Cactus wine: Idea for eliminating cactus mucilage

[Porkchop Johnson]

For reasons that aren't really important right now, recently SWIM became enraged with a substance known as "mucilage" and resolved to find a way to defeat it. SWIM researched a while and learned that there are others who hate mucilage... these are coffee plantation owners. Apparently, getting rid of mucilage is a big part of processing coffee. So SWIM researched their techniques, and found that apparently certain kinds of yeasts and bacteria will digest mucilage to sugar and then sugar to alcohol. SWIM further found that the main yeasts and bacteria are easily obtainable from home-brewing shops and hippie grocery stores (details below).

SWIM believes that the following information will process a gooey, mucilaginous cactus mousse into a cactus wine that is suitable for either drinking or easy acid-base extraction without the recovery-ruining emulsions.

Method begins by making a very foamy, heavily oxygenated mousse of the cactus, then adjusting the pH to 5.8 using acetic acid (vineagar). Add about 15g of sugar (dextrose preferred) per liter of cactus mousse. Then introduce mucilage-digesting yeasts and bacteria. If SWIY is considering drinking the cactus wine, use yeast only, and take care to keep the product free of bacteria... the yeast of interest are: Saccharomyces cervesiae, Saccharomyces bayanus (beer yeast and champagne yeast). But if SWIY has no intention of drinking cactus wine and merely intends to eliminate all traces of mucilage, go for maximum fermentation by introducing bacteria from kefir and kombucha. These will make the flavor putrid, but by bringing in the mucilage-fermenting Kluyveromyces maximus and Lactobacillus brevis, likely almost all the mucilage will be eliminated. Fermentation should take 5 to 7 days at a temp of 22-26C. SWIM warns that brewing generally results in a layer of settled dead yeast at the bottom of the vessel, and one should try to keep this separate from the drinkable product or whatever else one intends to do with the cactus liquor.

SWIM believes the fermented product may be quite palatable and drinkable. If SWIY is not interested in drinking the cactus wine, SWIM suggests this wine might be the best starting point for the published acid-base extraction methods, instead of boiling it in acid for hours and hours.

SWIM invites you to try this method... if it doesn't work, you're no worse than you started, you can still do whatever you intended to do with the cactus juice. If the method succeeds, then it would be possible to process cacti in a much more organic manner, using a much smaller amount of industrial acids and alkalis. SWIM hopes to try this method soon, but if you try it first, please report back regarding the outcome.