My neighbor and friend has some wonderful blackberry canes in her backyard and invited me to harvest some. I've never really worked with blackberries before because I don't like the big seeds. But this was too good a gift to turn down. I washed and blended the berries with a little water and then strained the seeds out of the juice. Blackberry juice is not very sweet, so I thought it might be possible to ferment it without it creating too much alcohol. I used my one liter fermenting bottle and filled it with the raw blackberry juice and added 2 1/2 tsp. Real Salt. ( liters are not quite a quart so I used less than the usual 1 TBS of salt). I installed the airlock and left it out for 5 days to ferment. It sure did ferment...bubbling up into the airlock and turning the airlock water purple! I just took it out and rinsed it and re-installed it. The finished ferment tasted salty but not "alcoholy" so my guess was right. I put it in a quart jar and set in refrigerator for another 4-5 days of cool down. I haven't put it downstairs because I keep sipping from it a spoonful at a time. I like the taste of it.
We all know that dark colored blue and purple fruits are loaded with antioxidents so that's good but now this lovely dark purple juice also has living lactobacillus and other enzymes and bio-nutrients common to fermented foods. It's a winning combination.
The rest of the juice I turned into regular jelly/jam with high heat and sugar. It's good too but not as nutritious as the ferment.
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