each pyruvate to three molecules of carbon dioxide while trapping the energy released in this process in ATP. There are 3 sub-pathways of cellular respiration - pyruvate oxidation, the citric acid (Krebs or Tricarboxylic Acid) cycle and the electron transport chain. Occurs in different sub-compartments of mitochondria.
Fermentation - converts pyruvate into lactic acid or ethanol; does not need oxygen. It is not as efficient as cellular respiration; it occurs in the cytoplasm." http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2254

We want to look more into this but on first sight  it seems we have an explanation, we are using the help of friendly micro-organisms to convert the sugars on milk or vegetables or honey into ATP, an immediate energy source for the body and brain.

Now the brain uses a  lot of energy, a high percentage of the body's energy requirements.  Glucose is  a very immediate source of oxidative fuel for ATP production (and it seems the brain does need at least some glucose) while the breaking down of fat, protein of glycogen is a bit more long-winded.  However it seems to us that fermented foods can supply instant brain energy without having to take in a lot of fruit sugar which, as many of us know can cause challenges to our bodies in other ways.

Could it be that in order to advance our evolution as a species we do need a more instantly accessible source of large amounts of energy for the brain and that by engaging harmoniously with friendly micro-organisms we have this?

our fermentation fetish workshop

making chocolate kefir cheesecake...

the final touch...

Our workshop went so well yesterday, we always get very appreciative feedback and this was a particularly fun day.  Here is what Chris Paradox, Vandita and Alan had to say afterwards, they really capture the mood of the event.

We feel this is a new generation of raw food, by fermenting gourmet raw food or using fermented foods to make the dishes, it is brought to life and becomes infinitely more digestible.

Next one is 22nd March.  Click here to find out more.

full euphoric spiral with the jun

Had an unexpected arrival in my life recently.  For many years I have mostly refused to drink any kind of alcoholic drink because of the mood drop compared with how I generally feel.  Sometimes I would wonder if I was missing out on something but I just wasn't willing to experience the unpleasant side that wine, beer or spirits would have for me.  For the most part I haven't been bothered though as feel so good on what we are doing.  So it was a really nice to surprise that the very small amounts of alcohol in the jun we have got going along with the other mind enhancing compounds in there are giving me a lovely tipsy and actually euphoric but still mentally functioning feeling at the end of the day.  Admittedly it doesn't take much for me.  Anyway, unexpectedly I've got the opportunity for an evening tipple back.  The feeling is very similar to then one I remember as a youngster drinking the amazing concoction my Dad used to ferment from orange juice, when I started to go out and drink commercial beers I was shocked out how deadening their effects were compared to the almost psychedelic effects of my Dad's magical brew.

Years ago, getting healthy was purported to mean abandoning chocolate, cheese, nice cups of tea and alcoholic drinks.  And I was willing to do it.  Bit by bit it has all come back unexpectedly and delightfully in upgraded, more natural form., raw chocolate, raw dairy products such as raw cheese and kefir, herbal teas and elixirs and now the jun.  Jun works for me much better than kombucha because you can drink it without it being fermented to a vinegary state.  If kombucha isn't fully brewed out to this state then there is a residue of sugar which I really don't get on with and also, from a technical point of view, stops the immune system working to full capacity.  Jun is quite like kombucha but it can digest honey so you don't need to make it with sugar.

The tea we are using is chaga.  Brewing the tea extracts many of the medicinal factors out of the chaga whilst the alcohol in the jun extracts the alcohol soluble triterpenes (Betulinic acid) that are well known for their amazing healing properties in Russia.

I have actually been enjoying our ginkgo version even more than the original chaga jun in our range, it will be on sale very soon, just as soon as the labels get here.  Ginkgo is a long time favourite of mine, it is a very magical tree and boosts circulation and brain function.

So life has come full circle or maybe full spiral, in many other ways too, feel like finding many of the real versions of things that I had let go of.  Real sky astrology is a prime case in point.