A new food for the world

[caesar novus]

Fermented apple sauce! Once as a kid I opened a jar of applesauce and it gushed all over the table due to being full of bubbles - it had fermented into a tangy treat.

 

So in the interest of creating a delicious homemade snack more healthy than chips or junk food, I have recreated this. Or I am perfecting it and maybe someone will have better ideas of how to do it. I don't generally even like alcohol and mainly focus on the bubbles, but the alcohol does give a good tang like a yogurt on steroids. The bubbles can give the sauce a thick consistency like moist bread for some reason - kind of like a rumcake. I saw some article saying bubbles tease your tastebuds due to some physics thing; not just due to their carbonic acid.

 

I start with plastic bottles of pure applesauce, which are surprisingly cheap. Plastic won't shatter under pressure, and lets you feel the pressure so to prevent a rupture or too much sprayout when uncapping. Well, you can't really prevent a sprayout since the sauce can double it's volume due to trapped bubbles when uncapping, or at least fruit pulp near the cap threads will shoot out everywhere.

 

But back to the start... You can open a fresh bottle of applesauce at room temperature, toss in some yeast, close it, shake it up and let it rest upside down. But the yeast I use won't find enough moisture to fully dissolve (maybe I should try another kind), so I have taken to spike it with a bit of a fruit juice chaser like cranberry. P.S. this may not work well with a previously opened bottle of applesauce because long contact with regular air brings in competing bacteria which can stink up the ferment. Wines can tolerate this because over time the good yeast wins, but we are doing this faster.

 

Anyway in a few hours the bottle distorts under pressure and will open in a big mess but give heavenly sauce. I don't think it would have helped to loosely cap the sauce because the bubbles are entrapped and won't bubble up. You can put the remaining unused stuff in the fridge and it will slowly recharge but get increasingly alcoholic as it converts more sugar. It eventually loses the fun combination of sweetness to accompany tang, but change in itself is fun.

 

What I am trying now is to cut back the messy sprayout without investing in bigger containers with the need to wash them and such. When the fermented bottle is down to 1/4 full, I partly refill it with fresh sauce. This is like reusing the "mother" yeast for sourdough bread and saves some money. But it referments kind of slow in the fridge - I will have to try at room temperature. And the freshly opened jar will need to be cooled... so you don't end up with a nice situation of warm sauce unexposed to air critters that gives optimum results - still perfecting the process!

[caesar novus]

Oops, I skipped the simple approach to get yourself calibrated without mess or fuss. You can check progress hourly the first time, which will relieve pressure and prevent spraying. Also gives you the feel of how much yeast is needed and what stage you like best. You should spoon some out each time you open it to give room for expansion. It will start off pretty bland, then should take off in 3 or 4 hours. If you eventually move it to a fridge, don't let it sit too many hours without checking it

 

I use about a coin size dollop of active dry yeast, as in for baking bread. I long ago tried special champagne yeast for fermenting, but it didn't seem so special. A medium to large coin size seems to work for most any size batch - the main thing is big enough to prevent some other microorganism from dominating, but not so big as to rupture your container before you notice it. Once you get calibrated for the timing, etc it will ferment better and more pure when you don't open it in the meantime. Any competing organisms (such as the kind that makes smelly cheese) would come from the air, assuming your applesauce was pasteurized at the factory.

[Melvadius]

Sounds like you are re-inventing the residue that you get from making cider - without some of the more 'interesting' additives. Have you thought of trying straining and drinking it? It could possibly make 'white lighting' seem like a soft drink

 

I look forward to hearing how your experiments progress.

[Ursus]

I'll stick with apple cider. :-)

[caesar novus]

What I learned now is to not recycle old yeasty applesauce like you would sourdough starter. It works ok, but the highly fermented pulp has an off taste which was masked by it's higher alcohol content in it's original situation. Also fermenting too slow in a cool environment leads to more alcohol than bubbles which is boring. The bubbles are the thing - to hold them to your tongue in a thick paste is a revolutionary sensation!

 

Sez http://sciblog.marylandsciencecenter.org/2010/01/what-do-bubbles-taste-like/ :

person

Edited June 15, 2011 by caesar novus

[Noricum]

Sometimes at the back of the fridge, I find forgotten fermented goodies - sometimes I throw the stuff out without opening the container because I am worried about the explosion of smelly fermented food - and you're creating this process deliberately!

 

However, you might be onto something good with applesauce!

[caesar novus]

OK, I can empathize with some skepticism about my, err, APPLE GARUM. On reflection I may have been inspired by drinking pulque in Mexico, which I had assumed was a fermented cactus slurry and byproduct of tequila production. Bubbly and almost gelatinous... but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulque gives it a bit different and historically fascinating origin.

 

Final production thoughts: I guess best to do a single container at a time, and put aside a quarter of it to give headroom for the rest to expand. Hit it hard with yeast for a fast bubbly ferment, using a fun flavor of fruit juice to help dissolve the yeast (berry juices do better than citrus, which ferments with odd tastes). Every hour or two, open the container (with a towel or paper in case of spray) and be prepared to spoon some out to make room for more expansion. When it is at a peak (4 hrs on a warm day?), eat all you want and refrigerate the rest (beware of storing more than a day or so).

 

This may be illegal in some countries like Norway where homebrewing is considered a sin. And where I live carbonation is practically a sin, with container recycle taxes, threat of sugar drink taxes, and transportation restrictions of CO2 tanks. But at least a small amount of alcohol is important for foods because certain flavors are primarily soluable in alcohol, like vanilla beans flavors. Hmm, I have a cheap bulk source of that, so will have to try chucking it into the sauce...

[caesar novus]

the yeast I use won't find enough moisture to fully dissolve (maybe I should try another kind), so I have taken to spike it with a bit of a fruit juice chaser like cranberry.

Health Alert: using the common "active dry yeast" you want to be sure to rehydrate it before mixing with applesauce. Layer juice over the applesauce, then top with yeast to sit a while before shaking up or inverting. Or ferment the juice/water before adding. Otherwise some yeast may not get activated until in your gut and give gas pain. Stomach acid won't kill all of it since it is tougher than "instant yeast" (which is a preferable but more expensive new product).

 

The bubbles can give the sauce a thick consistency like moist bread for some reason

I think I understand this happy process now. The applesauce gets foamed up with CO2, then the uppermost levels drain applejuice down the cell walls formed by the fiber. Thus the top level becomes a rich "sponge cake" with a sort of banana bread flavor. The middle level has an addictive whipped cream consistancy, but is subject to collapse when spooned out because of more juice to pulp ratio. The bottom is a juicy gruel that is maybe best relegated to a fridge overnight to see if it evolves into something interesting. Reminds me of the Seinfeld muffin top episode - what to do with the bottoms after cherry picking the delicious tops. You can control the top thickness by amount of juice - maybe remove 15 or 20% of applesauce for expansion and restore 5% with liquid for best results.

[Kosmo]

You must give a name to this thing

[caesar novus]

You must give a name to this thing

Apple Foam

Apple Sparkle

Apple Cake

Apple Fizz

Apple Dream

Apple Cloud

Apple Chuckle

Apple Garum

Calvadocious

Pomedocious

Pome Slime

Saucy Apple

 

Pressurized apple sauce might be a good picnic novelty. Add yeast mixture with little headroom. At your destination find the leather awl foldout on a Swiss knife... and stab the plastic container!. Squirt sauce thru the air into your or a companions mouth, like with a wineskin. (not tested)

 

P.S. if the container gets over pressured against your intentions, there is a way to prevent it from spraying too badly upon opening. You can tap it (slam it?) down on a table and tease the bubbles to consolidate at the top. So you can restore most of the headroom, and briefly vent the top. At that point, it will probably reinflate the sauce with bubbles, so you can close it back and tap down some more.

Edited September 26, 2011 by caesar novus