you hello friends we're having a beautiful day here in West End and I want to show you how to make your own fermentation starter now this starter can be used for making kimchi fermenting any fruit or vegetables of fashion style lacto fermented pickles so good best kind of pizza so I'm going to show you how to make your starter out of just three ingredients and let's get started all right so all you need to make your fermentation starter is some fruit some sugar this is organic cane sugar don't use the GMO beet sugar a glass jar and some filtered water this needs to be either rain water spring water not City tap water because you do not want the klore chlorine and it will kill your bacteria and obviously you do not want your fluoride in there either so you need to get some some sort of filtered water distilled water I use filtered rainwater and I store all my our rainwater in these glass jugs and it is filtered with a Berkey filter then for today I'm going to use blackberries these are some beautiful blackberries from my thornless blackberry bush I think these things are huge and the bush was a gift from my brother-in-law a couple years ago and blackberries around here grow like crazy and so at first I was like oh nice and we can go pick them weld anywhere however these are thornless and these are huge and I can grow them right here on my property so I don't have to go out and get them and now that I know I'm really happy with these I am going to be planting them taking them out of the pot these came from a pot the planted I'm getting a lot of blackberries off it and I'm going to be putting them in the ground next to the fence no the fence is done and then let it grow along there and I I bet I'll be I'll see a lot more volume of grapes or excuse me blackberries out of that so the best fruit to use for making your fermentation starter are berries you can really use any fruit as long as you leave the skin on so peach you know cut up pieces of peaches make sure you leave the skin on because you're the yeast that's going to get the fermentation going is always on the typically on the outside side outside layer of the fruit but berries are especially high in yeast when you see look at a grape and grapes as well and grape or a blueberry and you see that sort of white kind of coating on the outside that is your yeast so blueberries are really really high and I have made my yeast starter for my fermentation starter out of blueberries ginger is another good one as long as you cut it up small and leave it leave the skin on blackberries here right here is when I started a couple days ago and this is made with grapes and I throw in a few raisins raisins are excellent because you know they're smaller and so the yeast is you know you've got more on there per good amount that you're putting in there so but I put both grapes from last year that I pulled out the freezer and anyway so how you do this is put in your fruit you don't need very much that's that's probably more than enough in fact it might even take a couple of these out and then just eat them later because these are big you know you don't need a whole lot to get this going though you can add fruit you can add more fruit as you go all right and then you'll want to put in all about a tablespoon to start with a sugar and then you're gonna add your water and note I'm only putting a little bit in not filling it all the way up yet notice this one is up higher so um I forgot to have my so then of course you want to stir this up if the sugar dissolving in there the sugar of course is is very important because the yeast is going to need their sugar and the fruit obviously but these just going to be lobster sugar okay to really get going and get your nice fermentation so what you'll do is just eat fighters chill it on just barely ham tight not even though just enough that it's it stays on there sorry about that a little interruption somebody was at the door and dogs or bones are but anyway you want to make sure that it's just loose enough where the gasses can escape so you don't have a huge mess now for this will take about three days for it to be ready it's going to depend on how warm it is in your house and where you put this and just end the fruit you use that can really make a difference so for the for the next three days what you want to do is add a little more water add a little more sugar another tablespoon of sugar and then you know add about this much water it's maybe about a half cup whatever I mean if there's no specific recipe exactly how much you have to add just you just want to keep adding and you'll do that until it's full usually by the third day you will you'll know it's ready because it will be very fizzy very bubbly now this one's a couple days and you can see it's already getting fizzy if I was to hold this up to the mic if the mic was I'm gonna shake it again I don't know if the mic will pick this up but I don't know if you can hear that it's it's getting fizzy so it's getting it's pretty close to being ready when it's tomorrow it should probably be pretty good cuz you won't need to shake it to get that you'll just have to pick it up and it'll be fizzy or open it up and you'll hear it you just open it up and you'll just hear it fizz and once it's ready then this is this is what's really great guys is that you simply take a quarter cup of this liquid and you add it to a quart jar and if it's a half gallon jar then you're going to use a half cup of whatever you're fermenting so let's say I'm making this is my favorite way to make kimchi I've made kimchi for many years I've done it the old-fashioned way where you let ferment you do the salt brine you put it in your jars and you let it sit for 10 to 14 days and love-love-love it my oldest son loves it too however I did have some failures because it for whatever reason it didn't ferment it rotted and that was I hated throwing this out since I've been using this method for making kimchi I have not had any failures and I can have Yummie delicious bubbly very very building kimchi in two to three days literally two to three days so all I do for the kimchi is that I'm going to do the whole salt brine process is I simply put everything in the jar all my spices you know the cayenne pepper the garlic the ginger whatever I'm using kimchi or whatever it is your your fermenting you feel your jar up you put in your you put in your quarter cup of fermentation starter and then you fill it up the rest of the way with your filtered water and then just set it on your counter and just keep an eye on it and you'll be a good idea to put a towel under it to catch anything that may bubble out in from under the lid but yeah you want to make sure you put your your lid on just like this same thing with your weather with whatever you're fermenting this same method works to make beet kvass you can do the same thing you don't have to have way you can use you can use your fermentation starters um anything you want from it will work this way and so and then you can have these just incredibly healthy probiotic fruits vegetables whatever you want using this you also can make a very wonderful natural soda with this same process you you take let's say I'm going to make a whole jug a whole gallon jug of juice so I've got my juice in here whatever it is grape juice raspberry juice it doesn't matter any kind of juice and I have it in here you'll probably need to add a little extra sugar depending on how sweet your fruit is because they'll need to be sugar some sugar in there for the yeast to feed on and then since I'd be using a gallon obviously you do the math I'm going to use a whole cup of the fermentation starter and then same idea put it in there for the soda typically I just put a piece of cloth over it and rubber band and then let it sit two to three days and then you're going to go oh gosh sorry haha dogs be quiet you've got some natural healthy homemade soda and if you drink it up within the first you'll want to if you're wanting to avoid any alcohol you want even keeping it in the refrigerator that your soda will keep fermenting and eventually can turn to wine so what you'll need to do is it is if you're like me and you're avoiding alcohol or you're wanting to feed it to your children or grandchildren you'll want used-up within two three days otherwise it'll start getting too strong me I'm very sensitive to alcohol so I after three days of it sitting on the frigerator I can feel I can feel the alcohol in it and so I I just toss it after that anyway so there was something else I was going to say about that um and I just had a brain cramp trying to remember oh the okay so that I know what it was so once you use your ear sir no and I'm very sorry the puppies I I need all of them some more they're still puppies but they want to walk on everything hang on let me go deal with the problem yeah sorry all right where was I okay so anyway once you take once you use some of this you can just build it right back up again you you add you fill back up with your water add a little more sugar start good let it sit for a little bit make sure it's good and bubbly and then if you want if you're not fermenting stuff on a daily every other day basis I would suggest keeping this in the fridge if not freezer refrigerator and let's see if you're if you're using it once a week then that's that's pretty good you'll because you'll want to feed it at least once a week so at that point every time you pull it out of the refrigerator you're going to you're going to use it you will let it get to room temperature first so it's bubbly before you add it to whatever and then you know very similar to when you make sour dough then you add your water edge of sugar put it back in the fridge or let it get to room temperature again then put it back in the fridge now also this fermentation starter though I haven't been very successful with it yet I am going to keep working on this you can use whichever kind you make you can use as replacement for store-bought bread yeast now I've worked with a little bit it does work but I still have to keep practicing to figure out exactly what my ratios have got to be to get a real nice rise out of it because my goal is to eventually become to be able to have my own ease that I make myself that's not a sourdough but since not everybody around here like sourdough or we don't like sourdough for everything then I I want something that's got a sweeter not sour for the bread and and so I got to keep working with it and once I get successful at it then I will post a how-to video I'll get my recipe put together and so that you can be able to make your own yeast and use that for a yeast bread as well I mean that's the way they used to do it they didn't go down to the store and buy some powdered yeast they made their own yeast whether it be through use you know making a sourdough starter or using something like this it's just and it's the healthiest way to go because the store-bought yeast you I read something a while back about it and I was not impressed it's not as bad as some things but um enough that I would like to get away from buying it you know as well as just being able to be a little bit more self-reliant by making my own so anyway that I think I think I covered everything hopefully and so happy fermenting and thanks for watching you