Ideas Have Little Substance
To make our fermented products viable at scale, we needed to rethink traditional methods. The challenge? Develop a flexible, efficient process that works for both liquid and semi-solid products, supports living, gut-loving microbes, and eliminates the need for complex handling during production.
We’re proud that our curious café kitchen adventures and approach to taming a bunch of bacteria has led to recognition by SNN. If we put up €60,000 for further development, they'd back us with 40k in EFRO funding. Very, very neat indeed.
This support allows us to collaborate with some cool high-tech partners:
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SG Papertronics – providing precise measurements and expertise (Maciej Grawjewski)
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AVEBE Innovation Centre – supporting process design and upscaling trials (Marc Laus)
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Innolab Chemistry – strengthening the project network (Sven Stielstra)
We design future-proof alternatives to popular foods and drinks.
The short version...
Since our first experiments with fermented ginger beer in 2019, we've been deeply engaged with the potential of fermented foods and drinks. This led to the opening of our test-kitchen, Parrhesia Café (Groningen NL) in 2023. After almost a year of playful recipe creation, process development and gathering feedback from our guests, we sold our café and are now working on large scale production of the most promising products. This requires a new facility, which is under construction in De Biotoop in Haren.
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Why fermentation?
Solid question, let us briefly explain what's going on.
In Parrhesia Fermentery we are optimizing the functions of foods and drinks with very specific and controlled lactic acid fermentations. Lactic acid fermentation is a natural process where lactic acid bacteria (no, not dairy related) convert sugars into lactic acid. This not only preserves food but also enhances its nutritional value and digestibility.
Already sounds good? Well, read on...
Enhanced Nutrition
The fermentation process increases the availability of essential vitamins and minerals, particularly B vitamins, and aids in breaking down food components for easier absorption.
Up to 200%
increase of vitamin B bioavailability
3 to 5 times
increase of folate content in foods
Gut Health
Fermented foods promote a balanced gut microbiome, essential for effective digestion and absorption of nutrients, and plays a role in strengthening the immune system.
more efficient absorbtion of nutrients if gut microbiome is balanced
Up to 20%
enhanced diversity of gut microbiota, improving overall gut health an immunity
25-30%
Companies are hardly ever a good source for scientific data... Luckily you can double check these statistics at Oxford Acedemic and Nature
Mental Health
There is a significant connection between the gut microbiome and mental health, a relationship often referred to as the "gut-brain axis." This connection suggests that a healthy and diverse gut microbiome stimulates the production of neurotransmitters (like serotonin and dopamine), which are crucial for nuanced regulation of mood, cognitive functions, and the body's stress response.
25%
higher serotonine levels measured compared to those with imbalanced microbiome
30-50%
claimed reduction of depression symptoms measured in meta-analysis (combined data) of a probiotic diet
Obviously these are quite impactful claims, so let's just call it "very promising". Make sure to read the details from the sources for his data at saNeuroGut and at Oxford Acedemic
Non-alcohol Alternatives
Our vision on sophisticated future proof beverages
With the development of our fermented drinks we aim to serve those who prefer to drink without alcohol, but are not charmed by the current alternatives. We believe there is space for a new category of non-alcoholic drinks that not only have a deep, complex and adventurous flavour profile, but actually benefits the consumer health-wise by means of fermentation. Kombucha has shown us there is a market for this type of healthy mainstream beverages, but its fermentation process has limitations. Combined artisan craftsmanship and modern advanced technology allows us to push it further. We'd love to show you what we can do with this knowledge.