Hanns Wetzel wrote: "Then there is the juice, which apparently gets thrown away. When the coconut is still green, the juice (I refuse to call it milk) contains much sugar."
Do not get coconut water or juice confused with milk. The milk is expressed from the grated meat and contains oil, while the water simply pours out when the nut is opened. The water is an excellent beverage - refreshing and restorative. When I climb to inspect my local Rotary Club's reforestation project on Mount Agad-Agad, I drink one or two nuts' worth at the top to get the oomph to get back down! I have eaten an excellent sherbet in Guadeloupe that was made from it, though I can't find it here. It can also be used to make vinegar, and coco vinegar is generally used here (wine vinegar is imported, expensive and essentially a gourmet item). Presumably, if acetic fermentation is possible, then alcoholic fermentation is, too. Must get some buko juice and yeast and find out... "What happens to this sugar as the nut matures and the endosperm thickens and hardens? Does it get converted to fat? Or is enough still present that it can be fermented to produce ethanol?" Good question. Easily settled, too. I have access to both mature (lovŽ) and young (buko) coconuts here. Yeast should not be hard to find, if I'm willing to settle for bread yeast rather than brewer's yeast. Time for a comparison test after I finish with the June issue of the magazine... "Finally, as I mentioned in a previous message, can ethanol be derived from veggie oil (perhaps through intermediate trans esterification) just like gasoline is derived from crude fossil oil?" The chemistry of that doesn't work out too well. You can get glycerol (a trihydroxy alcohol) from the oil by hydrolysis (such as occurs in soap manufacture), and the fatty acids can be converted to fatty alcohols, but these will be higher alcohols, not ethanol. Best, Marc Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
