can i ferment grains after cooking them?

It always says to ferment the whole grain, then cook, but what if I boil the quinoa and then add vinegar and let sit for a couple days???!!

i am confused as to why you would want to do this.

All I have ever read is to do it before hand. Now if you are wanting to make wheat vinegar maybe this would be the way to go. I imagine the grains have something which protects them from going off. Now once the grain gets cooked, it basically turns them into very easily digested food for organisms.

Fermenting the grains prior to cooking them, means the seeds are alive/active/protected. and than they are cooked and eaten

Cooking the grains first renders the food cooked, and than it basically needs to be protected from being taken over by any number of organisms.



One reason for fermenting/soaking prior, is it removes some of the phytic acid from the grains. I do not think this would happen after.


Is there a certain dish you are wanting to create that needs to be acidic? Because once the food becomes cooked it will be soft. Than adding the vinegar to it would make it even softer/mushy. I can't think of that as tasty. Another thing is you usually rinse the vinegar soaking water off.  The way you are suggesting i would think it would get soaked in and be hard to remove.



Now if you were wanting to make miso, you could get the right culture and this would require the grains to be cooked before hand.


All i can suggest would be for you to try it as an experiment for all of permies. and than report back here with what you find. :)

Good luck

You can, yes. It's one way to get rid of any unwanted organisms that might have been on the grain. But be aware that it will change the properties of the grain somewhat.

Wouldn't fermenting after cooking basically give you sour mash, first step in most grain alcohols?

sake, and amazake is make by fermenting cooked rice with koji.
Soy sauce is made by fermenting cooked soybean with koji
cooked Barley/Wheat/Rice is also fermented with koji

Tempeh and Onchom by fermenting cooked beans/peanut/coconut/etc

There is also Peuyeum which is fermented cooked cassava.

There is also Tape Ketan too

Hi
I'm interested in this also .. I see hodmedods do a fermented whole grain barley.. it looks interesting but I can't find any info on how it's done...people seem to be eating it direct from the jar without cooking so I'm guessing it's cooked.

Daphne Széles wrote:It always says to ferment the whole grain, then cook, but what if I boil the quinoa and then add vinegar and let sit for a couple days???!!

Maybe I am wrong but adding vinegar to the grains will cause them not to ferment.

If you want the grains to ferment after cooking just leave them out for a few days.

Look at them, smell them after a few days do the grains still seem edible?

Then let us know how this experiment went.

I personally would not want to try to ferment after cooking.

Think about the process of fermentation. You can go two main ways.
1. Allow existing microbes on the grain to ferment. This is a mixed community of microbes (lactobacillus, etc.) so the result may vary with location and time of year. It's whatever is deposited on the grain by nature. The results are usually good if you provide the right conditions and do it for the right amount of time. This is how you make your own levain or sourdough starter.
2. Cook the grain, killing the wild microbes.
    a. If you leave this cooked grain out, bacteria and fungi in the air will settle on the grain and start growing. Usually not great results.
    b. Inoculate the cooked grain immediately with koji or other pure cultures to get a specific flavor and texture. Results are usually good, depending on your skill and sanitation levels during processing.

Adding vinegar to cooked grain is not fermentation. It's bypassing the process of developing acids through fermentation and going right to the end product. There is certainly nothing wrong with using this method and I do it for lots of things to help preserve the food. If you add vinegar to cooked grain and let it sit for a few days the acids may break down some of the grain components but it's already too acidic for lactobacillus to grow. If you want to try it, I'd be interested in the results. It might be good after 2 days then start to go manky, but who knows? So much depends on your process and temperatures, etc.

Thanks, Robin for explaining this in a much better way than I was able to.

I'd like to raise my hand and ask a clarifying question in this very informative thread:
If acetic acid bacteria (vinegar) eats alcohol that is produced by yeasts that eat the natural sugars in the cooked grain, is the fermentation activator that is missing with vinegar some kind of yeast (such as that in the sourdough starter that Robin mentioned) that could be added to the cooked grain? Instead of buying koji or a pure culture, could we just use our sourdough starter culture?

Amy, that's a great question. The sourdough starter has live microbes so when you add food liked cooked grain, you'll get alcohol or acid, depending on the bugs and conditions. I've noticed my homemade sourdough starter can sometimes have an alcohol whiff to it along with the acidic flavor. Maybe my starter is weird but it makes good bread.

It would be really fun to try and make a continuous sour grain culture just like you would do with sourdough starter. It's the same process, but I've never tried it. I'm pretty sure this concept has been used in other places around the world. If anyone has any experience with it, I'd love to hear about it.

Edit: I should clarify about adding vinegar. If the vinegar you are using has live cultures in it, depending on how much you use with the grain, the microbes can start up fermentation again. With both alcohol and acid, the bugs will produce these chemicals until there is so much that it inhibits further growth. Some of the microbes will go dormant and many die at this point. This is why you buy certain strains of yeast for different kinds of brewing alcohol. Some strains have a higher tolerance for alcohol. Pasteur yeast for champagne has a very high tolerance.

Yes this was the sort of thing I was thinking of .. but I was thinking of using kefir whey or kombucha as a starter..
But I guess sourdough starter sounds a good way to go.