Great Barrington — “I think it’s rare to find one that’s completely adapted to coffee.”
“Have you ever heard of people doing it with herbal teas?”
“I think it depends on the mother…some are just more resilient than others. I think it’s all just how much you want to experiment…and not be afraid to mess up.”
This was some of the conversation at the culture swap table at the 2nd annual Berkshire Fermentation Festival, held last month at the Great Barrington Fairgrounds, where people left kefir grains, sourdough starter, and the object in question, the scoby, or mother, used for making kombucha. In addition to all this information sharing, Nash Atkins, behind the table for a time, said that “a lot of people just want to know what these big slimy things are.”
Indeed, if you’ve never seen the soft brown rubbery disc that is a kombucha scoby (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast), it can take some getting used to. But in the Berkshires, various incarnations of fermented foods have caught on fast, just one prong of the ever-growing nationwide movement to take back our food. A jar of lacto-fermented veggies from Berkshire’s own Hosta Hill is a common fixture at many a potluck, and chances are you know someone who makes their own kombucha, or have at least encountered the fizzy, tart beverage in stores.
“That’s a new thing,” said Michelle Kaplan, a driving force behind the festival. “In the 80s, you couldn’t go to the store and buy kombucha, you had to know someone who had a scoby.” Someone behind the booth of Katalyst Kombucha even said that when they started in 2005, he’d “never heard of it.”
Similarly, when Robin Cole started working at South River Miso 20 years ago, “nobody knew what miso was, nobody thought about fermentation at all,” she said. “There’s been a real amazing shift in the past several years. Instead of explaining what miso is, now I just get to share new varieties with people.”
She credited Sandor Katz, the author of several books on fermentation, with “getting the word out.” Cole, who said she’s “heard of a lot of people’s health really improving,” was giving out samples of their miso (it’s a paste made from fermented soybeans), stirred into sautéed onions and olive oil.
“I never like miso,” said one woman, “but this is delicious!”
Meg Witherbee of Wildwood Culture in Vermont noted how positive and excited everyone was to sample and learn about different cultures. “This exceeded our expectations,” said Ed Case, beside her, referring to the volume of people. He also noticed that he didn’t have to “explain what cultures were or the fermentation process.”
Michelle Kaplan guessed this year’s festival drew at least 2,000 people, triple the number that came last year. She even had to turn vendors away. “We have a long list for next year!” she said. Kaplan thinks fermentation is so well received here because it goes hand in hand with the emphasis on local farming and food sustainability. “Great, you’re gonna grow all this cabbage and all this cucumber, but what are you gonna do with it all? It’s gonna rot.”
Not only is fermentation an ancient strategy for food preservation, it brings health benefits and unique flavors, Kaplan says. She notes that the Latin root fervere means “to boil,” and she’s quick to draw the parallel between the scientific process and the “cultural, social ferment” happening as more embrace these benefits in the Berkshires.
When we say that “change is brewing,” or that something “bubbles with excitement,” the chemical and cultural connections become apparent. Furthermore, the word “culture,” both the bacterial and societal varieties, comes from the Middle English for “place tilled.” To cultivate, to have things grow, as Kaplan says.
“A Year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution” is the subtitle to Derek Dellinger’s book The Fermented Man, which he was signing at the festival. Dellinger decided to live on only fermented foods for a whole year. “Aren’t you gonna have too many microbes?” people asked him. But he didn’t experience anything extreme. “I saw my blood pressure go down, I had a lot of energy, didn’t get sick at all during the year.”
Dellinger wasn’t doing this for special health reasons, though that has been done (just ask presenter Dan Hegerich, a six-time cancer survivor who credits fermented food, “high” meat in particular, for his recovery). Dellinger just wanted to “normalize” our relationship with fermented foods. “If I can do an extreme version,” he said, “people shouldn’t feel intimidated to incorporate it into their diet in a lesser amount.”
“We’ve just been very afraid of germs and microbes for decades now,” he says, but “fermenting is gaining traction now.” People are more interested in a healthy gut. Plus, many fermented foods are so common, they aren’t described as such, he said. Think bread, yogurt, beer, even cheese.
“Cheese is absolutely alive, especially raw milk cheese,” said a cheesemaker vending at the festival. “The mold and the cultures growing and changing their environment is where you get flavor.” She pointed to the vast difference in taste between “pasteurized commodity cheddars, for example, and something very small operation.” And because pasteurization kills lactase, which is what your body uses to digest milk, lactose intolerance is much more of an issue.
The simple, traditional process behind ferments is connecting us to our roots, said Kaplan. “When I bite into a pickle sometimes, I think, wow, this is what my great-great grandmother ate.”
Books on fermentation and kombucha, said Deborah Balmuth of Storey Publishing in North Adams, are doing very well. “The food angle seems to be especially strong right now, especially foods that foster a healthy gut.” Storey has been publishing books “promoting self-reliance and do-it-yourself skills” since 1983. While she thinks that a place like the Berkshires is an “incubator for this kind of activity,” Balmuth says that Storey operates internationally, and has “seen a huge increase in the last 10 years.” Interest in the backyard homesteading movement — raising chickens, compact farms, medicinal herbs, is on the rise.
“And the creativity angle, too,” she adds. “All of our books are really about fostering a creative life experience, too.”
This creativity and experimentation was celebrated in a host of workshops on everything from kimchi and bread to fermented sausage and dairy-free cheeses. Adam Elabd demonstrated how to make tepache, a Mexican fermented beverage, from nothing more than unrefined cane sugar and pineapple rinds and core (“the part that you normally throw away”).
“Wild yeasts on the rind of the pineapple will drive the ferment,” he explained. “Yeast eats sugar and creates carbon dioxide and alcohol,” he reminded the audience. A couple of days in a jar, and you had tepache. One can add spices, other fruits. “The process is ripe for experimentation and playing around with,” he said.
“Have you ever let it go to vinegar?” someone asked. He had. Tepache vinegar, “code for, whoops, I forgot to check on it for a couple days and now it’s not really drinkable anymore.”
“Just let it keep going,” he says. “At some point you’ll taste it and there’s absolutely no sweetness left, and you’ve got an awesome homemade vinegar.”
Michelle Kaplan is offering various fermentation demos this month at the Mason Library, Wednesdays at 5 p.m. Keep in touch with Berkshire Ferments on their Facebook page.
