Yes I know I need to get some rubber bands

2% salt for one week on a windowsill - jalapeños from my own greenhouse, 86 in total. Great snack!

They came out really soggy though. Any tips to keep them crisp? The flavor is great

I thrifted a Foodsaver Jar Sealer that pulls a vacuum from a widemouth jar with a metal lid. I purposely left two cucumbers above the brine. I let them ferment for four weeks. I manually burped it several times. There was no mold or kahm. The two that were out of the brine were mushy, so I tossed them out.

Vacuuming the air away keeps the mold away.

Hibiscus flower, cinnamon, lemon and star anise.

I know kahm isn't necessarily bad, but my second batch of ginger bug started growing kahm, much to my dismay. I know I can skim it off or decant it, but I'd really like to just get a clean batch. I've seen suggestions to leave it closed/covered for the duration, but I thought you need to add ginger and sugar each day. I'm guessing you'd need different amounts of sugar and ginger if it's a make it and leave alone method. My jar is sterilized. I keep it on the kitchen counter, out of the sunlight. I even used distilled water this past time.

I often have koji available because I brew sake at home. If some is left, I convert it into amazake with a sous vide setup (55 C for 12 hours).

Recently I've been trying to ferment the amazake so that it reaches a pH of about 4, and then press and pasteurize it with the idea of obtaining a clear liquid, hopefully somewhat similar to a sake but without alcohol.

But my first two batches have failed. I don't know what I might be doing wrong.

In the first test, I added half a capsule of L. plantarum, Swanson brand, to a recently made amazake, inside a sealed bucket with an airlock, at room temperature. It's my first time using these capsules.

By day 5 it had a heavy sulphur smell, and pH was 5, so I threw it away and started over.

For my second batch, I took precautions to have a better temperature control. For example, cooling the amazake to a lower temperature before adding the capsule. It was a full capsule of L. plantarum supplement this time, 10 billion CFU.

That batch resulted in only a faint sulphur smell, I think. By day 5, pH was 4.5 but there was a small spot of green mold on top of the mixture. So I had to throw that away as well.

The amazake has a low rice to water ratio (150%), and it becomes very thick. Can that be why the fermentation is slow or stalling? I could increase the amount of water, and even press the amazake before inoculation.

Another thing that I'm thinking, is to add lactic acid to protect the mixture, and the third thing that could be causing the problem are the L. plantarum capsules themselves. Maybe they're defective.

Any suggestions/ideas?

Jalapeño, Serrano, habanero, peaches and red onion in a 3.5% brine. One week in and they are just ripping!

Is this ok ,some of the cabbage is floating in the brim

Wish me good fortune in the bubbles to come. My friend and I are starting a business, so I'm testing out a mash ferment. Cutting everything by hand will take too long at this scale, so food processor it is. Dried arbol chile, tomato, onion, garlic, no water added. I grew a jalapeño plant last year and researched how to preserve the peppers. Fast forward to this year: I have multiple stable recipes and I'm aiming to produce a 100% locally sourced produce fermented hot sauce product. Lots and lots of requests to buy from so many kind people. This is a 1.5 gallon fermenter. Next will be 5gal, and up and away.

My new closet fermentation lab is cooking right along. Two one gallon batches of mango habanero hot sauce, and a 5 gallon batch of apfelwein.

I've had a kiwi cheong going for a couple of months and it looks ready now.

I'm not sure the storage process is now? Do I strain the fruit pieces? Do I need more sterilised containers to keep things in if I separate the fruit and syrup? How long do things keep for once you start using?

What's wrong with them? They are covered in a white mush and aren't reproducing. On the contrary, they seem to be crumbling. The instructions that came with them said to use 80 g of brown sugar per 1 L of water. I reduced that a long time ago to less than 40. Currently, it's 10 g of brown sugar and 15 g of white sugar with about five raisins and a pinch of natural salt. The water temperature is rather on the higher end at 22 to 24 °C. The water itself is quite soft.

I am changing the water every day.

What can I do?

The whole purpose of keeping everything submerged is to prevent mold and oxygen. But if it's a closed lid with just a water air lock, carbon dioxide will displace all the air. If for some reason the ingredients rise up above the liquid because bubbles beneath, there is no worry about having to resubmerge them, correct?

Have a few different breeds of jalapeños but these yellow ones are supposed to be citrusy, I was thinking of doing a fermented mango jalapeño hot sauce . Never made one before, any have any recipes they’ve liked?

I tried my first batch of cucumbers, but after 8 days the pH is 5.5. I gained the courage to start because I told myself botulism can’t grow at pH levels below 4.6, but clearly I did not achieve an environment for that. So I’m not going to try them, or allow anyone else to.

What other things do you keep in mind to be able to do this?

I tried ginger beer years ago and it was a total loss. 15 years later, my cucumber crop is likely gone. Are you all just magical herbalists? Any help would be appreciated!

Its been about a week and the middle jar .. I think its a half gallon has stopped fermenting when i pop the lid there arent any bubbles anymore.... Do bubbles stop after a week?

Hi all, is this ok for sauerkraut

Pulled the last of my hardneck garlic from my backyard plot a few weeks ago and decided to do a garlic honey ferment because I kept seeing it come up and it looked low effort enough for me to not destroy it. Famous last words honestly.

I used raw local honey and fresh garlic cloves, flipped it daily, saw bubbles by day three which felt promising. But around week two the honey got so thin and watery looking I genuinely panicked and convinced myself I had ruined it. I did not throw it out this time, which is growth for me, and it has been sitting for about six weeks now

It smells incredible. The garlic is soft and a little golden and the honey has this savory almost umami thing going on that I was not expecting. I have been eating the cloves on sourdough toast and feel like I discovered something

My question is whether the very thin consistency is just normal or if my honey ratio was off. I used a pretty generous amount of garlic relative to honey because I had so much garlic and eyeballed it more than I should have. Also curious how long people actually age this stuff before it peaks because mine is good now but I wonder if I pulled it too early.

First time making it, a nervous because I left it sorta long, the jar was full of garlic at some point. Super excited to try

So im making sauerkraut and half the water has like disapered even though it was full a week ago. So what do i do and where's my water? I have been opening my jar slightly everyday to burp it but not lifting the lid just screwing it open does that have something to do with it?

Hi! I have a tree full of plums wanting to be used up, and I'm looking for some suggestions! Some considerations:

unfortunately I'm on a medication where I can't really drink alcohol or I'd totally make something in that realm. A little bit is fine though, maybe ~ 3% ABV would be okay.

I'm open to some version of a soda, but I'm not a big fan of sweet sodas - I do enjoy some of the store bought kefir sodas that I've tried, I'd say something like that if it could even lean more hard into that probiotic taste would be good.

I've been doing some internet searches and mostly I'm just finding more standard style soda, or brined plums. I'm open to doing something a la a brine plum, but I feel like a beverage might be better to use use a larger amount of plums (I imagine I'd drink more plum *something* than I'd eat brined plums). Now, I'm open to some weird fermented plum/beverage plum hybrid situation...

Any ideas?

I've been a lurker here for a while but wanted to share with glee my current bubbly babies and how they have made life so much better. On the left is the first ferment of the Kombucha and then in the little jars is the second, where I add whatever fruit I grow/find for 48hrs for a quick second fermentation. I grew these delicious little grapes, last few weeks I've used pears I found on the street, apples and plums I grew!

I have water kefir, fermented grapes, fermented radishes and dabble in kimchi/kraut. I suffered from various inflammatory diseases including gout and psoriasis. I started growing my own veg and fermenting and my gut just feels so happy. Much love to everyone else enjoying their fermentation stations and thanks to all the Reddit posts that inspired me to try different things!

New to fermenting. So you throw some vegetables in a jar with some salt water and in a week it’s awesome!

I may be addicted to this for a while!

Did a simple kimchi and jalapeño hot sauce. Fun and tasty!