THE STORY OF FERMENTATION

I know this article should have been introduced in the earlier part of this blog. But by doing so I believe I would have succumbed to the normal approach of introducing the subject of fermentation or fermentation technology. This would have made the standard approach boring and the readers of the blog would have thought that there’s nothing new or exciting to learn about fermentation technology.
Instead I have opted to introduce the history of fermentation technology by letting the readers of the blog discover the spread and depth of this topic and to appreciate the subject of fermentation technology less from the traditional history approach but much more from the critical point of view
It is true that the understanding of fermentation technology have its roots far deep in the past or early beginning of human civilization. It should be noted that from the spread of fermentation activities occurring almost in all countries and civilizations, its discovery must have been independent of specific country. It could be considered as more as parallel evolution in the knowledge of fermentation.
Sad to say that despite these observations, there are still some countries or nations which regarded that the fermentation process is their sole copyright in the evolution of human history. If only they realized that the discovery of alcoholic drinks and even fermented food such as fish undergoes the same process with the same microorganisms. The only significant difference is in their naming of the fermented products in the language of their country. Guess the pride of these people is the reflection of their own ignorance of the developments in fermentation in other countries besides their own. (The black age of ignorance of the past is still thriving in the modern minds of the uneducated today!)
The beginning or the discovery of fermentation or fermentation technology is very closely inter twined with ignorance and even religion. There is a general belief in the past that magical forces act to transform the food materials into fermented products. Despite the proof by Pasteur and the wide scientific studies on fermentation today, things have not changed much from the past. There are many human civilizations still believing the presence of forces or spirits to allow fermentation to occur. Even in this modern age the making of certain fermented foods such as tapai or fermented substrate is restricted by the various taboos. If these taboos are broken the fermented food or beverage would not turn well.
There is no such things as taboos to explain the failures but more the problems of contaminations and lack of understanding of the fermentation technology knowledge.
In the Roman mythology they even have honored the fermentation process especially with regard to wine by having a Roman God of wine named as Bacchus. So it is not strange if our own medicine men took to the wine to dance and get into the trance !!
Nothing have changed much from the earlier days of discovery of fermentation to what fermentation is today. The input of engineering and the inventing of the fermentors only help to improve the efficiency of the fermentation process. Strange it may be as in the case of many fermentation products such as antibiotics the many fold increase in the volume or concentration of fermentation products is attributed not so much by the improvement in the design of the fermentors but by the improvement in the fermentation productivity of the strains
In fact the design of fermentors have not changed much from the days of Fleming. Today they are still arguing on the problems of stirrers and impellers…. and rudimentary novel bioreactors.




Type rest of the post here.