If you’re a fan of Korean kimchi, beer, hard cider, or sauerkraut - then you might want to head to Green Mountain College Saturday. Experts and vendors will be on hand to share and celebrate the art of fermentation.
Scientifically, fermentation is the metabolic process that converts sugars to acids, gases and-or alcohol. There’s a lot more to it than that, but we’ll leave the science there for now.
For foodies, fermentation is the key to making everything from sourdough bread and yogurt, to more exotic offerings like Kombucha, a fermented tea; mead, a wine made from fermented honey, and Dosa, a South Indian flat pancake.
Festival organizer Leslie Silver says they’ll have 20 vendors selling and offering foods for tasting as well as workshops to teach people how to ferment foods at home.
"You know most of fermentation is a really easy process that we can do in our kitchen," says Silver. "So it’s a perfect opportunity to take our food from our gardens or from the farmers market and preserve them into the winter.”
Fermentation has been around for thousands of years. Silver says the process is enjoying a rebirth in popularity in part because of the attention now being paid to the probiotics produced by fermentation - organisms many scientists say are important for healthy digestion.
It helps too, she says that many of these foods are just plain delicious.
Saturday’s fermentation festival will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Green Mountain College inside the Whitney Student Center. Adult tickets will cost $10.
