Fermenting might be one of the biggest culinary subjects at the moment, but Aaron Adams and local food writer Liz Crain have been at it for years. Adams is the chef behind former Portland vegan spots Farm Spirit and Fermenter; Crain, in addition to her culinary writing career, is co-host of the Portland Fermentation Festival. Their cookbook, Fermenter (Sasquatch Books), is a punk-inspired, DIY guide to fermentation for all skill levels.

What makes this cookbook different from The Noma Guide to Fermentation, an offering from the famed Copenhagen restaurant—other than lots of punk kid narratives and dad jokes by Adams—is its willingness to embrace experimentation, and the fact that things will, inevitably, go wrong. Like the Fermenter restaurant, everything in the cookbook is vegan.

“You’re gonna fuck up a lot. And it’s okay. We try to make that message really clear by talking about failure … and talking about how fickle fermentation can be,” Adams says.

Opening with a foreword from star Portland chef Gregory Gourdet (Kann), Fermenter offers instructions on how to make everything from basic lactic acid bacteria ferments, like kelp and ginger-laden sauerkraut, pickles, and hot sauce, to more complicated projects like tempeh burgers, koji beets, and chickpea miso. Vegan “dairy” products are also on the recipe list, including sunflower yogurt and wine-washed aged cheese, as are chuggable ferments: beet-ginger-lemon kombucha, blueberry-lemon-ginger beer, and raspberry-lime-leaf kefir. The cookbook also ventures into composed dishes like the Fermenter burger, barbecue tempeh sandwiches, and the Fermenter bowl.

Flipping through the cookbook, it’s refreshing to see an approach to fermentation that makes it feel like a fun, experimental journey, rather than something intimidating that requires a biology degree. It also just makes fermentation cool, a way to live out that punk spirit we all probably aspired to as teenagers.

“When it comes to that punk attitude of doing it yourself, you certainly find that in fermentation,” says Adams. “You have this tenacity and will to make it your own.”

Try your hand at this botanical kombucha recipe from the Fermenter cookbook.

Botanical Kombucha 

Makes 13 cups, about 4 (750 ml) wine bottles

This is our all-time most popular kombucha at Fermenter. It’s refreshingly bright and floral, and we brew and drink it year-round. I love that it tastes honeyed even though there isn’t a drop of honey in it. It develops that really special, natural sweetness from all of the botanicals.

Making kombucha is fun. I love how day by day the SCOBY gets more and more buoyant and everything gets really active and effervescent. I also dig that it’s fast enough to never be frustrating, and slow enough that you can control where you want it to go. If you have any trouble sourcing the herbs or flowers here—there are quite a lot—I recommend checking out Mountain Rose Herbs based in Eugene, Oregon. They’re all about organic and sustainable, and all the other good stuff.

You can get this kombucha to a place of sourness and full flavor that you want to drink right away, you can bottle condition it till it’s nice and fizzy, or you can let it go all the way acetic and turn it into a vinegar. So many options.

Ingredients 

13 cups water, divided

1 cup organic pure cane sugar

2 tbsp dried rose petals

2 tbsp dried hibiscus

1 tbsp loose sencha tea, or 2 to 3 tea bags

2 tsp dried verbena

1 tsp dried chamomile

1 tsp dried jasmine

1 tsp dried lemon balm

1 tsp dried lavender

1 tsp dried mint

Kombucha SCOBY (see below)

1 1/2 cups starter kombucha (fully fermented kombucha from a previous batch or store bought)

SCOBYs

Kombucha SCOBYs are pretty dang easy to source. First, if you have a friend DIYing homemade booch, go ahead and ask them for a SCOBY. Since kombucha SCOBYs grow and reproduce constantly (bunnies come to mind), and jars and crocks to contain them are only so big, you’ll actually be doing them a favor by taking a SCOBY off their hands. Don’t know anyone homebrewing booch? Purchase a SCOBY at your local food cooperative, homebrew supply shop, or DIY or hippie supply shop selling things like cheesecloth and water-bath canners. If you’ve got none of that, buy one online at a rad business like Cultures for Health or Kombucha Kamp.

Steep and Infuse

Takes about 2 hours

In a medium pot over high heat, bring seven cups of the water to a boil, then remove from heat. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Combine the rose petals, hibiscus, sencha, verbena, chamomile, jasmine, lemon balm, lavender, and mint in a tea ball or sachet (don’t pack it too tightly; you want the tea to be able to expand), and steep it in the water for about one hour.

Remove the tea ball or sachet, put it into another medium pot or pitcher, and pour the remaining six cups of cold water over it. Cold infuse the tea for about one hour.

Brew the Booch

Takes 3–14 days

Strain and pour both teas into a one-gallon glass jar or other nonreactive one-gallon vessel. Once the combined tea has cooled to 85 degrees Fahrenheit or cooler, add the SCOBY and starter kombucha.

Cover the top of your fermentation vessel with breathable cloth, secure it with twine or a rubber band, and ferment it, out of direct sunlight, and at room temperature for three to 14 days. Kombucha is happiest when it’s a warm 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit throughout fermentation. I tend to like small-batch kombucha, like this one, at seven to nine days in the fall and winter, and five to seven days in the spring and summer.

Give it a stir and taste it every day or so, using a clean spoon. Once it tastes tart, tasty, and great to you, it’s time to bottle.

Bottle

Takes 5–10 minutes 

Remove the SCOBY along with one and a half cups of the kombucha. Put both into a clean jar and top it with breathable cloth, then secure it with twine or a rubber band, for your next batch of booch.

Strain the rest of the kombucha through a fine-mesh sieve or reusable coffee filter.

Funnel the kombucha into clean bottles (four securely fastened screw-cap wine bottles work great). Enjoy right away or refrigerate for up to two weeks. If you want fizzy kombucha then go ahead and bottle condition it; otherwise it’s ready to drink. Generally, kombucha will not become fizzy once it is refrigerated because lactic acid fermentation slows way down in that temperature range.

Bottle Condition

Takes 3 days to 1 week 

If you are looking for effervescence, bottle condition the kombucha for three days to one week, simply storing it at room temperature during this time. Again, that sweet spot of 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal. Keep an eye on your bottles throughout bottle conditioning because every batch is different, and you don’t want any to explode. Once it is as effervescent as you like, enjoy some, and refrigerate the rest.       

(c)2023 by Aaron Adams and Liz Crain. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Fermenter by permission of Sasquatch Books.