RE: Alchemist in the Chocolate Forest: Fermentation of Cacao Bean
Another fascinating and informative post. I envy your experience.
As you well appreciate humanity would not exist today without fermentation. I fear the farther we as a species retreat from it the more questionable will be our plight.
I make wine and have become intimate with Saccharomyces. My goal is a reasonable quality dinner wine from the cheapest ingredients possible that are free of the usual crap they put in wines. I'll post on Steemit the process soon.
But I am specifically interested in:
Blending the mind of an empirical chemist with the world of spirituality and alchemy is levitating my understanding of natural and sacred medicines.
Will you please share more on your experiences and insights in future posts?
I've never experience vinegar quite as you describe. Could you please elaborate on:
"One sip of this matured culture sends noticeable vibrations of activity throughout the body."
;-)
I'm curious about the processes of wine. I have only worked with kombucha and vinegar. I'm not understanding how it is possible to hault the process at alcohol fermentation before it is further oxidized to acetic acid. I'll definitely be interested in reading about the process. If your able to tag me in the article or comments I'll easily know and be able to find it.
In reference to blending empirical chemistry with alchemy and spirituality. A few month back I was living with a Catalan Boy who was very interested in alchemy. He spoke often of the energies and personalities of the different chemicals. When aprouching an experimental problem he would discuss the for example sodium hydroxide is volitalizing and brings a masculine energy while the mineral water was healing and had a strong feminine energy. He would question what the two together would create and how they could be used. From my background I aprouching the problem by drawing Lewis dot structures and explain what I understand of acid base chemistry. Together we were able to blend these understandings to further the experimental process.
As for the vinegar I am currently using my momentary wifi to download articles on their bodily effect. I find the when I put a few drops in the back of my mouth my tonsils become excited and the cells just below my skin get a July of energy. Imagine the sensation that rolls through the body when you drink sting alcohol. I find it similar but the experience more healing and pleseant.
The word "oxidize" is the key. Wine kept anaerobic remains wine; in the presence of oxygen acid forms. I make sure there's a layer of CO2 above the wine before I cap it. I'm almost done with my post on wine. I'll make sure you are notified.
My wife was having me take vinegar medicinally. Maybe I'll revisit it. Although they removed my tonsils many years ago. Wonder if that makes a difference? ;-)
Concerning the spiritual:
We are creatures limited by our relatively restricted bodily senses yet it is that rather poor set of inputs that when processed by our brains define our "reality" or "truth"! Clearly not a recipe for any type of profound understanding (plz don't tell the physicists). Our pitiful solution is to build more sensitive extensions of our senses in the form of instruments. Another approach is to "enhance" our processing of the input. Any experimentation with psychoactive agents confirm this.
My problem is that any individual experimentation is an experiment where N=1 so no inferences can be made. Even if we pool our experiences all we do is catalog common perceptions but each experience remains alone but in a pile of similar ones. But then folks come along and pronounce deep and spiritual interpretations on this collective pile, much as they do on all tentative observations (often called theories). We need Navi tails (as in Avatar) where we can directly connect with other creatures! There's a mind experiment: A Navi on Ayahuasca while connected to his flying creature.
Sorry for the book!