Hello. Welcome. And this is a How to: Fermented Plant Juice.
This is a simple video step on how to make it.
If you want the details and the scientific facts, check out my other video: All About Fermented Plant Juice
For the rest of the video we will call this FPJ.
The first thing you want to do in making Fermented Plant Juice or FPJ is get your materials together.
Here is a list for getting all your tools
on hand.
Otherwise you'll be running around, searching for things when you have your hands dirty.
The second thing you want to do is get up early before the sun rises or a little after to collect your plants.
You want to get them when the dew is still on them
This is best.
Next step is to cut them.
Today we are going to be using banana flowers.
This doesn’t hinder your production of your banana.
This I take off after the banana tree makes all the bananas it's going to make.
When you cut banana flowers you want to cut them about, or any plant for that matter,
you want to cut them about the length of a man’s thumb, the last knuckle there.
You can go a little bigger, or a little smaller, that's fine.
This is to increase the surface area when we mix it with brown sugar.
So next you want to weigh and mix your material that you have chopped so nicely with brown sugar.
You need a scale
and a container to weigh in.
I have zeroed out my scale so that container is about zero.
The red marks here are the pounds.
So what I'm going to do now is drop all my banana flower into my container.
We have about 4 pounds.
So the next thing I need to do is add to it 4 pounds of sugar.
So the total weight of my container will be 8 pounds.
I use brown sugar.
If you don't have any of the things in this video, see the video All About FPJ video.
There are a lot of details
No scale? There are work arounds.
So check that out.
Today we are just showing what I've got here.
All right.
That is about 8 pounds there.
So now we have 4 pounds of banana flower and 4 pounds of brown sugar.
This bucket is a little small for mixing.
If I started getting in there and turning it
all over I'd have trouble.
I'd spill a bunch.
So I'm gonna use a larger bucket for mixing.
Now what I want to do is I want to thoroughly turn this into itself,
completely covering all the banana flower in brown sugar.
It's okay to be a little rough but
you're not trying to smash it.
When the sugar starts to appear wet overall
or you feel like you've got a good mix.
That should be plenty
Next we want to place our mixed material in our fermenting jar.
Banana flowers, since I've made it before, I know
if I fill it all the way to the top it will end up about half full.
You want to fill your fermenting jar
about three-quarters full.
If you know it's going to drop, you can
fill it to the top and it should go down about here.
Today to show you that, I'm going to use the small jar for fermenting.
Now that you filled it to the top, you can press down a little bit.
Take a little more sugar and we're going to add a cap.
So what that looks like is just a little bit of sugar and it goes on top
and it helps regulate some of the oxygen and that's the way to get it to ferment just right.
That looks about right.
So now with this sugar I just go ahead
and evenly pat it down.
Distribute it all the way to the edges of my container.
Now that we have  finished here, we want to go ahead and clean off the whole outside of your container.
So I like to thoroughly clean both the lid and the outside of the container of any stickiness.
Sometimes what I'll do is I'll use a little vinegar and that just helps to get rid of the last residue of sugar.
The last thing you want is a bunch of ants all over your place where you make FPJ.
Vinegar is great in natural farming for cleaning.
It is safe and doesn’t mess with any of your fermentation and it is a good cleaning agent.
Go ahead and get the bottom and move it to a clean spot.
All right. Now we're ready to put
the cap.
What I do use for a cap is paper, or you can use a paper towel.
Try not to use cotton cloth or or rags because they can build up with moisture and dust
and create a situation for your Fermented Plant Juice that you don’t like.
So I use butcher paper.
This one I've already molded to the top of the lid here.
And to cover it I use a link of rubber bands.
You don't need rubber bands and you
don't need butcher paper.
Whatever you have paper-wise, like  paper towel
and if you have twine or even a strip of plant material you could tie off your lid.
What you do want to do is make sure that the edges are pretty secure so the ants can't get in there.
Now your Fermented Plant Juice is ready to go.
In 5 to 7 days you want to check that out and the fermentation should be complete.
It kind of depends on your environment.
5 days of its fairly warm.
7 days if you're in pretty cold place. And that can vary.
Check out all about FPJ.
It's already starting to liquefy there,
dropping down. We'll see more of that.
Now i'm going to show you a finished FPJ.
This one I made in a two gallon jar.
It was all the way full when I fermented it or when I began.
See how it settled down here.
There's all of this liquid, the plant material and then our cap, the residue of our sugar cap
I covered this one with the paper towel.
Let's go ahead and extract!
Today to extract I'm going to use a big old funnel
and just some mesh that will take out the bulk of the big material.
After I extract the big material we will go ahead and strain it down finer.
Don't worry about getting all the little bits of sugar in here.
We are going to use those for vinegar.
The plant juice takes a minute to drip all of the drippings out of the material.
Leave it sit with a cover for a period of time
or if you have plenty for what you need, don't worry about it
and all of the remaining FPJ in this material can be used for making vinegar.
So if you're interested in vinegar,
watch my other video How to Make Vinegar.
Now that we have extracted FPJ into this big container and strained out the bulk of the big stuff
we probably want to go through and get the fine stuff.
This part isn't necessary.
If you don't have anyway to strain it finer than what you've got.
Don't worry about it.
I use a fine gauge stainless mesh.
Throw it into my funnel that was made for that little piece.
All that finer mesh does is gets out the remaining chunks and bits.
Sometimes it's helpful to store your FPJ in a few small containers.
I store all  mine in the same big container.
This is now ready to go.
You have finished your FPJ.
Now what you want to do is put a cover on it that's breathable.
This is still going to be pretty active.
And if it bubbles a day or 2 later, if
you see a bubbling and active,
add a little more sugar.
More about that in the All About FPJ video.
Now you have your finished FPJ.
Thank you for watching How to FPJ.
Make sure you check out the next video :
How to Vinegar
where we'll use the remainder or the leftovers of your FPJ; the waste.
And we'll turn that into a couple of gallons of vinegar with one ingredient, water.
Thanks for watching.
