This was my first experiment drying a ferment. The plums were sierra honey gold and I wasn’t too impressed with their raw, fresh flavor. I thought fermentation might give them the acid it needs. Still, they were just okay. But after drying them? Delicious to eat straight up. I used over half of them to make a powder and it tastes great. It’s salty, sweet, and tart with the wonderful complex flavors of lacto-ferments and a bit of yeast.

I’m planning to use it as an ice cream topping. I’m also considering using it to season a grilled pork chop. It’s very sugary, so I have to be careful. Maybe I could make a plum glaze with some honey, soy sauce, and shaoxing wine.

I’m open to brainstorming and other tips as well!

Fermented with garlic and onion in a salt brine, then added some fermented honey garlic (I didn’t get botulism) and finished with vinegar and a touch of xanthan gum

Next time I won’t breathe while recording 🤦‍♀️🤣.
Just love burping these things! They are busy busy!

The color is magnificent; as for the spices, I added cloves, chili, pepper, and a piece of fresh ginger. 5 days for the F1, bottled today.

I added no salt brine, but just did the massaging / salting cabbage method. It is a saltier batch, around 3% salt weight to cabbage weight ratio. It yielded enough juice to completely submerge the kraut last night. When I came home from work today, I noticed the juice overflowing right into the airlock.

So I removed and cleaned the airlock, and with a clean spoon I scooped out some brine. Then i cleaned my hands and pushed the kraut back down with my fingers and fist.

Would this episode interfere with acidification timelines?

Remembered we have vacuum sealers at work, figured I'd test it out with some new peppers.

Left bag is 97g frozen reaper, 14g garlic, 3.35g salt

Right bag is 102g 7 pot primo yellow, 7g garlic, 3.35g salt

No brine in either.

I just got the 7 pots from plantsomekindness and they smell great. Hope I can get at least a month before bags want to pop. It doesn't look like it got all of the air out of the reaper, fingers crossed.

New to fermenting after doing a cheeky little pepper garden on my balcony.

The left jar is Thai bird chilis, papaya, garlic, and onions. I had to pack the jar fairly tightly in the beginning to keep everything submerged, and now I am getting decently sized trapped pockets of gas. Despite rattling things around a little, they’re fairly well sealed in amidst the soft, compressed papaya.

Do I need to worry about this? I figure since it’s CO2 gas, I don’t need to be concerned about mold. Worst case, the fruit might get slightly less fermented without being in contact with the brine, but do I need to be concerned about contamination?

It is unsurprisingly pretty active from all the sugar in the papaya, and I’ve read that I should avoid opening the jar and introducing oxygen. They do have valves on the lid.

Should I crack this thing open and break up the pockets, or am I safe to let it do its thing?

Hi everyone, I've just started experimenting with ginger recently, I had a ginger bug that was going very well, the right smell and loads of bubbles. When I made my ginger beer using that bug, there were 2 issues. First as you can see on the picture, a lot of deposit on the bottom of the bottle, and this was after sifting. Second, even after much more days than what was advised, when I opened the bottle, there were absolutely 0 bubbles, no gaz had formed. The recipe I was using advised blond cane sugar but I don't see how that might have caused that deposit. Could it be starch from simmering the ginger too long?

Also, the recipe advised to first keep the ginger beer in a cloth covered pot 24h before filtering and transfering to a bottle, do you agree with that?

Thank you a lot in advance for your recommendation.

PS : I know that there is too much air on the bigger bottle on the pic, but both bottles had no gaz.

Homegrown Picklebush cucumbers, dill, and garlic. These fermented for 31 days in the basement.

Note that I don’t cut off the ends of the cucumbers. I scrape off any part of the blossom end and do an overnight soak in an ice bath with some pickle crisp.

I have a -ton- of sweet peppers from the garden that I pulled out the other day. They need processed and I was thinking of making some hot sauce. These are not a hot variety but they're all tasty. Could I put in some dried cayenne peppers I have left from last year to add heat? Or will that disrupt the fermentation too much? I wouldn't be doing many, just enough for a kick. How many would you put in a gallon fermentation jar?

Also looking for other ingredient suggestions. I have fresh garlic left from the garden, and onions. What else should I add? Or is that good enough?

I've only ever done sauerkraut, this would be my second fermentation.

Whatever is left that I can't jam in the jar is getting dehydrated or frozen. Though I assume I don't pack it in the same way I do cabbage?

This is day 5

It's been three days since I started my new Ginger bug, and it's sparkling really nice. Feeding it for three more days would be enough to use it for a nice ginger beer.

But I want to know is: when is it time to separate the old grated ginger from the liquid and add more fresh ginger?

if you people can give me any tips, it would be great.

Thank you all

Made some habanero garlic dill pickles for my first ever pickle batch. I did a 3.5% brine over 5 days and it finished around 4.4pH. They are delicious! It’s better than any hot garlic dill pickle I’ve ever had and dare I say better than my favorite pickles at the local Jewish deli I haunt. The one thing I’d like to improve is texture for sure. I used Persian cucumbers and they got a little mushy after 5 days. I also thought they would be tangier and less salty. In the future I think I’m going to tune it down to 3% and maybe try a different kind of cucumber? Would love any recommendations. I also expected them to be kind of fizzy when I bit into them but they weren’t, surprisingly.

Everything else looks fine. But there is what appears to be white fuzz across the top of the jalapenos and veggies. But it is all below the surface of the liquid. And has been the whole time.

2.5% salt.

Thoughts?

(I don't see a megathread for this post)

The is this mold megathread is not up I had posted there but it seems to not exist anymore and I’m still wondering if this is safe

For the life of me I can't find a well written recipe for these, only short form videos. Does anyone make these on the regular have a recipe I could follow?

Fuzzy spring that keeps the cabbage beneath the brine. I didn’t see the weekly mega thread anywhere, sorry if I’m breaking the rules!

I lacto-ferment a variety of vegetables (radishes, carrots, sauerkraut, garlic, peppers, etc). I use 3-4% of the weight of my vegetables + RO water to calculate salt amount. I use a gram scale. I wash my hands, knife, and cutting board prior to prep. My mason jars are clean from the dishwasher. I use glass weights and make sure everything is below the brine. If there are little bits of material floating on top, I will fish those out with a clean spoon. For my air lock, I either use pickle pipes or a 3-piece air lock. I have also used La Parfait jars.

I have also vacuum sealed ferments and have not gotten mold. HOWEVER, I tend to get an alcoholic ferment when I vacuum seal (tomatoes, peppers) and I'm not a fan of plastic generally.

My main problem is MOLD. I get green or white fuzzy mold growth on the surface about 25% of the time. There doesn't seem to be any pattern either. It has happened with the pickle pipes, 3-piece air lock, and the La Parfait jars.

What am I doing wrong? Do I need to sterilize everything? Different salt concentration? Am I just dirty?

Don't be shy... 😏

It's time to put your crock on display! Big or small, young or old, shiny or showing its age — we appreciate a good crock around here!

We won't judge by size, shape, age, or a few battle scars.

Hi everyone, I made a hot honey ferment for the first time time today. I was following a recipe that used chilies and onion, chopped them, put them in jars, covered with honey until fully submerged, the usual process. I've only done a garlic honey before this, and that took days to get runny, meanwhile this one, the onions let out so much juice that the honey already got diluted to a very watery consistency in just an hour. I've not seen anyone mention this in the recipes for hot honey ferments or in discussions about them. Is this expected, is it okay for the fermentation, and most importantly, is this safe? I would appreciate anyone with experience letting me know.

Less sugar more burping next time I guess. Tastes great though!