Category: Ferment Lab
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Master Of Spices: Global Heat and The Art Of Spicy preservations
A Fermenthings exploration of chili, spice, preservation, and the history of heat. Heat travels. It moves along trade routes, through migrations, across climate zones, kitchens, and generations. What begins as a plant chemical—capsaicin, sanshool, isothiocyanates—becomes taste, culture, and memory. Around the world, cooks have found ways to stabilise and shape heat into condiments that endure:…
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How to Escape Coffee – Part 2: The Search for New Grounds
Part 1 followed coffee’s long shadow through history. Part 2 begins in a smaller space: the kitchen, the lab, the table. Here we try to rebuild what coffee once offered, using what grows around us. What Is Coffee, Really? To escape something, you first need to understand it. Coffee is more than a plant or…
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How to Escape Coffee – Part 1 : The Bitter History of Coffee
Coffee is not just a drink. It’s a ritual, an economy, a memory of conquest and connection. It has fueled revolutions and morning routines alike — and perhaps, if we look closely, it can fuel reflection too. From Forest to Empire Every story of coffee begins with a myth.A goatherd named Kaldi, somewhere in the…
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RotFest 2025 – Circular Fermentation
Introduction Fermentation has always been about transformation. With the help of microbes, humans learned to turn milk into cheese, grains into beer, and cabbage into kimchi. It preserved food, created nutrition, and unlocked flavors that raw ingredients could never carry on their own. At Fermenthings, we take this ancient tool and give it a new…
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Extra Fire Cider
Fire cider is a traditional herbal tonic that has been used for centuries as a natural remedy to boost the immune system and fight off colds and flu. The origins of fire cider can be traced back to the 17th century, where it was used by American folk healers and passed down through generations. Here…
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Why waste it, when you can taste it #4: Kimchi
While in the first article about Kimchi you can learn how to make it, here we will go deeper into a few options on how to not waste leftovers and over fermented kimchi. You will find a way to make flavorful salt with over fermented kimchi and a great cocktail with leftover juice. Go check…
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Why waste it when you can taste it #2: All about Kombucha
After a first article about what to do with leftovers from lactoferments & shoyu to transform them into flavor powders we are attacking every aspect of the Kombucha production this time! If you want to learn the basics of Kombucha and continious brewing, click here Coffee Kombucha: it only gets better with time. At our…
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Vegan Beetroot Charcuterie – Our Takedown
Many of you asked us for the recipe of these vegan beetroot charcuteries. While we aren’t the inventor of this technique, the credit goes to the writers of the just perfect book “Koji Alchemy” Rich Shih and Jeremy Umansky, we gave it multiple tries through the years and will gladly share our insights. The road…
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Ferment Lab: A dedicated space for circular fermentation & conservation in Brussels
After writing a first version in December last year and continue with a more theoretical introduction earlier this year we can finally announce that we are building the full-on Ferment Lab thanks to the Prove Your Social Innovation fund! Inspired by fermentation & conservation techniques from around the world, we want this place to be dedicated to teaching, researching…
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Why waste it when you can taste it #1: Flavor powders
At our Ferment Lab we are obsessed with leftovers, and we try to extract every last taste out of it. Over the last couple of months, our R&D manager explored the possibilities of flavor powders based on three leftovers we had in our lab: scraps, over fermented vegetables & pulp from pressing shoyu and other…