Sweet Potato Fly

This is an old-fashioned way to make a soft drink. It’s a new-fashioned way to drink healthy probiotics.

Contributed by mscellenea on
Crossgrained.

Published 3. Oct. 2015

This is everything but the water in a pot.

Ingredients

• 2 large sweet potatoes
• 1 gallon purified water – use distilled if you are not sure — any chlorine will kill your ferment
• 2 cups sugar — fermentation needs sugar to feed the reaction. Don’t worry about the carbs here–fermentation eats most of them so you don’t have to
• 1/2 cup whey, drained from a good yogurt
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, and zest if you have it (I used fresh-frozen juice from my last juicing extravaganza, as I forgot to buy lemons. Hey, I was shopping in a hurricane. Not much of one, but a hurricane, nonetheless)
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg, fresh ground
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 empty eggshell, rinsed clean
• dried spices of choice (optional) in large pieces: I used several slices of dried whole ginger, one cinnamon stick, and about 3/4 tsp of white peppercorns, just ’cause I love the zing

Instructions

• grate the sweet potatoes on the coarse grater of your food processor
• rinse the potatoes a bit under filtered water to get rid of some starch; skip this step if your water is chlorinated
• Pour the potatoes and everything else into a non-reactive pot
• Keep checking the mix every few days after two or three days, (the warmer the room, the faster the ferment) for fizziness and a sweet, tangy smell — taste to see if most of the sugar is transformed into something much more wonderful
• Strain all solids through a fine mesh strainer, for example, a bouillon strainer
• Refrigerate and consume in about one month (doesn’t last that long around here.) The refrigeration will slow, not halt, the fermentation

Further details

Yields about one gallon.

Preparation time is approximately 10 minutes.