Researching more, to interfere less.

Our curiosity spans the distance between the smallest iteration and the largest reconfiguration.

Data we build on.

What follows is about microorganisms — how they transform a substrate (carbs/sugar), respond to their surroundings, and — when they are in a healthy state — can perpetuate new fermentation. These are data we use from the broader research literature, not direct measurements of our own lab.

Microbes as makers, not ingredients

Microorganisms don't simply inhabit a fermentation. As they metabolise a substrate they consume some compounds and build others — acids, aromas, and even solid material that wasn't there before.

10.32 g/L exopolysaccharide produced by a single L. plantarum strain

2.5× Production increase measured by optimising the growing conditions alone

Read the work at BMC Microbiology

Designing the conditions

The microorganism is only half the design. Change its surroundings and you change what it does, without changing the organism itself. Give it oxygen and it leans into one set of metabolic pathways; take the oxygen away and it runs another.

20 strains of L. plantarum profiled under aerobic and anaerobic conditions

3 groups distinct metabolic profiles emerged — amino-acid metabolism with oxygen, fat- and sugar-metabolism without it

Read the work at Food Microbiology

One fermentation can begin another

A living culture doesn't have to end with the product it was made for. While the microorganisms stay viable, a portion of one fermentation can start the next — back-slopping, the oldest continuous fermentation there is.

18 years the same strains still carried batch to batch, each fermentation started from the last

>100 years of unbroken back-slopping documented in some ferments

Read the work at Applied and Environmental Microbiology