Fermented Beverages Your Way: Homemade

See what all the fizz is about by trying your hand at making your own fermented beverages.

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Getty Images/Ann_Zhuravleva
Fermented beverages can be an easy and effervescent addition to shared meals.

If you start with sugar, water, and the tiniest bit of bacteria, you’ll soon have a fermented beverage on hand. Whether it’s a “soft” lacto-fermented beverage, a “hard” alcoholic one, or a good old vinegar-based beverage depends on sugar, time, and exposure to oxygen. They all begin with sweet liquids.

Generally speaking, sugar- or fruit-based beverages go through several stages of fermentation, from fresh juice to soft drink to hard drink to vinegar. Take apple cider, for instance. It begins as freshly pressed apple juice, more or less. If left for a short amount of time, it changes to soft cider when the lactic acid bacteria have taken over. At this stage, the beverage contains only trace amounts of alcohol, along with beneficial bacteria, enzymes, and small amounts of organic acids. This is primarily a lactic acid fermentation.

Given a bit more time, this soft drink will begin to form more alcohol. Eventually, it will contain enough alcohol to no longer be considered a soft drink. At this point, the sweetness is minimal, and the alcohol flavor is pronounced. This is now primarily an alcohol fermentation, known as hard cider.

The final stage can only happen if the hard cider is left exposed to oxygen. In an aerobic environment (meaning, exposed to oxygen), the Acetobacter begin to take over in the alcoholic environment. Eventually, the acetic acid becomes prolific, and the beverage becomes apple cider vinegar. This is now primarily an acetic acid fermentation, or vinegar.

At each of these stages, a culture can be introduced to persuade the microorganisms to go in one direction or another, but if given oxygen, time, and warmth, all sugar-containing liquids will go down a similar path.

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