So I recently made some Strawberry FFJ, should be ready to go today (have to check it when I get home.)
So I know pretty much everywhere online they say to use brown sugar. Well I also read something a while back that molasses is fine.
This is my second FFJ and I’ve used horticultural molasses both times, does anyone know the pros and cons of using molasses over brown sugar? And I guess the pro s/cons of brown sugar. Thanks DGC
Molasses all the way. Brown sugar and molasses both come from sugarcane but they’re not nutritionally equal. To make brown sugar, sugarcane is refined to white table sugar crystals which is sucrose (C12H22O11), then a little molasses is added in different amounts to those crystals to create light or dark brown sugar. Sucrose has an adverse affect on microbes like some bacteria because it can dry them out in high concentrations when they come in contact like salt.
We want to use blackstrap molasses because it’s full of vitamins and minerals and low in sucrose compared to other sugarcane syrups. Sugarcane can be boiled 3 separate times creating three different syrups. After the first boil the syrup has it’s highest sugar content and down south we call this cane syrup. The second boil is darker with less sugar and a bitter flavor. The third boil creates a thick black syrup known as blackstrap molasses and it has the lowest sucrose content while keeping vitamin B6 and the minerals potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese and iron plants can actually use.
Mystro is on FIRE!!! and he’s right too.
Sugar is used to extract all the moisture and nutrients from material used to create a true fermentation. Check out Drake one of Master Cho’s students on the Big Island. This is his youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSXsSRY4u1oxY1JFAKaL-QQ
All the goods on KNF Aloha
Great point joebob. Sugar is key during fermentation. But all sugar is not the same like all bacteria are not the same. Anaerobic bacteria are present during fermentation. The type of sugar the anaerobic bacteria prefer can vary. This is why there is not yet proven hard science behind a lot of bacterial research. Fermenting bacteria can eat some sugars and not others. Sucrose is the simple sugars glucose and fructose combined. The anaerobic bacteria during fermentation use the glucose and not sucrose. So the sucrose has to break down. Fructose is a simple sugar in fruit (like the strawberries he used) and is also difficult to crystallize which makes for an excellent and very popular preservative.
I look at the choice as timing. Brown sugar will speed up the process for a short term solution. While using molasses provides a longer term solution with the fermentation relying more on the natural sugars in the fruit. How long you plan to keep the ffj or how fast you need it would probably be one reason to use one or the other. I always feet rewarded when I choose the patient path.
My understanding is that for most KNF applications you want DRY sugar or DRY (dehydrated) molasses. While liquid molasses is great for many things, in most KNF recipes, I think you really want to use a DRY sugar source instead.
I forget the specific reasons, but this was covered and explained quite well in the recent “Growing with fishes” podcast where they interviewed Chris Trump, Korean Natural Farming expert. They asked about using molasses vs sugar and Chris clarified that molasses is fine but you want dehydrated molasses, NOT liquid. I wish I remembered the specifics but I don’t.
I believe the reason might have something to do with the fact that we are trying to utilize osmosis to pull the liquids out of the plant material. Think about when you add sugar to strawberries and the way the sugar starts to pull the liquid out of the fruit. Eventually it kinda turns into a strawberry syrup. This is the same effect we are trying to utilize when making FPE, and I’m not sure you get the same effect when you use liquid molasses.
Thanks Soup. I forgot to mention dehydrated molasses. In a liquid, the wild yeast would convert the sugar to alcohol. We don’t want to make alcohol. We only want the bacteria to consume the sugars. A typical liquid fermentation has yeast and bacteria working together. The yeast burp out alcohol while the bacteria burp out CO2.
Definitely check Chris Trump on anything KNF. He also appears on the “Shaping Fire” podcast and talks about the exact process of making FFJ and FPJ on this podcast. He definitely stresses the use of the dry sugar and the 1 to 1 ratio necessary for not over fermenting any juice you make. Check it out, it’s a great show.
Jmystro, SOUP, and JoeBob thanks so much, always a huge wealth of information. Thanks for the recommendation ChemDizzle, that was a great episode!
So I did use liquid molasses and it never really bubbled and doesn’t really smell fermented to me. I’ll probably just water some of this into my vegetable garden, after listening to the shaping fire podcast I realized I made the wrong ferment anyways. In flower we should be using a FPJ, which I had this backwards anyways.
Thanks again DGC for always helping, I hope one day I’ll make it out to the DGC cup.