Culture Pop probiotic soda

[bleme]

I have been thinking about recreating something similar. They are 18% juice with no added sweeteners and bacillus subtilis. My wife keeps buying them at $1.88 each so I really want to create a cheaper alternative!

I was thinking about bringing 2 gallons of water and 64oz of juice to a boil and putting it in a 2.5 gallon keg to cool, then adding a liquid probiotic, culture for up to 24 hours, chill and carb.

Any idea how much probiotic I need to start with? How long I need to culture at 95F? Am I going to go down in history, listed right next to Jim Jones?

 

[Beernik]

All I can tell you is that I’ve read you need 8 - 10g probiotic to do you any good. Less than that isn’t enough to improve your gut health.

 

[bleme]

Frankly, I'll be happy with enough 'probiotic flavor' so my wife will take one of my Grolsch bottles to work every day instead of buying more $1.88 cans.

 

[bleme]

Well, I made a test batch on Saturday with just juice and water (no probiotics), force-carbed at 35 PSI, and my wife was happy with the flavor. It's been over 100F for a month now and this is a very refreshing drink. I still haven't decided what to do, if anything, with the probiotic though.

Without the probiotic aspect, I should probably post this over in the soda forum.

 

[Temptd2]

I just ran across this thread!

We've been making two forms of probiotic "sodas" - b. subtilis, and s. boulardii. Our method has been to buy 32 ounce bottles of "nothing but juice" fruit juices - we've made tart cherry, blueberry, cranberry, cranberry pomegranate, apple.... Pour the juice into a very clean half gallon canning jar, add one capsule of whichever probiotic you want to ferment - open the capsule and sprinkle the powder over the juice. Stir it really well with a really clean spoon, then we put those silicone fermentation lids on them (the ones that let out the gasses) and ferment at room temp for at least 36 hours. You can keep tasting it at that point and when it's to your liking - it's done! You CAN move it to secondary fermentation in a Kolsch-type bottle if you want; we just cap it loosely and stick it in the fridge back in its original jar. We let ours get fairly dry but you can always backsweeten it if you want. We like to ferment out as much sugar as possible and then backsweeten if it needs it but we prefer the tartness.

Some of them ferment really fast, and some take quite a while, and we learned early on NOT to just dump the contents of the capsule straight into the jar the juice came in (talk about a mess....) so maybe that will help you if you decide to try it.

Anyway. Simple process for us! You've probably found a good solution by now though!

 

[bleme]

I've actually just been enjoying fruit seltzer, mixing 64oz juice with 2 gallons of water and carbing. I still have those probiotic drops marked though and am thinking about treating one bottle of juice then adding a second one when I keg to sweeten it a bit.

 

[Bassman2003]

As a side note, I have been making yogurt in my sous vide cooker and it looks pretty similar to what you are trying to accomplish. I started with a single capsule of probiotic, 2 tablespoons if inulin (food source, in your case, the fruit juice) and 1 quart of half and half. This sits for 36 hours @ 98.1F and it is done. Put it in the fridge and eat.

The 36 hour 'ferment' time seems important to get maximum probiotic growth. Longer was supposed to have a negative effect.

Most on YouTube do not sanitize but being a brewer, I use starsan on everything. For the yogurt I take a little bit out at the beginning and use it as a starter for the next batch. I imagine you could do this for the soda as well. Makes it even cheaper.