Skip to main content

← All questions

Asked by jennifer ·February 26, 2019 ·7.18k readers

Making FPJ from "dry" leaves

My friend made FPJ using mamaki leaves and very little liquid was extracted. I understand it is possible to use some sea salt to aid the osmotic extraction. Can you please tell me the process for this? Thank you!

fpj purefood fermented-plant-juice how-to-make-fpj

Top answer

From the KNF library

From the KNF library Drafted by Claude from Office Hours and the books · Sep 2026 · 5 sources

Here is what the library gives for dry leaves.

  • Start with sugar. Leafy plant material gets one third sugar by weight. (Office Hours Ep. 51, 34:01)
  • Add fine salt, up to 10% of the sugar weight, to draw more juice out. (Office Hours Ep. 40, 8:50)
  • Massage the sugar into the leaves until they turn soft and begin to release their liquid. (Student's Manual, Basic Course, p. 36)

Drake says dry plants such as mugwort yield little juice, and small jars render less than large batches. (Office Hours Ep. 40, 11:48) Master Cho's recipe extracts the plant essence with brown sugar instead of salt. (Cho, Recipe, p. 31) So the library treats salt as a helper to the sugar, not a substitute. (Office Hours Ep. 40, 8:50) (Cho, Recipe, p. 31)

The library does not cover mamaki, sea salt versus fine salt, or a salt-only method.

1 more answer
jennifer · Apr 5, 2019
Thanks for your reply. No just tried to extract the essence osmotically using brown sugar. Usually the addition of makgeolli is for rehydrating dry herbs to make OHN. I'm hoping to find an answer to possibly using salt instead of sugar. Thanks for your help.

Also discussed on Office Hours

Know the answer? Members answer, ask, and get their questions onto the Sunday show.

Sign in Become a member