Photo: supplied
After two years in business, the founders of Blackball Black Garlic say they cannot keep up with demand.
Sam Weston and Wayne Hanright are one of only two producers of black garlic in the country.
Black garlic takes five weeks to make, and they produce it in 70-kilogram batches.
Black garlic has a sweet flavour with a savoury aftertaste, and is a great condiment in many dishes, they say.
The garlic is made in an old freezer converted into an oven, Weston tells Nine to Noon.
"My business partner Wayne has been a very avid garlic grower here in Blackball for a number of years. And we came across the idea for black garlic from other sources, and after a bit of research we realised that it's quite possibly easy to make ourselves.
“We managed to get our hands on an old freezer that we converted through talking to other tradies on building sites about how to turn it into an oven.”
Wayne’s annual crop of 10 kilos of garlic was the first batch, he says.
“And what came out the other side was a perfect batch of black garlic.”
Since then they have built a second oven and are sourcing their garlic from a supplier in Renwick.
It is a chemical process that turns the garlic black, he says.
“What happens is called the Maillard Effect. Basically the chemical reaction of the amino acids and reducing sugars turns it into the black garlic over the course of the five weeks.”
The bulbs are cooked whole he says and then crushed.
“When they come out the other side they don't actually look that much different from when they go in as normal white bulbs, they just probably have more of a tint to them.
"And if you were to cut them in half, all the cloves inside are completely jet black.”
The taste, he says, is complex.
“We tell people it tastes very similar to a date or raisins on first taste, and then it mellows out to a very savoury aftertaste, as if you've just finished a roast meal and you've got that lovely combination of umami flavours in your mouth.”
Presently they are mainly supplying the local market but have plans for a purpose-built factory and then a third, larger oven to ramp up supply, Weston says.
