4 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

I can get locally grown beetroot here. Steaming them is a bit of a chore, but cold pickled beetroot is one of life's necessities.

I've been meaning to have a crack at fermented beetroot. Borsch too.

The site has just informed me that I've become a primate, so thanks for that! 😊

Pickled beets are an essential of civilized life, agree.

I'll be interested to learn how the fermented form compares. Lactobacillus casei is one that naturally appears and works well. It's used with ginseng, too.

And congratulations to you and the Archbishop of Canterbury, on being primates.

On 11/14/2025 at 8:20 PM, exchemist said:

Hmm, I wonder if whatever makes the sugar brown (obviously not sucrose but something more complex from the sugar cane) is going green under acid conditions from the lemon juice. You could try with a bit of just sugar solution plus a few drops of lemon juice and see if there is a colour change.

For the record, I did as you suggested and didn't get the colour change in a container open to the air.

The vivid green correlates with acidic, anaerobic, reducing conditions. We may get some indication whether these factors are causal or not in a week or so when fermentation is complete, and I crack open my first bottle.

Nigerian accessible aquifers can exceed 10 mg/l Fe so something around a mM solution of ferrous ion is feasible.

Don't you love laterite.

1 hour ago, sethoflagos said:

For the record, I did as you suggested and didn't get the colour change in a container open to the air.

The vivid green correlates with acidic, anaerobic, reducing conditions. We may get some indication whether these factors are causal or not in a week or so when fermentation is complete, and I crack open my first bottle.

Nigerian accessible aquifers can exceed 10 mg/l Fe so something around a mM solution of ferrous ion is feasible.

Don't you love laterite.

Well citrate can chelate with Fe in various ways, so perhaps there is a bright green complex you can get under reducing conditions. I found a picture of a fairly bright green powder on the web, called sodium iron citrate, but could not find a chemical formula for it. You may well be right that exclusion of oxygen is the key, as Fe II oxidises to Fe III so readily. It will be interesting to see what happens to the colour when you expose it to the air.

Could be this:

In turn, I couldn't find a good picture, but in my memory it was less a bright green but more brown/grey-green-ish. But entirely possible that I am confusing compounds, it has been a minute.

To make things really visible you can also shift the pH (e.g. using NaOH or if not available baking soda). In presence of oxygen and pH >7 iron precipitates rapidly in form of insoluble ferric oxyhydroxides that should settle quite nicely.

Edit: I may be wrong, upon reflection I think I likely only have seen ferrous citrate.

11 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Could be this:

In turn, I couldn't find a good picture, but in my memory it was less a bright green but more brown/grey-green-ish. But entirely possible that I am confusing compounds, it has been a minute.

To make things really visible you can also shift the pH (e.g. using NaOH or if not available baking soda). In presence of oxygen and pH >7 iron precipitates rapidly in form of insoluble ferric oxyhydroxides that should settle quite nicely.

The picture I found was this:

Whereas simple iron (II) citrate was indeed brownish grey-green:

That certainly looks compelling.

Before baking soda

After baking soda

Bit of a fizz and little else.

After Domestos

Moreorless instant change. No dark precipitate.

Hmm that is odd. Most ferric compounds are somewhere in the spectrum between black and yellow. The only whitish ones I can think of are some form of ferric sulfates as powder (white-yellow) but in solution it turns reddish brown or at least yellow. Does something precipitate at all?

I wonder if it could be another metal...

29 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Hmm that is odd. Most ferric compounds are somewhere in the spectrum between black and yellow. The only whitish ones I can think of are some form of ferric sulfates as powder (white-yellow) but in solution it turns reddish brown or at least yellow. Does something precipitate at all?

I wonder if it could be another metal...

Domestos is a pretty concentrated solution of sodium hypochlorite and probably overkill as an oxidising agent. Could it bump iron into one of the higher valency ferrate states?

My money is still on @exchemist 's intense green citrate complex. Given the suboptimal nature of my bucket chemistry, and the fact that the species of interest must be barely into the millimolar regime, perhaps there simply isn't enough oxidation product to be visually detectable.

On 11/17/2025 at 3:41 PM, exchemist said:

It will be interesting to see what happens to the colour when you expose it to the air.

After a week in the decanter and three days secondary fermentation in the bottle, the green eventually settled out in the lees, leaving a typical ginger beer colour.

Obviously, a taste test was necessary, and that took me straight back to a job I had in Catalunya over 30 years back where I spent most evenings in a small expat bar in Salou necking Cava brut by the pint. (Ah, those were the days!). In hindsight, that's essentially what the yeast I used (Lalvin EC 1118) is expected to do - produce sparkling wines up to 18% alcohol with fermentation temperatures up to 30^oC.

I guess it was a success then, but not quite what I was expecting. Questions remain.

Re my entrance into milk kefir making. I'm sold. Man, is it sour and fizzy! I think it's still stabilising as it's gone from sour, cheesy, creamy to a cleaner, sour/semi-fizzy taste and mouth feel. Going to try water kefir next. I've got this milk kefir on a daily routine now.

On 12/1/2025 at 12:42 AM, StringJunky said:

Re my entrance into milk kefir making. I'm sold. Man, is it sour and fizzy! I think it's still stabilising as it's gone from sour, cheesy, creamy to a cleaner, sour/semi-fizzy taste and mouth feel. Going to try water kefir next. I've got this milk kefir on a daily routine now.

Apparently the kefir organisms are quite sensitive to both ambient temperature and humidity. As I'm currently living in Abuja (central Nigeria) and looking at six solid months of mid-thirties Celsius and 25% RH, perhaps we're going to be a little too hot and dry here.

But you've whetted my appetite, so I think I'll have a bash at making dahi, an Indian version that should be a better match for our climate. And I am very partial to mint raita. Though I think I'll steer clear of the bhang lassi.

On 10/23/2025 at 9:10 PM, TheVat said:

I've bought pickles that are fermented (so somewhat a misnomer, for those who use pickling in its most technical sense), and are probiotic, like Oregon Brineworks. Definitely more flavor than conventional pickle-pickles, and convey a feeling of warmth in the gut, usually a good sign for me. OBW uses mainly lactobacilli, with some Leuconostoc mesenteroides as well which brings up the flavor and acidity but not so much as to harm the lactobacilli.

Well, based entirely (😉) on your recommendation I've given it a go.

The cucumbers available were a fair bit larger than what I'd have preferred, but I scooped out the seeds (sandwich filler) and cut them into spears. Also a bayleaf and a few scent leaves should hopefully supply enough tannin to help prevent them from disintegrating.

Being from the vine, these will certainly attract Kahm yeast, so I employed @StringJunky 's 'floating roof' barrier in a 32 fl oz Kilner. A bit got in through the gap, so I added enough vegetable oil to make a decent seal, and everything appears to be progressing fine. A few more days of hubble-bubble and after chilling in the fridge, we'll see what we get. Looking forward to it.

17 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Apparently the kefir organisms are quite sensitive to both ambient temperature and humidity. As I'm currently living in Abuja (central Nigeria) and looking at six solid months of mid-thirties Celsius and 25% RH, perhaps we're going to be a little too hot and dry here.

But you've whetted my appetite, so I think I'll have a bash at making dahi, an Indian version that should be a better match for our climate. And I am very partial to mint raita. Though I think I'll steer clear of the bhang lassi.

Yes, I've read this too, but I'm just leaving it at ambient 16-20c and experiencing the slightly different tastes each day. I started the culture pretty warm - 28-30c - with a beer warming mat to get the population up quickly, so that the undesirable micros didn't get a chance to dominate.

I had an issue that put me bordering on diarrhoea and I surmised it might be down to an incomplete gut biota, such that my gut lining was somewhat inflamed. The body thinks it's being attacked, so, as a result of the inflammation, which is protective, the fluid absorption was compromised, leading to watery stools. Everything seems to be normal now. The underlying reason, I guessed, was I don't eat enough fresh food to keep the biota maintained and this seems to have fixed it, I think. I still have to address my overall diet though. I've come to realize that veg variety is not just about vitamins, fibre and minerals, but also inoculating the gut lining regularly with diverse microbiota. Being in my mid-sixties now, my body complains much more about not eating properly. I'm trying to halve my consumption as well because I don't need it... the evidence is in my expanding belly!

Edited December 7Dec 7 by StringJunky

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

The underlying reason, I guessed, was I don't eat enough fresh food to keep the biota maintained and this seems to have fixed it, I think. I still have to address my overall diet though. I've come to realize that veg variety is not just about vitamins, fibre and minerals, but also inoculating the gut lining regularly with diverse microbiota.

Psyllium seed is also a big help as a prebiotic and stabilizing fluid balance.

2 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

. A bit got in through the gap, so I added enough vegetable oil to make a decent seal, and everything appears to be progressing fine. A few more days of hubble-bubble and after chilling in the fridge, we'll see what we get. Looking forward to it.

Are you starting with a culture, some juice from other fermented vegs? Seems to me it goes better with a starter brine, as the good bacilli more easily outcompete the spoilage bacteria. Also, eye of newt, but that's just a personal preference.

15 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Psyllium seed is also a big help as a prebiotic and stabilizing fluid balance.

Are you starting with a culture, some juice from other fermented vegs? Seems to me it goes better with a starter brine, as the good bacilli more easily outcompete the spoilage bacteria. Also, eye of newt, but that's just a personal preference.

Cheers. Will have a look.

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

I had an issue that put me bordering on diarrhoea and I surmised it might be down to an incomplete gut biota, such that my gut lining was somewhat inflamed. The body thinks it's being attacked, so, as a result of the inflammation, which is protective, the fluid absorption was compromised, leading to watery stools. Everything seems to be normal now. The underlying reason, I guessed, was I don't eat enough fresh food to keep the biota maintained and this seems to have fixed it, I think. I still have to address my overall diet though. I've come to realize that veg variety is not just about vitamins, fibre and minerals, but also inoculating the gut lining regularly with diverse microbiota. Being in my mid-sixties now, my body complains much more about not eating properly. I'm trying to halve my consumption as well because I don't need it... the evidence is in my expanding belly!

Two things I seem (touchwood) to have said farewell to recently are a beerbelly and chronic IBS. I'm loathe to claim any particular factors as being critically significant to either of these, but my working hypothesis is that they correlate with ditching a pub grub diet in favour of a) increasing fruit and veg intake b) switching carbohydrate intake from chips, rice and pasta to wholewheat flatbreads and pulses. Perhaps @CharonY can shed light on whether the more resistant starches of the latter are the good dietary move my subjective experience and unlearned research seems to suggest

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Are you starting with a culture, some juice from other fermented vegs?

Sometimes I do but not on this occasion. As it's my first go at fermented cucumbers I'd like to see the full natural sequence first without too much tampering with the process.

This ferment is quite vigorous anyway so I don't think there's much of an issue.

@sethoflagos AFAIK resistant starch is food for the gut biota. We can't use it directly.

To add: Eating cooled potatoes, which forms some resistant starch, reduced digestible calories by up to10%. I think that's a useful reduction.

Edited December 8Dec 8 by StringJunky
E2A

On 12/8/2025 at 1:27 AM, StringJunky said:

@sethoflagos AFAIK resistant starch is food for the gut biota. We can't use it directly.

Very much not my field, but I'm guessing that the gut biota produce short chain fatty acids from it that we use? My understanding is that it gives the gut downstream of the small intestine a bit of work to do that highly processed foods generally don't.

15 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Very much not my field, but I'm guessing that the gut biota produce short chain fatty acids from it that we use? My understanding is that it gives the gut downstream of the small intestine a bit of work to do that highly processed foods generally don't.

Yes, colonic cells feed off them.

Green banana and cooled tatos are a tonic

To our microbial friends colonic;

Like Ruminococcus bromii,

It's fatty acids show me why,

Starch resistance is not mere histrionic.

On 12/9/2025 at 12:36 PM, sethoflagos said:

Very much not my field, but I'm guessing that the gut biota produce short chain fatty acids from it that we use? My understanding is that it gives the gut downstream of the small intestine a bit of work to do that highly processed foods generally don't.

So, fundamentally yes, but things are (as usual) quite a bit more complicated. There are different types of resistant starches that are associated with different shifts in the microbiota, as well as SCFA being produced. I will also note that while there are plenty of associations between SCFA and gut health, they are predominantly derived from animal models and the mechanistic understanding is still lacking. I.e. there is good reason to believe that this might yield health benefits, we have only limited human data and we don't really understand how it might happen.

Yep. Some RS foods have a fair amount of galacto-oligosaccharides, which lead to really opposite outcomes depending on the gut - prebiotic for some, nasty irritant to others who are FODMAP sensitive and have IBS. Beans are a classic double-edged sword, among the RS foods.

Also, there are different compositions of RS. The lit seems a bit of a mess to me and less resolved compared to even the complex situation you find in environmental communities.

16 hours ago, TheVat said:

... Beans are a classic double-edged sword, among the RS foods.

And yet a substantial percentage of the world's population gain much of their carbohydrate and most of their protein intake from them without undue GI distress.

I wonder if FODMAP sensitivity arises in part due to the typically impoverished diet of Western industrialised nations. Where of course, most of the limited research in the area will have been done, with all the consequent selection bias that implies.