Whelp, it's been about 12 days since pitching, and the must seems to have mostly settled down. It's still definitely doing something though; as I type this I just saw a single big (3mm?) bubble attached to a chunk of sediment rise quickly to the top, pop, and the sediment slowly glided back down. Cool.
So, just to recap, the info I can find suggests that unrefined palm sugar (jaggery) consists of about 50% sucrose (but with longer chains), 20% invert sugars (sucrose that has been inverted to glucose and fructose), water up to 20%, and the remainder consists of wood ash, proteins and bagasse fibres.
The liquid in the top half of the bottle is beginning to clear and is a deep "dirty orange" colour, and the bottom half of the liquid is slightly murkier and lighter in colour. At the bottom is the most interesting sediment. At the very bottom of the bottle is is a sediment that looks like sedimentary rock, light brown with horizontal layers of white all through it, rather like this but less precise:
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTVwiV424AkHykGG5JZY4YC5Iv7-nMLbpJm4sxNfN0dMHMrpIvPtA
On top of this layer is a milky/pearlescent white layer, which upon shaking does not disturb as readily as the aforementioned layer, and requires more vigourous shaking. Do you think that would be the yeast layer? On top of that is a very thin layer of light brown, followed by a very thin layer of yellowish. These top two are barely noticeable unless you're looking carefully. The top one might even just be light filtering through.
At this moment I don't have the means to photograph close up, but when I do I will.
I just tasted the top and it's not sweet; actually rather insipid, which is predictable since there's nothing in it other than water, yeast and unrefeind sugar. Not offensive, but not "pleasant" by any means. Then I shook it up and degassed, and it tastes a lot different; the sediment really gives it a kick, and it actually smelled more... alcoholic, which can't be right, since alcohol doesnt sink. It's unlike anything I've ever tasted before and probably not suitable as a "beverage", but if nothing else I imagine the sediment would probably be very interesting in a stirfry, since jaggery itself is used in ethnic cooking anyway.
The only thing I can think of to do (after a few days of further clearing) is to
1. shake, settle for a while, and rack off the lightbrown/white layered sediment
2. freeze/refridgerate the sediment for further culinary use
3. add more of the adjunct to the liquid/yeast
4. wait until clearing
5. repeat all steps.
I might use the liquid in novelty Bloody Mary when we're all too drunk to get upset about it, and use the unfermentables at the bottom in a sauce. I'll also reserve judgment until it's cleared as much as it will.
