FPJ Failure? Why and How to Fix it

Fermentation Bubbling Over

I had to throw away my first Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ), and I was doing everything right. Once I identified the cause, the solution was simple, and it changed how I teach fermentation.

We know we want to create an input that signals our crops what to do, whether that’s green vegetative growth or ripening fruit, so that we get crops with better quality and higher yields. That’s what a Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ) does.

We make sure that happens by following a protocol. It’s quick and easy, but things can go wrong.

As a Master Cho certified teacher of Korean Natural Farming (KNF), I have people show me their FPJ problems. Most are common mistakes, but I want to cover problems that can arise after the liquid FPJ has been removed from the plant material.

First, some people do not realize how important it is to let the decanted liquid settle, then clean or rack it into a fresh vessel. That was covered in the article Rack and Store FPJ. The bio-sludge contains enzymes that degrade the desired biochemistry for the FPJ. See the article for more information.

It seems common practice to immediately saturate the FPJ liquid with sugar and then store it, often in a fridge.

The process was designed for farmers who did not have access to refrigeration, so why are you doomed to keep them in the fridge? And how do you know the biochemistry in your inputs will function as it should?

Let’s make sure you’re not wasting time, effort, sugar, or money, find out how to store your inputs without relying on fridge space or electricity, and ensure that your FPJs do what you’ve designed them to do.

First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same level. Here is a quick overview of the FPJ making process.

FERMENTED PLANT JUICE (FPJ) PROCESSING STEPS

1. Collect plant material (correct time, plant type, and plant part)

2. Prepare plant material

3. Layer in fermenting vessel with dry sugar

4. Cover with a secure, breathable lid

5. Ferment (wild aerobic fermentation) 3-5 days, no more than 7

6. Decant serum (FPJ) from plant material

7. Let serum settle and let fermentation finish

8. Rack into clean vessel to remove sediment

9. If still active after one week, saturate with sugar to force dormancy

10. Tightly cap, once dormant, and store away from light and heat

11. Ensure FPJ is labeled with date, material (type and stage), and other notes

Here, we focus on steps 7-10 after decanting the liquid from the fermented plant material and preparing it for storage.

We want to:

• Remove the bio-sludge, which can degrade your FPJ

• Make sure it stops fermenting to keep the biochemistry from changing

• Ensure that your inputs do what they are designed to do

STEP 7. Let serum settle and finish fermentation

When you separate the liquid from the solids, fermentation is not yet finished. It needs time. Letting the serum sit for about a week allows the bio-sludge to settle and fermentation to stop.

Test quality by smelling and tasting. Leave it undisturbed, away from light and heat.

STEP 8. Rack into clean vessel to remove sediment.

Pour or decant into a clean vessel, leaving the bio-sludge behind. Then, inspect your FPJ.

Ideally, it should have finished fermenting. Any bubbling should have stopped. The sediment should have been removed, and the liquid should be clear, not cloudy. Test the quality by smelling and tasting.

It should smell and taste almost like the fresh plant material. There should be no smell or taste that is off in any way: rotten, sulfuric, swampy, etc. You should not taste or smell any alcohol or vinegar.

STEP 9. If still active after one week, saturate with sugar

This is the step where I noticed the problem.

What is supposed to happen is that the sugar binds to water molecules, forcing the biology into dormancy since water is necessary for life to function. Without access to water, organisms die or go dormant. We are trying to establish dormancy.

To saturate the solution, sugar is added and stirred until sugar no longer dissolves at room temperature. Once the liquid reaches this limit, any additional sugar will remain undissolved as crystals at the bottom.

It’s saturated when the sugar stops dissolving and starts settling at the bottom. Adding too much sugar can cause problems, so stop once you see a few crystals settling at the bottom.

One day, I had a pumpkin FPJ that I couldn’t saturate. I added sugar to the saturation level, but later checked and found the sugar had dissolved, and the FPJ was bubbling again. I saturated again. Then again. Whenever I saturated the FPJ, instead of the sugar stopping the fermentation, it was feeding it. I did not know what was happening.

As this process continued, the FPJ started to smell and taste bad. At first, there was just a hint of alcohol, but it got worse with each attempt. It was the first FPJ I ever had to throw out.

The traditional advice when saturation fails is to cold-crash it in the refrigerator. In fact, some people store all their inputs in the fridge.

However, KNF was designed for farmers without refrigeration, so it shouldn’t be necessary to store FPJ in a fridge.

Keep in mind that a fridge does not stop fermentation; it only slows it down. The perfect snapshot of biochemistry you carefully collected is deteriorating in quality and losing its precise signaling properties because it is not dormant. In the fridge, it just happens very, very slowly.

At the time, I didn’t have fridge space. Cold-crashing was not an option. This FPJ had to be tossed, my first catastrophic failure.

I’ve heard advice to add alcohol. Yes, this will stop fermentation, but it will chemically alter your FPJ. Since this is a biochemical solution, adding alcohol is not recommended by Master Cho, and chemistry shows it’s not a good idea.

The problem happened again recently. I had a couple of batches in which sugar saturation caused fermentation to continue rather than stop. I had to research what was going on.

That’s how I found out about osmophilic organisms.

OSMOPHILIC YEAST

Osmophilic means it can thrive in high concentrations of sugar. When your FPJ has an osmophilic organism, adding sugar won’t stop the biology; it will accelerate it. That is exactly what I was seeing.

The more I tried to stop the fermentation by adding sugar, the more it foamed. And that is why it started to turn into alcohol. This is the process that produces beer and wine.

When your ferment comes alive after adding sugar 2-3 times, you are likely hosting Zygosaccharomyces, an osmophilic yeast. They have evolved to pump compatible solutes, such as glycerol, into their own cells to counteract external sugar pressure.

These specialists can survive in environments where others die. Most importantly, not only does the FPJ fail to go dormant, but the chemistry is being changed, meaning you lose the biochemistry you carefully collected and fermented.

Protecting the Signaling Molecules

The hormones (like auxins and gibberellins) and enzymes you are after are delicate proteins. They are destroyed by two things in the biological cycle:

• Oxidation: If the liquid stays aerobic, oxygen-loving bacteria will combust, or oxidize those complex molecules for energy.

• Metabolic Consumption: If the osmophilic yeasts persist, they are using the valuable enzymes and cofactors and depleting them.

  
  

THE SOLUTION

If you get a batch of osmophilic FPJ, are you doomed to failure? No. I ran some experiments and have been documenting the results.

I now let my ferments rest for at least a week after racking before I consider saturating with sugar. If it looks and acts dormant, I will add sugar until saturation levels are reached (crystals at the bottom, undissolved).

If, a week after saturating, it still shows no sign of active biology, I cap it and store it. This is the normal prescribed procedure.

However, if it becomes active again, indicating an osmophilic yeast, I then set the FPJ aside until it is dormant. The longest wait time was just over three weeks. I make sure that all the sugar has been consumed and that all the yeast is dormant, including any osmophilic ones.

Once the FPJ is dormant, I do not add sugar. I do not want to re-activate the osmophilic yeast. Once dormant, the FPJ is capped tightly (to prevent oxidation) and stored properly.