Fermentation Report

Fermentation is widely known as a method to preserve food. Many countries using fermentation to preserve fish, Thailand is between the famous one. There are many fermented foods in Thailand, one of them is a fermented mixture of fish and white rice called "som-fak".Som-fak is produced by spontaneous fermentation using white rice and garlic, preserved at room temperature to achieve new texture, flavour, and odour. The methods in this experiment is laboratory-scale experiment to know the process of making som-fak and it’s characterization. pH value is tested for the product before and after fermentation to determine wether the acidic condition arise or not. Descriptive test is used to determine the quality of the final products. The final products

Introduction

As we already know, fish is rich with protein and other important nutrition. Unfortunately, fish is categorized as perishable food. Therefore, people try to preserve it by various method. One way of preserving fish is fermentation. Preserving fish by fermentation is a traditional preservation methods which widely used in Indonesia and Southeast Asian countries, because it is relatively cheap and easy. Fish and seafood are mixed with salt, rice and spices is a traditional fermentation is done in many countries of Southeast Asia. (Paludan-Muller et al., 2002).

One of the famous fermentation products from Thailand is Som-fak. Som-fak is a low salt fermented fish products which fermented for 2-4 days at room temperature and the have dominant microflora namely lactic acid bacteriaor (LAB). Som-fak made from freshwater fish meat mixed with rice, garlic and salt and then wrapped in banana leaves. It is fermented at room temperature to form acidic flavor (Rahayu et al.1992).

2. Material and Methods

The method used is a laboratory-scale experimental methods. Implemented in Processing Laboratory of the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences, Diponegoro University, in May 2014. Tools and materials used are : Process of Making

Spontaneous fermentation is a fermentation which the type and number of microbes in the fermentation process are unknown and uncontrolled. Spontaneous fermentation process depends on the type of raw materials and environmental conditions during fermentation. Events that occur during som-fak fermentation are changes in the composition of glucose and fish protein. Glucose converted into lactic acid by microbes. This change is caused by anaerobic conditions applied to the product. Degradation of glucose to lactic acid fermentation is a major process in som-fak where it affects the durable power and quality of the final product. According to Muchtadi and Sugiyono (2013) result of fermentation obtained from metabolism of microbes in product under anaerobic state. Microbial fermentation requires energy which is generally obtained from