Mojo

[Dominican56]

My concern is that I hadn’t noticed any fermentation like when I used to make beer or wine. Now the floating pineapple is moldy.

How do you keep the floating fruit from molding?

 

[Dominican56]

What’s “normal” making this stuff?

 

[Dominican56]

Should I carefully remove the moldy pineapple, strain it and add rum?

 

[Dominican56]

I think I’m tossing it. The floating tobacco stems have a very ugly greenish mold on them.

 

[Gdaddy]

Raw pineapple chunks, filtered water, a few tobacco leaf stems.
It’s been on for 3 weeks.

The 'mojo' looks weak.

Mine had much more foam and I stopped at 2 weeks. It could be because I used a more rich mixture of crushed pineapple and pineapple juice. More sugar to react to fermentation. A rich mix will also have more citric acid which is what you're looking for.

My advice would be to start over and make it as pineappley as you can. Crush the pineapple and use the pineapple juice also. (I'd nix the stems)

 

[Dominican56]

Change of plan. I removed the top layer of fruit. I strained in into a bow, covered it with plastic wrapper and put it into the refrigerator.
I’ll add rum or bourbon tomorrow when I get some. It doesn’t smell bad so I’m going to give it a try.

 

[Dominican56]

What leaf should I mist with it?

 

[Gdaddy]

Change of plan. I removed the top layer of fruit. I strained in into a bow, covered it with plastic wrapper and put it into the refrigerator.
I’ll add rum or bourbon tomorrow when I get some. It doesn’t smell bad so I’m going to give it a try.

IMHO... it doesn't smell so bad because it's mostly just water with solid chucks of rotten pineapple floating on top.
No offense but instead of making a fermented 'mojo' you made weak pineapple water.

Think of it this way...chicken soup isn't just a chicken floating in water. It's made using chicken broth. Your 'soup' is just solid chunks of fruit floating in water. Don't waste the rum.

 

[Dominican56]

Next try, I’ll put the fresh pineapple in the blender and eliminate the tobacco stems.
How about using champagne yeast to ferment it?

 

[Gdaddy]

Next try, I’ll put the fresh pineapple in the blender and eliminate the tobacco stems.
How about using champagne yeast to ferment it?

Yeast... I don't know what it would do, so I'd be tempted to stay with what works and not vary.

I picked up a can or two of crushed pineapple in pineapple juice and added only a little water. Easy as pie. No muss, no fuss, keep it simple.

 

[Dominican56]

Yeast... I don't know what it would do, so I'd be tempted to stay with what works and not vary.

I picked up a can or two of crushed pineapple in pineapple juice and added only a little water. Easy as pie. No muss, no fuss, keep it simple.

Since the goal is to ferment this concoction to remove sugar, it's better, at least to my mind, to control the fermentation with a known yeast strain. I'll give that a try.

 

[Hopduro]

Cuban farmer fermentation mix listed here... interesting addition is coffee. No percentages but it is interesting:

 

[Dominican56]

Cuban farmer fermentation mix listed here... interesting addition is coffee. No percentages but it is interesting:

good video.

The horse... the horse is too small for his fat ass! The poor thing.. (horse that is)

 

[Gdaddy]

Cuban farmer fermentation mix listed here... interesting addition is coffee. No percentages but it is interesting:

That was quite a list of ingredients he rattled off in his Mojito blend. I wonder if the coffee is roasted or is it green, unroasted coffee??? Hummm...
The government uses chemicals to aid the fermentation process. Hummm...

Here's the part I don't get...
That one guy said he goes through 5 thousand poles of tobacco a year from his few acres of land. That's a good amount being grown.
Tobacco will deplete the soil of nutrients (strips the soil) in a very short time. Year after year, decade after decade never rotating the crop how could there possibly be anything left in the ground that could possibly influence the flavor of the tobacco as it is claimed to do. Horse shite, pig shite, bull shite certainly could have an influence but the signature Cuban flavor can't possibly be coming from the soil. Impossible! Yet everyone continues to say it's the unique volcanic soil giving the flavor. I don't believe it. Whatever flavor that was in that soil was sucked out many, many decades ago.

 

[Dominican56]

The farmer doesn’t have to be technically accurate, only entertaining

 

[Hopduro]

That was quite a list of ingredients he rattled off in his Mojito blend. I wonder if the coffee is roasted or is it green, unroasted coffee??? Hummm...
The government uses chemicals to aid the fermentation process. Hummm...

Here's the part I don't get...
That one guy said he goes through 5 thousand poles of tobacco a year from his few acres of land. That's a good amount being grown.
Tobacco will deplete the soil of nutrients (strips the soil) in a very short time. Year after year, decade after decade never rotating the crop how could there possibly be anything left in the ground that could possibly influence the flavor of the tobacco as it is claimed to do. Horse shite, pig shite, bull shite certainly could have an influence but the signature Cuban flavor can't possibly be coming from the soil. Impossible! Yet everyone continues to say it's the unique volcanic soil giving the flavor. I don't believe it. Whatever flavor that was in that soil was sucked out many, many decades ago.

That's a really interesting point... the crop rotation provides the true cuban flavor?

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk

 

[Gdaddy]

That's a really interesting point... the crop rotation provides the true cuban flavor?

They only recently started using crop rotation methods. The point is it's NOT the 'special Cuban soil' that gives a unique flavor. A very romantic story told again and again but let's face reality, that whatever was in the soil is long gone. The soil MUST be replenished with nutrients and NO the sun doesn't shine on Cuba any better than it shines on the Dominican Republic or Nicaragua. (BTW...they have excellent soil there also.) It's more the WAY the tobacco is grown and fertilized contributes to the taste more than the soil itself.

Cuba has one of the longest histories for making cigar tobacco. I could imagine they have a recipe that they use prior to fermentation much like a mojo hundreds of years old. In fact, one of the historic videos there is a guy spraying down the Cuban tobacco with "a tobacco solution" prior to fermentation. This is only one piece of the puzzle.

Whatever the process they use in Cuba is a VERY well kept secret 100's of years old and no one is going to readily divulge their families recipe to a bunch of tourists with video cameras running. (Heck, I couldn't even get a pizza dough recipe from a local family restaurant. They'd have to kill me!) They would tell everyone the 'secret' of the unique flavor of their pizza was the 'old oven' in which the pizza was cooked and the vast majority of people believed it.

 

[Jim D]

It's time to make a new batch here. I've crushed some fresh pineapple and it's been bubbling in its own juices for two days. Just started letting the gasses out today as the saran wrap was forming a nice dome over the bowl. I'll add a bit of distilled water, vanilla extract, and rum after straining out the chunks and have a spray bottle that lasts a couple more years.
Have you gents made any changes to your recipe lately?

 

[BrewinHooligan]

It's time to make a new batch here. I've crushed some fresh pineapple and it's been bubbling in its own juices for two days. Just started letting the gasses out today as the saran wrap was forming a nice dome over the bowl. I'll add a bit of distilled water, vanilla extract, and rum after straining out the chunks and have a spray bottle that lasts a couple more years.
Have you gents made any changes to your recipe lately?

Instead of making a vanilla tincture with chopped beans soaked in rum, I just added pure vanilla extract with the rum on the last batch. Instead of Pyrat rum I used Bacardi. Not spiced, but golden. Still working like a champ. I only use it on strong ligero, the milder stuff I leave as is. I don't use on viso or seco at all.

 

[Gdaddy]

It's time to make a new batch here. I've crushed some fresh pineapple and it's been bubbling in its own juices for two days. Just started letting the gasses out today as the saran wrap was forming a nice dome over the bowl. I'll add a bit of distilled water, vanilla extract, and rum after straining out the chunks and have a spray bottle that lasts a couple more years.
Have you gents made any changes to your recipe lately?

Just as Brewinhooligan says. Be sure you use high quality vanilla extract. Probably the most important element is the citric acid in the pineapple juice helps to chemically lower the ph of the tobacco which is usually too alkaline. It acts as a smoothing agent.