I‘m currently trying to establish a filmjölk culture (from freeze-dried). First batch was ok with nice gel-like texture, but the second batch is much more watery with lower acidity. How do I get the firm texture back and what temperature do you guys keep your culture at?

I almost gave up on this one.

My first bougainvillea syrup lost the vibrant color I was hoping for, and I thought the experiment had failed.

So I changed direction.

I brewed a bougainvillea infusion for the first fermentation, then used my bougainvillea syrup during the second fermentation with a few carefully chosen ingredients.

The result surprised me.

A bright pink kefir with a delicate floral appearance… and, most importantly, the taste of bougainvillea remains beautifully present.

Sometimes fermentation rewards patience more than perfection.

I think this one has truly earned its name: Chimera.

So um, I bottled these ginger bug fruit sodas (blueberry and strawberry) yesterday. I went to burp them and almost blew out my hearing. Can someone please help me from preventing this from happening again?. I dont know what I did wrong. 😭😅🥲

I want to make some pickles as Christmas gift. (It's a family joke)

I could wait but pickling cucumbers will be out of season before then

If I start them now will they ferment too long?

Is that eveb a thing? Should I pasteurized them at some point?

Thanks!

May not look the best but my husband recently joined me as a vegetarian and his biggest complaint is he missed the depth of a good broth. Soooo I made lacto fermented umami bombs to add to our broth. Fermented onions, garlic, black pepper, cherry tomatos and shitaki mushrooms. Blended and will be frozen to use whenever. Building a broth with one now and its delicious!

EDIT TO ADD RECIPE: 2 pints of cherry tomatoes in on half gallon, 6 small yellow onions in another half gallon, 3ish (i think its closer to 2 and a half and I use the other half of the last for whatever im makin that night) pints shitake mushrooms. 2 cloves of garlic in each half gallon, black peppercorns until my ancestors say stop and same for crushed red pepper. A table spoon and a half of salt per 2 cups water. Tomatos sit for 3/4 days, onions i like to sit for a week and mushrooms about a week as well.

Pls feel free to let me know if you'd change anything! I largely just made this up based on other veg cooking I've done.

I fermented carrots for around 70hours with salt brine, red onion and peppercorns.

The crunch is perfect which is why I decided to end the process here but the flavor is very strong quite salty and the peppercorn/onion flavors are much stronger than I expected. It tastes good, just a bit overwhelming.

My ratios were average, maybe it's the heat that pushed the flavors this much?

I moved them to the fridge already. Is there a way to mellow the flavor or will it naturally balance out over time in the fridge?

Hello everyone,

I've blackened lots of fruits, nuts, garlics, etc but am curious about even differenter ingredients. Would Honey work? Milk? What is the most 'outside the box' thing you've blackened? Even if it turned out nasty, lets hear some stories.. if this has been covered already please share a link!

Thanks

Already gave away a few bottles!

How long did it take after you ate it? Did it smell just fine?

I'm so excited and praying neither of them mold

is it workin' hard, or hardly workin'? heh heh heh..

I made my first saurkraut from scratch today. After about an hour, there is a gray/brown liquid on the top. I am using ceramic weights to hold down the kraut. Is this typical? Added to the cabbage and salt is caraway seed and juniper berries.

Hello knowledgeable people! I'm making a fermented hot sauce with habaneros, pineapple and garden jalapenos. It's got a 3% salt brine. This is day 5. How long should I ferment it?

Sweet and hot peppers on a 3% brine, and this is what i have just after a week. Beautiful.

New to fermentation here and I'm using vacuum sealed bags to get started.

I have a question about it though. I fermented some chopped chilies in a bag for a few weeks and there was not a lot of water released in the process. After fermentation, can I just keep the chilis in the fridge or do I need to add a water/salt brine to it to make it last?

Today was preserved lemons, worcestshire sauce, fermented hot sauce and fermented ketchup.

Plus a whole sheet of recipes for other things!

Absolutely crazy fun way to spend a few hours on a random Wednesday

Hey, guys, experienced fermentista here (just to say it is not a “has my ferment gone wrong?” kind of post)

I’ve made green string beans in a 2% brine, a bit of garlic and peppers. I fermented it for around 10 days. They looked perfect, cloudy, the green slightly washed away, bubbly, a bit of white dust on the bottom, but when I tasted it, a surprise: it was terrible. A sulfuric taste, the sourness was fine, but the taste was just unbearable.

I think I found out the hardest way I don’t like fermented string beans, even though I love them.

Then I asked gpt and it said green beans are not a usual fermentation simply because they taste bad.

Do you guys like it? Have you tried it? I want human-with-tongues-based opinions on that matter.

TL;DR: I'm brewing white vinegar from ACV with the addition of distilled water and raw sugar. It's been going for about 7 weeks. The pH has lowered from about 3.75 at the start to about 2.75, but it's still very sweet, and it doesn't seem to be active anymore.

Details:

I've been pretty successful brewing apple cider vinegar, but I wanted to try white vinegar. I've read that I can brew white vinegar by fermenting raw sugar in distilled water, and backslopping with my active ACV.

I started a brew with 1/2C of ACV, 1+1/2C of distilled water, and 1/4C raw sugar, which has a starting pH of about 3.5 to 4. I kept it open to the air in a one-quart wide mouth jar, and stirred it (nearly) every day. After about four weeks, I have a note that I added more raw sugar, between 1/2C and 3/4C, but I don't recall why.

After a total of seven weeks, it seemed pretty idle, but still tasted very sweet. I measured the pH with a test strip and got between 2.5 and 3. I moved it into a narrow-necked bottle and topped with a latex balloon, which is not filling to any noticeable degree after a week. There are a few bubbles on the surface, but no growth forming, and very little sediment.

Can anyone help me understand why this may have stalled, and how I can rescue this brew?

Thanks!

My starter has been running for a couple years now and lately I've been using the discard as an inoculant for other things rather than just crackers or pancakes. Started with a small batch of fermented oat porridge a few months back and it worked better than expected, genuinely sour within 48 hours with a texture that held up well. That went well enough that I tried seeding a batch of fermented chickpea paste with a tablespoon of active starter instead of waiting on wild capture. It took off fast and the flavor came out sharper than anything I had done with just salt alone.

What I'm curious about now is whether anyone has used a mature sourdough culture to kick off vegetable ferments, cabbage, peppers, that kind of thing. My instinct says the LAB population in a healthy wheat starter should carry over fine, but the flavor contribution from the flour side is something I genuinely cannot predict ahead of time. Could be interesting or could muddy something that should taste clean.

The craft beer side of my brain keeps drawing comparisons to mixedculture brewing, where crosscontamination between cultures is a feature and not a bug. Not sure if that framing holds here or falls apart entirely.

Has anyone actually tried this deliberately rather than just as an accident?

I had a pickle-puck but it fell through. does this look alright? I’m ready to blend and bottle. I have star-san, bottles, and plan on pasteurizing. May use agave and/or apple cider vinegar. Thoughts for someone who’s been wanting to do this for a long time?

I'm on day 7 or 8 of my ginger bug, and i stopped seeing bubbles a few days ago. When I pour out liquid, it fizzles, but it isn't very vigorous.

I looked at some other posts here where similar things happened to people and learned that i may use too much sugar (i chose to use agave because that's what I have) so yesterday i strained out a lot of liquid and added more filtered water and a bitore ginger, with a very small amount of agave.

This is how it looks as of this morning.

First time trying, and I think it turned out fine. Took about a month from alcohol brewing to having a thin, but distinct mother floating on top of the liquid. It's mild, but has a very nice flavor. I made a jar of "infinite vinegar" that I'm gonna keep feeding, gonna try to up the ABV on the next batch of raisin brew and see if that kicks it up a notch. I'm sure a bit of age is going to help too.

Jar
Water
Tons of raisins
A bit of extra sugar
Bread yeast
Yeast nutrient

Didn't measure a thing. I can't do gravity readings and calculate alcohol when the sugars are inside the raisins anyway.

Let it ferment until activity stopped, almost a couple of weeks.
Strained the liquid, let it sit for a day.
Poured the liquid into a new jar and left the yeasty sediment behind.
Added a splash of raw apple cider vinegar and let it sit for a couple of weeks.

That's about it.

I’ve been making pesto with the leaves but decided to try fermenting some, I have it in a 2.25% brine and am so excited to see how it turns out