A Master Class in Wild Fermented Juices

My cookshare efforts have taken a more focused intention of late. In my thirty+ years fermenting many plants on this earth, I came to understand a prime natural law—We as a species are meant to consume wild ferments on a daily basis. “Wild ferment,” meaning the airborne microbes in your home are captured and harnessed to transform produce into probiotic foodstuffs.

In this master class, we are wild culturing fruit and edible roots into tasty, healthy tonics.

I recently discovered this intriguing quote from his essay “Walking.” Thoreau continues, “From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.” 

His incite reawakened my intrigue in wildness. I submit to you that when we return to enjoying wild ferments in our daily meals, a far reaching healing will ensue. What’s most exciting—this is a very easy and fun kitchen hobby.

There is a paradox in healthy cuisines— most long-lived people consume a majority of calories from ultra refined foods—in the form of starches. Each civilization learned to transform them within their digestive tract by consuming small amounts of wild ferments during their meals. This is my Eureka! moment…

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Sandor Katz, author and fermentation guru, expresses wild so beautifully…“Wild fermentation is a way of incorporating the wild into your body, becoming one with the natural world. Wild foods—microbial cultures included—possess a great, unmediated life force, which can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease.

A brilliant scientist, John Hamaker noted, “Microbes select what they need to make the compounds of life, and reject what is not needed [Wild activity].”

That is the “aha” discovery—resident gut microbes, along with probiotic microbes eaten during most meals, fashion more complete nourishment by rebalancing the refined foods we consume.

How Wild Ferments Rework Our Refined Foods

• Asian cuisine consumes white rice and noodles as a staple, but also consume them with wild ferments of soy sauce and pickled veggies—the Japanese are the longest lived people on earth
• Western diets include refined flour-based starches that are rewilded in the gut through a variety of pickles and condiments.
• But in the last 100 years the standard American diet has mostly lost wild-culture. They are made “shelf stable” by cooking and pressure sealing them. We lost our wild!

The good news— We can reverse this right in our kitchen with just a common fermentation kit and some sea salt!

Fermented Tonics Matter

• They infuse the gut with lactobacilli and lactic acid
• Serve up a nice array of enzymes and nourishing minerals
• Taken with meals they promote thorough and easy digestion of food
• Taken after physical labor they replace lost mineral ions 
• This is our Gatorade® hack, now with lively benefits

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I have devoted these past few decades in sharing how easy home fermenting can be. I am excited to now include fruit and root tonics to this bounty.

Introducing Fruit Kvass and Ginger-Turmeric Tonic

L: Fruit Ready for Kvass R: Ginger and Turmeric Tonic Fermenting

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Fruit Kvass is a golden egg of a ferment. I had not been aware of it—along with most of the beverage ferments—which tend to need a touchy craftsman’s passion. Not so with fruit and root tonics.

Kvass traditionally was made by fermenting stale rye bread! Along my curious path I came upon Fruit Kvass. It couldn’t be easier to make.

• Add 2 cups filtered water to a 1 quart jar
• Dissolve 1 tsp sea salt, 2 TBS saved brine from your fridge, and 2 TBS honey
• Add 2 cups chopped, ripe fruit and stir vigorously for a minute
• Seal the fermentor according to manufacturer’s instructions
• Keep in cool, dark space for 3 days
• Strain off the fruit and that’s it Fruit Kvass Beverage
• Oh, and enjoy the spent fruit with yogurt or use to make froot chutney [see this workshop]

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This Fruit & Root Tonic Workshop offer you a path forward

Peach Kvass Ready to Ferment Workshop Cooksharists Brewing Some Kvass

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Today you can’t avoid seeing all the marketing for “power shots,” jacked up with all kinds of chemicals and hype. For a singularly simple-to-make Root Tonic:

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Store Bought Root Tonic at $1.67 each. But our tonic is also boosted with probiotics!

Root based tonics are more intense in flavor than fruit tonics and require longer fermentation time. They are best served as a shot into your morning smoothie, or juice. Turmeric and ginger have been used for millennium to relieve inflammation and upset stomach. Now you can boost them further with wild cultures to up your health game and without paying high retail for mass marketed beverages.

Bonus! Use any fruit or vegetable juice—fresh squeezed or bottled—and easily-peasily make wild beverages to enjoy. Here’s how:

• For a Quart of All Juice Fermented Tonic – As a tonic, this beverage should be diluted with soda, chilled water, ice, or other liquid to dilute
  • Per quart, add 2 tsp sea salt, 4 TBS honey, 2 TBS brine from a previous lacto-ferment in your fridge
  • Seal and ferment for 3 days
  • Refrigerate

Grab some organic fruits and roots and whip yourself up a wild ferment then sip away! Join the wizened cultures scattered about the world who discovered keystone wild ferments.

© 2025 B. Hettig