Fermentation is something I haven’t experimented with much, other than the ginger bug I attempted to make a few weeks back (which seemed to fail at the time, but I will try again!) My gut can’t help but tell me that leaving things out on the counter to collect bacteria will somehow make me sick. Time to get over that fear, though, as I dive into fermenting. Yesterday we had a plum massacre (will post about this later… I still have to cover the cucumber massacre from last week!) during which we started a carboy of plum and blackberry wine, and a bottle of “Apple Drank” – pictured above.

We didn’t really follow a recipe for the wine, just winged it with about 10 lbs of plums, a whackload of sugar, some hot water and a package of blackberries we had sitting in the fridge. We loaded it all into the sterilized carboy, added some wine yeast and the bung and airlock. It is now bubbling away in the kitchen, and will be ready sometime next year.

Next year is a long ways away and we are impatient for home brew, so we also made some apple drank. Using a glass jug of Santa Cruz organic apple juice, we boiled up some chopped ginger and added it to the bottle (removing first about a glass full of apple juice to make space) and a sprinkling of champagne yeast. We then corked it with the bung and airlock and set it in the sunny front room where it will brew for a few days.

^ After a few hours – baby bubbles!

^ The next morning – more bubbles!

We are so NOT scientific about this process, so the results will be a surprise. Looking forward to seeing what happens!