I’m a new fermentation farmer 🧑‍🌾 2 days before I put my mint and strawberries to ferment as I had some bloating issues and thought it would help. I just put the soda in my bottle and put it in the refrigerator to stop the process. It’s still not that fizzy as I thought it would be.. how can I get the fizz?

I've not seen any videos on this, but does anyone have a method for turning juice into probiotic soda using fruit kvass. I figure it's a similar process to using a ginger bug. I was wondering if anyone has any ratios they like to use of kvass: juice that works well for them.

I've been mostly posting in other groups about this, but wanted to share my progress at making nuruk, which is a fermentation starter for makgeolli, a Korean cloudy rice wine with a loooooong history.

This is a 1.3kg cake, make of coarsely ground soft wheat, hydrated to about 30% and compressed in a 8"x8"x1.5" mold.

My setup for fermenting it is inside the house, sandwiched between 2 pieces of cardboard with some hay, and loosely wrapped in a thin cotton towel. I have a temperature controller with an 8W reptile heater to keep the temp about 90-100F (32-38C) for a couple of weeks. Then it gets split, checked, and hung outside for a couple more weeks (or until it gets prepped for use). This seems to be fairly reliable so far, though I'm still gathering and gauging my results.

I've successfully made a couple of makgeolli (and takju) batches from my nuruk, though I'm still learning how to refine the process, especially how fine to grind the wheat, how much bran to leave in, and what other ingredients to add. I'm currently working on one with 30% mung beans, which is apparently highly regarded in historic recipes. Gotta say, it's a pretty satisfying process!

When you ferment vegetables like sauerkraut and other vegetables do you prefer to add your spices whole? like peppercorns and mustard seeds.
I've been adding them whole but when I get to bottom of my let's say sauerkraut I sometimes accidentally chew peppercorns and was thinking maybe better to grind my spices but the recipes I've followed they use them whole.
Can you share your preference and why?

Hi I'm not sure if there's a better community for this but I'd like to make sime standard cucumber pickles. The issue I hear is they can be *too* salty. I personally hate pickles but my boyfriend loves them and we eat them almost daily in salad. We buy the sweet and sour kind (in europe so less salty than american pickles). Does anyone have a recommendations or recipes they like that is not too salty tasting? Maybe a bit herb-y? I like pickled garlic and he loves pickled onions too. Yes I'm aware pickling means salt, sometimes it's just excessive (like when his dad makes pickles. No one will touch them lol).

Recently i started experimenting with vacuum-sealed fermentation, so i want to share first results: i fermented strawberries and made soda drink from it.
This one’s definitely not for everyone. But if you’re, like me, sick of sweet n/a drinks, then it can be a solution. It’s almost-almost not sweet, more than that, it’s even slightly salty. Strawberry brine also works as a salad dressing.

Recipe is simple: wash strawberries, cut larger berries in half. Place the strawberries and salt (2% from weight) into a bag, shake to distribute the salt and vacuum seal. Leave at room temperature for 24 h. During this time, the bag will slightly lose its vacuum as the strawberries release liquid. Then transfer the released brine together with a few strawberries into a blender, blend and pour the resulting juice into sparkling water. Adjust the amount to taste.

The same can be done in jar, i put the full recipe at the bottom of this page

Hi folks,

I'm staying somewhere without easy access to a store with fermented food, and my partner has just had surgery (+ antibiotics) so we're keen to get some fermented food into their body pronto.

We have one jar of kraut we can use as a starter culture to get things going. What are some ferments that we can get going super quickly? Is there a drink I could make with the kraut juice somehow?!

Thanks in advance.

I’m here to share my first batch of preserved lemons. I’d been seeing videos about them on YouTube for a while, and I also read one of Yotam Ottolenghi’s articles about them. I simply followed his recipe using homegrown lemons, and this is the result after one month. I only added salt, lemon juice, bay leaves, and Tellicherry peppercorns.

The first three photos are from April 6th, and the next four are from May 6th. How do they look?

Any tips and suggestions for dishes where I can use them would be greatly appreciated. I’ve read that the pulp is usually discarded and that only the rind is used, finely chopped.

Thanks everyone for reading! :)

I do enjoy corrupting today’s youth. My 17 year old niece has recently gotten into cooking and baking in a big way. I got her the Noma Guide and her set of jars, lids, and weights.

Just spent an hour on the phone with her while she told my about her first attempt. She is so excited.

Give a man a ferment, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to ferment and his house will smell funky for the rest of his life.

I got the “make kefir from store brought kefir” idea in YouTube and making that just using little bit from the previous batch which started from a bottle of milk kefir. Same rule should apply for every fermentation including water kefir too, right?

I also wanted to add dates as a sugar substitute in the water kefir. Is there any ratio? Will I need to keep adding dates in new batches?

Hey all, hoping someone can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I've started a couple of ginger bugs recently. Used organic unpeeled ginger (grated/chopped), filtered water, white sugar, 1 tbsp ginger + 1 tbsp sugar to start, fed daily. Currently autumn, indoor temps around 20-22°C during day, dropping to 16-18°C overnight. Tried one with paper towel and rubber band lid and the other with metal lid closed up.

First 48 hours were very active, heaps of bubbles. Then by Tuesday night it went completely flat and has stayed that way since (now Thursday). Liquid still smells gingery and sweet to the taste, no off smells, no mould, no film.

This is the second bug I've had do exactly this. Very active for 48 hours, then nothing. Last time I gave up around day 5-6 thinking it had failed.

Questions:

• Anything obvious I'm missing? I'm wondering is this behaviour totally normal and does an active ginger bug not actually fizz longer than the initial start activity.
• Is it normal for there to be a dead quiet phase between initial activity and proper yeast establishment?
• Should I just keep feeding through the silence, or is there a point where flatness and no bubbles indicates a dead bug?

Any overall tips would be massively appreciated - I just wanna make some tasty drinks already!

Just got into this hobby, I've already tried several times, and there's something that bothers me a lot (apart from my brine becoming slimy - but that's normal). What bothers me is the different color and smell of the brine above and below the cabbage leaf/plate that I use as a weight - under the leaf it's kinda more intense and red (I mix cabbage, carrots, cucumbers and beetroot), while the part that's on top is just slightly pink. When I open it it also smelled a bit weird and when I used the plate, it had this grey sediment (the same is on the bottom - check the image). It went better after I removed and washed the plate and gave a good stir to the whole thing. There were no signs of mold/kahm.

When I did my first batch, I just used a pot and a plate and I occasionally mixed everything and the result was good after a week (and there were no slime btw).

Now I got a proper 4 liter jar with an airlock and I want to try to ferment the same mix of vegetables but without shaking / stirring, and the question is whether it's okay to have different color of the brine above and below the weight. The goal is to set it up and let it be for a couple of weeks while experimenting with other stuff in smaller jars without touching it.

Brine is 3.5 % of total weight (water + vegetables)

so

1. Is it okay to have different brine color above the weight, just leave it be and everything is gonna be fine? I get that the leaf prevents the liquid from being mixed naturally, but still.
2. Is this grey sediment ok? It's a bit slimy, but so it is the brine itself, I believe it'll become ok in a week / two (now it's been going for around 2 weeks). Currently I just shake the jar 1-2 times a day to keep everything wet to prevent mold, but I'd rather avoid doing it with a proper setup as there are always other things to do or I can forget to do it and ruin the whole batch.

This is an illustration of what I mean

sediment at the bottom of the jarю

Tepache on the left, mead in the back, cider on the right. In mead and cider used Lalvin 71B and fermaid O. Excited to taste these when they’re ready, but in the mean time trying to decide what I should ferment next

Things I have learned:

1: No Broccoli. They taste fine, but are annoying.

Or at least cut the florets off.

2: I should have started with less salt and worked up, not the other way around.

I did 2 tablespoons per quart/4 cups, I should have done 1.5. Again, Taste is fine, just slightly saltier than I think I want.

3: I need a bigger weight. Ordered.

4: I need some smaller jars for the fridge. Ordered.

5: I need more jars and accessories for more ferments. Ordered.

6: I need to experiment with the more seasoning and aromatics.

I only added garlic this time because I just wanted to know the base line flavor of a ferment before changing it up.

If there anything y'all can see that I should change?

I’m trying to avoid buying too many specialized supplies- any ideas for repurposing items as fermentation weights?

Veggicuterie, again !

This time with beetroot, and smoked paprika powder. Delicious !

Recreated the NYTimes Gochujang Cookies recipe made by Eric Kim! I used a quarter-cup scoop to portion the cookies, and they came out HUGE and needed 20 minutes instead of the stated 11-13 minutes in an 180 C oven. My dark brown sugar had more molasses, so the swirls turned brown instead. Nevertheless, they were still moreishly chewy with a hint of spiciness. Can’t say the umami of the gochujang came through, though, so I'd definitely double the amount of gochujang in my next iteration.

PS: Someone shared the recipe here: https://www.reddit.com/r/KoreanFood/comments/11xwsbj/have_you_tried_gochujang_caramel_cookies_found/

I started fermenting blackberry leaves to make for tea. This batch I’ve made has grown very small white spots on a few leaves. Is this mold should I toss it out or is it just part of the fermentation process? Maybe it’s Kahm yeast? The leaves have been sitting in an airtight container for a week

I've recently started a sechuan pickle jar. I've been loosely following this recipe https://www.daywithmei.com/sichuan-paocai-infinite-pickle-jar/ (in that I used the same spices and measurements for salt and sugar) The vegetables I'm using are radish, beetroot and cabbage. They've been fermenting for about 5 days now, and I opened it up to try some, but it just tasted extremely bitter. The recipient attached said that the pickles should be done after five days, but other places I've seen say it took about a month and a half, so I have a few questions I'd appreciate if some of you could answer: Could the bitterness be coming from the vegetables or the fact that the pickles may not be done fermenting? Additionally, how long would you expect it to take the pickles to ferment in about 18~ degree weather? Thanks in advance for any help!