Baking Soda

A can of worms indeed. Today as I was thinking about Hibiscus tea and wondering if I could put it through a Malo-Lactic fermentation similar to what is done in wine. Surely I could, but what would non sour hibiscus taste like?

I recall one of our chefs at Q talking about using baking soda to reduce sour flavors/acidity in a tomato sauce. Baking soda is basic, tomato’s are acidic, makes sense. It’s a trick I use literally every time I make tomato sauce since I’ve learned it. Why not with hibiscus?

Tonight we had a wedding, I had a lot of free time. I made hibiscus tea and put some baking soda in it. The color changes from red to purple, and I’ve found there is definitely a limit on how much you can add before you ruin the flavor and create a nasty finish to the flavor. It was a minor success but I need to follow up on it.

I got home and cracked open a bottle of red wine. One of my first thoughts was this is good, its a touch sour though. Wait a second… *puts in baking soda*

For the record it wasn’t good. It took away the sour flavor but without it the bitterness and the tannin really stand out. On top of that baking soda gives a strange flavor. Although this was a failure, I think it would be wise to try it with a couple other styles of wine. Sour wines with less tannin might be nice?

As I am almost clueless in this field, I will look for alternatives to baking soda to use as de-acidifiers in these drinks. Based off my experience with the barrel aged coffee; finding the ‘sodium carbonate’ as opposed to bicarbonate, a bicarbonate not related to sodium might be a great option. I don’t even know if such a thing exists though.

Edit: I was chatting with a friend of mine who’s a sake maker in BC. He recently discovered a natural source of water in BC which is incredibly alkaline (ph of 9 or so). Would adding an acidic tea like Hibiscus to incredibly alkaline water have the same effect without the negatives of using baking soda?

Josh