[Biohackers] Fermentation Station Aug 11th 2014 meeting notes

[Rikke Rasmussen]

Hi all,

A quick type-up of my notes for the evening - Stan, Alex, will you take
responsibility for making sure they end up online somewhere (other than on
the list archive)?

1) Our technical setup is good to go - temperature monitoring, logging and
graphing all work, all components have been integrated, and Frank is
assembling a deployable setup for next week.

2) We have two established cultures: one from Francisco's vinegar
production, and one from Rikke's Three Stone Hearth strain. A batch of each
was made on Aug 4th - 1.5L and 3L, respectively - both batches seemed very
under-fermented (almost no yeasty flavor, little acidity, almost no sugar)
upon tasting today, and had developed exceptionally thick pellicles for the
relatively short duration of the fermentation. There was some discussion as
to the possible explanations for this, and generally agreement that the
most likely is the primary sugar source used (corn rather than cane), and
the differing chemical composition of different sugars.

3) Alex purchased 8lbs of sugar for the project - thank you, Alex! =)  We
added 60g and 120g of pure white cane sugar to the 1.5L and 3L batches of
kombucha from last week to boost the fermentation process - the immediate
CO2 development and evolution of a distinct yeasty aroma indicates healthy
cultures.

4) A potential line of inquiry that could be pursued with minimal analytic
equipment would be the comparison across cultures of the influence of
different sugar sources on the pellicle development, measured as the wet
weight of the pellicle at time of sampling. Influence of sugar source
(again across cultures) on pH would also be simple, as would the
relationship of both characteristics to temperature profile.

5) Last, but not least, Alex will not be commuting through the East Bay on
a weekly basis anymore, and wants to set up a Fermentation Station at
Noisebridge. There is strong historical basis and social support for this
project, and we anticipate that it will be well receive. As an initial test
of this theory, we will prepare a 15L batch for the NB fundraiser on Aug
15th. For this purpose, we have taken 4lbs of sugar, the jar of oolong tea,
and two buckets from our supplies at CCL. In addition, we will need to
acquire (or bring from home for now): kombucha starter, a 2gal soup pot,
something to stir with, a kitchen scale, filter cloth (muslin or similar),
a bunch of bottles, caps and a capper, and possibly a dedicated mini fridge.

That's everything on my notepad - anything to add, anyone?

/Rikke



On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Francisco Jimenez <
francisco at tucanvinegars.com> wrote:

> Thank you Rikke and friends of cross-pollination.
>
> I first apologize all of you guys for no to be involved in all events and
> mettings of the group but I need to say that I have a lot of things dealing
> with at the same time, specially I am looking for a part time job plus
> re-colated my vinegar workplace and some other thing consuming time and
> energy.
>
> I need to let you know guys that I brought a some glasses, a big mouth 1
> gallon container and a scoby made out of a vinegration process and I think
> it is interesting for us to work with it. I put it inside the refrigerato,
> that one that it is alone at the Sudo kitchen. It is in a small glass
> container at the refrigerator's door. I leveled it.
>
> I going to be around the SR those days in the afternoon available if some
> of you guys want to contact me for just talking about anything relate to
> the colective.
>
> Thank you very much all of you and I hope to see you on Monday,
>
> Francisco
>
>  -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Monday 7/21 activity & followup
> From: Rikke Rasmussen <rikke.c.rasmussen at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, July 31, 2014 3:34 pm
> To: Francesco Capodieci <fgcapo at gmail.com>
> Cc: stan at ana.com, Francisco Jimenez <francisco at tucanvinegars.com>, Alex
> Alekseyenko <alex.alekseyenko at gmail.com>, biohackers at lists.sudoroom.org
>
> Awesome, Frank, thank you so much for the cross-pollination effort, and my
> sincerest apologies for not being there in person to support said effort!
>
> Speaking of cross-pollination, I went to the Counter Culture Labs meeting
> last week - they are still very focused on building out their space and
> attracting new members/projects to fill it, so they were very eager to
> accommodate the Fermentation Station. That said, they do also have rent to
> cover, so I made the agreement on our collective behalf that we would pony
> up the cash for 2 reduced-rate memberships ($25, I believe...possibly only
> $20, my notes are unclear) in return for a dedicated portion of the outer
> space for our set-up.
>
> As for SF Biohackers, Matt Harbowy (founding member and primary financial
> baclker for CCL) also proposed that we could trek out to the Sunset to
> check out his home lab - it could probably fit 10-12 folks in a meeting
> situation, maybe 6-8 working in clusters...I've only seen it once about 6
> months ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but it sounds like a sweet
> setup, and may be worth checking out?
>
> Last, but not least - I think we have the clear makings of 3 separate
> sub-projects/groups that all tie together, focusing on 1) the gastronomical
> aspects of kombucha/vinegar/beer/yogurt/kefir/etc. production (that would
> looking at the correlations between environmental conditions and
> chemical/flavor profiles), 2) the molecular aspects of same (such as
> species identification and characterization, manipulating species
> composition, looking at cellulose production, and engineering individual
> species for specific chemical/nutritional/etc. profiles, and 3) the
> technical development of bioreactors/cultivators for all of these awesome
> microbes.
>
> Anyhow. Sorry for being a total flake this week, will endeavor to do
> better next week. See you on Monday!
>
>
> /Rikke
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 9:44 PM, Francesco Capodieci <fgcapo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I met with a couple of people from the following group who are interested
>> coming to our meeting next Monday:
>> http://www.meetup.com/SF-Biohackers-Meetup/
>> <http://www.meetup.com/SF-Biohackers-Meetup/>
>>  They are interested not only in bioreactors but in genetically
>> modifying kombucha yeast.  We agreed to put ideas and research into a wiki.
>>  Stan, is Sudo Room's wiki a good place for this?
>> I will have some progress on the (sensor -> arduino -> raspi -> web
>> browser) setup to show next week.
>> Frank
>>
>
>
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