/Fermentation Station General/

Quality of ingredients I'm assuming. The peppers weren't, or at least I don't think they were, organic. If they're not organic you run the potential risk of introducing contaminants to the ferment which will make it turn. I may change the source ingredients from the store I buy from to another and see how that goes.

Ah, makes sense. I've only used my homegrown stuff and we grow true organic with no pesticides, herbicides or industrial fertilizers.

Yes. Gonna make some red kraut tomorrow. Question?

Fucking making these generals has ruined them. I'm gonna do a ferment along tomorrow to hopefully revitalize this meme shit

Ruined them?

how does red kraut compare to white kraut. I have gone on a quest to make an epic hot dog and alternative sauerkrauts are on the list of stuff to investigate

Nothing wrong with the general it doesn't preclude doing an OC thread. I did a habanero hot sauce OC thread several months ago that generated some interest, so I'll be interested to see how yours goes.

whats up with the sticks?

Last summer I had kilo's of red pepper from the garden and I transformed it all into sambal and canned them in vinegar and brine. this year I will try to ferment them into hot sauce

Tried the carrots, interesting taste

So i'm wondering, the acidity is it mainly the CO2 or the lactic acid. because with this amount of CO2 it certainly will drop the ph of your liquid by quite a bit

Purchased some water kifer from a store and thought it was pretty good.

What exactly is kifer, and how can I make it at home?

I have a lot of bamboo plants, so I just used some twigs to form a kind of cage to hold everything submerged. Was pretty effective.

>I have a lot of bamboo plants
everybody who has bamboo has a lot of bamboo, that stuff comes straight from hell

Fermented red kraut tastes great. You can add some red wine and apples to the mix. Goes well with duck or goose.
If you prefer American prole food, you can probably put it on a hot dog too.

I use the shit out of it for garden fencing dude. It's not hard to contain it by digging a barrier.

Napa is for kimchi. Don’t add it to round head cabbage ferments if you just want sauerkraut cause the Napa gives off some weird flavors that don’t compliment Bavarian flavor profiles.

It’s lactic. Have some unflavored lacroix.. that’s the level of acidity you can expect to be imparted by carbonic acid.

So what is the weirdest thing you guys fermented?

Wanna see my baby scoby?

>decide to make picked eggs for protein gainz
>recipe calls for malt vinegar and some whole spices (bay leaf, cardamom, etc)
>leave for a few days
>taste test ohboy.jpg
>no semblance of any flavour
>malt vinegar is overwhelming
>might as well drink straight out the bottle
>why the fucking bay leaf
>throw out in sealed bag
>bin still reeks to this day

Yes

has anyone tried pickled Northern Pike?

Yes I love it

Anyone have any advice for pickling hardboiled eggs?

how does it taste? My MIL jarred one I caught in the summer. Apparently the vinegar dissolves the Y-bone?

tried the sauerkraut which I made on monday evening, it tasted of salty cabbage but it is gettign a bit softer and the first hint of sourness is appearing although the salt still overwhelms it

Gonna post your scoby or not?
Whered you get yours from?

How big (or small) does a scoby need to be to efficiently process the tea? Does it matter?

hey, I wanna get into pickling - where can I buy a shit ton of pickling jars in bulk for real cheap?

Why didn't the cooch meme have stating power here?

Someone tried to force it. Didnt ferment very well and got tossed.

It is good. Tart and not too fishy. If it was a good eater (~20”) it will remain firm. It’s been a while but even as a skeptical teen (last time I had it) it was palatable and enjoyable. I ate it on crackers iirc

Make a brine with vinegar. Basically you want to replicate a dill pickle brine. Add onions and garlic. Leave it for a good month in the fridge.

Doesn't ikea have mason jars for nearly nothing?

Local co op had a starter kit. You can see the mother scoby with child

WOAH THERE BUD.... PG-13...

What.

He implied an incest porn thing

Good call.

>I work in a lab so I probably expose myself to worse on a daily basis
I say this all the time but I'm starting to reckon that you may as well just start taking care of yourself again and find a lab where they'll properly vent the fucking place/provide proper PPE

So I checked on some chili peppers and stuff I was fermenting and I saw that some of the peppers poked thru the brine and started to grow mold....
Should I toss the entire thing and not risk continuing it?

If it's white, just remove the pieces and make sure everything else stays submerged. Any other color and I'd probably chuck it. But if it bothers you, just trash it and try another batch.

'Hot'sauce. 3 habanero 2 jalapeno some tepin chili, an 8th onion a bay leaf 5 cloves garlic and some sauerkraut culture.
3% brine

So my jalapeno hot sauce ferment should have been done today...

Brine is clear, it never got cloudy.

In fact, it stopped fermenting for a few days, and just yesterday started producing bubbles again.

Will it be safe? I'm going to run it for a few more days and see what happens, but it does have me concerned. It went from smelling sour (bad sour), back to smelling alright-ish again.

Sounds normal to me. They often smell like rotten egg for the first week then it stops but continues to ferment. Just relax, have a shot of homebrewed pepper sauce and don't worry. I've been using all of these and a couple had white mold that I skimmed like you do with sauerkraut and they're goat. 4 of them had the rotten egg smell at the beginning. If it continued to smell like that after 1 month I'd trash it.

I have some ginger beer fermenting right now in 2 liter soda bottles. The last batch i made tasted a little watery, and bitter. I let one age for 48 hours and the other age for 96 before cold crashing. 48 was too little, and 96 was like drinking dry champagne with ginger burn. I sort of liked both, but i think something in the middle will be better.

to combat the wateriness i added 4 oz of ginger juice to each 2 liter bottle. and 3 ounces of lemon juice. this time i didn't use the juicer to juice the lemons whole, i only threw in the soft interior flesh, not white and no zest. i skinned the ginger, but used 3 times as much. the first time i made 2 bottles and used tap water and distilled to see if there was a difference, the tap water one came out more bitter.

got my fingers crossed that they come out better this time, i'm going to shoot for a 35 hour ferment, and then i'm going to strain and bottle and give another 24 to build pressure before cold crashing.

I buy whatever shit Kroger sells, haven’t had a problem. You still weren’t very specific. Mold or overtaken by bad bacteria?

I threw mine out. I have started pushing plastic wrap down close to or on top of the brine/peppers to get rid of the oxygen and stop mold from growing. Haven’t had a problem since

Still new to fermentation outside of kimchi and kefirs

Made some lacto-fermented pickles the left is 5% brine solution and I burp it once a day, the right is a 2.5% and I tried leaving the clean cloth over it to see if it is more efficient . Both are like three days old at this point. Is the right one fucked? It smells like cucumbers still to be honest but it is very cloudy just don't know if that's normal or not. Advice? Also anyone that can point me in the direction of a good basic hot sauce it would be appreciated.

Kefir is a colony of bacteria essentially. If you want to make some at home save the culture from the bottle you bought and follow a yogurt recipe just substitute the yogurt for kefir.
If you really enjoy it and want some stronger stuff look up kefir grains (note water grains and milk grains are not the same they are different strains of bacteria and I've never tried substituting them) they aren't actually grains so much as cultivated bacterial colonies but apparently they last practically forever to reuse them if you keep them alive.

Pic related is my 10th batch of hot sauce, trying a sriracha style.

If you want to start easy, cut a bunch of Fresnos or red jalapeños into thin rings, and a couple of habaneros. 1 part jalapeños, 5 habaneros, 2/3 part onion. 3TB salt. I do 2 tsp each of peppercorn, mustard seed, caraway seed, and 4 cloves. Heat the spices in a pan to bloom and mix everything together and lay a sheet of good plastic wrap over and let salt cure for 2 weeks stirring every other day. Blend everything together and add 1/3-1/2 distilled white vinegar to taste.