Fermentation
During the summer of my middle school, I would help my parents out by stocking shelves of our family liquor store. Pushing boxes of water, soft drinks, wines, and vodka, my days would consist of going between the warehouse, stocking the shelves, and giving details of the items a customer was interested in. Being 14 years old and knowing nothing about alcoholic beverages, I would read a little about the products and give general information to adults. Most of the alcoholic drink details were straightforward, the alcohol by volume (ABC) would be written in big fonts usually on the front, ranging from 5% to 42%; and the type of drink, whether it be vodka, tequila, apple cider, beer, whiskey, or wine. Out of these varieties of drinks, two of them have always stood out to me: apple cider and wine. Their process included a rather weird and passive step. With relatively low alcohol concentration, these two types of drinks were made from a process called fermentation.
So what exactly is fermentation? Are there magical tiny beings inside our grape juice that turn them into intoxicating drinks that even the Greek and Roman gods indulged in? Well, the short answer is yes. Microorganisms within the substance in our food and beverage are able to turn glucose into ethanol molecules or into lactic acid. In other words, small single-celled organisms live inside the food with no oxygen and turn sugar into alcohol or other substances. Due to this process, we were able to introduce more variability into our diets, such as kimchi, natto beans, and bread, on top of all the beverages that these unicellular organisms naturally decayed into existence. To them, it’s the degradation of nutrients as they consume glucose but to us, they have just made delicious treats that are hard to make ourselves. However, not every fermentation process is the same as we’ll explore different end products of it.
Apple cider, both soft (non-alcoholic) and hard (alcoholic), has differing names and terminologies in different countries. While some regions may define apple juice as cider, some regions would point to unprocessed, alcoholic beverages from pressed apple juice as cider or ‘hard’ cider. Currently referred to as natural cider, the drink is made by extracting liquid from the apple or its core, boiled to a certain degree, and left on its own so that yeast from the apple skins would start fermenting the drink. As mentioned in Michael Pollan’s book ‘Botany of Desire’, during the 18th and 19th centuries, it was relatively healthier to drink apple cider instead of some bodies of water as they were likely to be unsanitary. Even today, apple cider and its many variations are still enjoyed throughout the world as a drink made by the processes from both humans and microorganisms.
Wine, a fermented grape juice, has been enjoyed for around 9000 years from the civilizations of China in the Henan Province of 7000 BC to Sicilian wines made in caves to even the indigenous people in America. Even incorporated in the miracle of Jesus in the ‘Marriage of Cana’, wine has its toes dipped in multiple religious accounts and associations. Ever since those years, the wine still largely follows the rudimentary process of selecting the right grapes, pressing them by machinery (or by foot in the good ol’ days), and storing them in containers to ferment. Much like the apple cider process, the fermentation is caused by the yeast exposed through the fruit’s skin. However, when it comes to variation, wine has no competition. Just by the French that’s on the labels of wine bottles, the terms ‘Pinot’ and ‘Merlot’ to ‘Rosé’ and red wines all have their meanings and differences. Depending on the different types of grapes, to the season they were harvested, to where the vineyard exists, variation and classification of modern wine seem to confuse everyone but the wine connoisseurs.
Since the discovery of yeast in the 19th century, the previously unknown microorganisms have been attributed to multiple mysteries that have governed human life from the rising of bread to the intoxication of fruit juice. When oxygen is taken away from them, they are able to cause fermentation, the very process that helped make the drinks I stocked and shelved half a decade ago. Depending on the source of the liquid and the process, fermentation has helped humans make bread, beer, wine, and even kimchi. This previously unappreciated labor of unicellular organisms have existed alongside our diet, making our bread delicious and our wine flavorful.
