Re: playing with your (raw) food - story of Pasteur too.

[Guest guest]

I did more reading about these guys when I saw several links with

kombucha - evidently you don't want them in your kombucha because

they'll eat the scoby and make it spongy and loose so it falls apart

easily. They eat the bacteria that produces the vinegar; some say

they're always in the " mother " of good vinegars while others say they

spoil the taste of it.

Louis Pasteur's famous pasturization was actually a result of these

little guys, who are also called wine eels and turn up in unpasturized

wine where they are thought to unfavorably alter the flavor! But that

is a funny story - when wine goes bad, it's because wild bacteria in

the air have gotten into it and are creating vinegar. Some vintners

called Pasteur in to help them fix the problem with their wine turning

bad and he found the vinegar eels living there and decided to heat them

to kill them to see if that could save the wine. Classic case of

mistaken cause and effect - trying to kill the eels he accidentally

killed their food producer instead! Of course heating the wine does

kill the bacteria that turns it to vinegar, so it worked anyways then

sometime later his method was applied to milk to see if it works as

well and the rest is history.

Still, as far as I can tell, vinegar eels, while the indirect cause of

pasturization and all the woes that has brought on us, are otherwise

harmless and ok to eat.

--- In , " joanhulvey " <joanhulvey@...>

wrote:

>

> > vinegar eels

> Would they also be in kombucha? Is that why it is said to have B12

> (which is also said to only be available from animal foods)? Is it

the

> microscopic critters in ferments that provide B12?

>