Masses of Mulberries? FERMENT Them!!

Lucky enough to have a mulberry tree in your garden? Let me tell you, when they fruit here in Thailand, it RAINS mulberries for weeks. They don't keep well for more than a day or two in the fridge, so you have a few simple options: freeze them for smoothies etc, make jam, bake with them, preserve them or FERMENT them. Now, not everyone has the patience, space of knowhow to make full-blown proper Mulberry Wine, so I'm going to show you how to make a simple Tepache - a Mexican, home style fermented probiotic home brew from mulberries.

If you've never made Tepache, it's a little like a cross between fruit champagne and kombucha minus the messy SCOBY. Easier and faster, no mess and no SCOBY to keep alive, and a simple way to ferment fruit waste or, in the case of mulberries, the buckets full of messy less-than-perfect ones that NEED to be used up.

The basic "How To" for pineapple tepache - the most common kind and basic Tepache - I've posted about before: Tepache: Mexican Probiotic Homebrew. Simply take pineapple skins and the fruit waste with good quality sugar, submerge it under water in a fermenting pot and wait 2-3 days. Easy right?

So how to adapt and adjust both the recipe and the technique for other fruits??

Firstly, I took the big bucket of mulberries and sorted them - put the nice, plump whole ones back in the fridge for baking, the mid-range mostly OK ones I trimmed the small stalks off with scissors and they went in the freezer in portions for smoothies or crumbles, and the rest went into the bottom of my clean, ceramic fermenting pot. And then I mashed them up with a stainless steel potato masher.

I then added the skins and cores of 2 very ripe, sweet pineapples, and an equal weight of coconut sugar. And then drinking water to fill the pot mmost of the way to the top.

Now here you can straight away see the challenge of a tepache-style mulberry ferment - the fruity bits and seeds FLOAT.

The secret to a clean, no-mold ferment is keeping everything well submerged under the liquid, so the fermenting is completely anaerobic.

So how to do that?

I took a square of clean kitchen muslin and folded it over the top like a little blanket.

And then I weighted it down with a small ceramic plate and pushed it down a little, so all the fruit under the muslin was neatly under the liquid. I used a butter knife to securely tuck in the edges.

And then the whole fermenting set up is carefully put in a warm spot on a shelf in the kitchen, for 2-3 days. I cover it loosely with another bog ceramic plate.

Why the second plate underneath? Depending how HOT it is and the initial bacteria levels on your fruit and the sugar balance, it CAN fizz out over the edge. 😁 Not all sugars ferment the same, and one batch can be quite different from another. And it's a living process. So planning for the fizz with the extra plate is smart!!

End of 2 to 2.5 days, give it a tiny taste test and be prepared to be amazed. Leave it TOO LONG? Can be sour like vinegar. If that happens, add in some more sugar and put it straight in to the fridge.

Assuming it's just right at the end of 2 to 2.5 days, it's time to strain and bottle.

I use my stainless steel soup pot and a colander. Carefully remove the inner ceramic plate, unfold the muslin and use it to line your colander. Upend everything into the colander and let it drain.

Waste material goes in the compost, and the cloth is rinsed and dried for next use.

Pro Tip About Bottling

This is a LIVE food which actively creates gasses. You either BURP your glass bottles daily to release pressure, or pay the price. 🤣

We have now stopped actually closing the bottles properly (since we sometimes forget to burp them) and just loosely put the lid in place WITHOUT snapping the metal part down. Perfect solution.

The finished product??

Fruity with a light, subtle fizz. Not sweet but no where near vinegar level sour. Unbelievably refreshing on a hot day. Yup, this is ME after I walked back from the local veggie market with 15kgs of produce in 42C heat. 🤣 My daughter snapped the pics, knowing I had wanted to post about the mulberry tepache process. No, she did not warn me or stage the shot and yes, I forgot to comb my hair. 🤣

Using the abundance from our own garden is SUCH a lovely thing to share and enjoy!! And I especially love it when my probiotic intake is yummy, practical, refreshing, tasty and super-cheap.