[Sca-cooks] torula fungus

[Terry Decker]

Torula is a genus of molds with no sexual state (thus differentiating them 
from true yeasts).  It is grown for use in nutritional products and ferments 
various sugars.  While I have no first hand knowledge of the manufacturing 
process, it apparently can be grown on the waste from sugar processing and 
other industrial processes related to sugar including waste from the 
production of alcohol.

While one meaning of liquor is an alcoholic beverage produced by 
distillation rather than simple fermentation, liquor has more general 
meanings referring to liquids in cooking and industrial processes.  For 
example, liquor is used to refer to the combination of liquids and fluid 
suspended yeast used in baking.

Bear


> Is this tortula yeast something that is intentionally grown on sugar 
> cane? Or something that you just end up with sometimes, anyway? I  assume 
> that if the rabbis are ruling on it, then folks must be eating  it though. 
> Do you mean this same fungus also grows on liquor? Or  something else 
> grows on liquor? Is that "on" or "in" the liquor?  Either way, I though 
> liquor referred to a distilled beverage with a  high alcohol content. How 
> does this fungus survive in that  environment? I thought most yeasts died 
> somewhere in teens or  twenties of percentage of alcohol? Or at least high 
> enough to be of a  concern when brewing mead.
>
> Stefan