funkyhorse
Well-known member
If you have access to banana bark, means you are in a hot enough area and you wont have problemsHi funkyhorse, thanks so much for the detailed reply. Yours looks great! I have access to banana bark so will try that. The only bamboo around here is that enormous one and I don't really have enough to fill it properly. Japanese bamboo would be perfect but I don't know of any around here.
It is winter here so I thought of putting it in a crock pot for initial heat. Lack of heat worries me slightly with fermentation at least in the initial stages. I make my own kimchi for example and that needs salt. I think for fermentation to be safe you need either salt or heat, but maybe I'm worrying for no reason.
The crock pot maybe is good in Tasmania or Melbourne, but wherever banana tree grows is hot enough so you wont need it
In life in general my experience is this: the more complicated things are, the less real they are and the results are not as good as with simple things
I had your same worries, I tried vacuuming the bark brick, wraping the bark on nylon for extra heat and results were not good
This is not kimchi. At this part of the world escabeche is made but this is different, it is more related to tobacco way of fermenting
At our southern hemisphere winter we have enough days reaching 25C, I have peaks of 30C
For the initial fermenting process is enough heat, just place your brick in a carton box and thats enough, dont forget you are not fermenting it super express with a yoghurt maker, this is slow but sure
Low tech and simple as it can be. Just wrap your brick tight with bark, place it a sunny place outdoors inside a carton box for some extra heat and dryness, a roof or something like that is a good place to put your brick and let nature do her thing. No need salt and the current winter heat is good for a long and slow fermentation process. When temperatures pick up in spring it starts drying the whole thing and curing
I post this video again for whoever didnt see it
The technique is called perique, this is how sailors made their tobacco
What we are doing with the bark is perique ganja and probably most brick I saw in my life is perique method without the oak barrel
Perique - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Look at how similar to cob this is, I dont think is a coincidence