I’m not a real hillbilly, but I play one on the internet…

My first “Will It Ferment” project is now in process.

See, I’m stuck with a somewhat unpredictable schedule and a need to travel frequently, cramped spaces to work in at the moment, and a streak of gustatory perversion that I just can’t help an urge to rebel against purists at the moment.

Quick bit of background on that latter statement: I’ve noticed that people seem to think there are only two-and-a-half kinds of “real” non-commercial fermented beverages. There’s beer (which is apparently defined as a strong tisane of hops, flavored by mixing it into fermented malt), there’s wine (which is always made of grapes of course), and out on the fringes of respectability is Mead (“Honey wine”) which seems to be slowly gaining some acceptance as a mildly exotic brew. The attitude is that anything else you might want to brew (say, a beer flavored and preserved with something besides hops, or a wine made out of anything but grapes) is probably some quaint “country” (i.e. hillbilly) thing for people who either live too far from civilization or are too poor to just buy a “real” beverage, or are too ignorant to know the difference. Either that, or it’s just some desperate attempt to make something to get drunk on. Might as well be making pruno.

The attitude kind of annoys me, so I’m trying to make a sort of “free person’s pruno”. I figure if the end result is as palatable as it could be, it’ll probably resemble “Zima®”.  Uh, no, I don’t expect it to be great – this is merely an experiment.  My must has an Original Specific Gravity (“O.G.”) of approximately 1.054, about the same as most lagers start out. As I write this, my gallon of must is on the stove in a stainless steel pot. I’m going to try to heat it to boiling and let it boil for a few minutes in hopes of driving off much of the benzoic acid in it, so as not to inhibit the yeast fermentation.

To your right, you should see the ingredients used in this project. Yes, those two bottles in the background are there on purpose. I’m trying to make…Mountain Dew® Wine.

Here’s the plan:

  • Last night, I took a couple of clean glass 1 Qt milk bottles, rinsed them with iodophor solution to sanitize, let them dry. Then, I put about 12 ounces of tap water (unchlorinated) into one and dumped the contents of both yeast packets you see in the picture into it to rehydrate.
  • The yeast packets were opened over a year ago – I don’t even recall what I did with the tiny amount of yeast I poured out. They’ve been sitting in the ‘fridge since then. What’s more, they had expired in December of 2006 to begin with.
  • The two yeasts (Red Star Montrachet and Red Star Flor Sherry) were both mixed into the same container in hopes that I could encourage a yeast orgy, giving me as much genetic diversity as possible from the two strains and maximizing the chance that I’d be able to get a culture which can grow in flat Mountain Dew and whatever benzoic acid (from Sodium Benzoate) might remain in it. I had read that V8 juice was actually an excellent medium for inducing yeast sporulation. Since sporulation occurs as a result of yeast cells mating, I made a huge leap of logic towards thinking the V8 might maximize my chances of getting some yeast mating going on.
  • After a few minutes to rehydrate, I dumped the 12-ounce can of V8 into the bottle and shook well. I also crushed up a children’s chewable vitamin (see bottle at lower-left) and a small portion (perhaps 1/5) of a capsule of the L-Arginine as a nitrogen source and added them as well. I then poured it back and forth between the two bottles a few times to aerate, then split the mixture between the two bottles, capped loosely, and went to bed.
  • As of this morning, fermentation was obviously occurring in the mixture, so sitting in my fridge open for over a year hadn’t killed off ALL of the cells. I opened the bottles and swirled to re-aerate, and added about a tablespoon of “corn sugar” (glucose a.k.a. dextrose) to wake the yeast cells back up. Since then, I’ve been pouring a bit of Mountain Dew right out of a third bottle into each of the yeast starter bottles every couple of hours. The amount of bubbling I see suggests to me that fermentation is still going on (and is not just from the carbonation of the Mountain Dew). Hopefully this will help the yeast culture acclimate a bit to the benzoic acid.
  • I dumped the other 2 2L bottles of Mountain Dew into a stainless steel 8-qt pot and heated to boiling, whisking with a steel whisk frequently to help get the dissolved gases to bubble out (hopefully along with some benzoic acid in the steam). At this moment, it’s up to 75°C (about 165°F) according to the thermometer I have stuck in it. It’s steaming a bit, and I can smell some of the citrusy aroma boiling off, unfortunately. I was afraid that’d happen. UPDATE: our ancient stove with one working burner seems to have trouble getting this much liquid above 200°F without cranking it up all the way and risking the bottom getting too hot. Since there’s a substantial amount of hot water vapor coming off, I’m going to hope that’s carrying away some benzoic acid and just let it start cooling down. I’ll stir it vigorously and frequently with the whisk until the temperature drops to about 160°F and then I’ll cover it for the night.
  • Meanwhile, before I go to bed, I’m going to recombine as much of the two yeast culture bottles as I can into one bottle, then rinse out the other. In that one, I’ll mix up about 12 ounces of tap water and enough corn sugar to reach a gravity of about 1.050-1.055. I’ll crush up another chewable vitamin and about half of the remaining arginine capsule into it, mix well, and warm it with a quick spin in the microwave (no exact measurements, just until it’s “obviously warm” to the touch after mixing). Then I’ll shake the V8 culture well to mix, and splash about a tablespoon’s worth into the new bottle.
  • In the morning, I’ll re-aerate the new culture and add a tablespoon of corn sugar to wake it back up, then once it’s going, I’ll start adding the now-cooled cooked flat Mountain Dew to it in small increments. Assuming it keeps going, I’ll dump in the remainder of the L-Arginine capsule, crush in one last chewable vitamin, and them combine the new culture with the rest of the cooked flat Mountain Dew in a nice plastic 2-gallon “water” container that I picked up (already rinsed with iodophor and dried). Cap it with a latex glove attached with a rubber band as described in the “Pruno” entry in Leon Kania’s “Alaskan Bootlegger’s Bible” (Click image for link) just because I thought it was the funniest airlock design I’d ever run into. Yes, I am easily amused.
  • If I’m lucky, there’ll be so much live and active yeast in the second culture at that point that the fermentation will finish quickly, because I’m driving to Texas the following day. Alternatively, I may be lucky and the remaining benzoic acid will slow the yeast down, so I can safely leave it fermenting (sitting in my sink in case of overflow while I’m gone) for the week that I’ll be gone.

If I’m UNlucky, either it won’t ferment at all (and I can then use it to try to develop a Mountain Dew Tolerant strain of yeast), or it’ll ferment but taste utterly disgusting (in which case I can use it to try to obtain some Gluconobacter strains and make Mountain Dew Vinegar), or it’ll be “infected” and will already BE Mountain Dew Vinegar, which would also be pretty funny anyway. So, other than completely unforseen results, this experiment can’t be a TOTAL waste.

[Update 20080727: Preliminary results of this perverse project may be read In this more recent post…]

“They laughed at me! But I’ll show them all! AH, HAHAHAHA!”

Another T-shirt to add to my list of T-shirts I want.

I’m spending more hours shoveling my way through the books and papers and crap we’ve got up here at House v1.0, since if all goes well I’ll be making a brief run back down to Southeast Texas so we can sign the papers for House v2.0 down there, at which point we’ll be able to start actually moving. I sure hope this one goes through. Not only is it our third attempt to buy a house down there, but I’ve already identified a convenient location to build my “Intentional Food Microbiology” brewlab in it.

Since there’s no way I can afford to buy a -80°F freezer, I have an obvious interest in alternate means of preserving the yeast, mold, and bacterial cultures that I want to keep. To me, drying seems like the most desirable method when it’s feasible, since dried cultures should require the least amount of maintenance. After a several-month delay, I’ve finally gotten around to getting back in touch with the archivist at Brewer’s Digest to see about getting an old article on the viability of dried yeast cultures[1].

Speaking of old but useful scientific papers, there’s an extremely nifty challenge going on through the month of May (deadline: May 31st) over at “Skulls in the Stars” blog: find a classic scientific paper, read it, and blog about it.

“My “challenge”, for those sciencebloggers who choose to accept it, is this: read and research an old, classic scientific paper and write a blog post about it. I recommend choosing something pre- World War II, as that was the era of hand-crafted, “in your basement”-style science. There’s a lot to learn not only about the ingenuity of researchers in an era when materials were not readily available, but also about the problems and concerns of scientists of that era, often things we take for granted now!”

I think this is a brilliant idea – the classic papers often seem to be forgotten and often explain things that people seem to take for granted these days. I already mentioned my post about the Gram Stain (original paper published in 1884), though that post really talks more about what has happened with the Gram Stain over the last 125 years rather than only being about the original paper. There are a couple of other classic microbiology papers that I’m going to try to get to if I have time before the May 31st deadline arrives.

I also need to get some yeast activated and get my must processed – I’m hoping a brief boil will reduce the amount of a yeast-inhibiting substance in it. I’ll post more detail after I get it going.

[1] Wickerham LJ, AND Flickinger MH:”Viability of yeast preserved two years by
the lyophile process.” 1946; Brewers Digest, 21, 55-59; 65.

I finally got to Bristol Brewing Company…

Signage in front of the Bristol Brewing CompanyAfter spotting the company’s mention in Jeff Sparrow’s “Wildbrews“, I’ve been wanting to visit Bristol Brewing Company, particularly since they may be the only such brewery using local yeasts and bacteria that they isolated themselves from their local environment.

Since we’re moving from Southeastern Idaho to Southeastern Texas, I’ve been going back and forth between the two location. It just so happens that along with New Belgium Brewing Company, Bristol Brewing is actually right along a convenient route between the two locations. (Let’s see if I can figure out how to work the Google Maps plugin):

How’s that look? How does it work? (Those of you reading this on the RSS feed: The interactive map only appears on the website, it would seem. Please check it out here.) I made the KML file myself…

Bristol Brewing is a cozy little brewpub, and the people there are encouragingly helpful. They were in the middle of bottling, so there were no tours. Also, there were not currently any of the skull-‘n-bones beers available. However, I did get an educational series of tastes of their current brews on tap (thank you to the employee I spent most of the time talking to whose name I’ve embarrassingly forgotten, but who I believe was Tad Davis judging from the photos on the web site). I also lucked out and their microbiologist, Ken Andrews, happened to be there. I asked about their native Colorado brewing flora. Turns out Bristol Brewing isn’t quite as bold as I originally thought. They’re still doing their primary fermentation with “normal” brewing yeasts. What they’ve done is inoculated some wine barrels with the locally-isolated yeasts and bacteria, and they use the barrels for a secondary fermentation and aging instead. Much safer if you have to worry about having a drinkable product at the end, and of course it makes me feel like more of a crazed rebel for wanting to isolate my own local bugs for the main fermentation. So, a great visit overall.

Incidentally, it seems they’ll be tapping a new Skull-‘n-Bones brew in a couple of weeks, at 5pm on Tuesday, May 27th (2008). It sounds like they’ll probably have some available for a few days before it all disappears, so I’m hoping my return to Texas can be timed such that I can swing by and at least get a taste.

“Open Thread”

Too tired to do a real post at the moment. I’ve seen other bloggers do this “Open Thread” thing, inviting readers to post comments about whatever the heck they want so as to make the blog look more active without actually having to post anything. So what the heck. Real post in the next 24 hours hopefully, but in the meantime, what’s on everyone’s minds?

Oh, yeah, and am I right that typical cola drinks are about 3 mM phosphate (as phosphoric acid)?

Asterisk® is our Friend

I suppose this is slightly off the usual topics for this blog, but what the heck.

Asterisk logo Asterisk® software is an open-source system for computer telephone stuff. Yes, I did just say “telephone stuff” instead of “PBX, VoIP, and Telephony”. Cope. Anyway, it’s an entirely legally-free (aside from the cost of a computer and any desired additional equipment) replacement for the kinds of many-thousands-of-dollars proprietary software systems that your cable TV and telephone companies use to prevent you from talking to human beings on the phone (so they can fire most of them, and outsource the rest to India or the Philipines or Florida or China or whatever other “developing” area has cheap low-grade labor). In other words, they seem to use their telephony system mainly for telephony prevention. The fact that “The Man™” uses the power of a PBX for evil in this way shouldn’t trick you into thinking that having your own is a bad thing, though. For example, my Minister of Domestic Affairs was recently in Australia for work. Since calls back to the US on the cellphone cost $1.50/minute, I set up a voice-over-IP client on her computer before she left. She could then use her computer’s internet connection to connect to the Asterisk box at no extra cost. The Asterisk box could then forward her Voice-Over-IP call out our residential phone line to my cellphone – a local call for the Asterisk box. No $1.50/minute for “The Man™”! Take that, The Man!

(Oh, “PBX”? That’s Private Branch eXchange. It’s a fancy way of saying it’s your own personal robotic Ernestine the Operator for your house or office.)

I discovered Asterisk a few years ago and have been puttering with it off and on. I figured if I wanted to learn how to use it, it’d be a good, simple start to replace my answering machine with it. It was a little trickier than I thought. I got my hands on a working “X100P“-type card, which is really just a specific variety of cheap voice-modem that was used originally for early development of Asterisk prior to the fancier hardware being developed. This connects my Asterisk box to the phone line. Like my old answering machine, it shares the line with an ordinary telephone that it doesn’t control.

Googling turned up all kinds of information on getting Asterisk to answer the phone and do all kinds of amazing tricks, but not a lot about controlling the answering in the first place. I wanted it to act like my old answering machine. It wasn’t answering the phone and taking messages that was hard to figure out, it was getting it to not answer the phone if someone in the house beat Asterisk to it.

I couldn’t find any references to this anywhere online at the time (and still can’t, actually, though they may be out there). Asterisk doesn’t seem to have any way – at least not with the X100P – to explicitly detect when another device picks up the shared line, but I came up with a workaround.

Now, when the lines starts ringing, I have Asterisk wait 11 seconds (which works out to about 3 rings) before doing anything. Then, I have it explicitly check for one more second to see if the line is still ringing. If not, the assumption is that someone picked up the phone and Asterisk leaves it alone. If it DOES detect one more ring, it picks and and carries on with whatever incoming-call magic I feel like programming into it – like detecting and saving incoming faxes. A copy of the relevant portion of my dialplan for any other Asterisk users out there who care may be found at the end of the post.

Once the house-hunting frenzy I’m in the middle of dies down, I’d like to start adding some nerdier features. For example, we’re moving to Southeast Texas, where there are occasional tornado warnings. Apparently, the National Weather Service’s warnings online contain embedded geographic information defining the boundaries of the warning area. I could have Asterisk watch the warnings page, and call my cellphone to tell me if I have to worry about tornadoes or not. (Kind of silly, I know…). It’d also be nice to finally test the fax reception that hypothetically is set up to work on my Asterisk box, too. (Dang crippled Motorola cellphones won’t let me fax despite supposedly supporting Class 1 fax mode, among other missing features…But that’s another post for another time.)

And now, the dialplan (or fragment thereof) (Update 20080523, fixed missing “]” after “[incoming”):

[incoming]
;give time to allow for someone to pick up 'regular' phone before asterisk does
exten => s,1,Wait(11)
;pause to check for one last ring, just in case someone picks up at the last second
exten => s,n,WaitForRing(1)
;So, you get 11 seconds - about 3 rings - to answer the phone.
;after that, Asterisk waits one more second for another ring.
;obviously if someone has picked up the phone before then,
;that last ring will never come and Asterisk will leave the call alone.
;otherwise, answer the phone:
exten => s,n,Answer()
;supposedly this will correctly jump to the fax extension if it's an incoming fax

;give announcement that ain't nobody here..
;(after waiting 3 seconds in case of fax tone detection)
exten => s,n,Wait(3)
exten => s,n,Background(nobody-but-chickens)
;...then go to 'leave a message' like a normal (if extremely powerful) answering machine
exten => s,n,Voicemail(9000)
exten => s,99,Hangup()
;end of line for now

Any questions?…

I Hate You, Carl Zimmer!

Carl Zimmer wrote a book. Of course, that’s no reason to hate him, and I don’t hate him for that.

His book is all about Escherichia coli (“E.coli”). The friggin’ “Microsoft” of the biotech world. Accursed E. coli, hogging up all the print space and protocol development and sucking up electricity for -80°F freezers. I mean, come on people! You could be doing transformation of B. subtilis and related organisms instead, which form nice, sturdy endospores which you can dry out and keep in an any cool, dry place, no -80°F freezer needed! Or you could use something like Agrobacterium tumefaciens, and as a bonus be able to then transfer your nice transformed genes into plants, too! But NOOOOOooo….it’s always “E.coli, E.coli, E.coli.” DAMN YOU, E.COLI!

Of course, none of that is Carl Zimmer’s fault, either, so this is also no reason to hate him.

Now, if his book was lousy, that MIGHT be a reason to hate him, but as far as I can tell there’s no reason to think the book is lousy, so this is no reason to hate him either. In fact, that’s kind of the problem.

No, the reason I Hate Carl Zimmer is that he’s written a book about friggin’, stage-hogging E.coli…and I want it. (Well, a copy of it anyway.) It sounds like a very interesting book. I feel like a Republican who wants a copy of “The Audacity of Hope”. Or a Democrat who wants to plan a vacation to visit the George W. Bush Presidential Library. The cognitive dissonance torments me, and it’s all Carl Zimmer’s fault! CURSE YOU CARL ZIMMER!

Okay, got that out of my system. A review might follow eventually if I manage to get a copy of the book. Meanwhile, for a change of pace, anybody want to hear about my Asterisk setup? Or should I just get back to the fermentation stuff?

P.S. Here’s a bit of trivia for you: “Frig” is apparently an old-English word meaning “to wiggle”…

WANT: “Teamaker” hops

Just a brief “aw, crap, has it really been over two weeks since my last post?” post, really, but I thought this was interesting.

It would seem that there’s a variety of hops that’s been registered recently known as the “Teamaker” variety. It’s got all the magic bacteria-stopping power of a hops plant, but composed of almost entirely the non-bitter component. I’m not sure how hard it would be for me to get them to send me a plant or two to evaluate it’s usefulness for yeast cultivation (as an anti-firmicutes antibiotic) and for controlling the growth of bacteria in fermented foods and drinks…

House-hunting (“Yep, these are house droppings all right. Fresh ones too…” [everybody’s seen that Monty Python bit, right?]) in southeast Texas and the related travel (both in the area here and between here and the other abode in southeastern Idaho) is eating my life at the moment, but I’ll try not to neglect the blog so much.

More to follow.

Boosting fermentation with science

All right then – I’ve got five pounds of honey, a pound of frozen cherries, packets of a couple of different dried yeasts, miscellaneous other potential additives, two 2-gallon polyethylene terphthalate fermentation containers with screw-top lids and spigots, several feet of aquarium airline tubing and connectors, silicone sealant, and miscellaneous kitchen gadgets (including a hydrometer). Now it’s time to discuss what I’m about to do and fish for comments and criticisms before I jump into it.

My goal here with this brewing experiment is a quick primary fermentation. And to compare the results from two different yeast strains, uh, TWO goals, quick fermentation, yeast strain comparison, and fermentation container design. THREE goals. Quick fermentation, comparing yeast strains, fermentation container design, and to try to keep the yeast cultures from dying off too quickly during the fermentation. FOUR. Four goals…

In this post, I’ll stick to talking about what I’m putting into the brew and how I hypothesize my additives and process with speed the fermentation along and help keep a large portion of the yeast viable during the primary fermentation.

Actually, the health of the yeast populations and the speed of fermentation are overlapping goals; more cells remaining alive and healthy means more cells simultaneously chewing up sugars and spitting out ethanol for me, resulting (hypothetically) in faster primary fermentation. In this experiment, I’m going to be focussing on nutrients and spices that are reported to benefit yeast activity. Here’s the process I am currently planning to follow, focussing primarily on the fermentation-boosting parts:

  • I’ll boil the 5 pounds of honey with enough tap-water to make about 2 gallons of must, adding the frozen cherries sometime after the boil gets underway.

    • Fermentation boost: we have water so hard that you have to wear a helmet to take a shower. (Joke stolen from my Environnmental Chemistry instructor, so you can blame Dr. Rosentreter for that one). It’s loaded with Mg2+ and Ca2+, which seem to be able to help the yeast to produce ethanol faster and survive higher ethanol concentrations better[1][2] as well as just being general nutrients[4].

  • Two approximately ½-liter amounts of the must will be put into clean glass quart bottles and used to develop the initial yeast culture for pitching (each one for a different strain of yeast).

    • Fermentation Boost: Growing up a large population of yeast from the dried yeast packets before pitching will give me a faster start. In addition, the large headspace and the use of cloth rather than plastic or rubber covering of the top will allow oxygen to get into the starter culture, helping it to develop more quickly and in a more healthy fashion (i.e. a larger proportion of healthy, viable cells).

  • Nitrogen supplementation: Capsules of arginine picked up cheap at a certain big-box store will be added to the yeast starter.

    • Fermentation Boost: “Free Amino Nitrogen” is perhaps the most important bulk nutrient for yeast, and arginine seems to be the preferred amino acid source[3][4], presumably because it contains the most reduced nitrogen per molecule of the amino acids. I actually want to try to develop a process for using dry milk powder instead, but achieving sufficient hydrolysis of the milk proteins looks like it’s going to take some development on my part. For now I’ll “cheat” and use arginine instead.

  • Vitamin supplementation: A single well-crushed children’s “chewable vitamin” (“Flintstones™” or generic equivalent) will be added to each starter culture as well.

    • Fermentation Boost: Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5), Inositol, trace minerals, and small amounts of additional potassium and phosphate to supply vital nutrients to the yeast culture.[4]

  • Fermentation-enhancing spices: I will be adding ground ginger and cinnamon (actually cassia) to the must near the end of the boil.

    • Fermentation Boost: In addition to providing what I think will be excellent complementary flavors to the final product, it appears that even fairly large amounts of these two spices – among others – provide a boost to fermentation rate[5] (via Shirley O. Corriher’s “Cookwise”[6]) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cultures. If I’m doing the conversions appropriately, the peak fermentation boost for ginger works out to something like 3 tbsp of ground ginger per liter, or something like (very roughly) 10 tablespoons per gallon. I don’t plan to add quite so much, but a couple of tablespoons of each spice in the two-gallon batch ought to provide some nice flavor while still hopefully providing a boost to the fermentation rate as well.

“Cinnamon”: In the US, the rust-colored stuff labelled “Cinnamon” is not, actually, cinnamon. True cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum)is actually tan in color. What you get in the US when you buy a bottle of “Ground Cinnamon” actually comes from Cassia (Cinnamomum aromaticum), a closely related plant. Realistically, as far as I have been able to find out so far, there’s not likely to be a huge difference in the active components or flavor. While I haven’t yet gotten my hands on a copy of the old article from Cereal Chemistry[5] mentioned above, I’d give good odds that the “cinnamon” used in the study was also actually cassia anyway.

There’s one more thing that I hypothesize would help promote my goals that could be added: small amounts of oxygen[7] (say, less than 13% O2, or very roughly speaking, around half of the normal atmospheric concentration or less). However, I’m still trying to work out an easy way to achieve this automatically and am not yet ready to try it. Besides, this is already pretty poorly-designed for a “real” scientific experiment as it is, considering the number of variables that are really contained in this brewing process. Really, my hypothesis here boils down to a relatively vague “This mixture and process will allow me to finish the primary fermentation within a day or two of pitching”. If I ever have opportunity to do serious experimentation on this, it’ll require setting up a large number of separate fermentation reactions to assess the effects varying each individual set of hypothetically-fermentation-boosting additives. Hopefully one of these days things will settle down enough to let me try it.

If anybody sees anything stupid (or just interesting) up there, please say something…

[1] Dombek KM, Ingram LO: “Magnesium limitation and its role in apparent toxicity of ethanol during yeast fermentation.”; Appl Environ Microbiol. 1986 Nov;52(5):975-81.
[2] Nabais RC, Sá-Correia I, Viegas CA, Novais JM: “Influence of Calcium Ion on Ethanol Tolerance of Saccharomyces bayanus and Alcoholic Fermentation by Yeasts.”; Appl Environ Microbiol. 1988 Oct;54(10):2439-2446.
[3] Carter BL, Halvorson HO: “Periodic changes in rate of amino acid uptake during yeast cell cycle.”; J Cell Biol. 1973 Aug;58(2):401-9.
[4] Fugelsang KC, Edwards CG: “Wine Microbiology – Practical Applications and Procedures (2nd Ed.)”; 2007; Springer Science+Business Media LLC; pp 15-18
[5] Wright WJ, Bice CW, Fogelberg JM: “The Effect of Spices on Yeast Fermentation.”; Cereal Chemistry. 1954 Mar;Vol.31,100-112
[6] Corriher, SO: “Cookwise”; 1997; HarperCollins Publishers, inc; New York; pp 69-70
[7] Nagodawithana TW, Castellano C, Steinkraus KH: “Effect of dissolved oxygen, temperature, initial cell count, and sugar concentration on the viability of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in rapid fermentations.”; Appl Microbiol. 1974 Sep;28(3):383-91.

Fermentation: not just for alcohol

What does gluconic acid taste like, anyway?

Well, that was an interesting reminder. I’m tracking “fermentation” on Twitter, and caught a random reference to an interesting fermented beverage being made in Germany. The “reminder” I drew from this serendipitous reference was that “fermentation” doesn’t necessarily mean alcoholic fermentation.

“Fermentation” seems to be slightly tricky to define accurately. Most definitions seem to directly mention alcohol production from sugar, but this is only an example and not a definition. I’ve also seen the term used to mean simply “to grow a culture of microorganisms” (because the tank they are grown in can be referred to as a “fermentor”.)

Properly speaking, fermentation is what you get when you have microbes growing under conditions where the elelectrons that get sucked away from “food” molecules like sugars ends up on another, simpler carbon compound rather than something like oxygen, and therefore fermentation is implicitly anaerobic although that’s not the same as saying that fermentation cannot happen in the presence of oxygen (e.g. the Crabtree Effect, and of course fermentation of ethanol to vinegar requires oxygen). The end product is generally assumed to be organic acids (like acetic acid [vinegar]) or alcohols, and carbon dioxide. So, making beer and wine is fermentation. Making vinegar is fermentation. Making yogurt (lactic acid) is fermentation. Citric acid can be made by fermentation of glucose by Aspergillus molds, as can malic (apple) acid (see US Pat#3063910). You can make tartaric (grape) acid from glucose by fermentation as well (see US Pat#2314831).

I am familiar with the flavors of all of those products. One I’ve never directly tasted is gluconic acid, which is the main product of the fermentation process used to make “BIONADE®” (it seems to be written in all-caps everywhere).

According to their English-language page discussing their process – linked from the image at right, click to view – they are starting with malt, just as one would for beer, but instead of Saccharomyces yeasts, they are fermenting this wort-like liquid with “acid bacteria”. I’m going to hazard a guess that the bacterium in question is a strain of Gluconobacter oxydans or one of its close relatives. This group of bacteria is in the Acetobacteraceae family of bacteria which is involved in turning your wine into vinegar. It would appear that under the right conditions, the enzyme Glucose Oxidase (EC 1.1.3.4) produced by G.oxydans converts glucose to a compound which reacts with water to form gluconic acid. BIONADE® then adds flavor extracts and juices to the filtered fermentation product, carbonates it, and bottles it.

Not being familiar with the flavor of gluconic acid, I’m aching to get my hands on some of this stuff and try it.

For another example of a relatively non-alcoholic fermented beverage, see also Kombucha, which is essentially sweetened tea fermented by acetic-acid bacteria and non-Saccharomyces yeasts…which I also have yet to taste.

geostr:50.4600,10.2208:200804110105-06:geostr (at least if Google Maps interpretation of the address I could find at the moment is correct, and assuming the information I dug up and my interpretation of it is correct, this should be the approximate location of the brewery responsible for BIONADE® production.)

Well, a PHP example, anyway

Once I dove in and started messing around, I only had to fix two typos as the example I was working on seems to work correctly, at least to the extent that I’ve tested it. I now have what appears to be a working example of Geostring parsing in PHP. In this case, the example reads my feed from the Twitter website, sifts out any geostring tags it finds, then generates Google Maps links for each one found. As I write this, there are two geostring tags on that page, representing places (and times)
that I have actually been, and it seems to work.

You can take a look at the source code for the example here, or see it in action here.

Feel free to grab a copy to play with if you’d like (or write one yourself that isn’t so messy – hey, as someone who doesn’t consider himself a professional “coder”, I’m just happy that it did exactly what I wanted it to do on the first try…). You should only need to worry about two things – changing the $text_to_read, and whether or not your web server (or CLI) has fopen wrappers turned on so the script can read another web page if you use a web page as your text to parse rather than a local file.

Since generating a geostring tag is trivial, I didn’t bother trying to incorporate that into this example. If you want one, then here:

<?php
//generate a geostr tag with the most typical information only
//point not part of a track nor including heading or angle
$lat=44.027168;
$lon=-111.297892;
$elev=”1711.9m”; //could leave off the “m” and treat as float, since it defaults to “meters”
$timestamp=”20071125T123438-06″; //6 hours behind UTC

print(“geostr:$lat,$lon,$elev:$timestamp:geostr”);
//”full” version: print(“geostr:$lat,$lon,$elev:$timestamp,:,:geostr”);
//completely unnecessary, but legal
?>

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.