/r/fermentation

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A subreddit for all things cultured with living microorganisms!

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Some other subreddits you might find interesting:

/r/homebrewing

/r/winemaking

/r/kimchi

/r/kombucha

/r/breadit

/r/fromscratch

/r/canning

/r/pickling

/r/kefir

/r/cider

/r/SalsaSnobs

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/r/fermentation

211,996 Subscribers

0

First time kickstarting ferment with whey

Chili (and a clove or two of garlic) mash with 2% salt by weight, kickstarted with whey and some hooch from a sourdough starter.

The first two weeks were uneventful. Daily burping and stirring, but not too much gas. Now, suddenly this white film appeared, and there seems to be more gas pressure in the jar.

I think it smells like sour candy, but my wife thinks it stinks...

Could the white layer be dead lactobacillus? I've never done a whey kickstart before, so I'm unsure what to look for.

1 Comment
2024/03/22
10:01 UTC

1

What is this substance?

0 Comments
2024/03/22
04:12 UTC

1

Pickling

I got into sourdough and ginger bug in the last year and now I’d love to try both short and long ferments pickling. I am planning to grow pickling cucumbers in the garden this year. I’d love help with choosing the best options of items to purchase to get started so that I don’t waste money.

I have lots of flip top/latch jars but it seems I need pickling weights and I don’t think those are going to fit that jar size properly. What are the necessities for getting started? Anything you wish you knew?

Thanks!

0 Comments
2024/03/21
22:59 UTC

1

Accidentally fermented garlic?

Not sure if this is the right sub, but…

I store garlic in a jar in my refrigerator. It’s garlic that I buy as a whole bulb from the store, and then open into individual pieces for storage in the jar. That way, I have cloves of garlic ready for when I need them.

Today, I opened up the jar and gas let out. It smelled kinda bad but the individual cloves looked alright visually. I threw it all out.

Does anyone know what happened? Did I make the right move or was the garlic okay to eat?

8 Comments
2024/03/21
22:58 UTC

5

First try at making curtido! Not sure if l left too much and/or too little headspace. We’re going to find out!

0 Comments
2024/03/21
20:58 UTC

1

Jars/Jars lids

what's best jars/ jars lids to fermentation ( new to the fermentation) and want to do sauerkraut?

thanks

2 Comments
2024/03/21
18:49 UTC

1

Mold on inside of the lid of the jar - safe or not?

I found this mold 3 weeks ago in the jar of a pepper mash, just habanero peppers and salt.

I wish I would’ve taken a picture. I wiped the inside wall of the jar down with vinegar and a paper towel where it was exposed to the headspace.

There is a half inch layer of brine between the pepper mash and air that was added when I started fermentation.

There is no visible mold after 3 weeks, and this mash has been going for about 2 months.

There is white buildup that looks completely different from the mold I saw; I always thought it was just yeast but now I’m unsure.

Think it’s safe?

1 Comment
2024/03/21
18:17 UTC

0

Draining the juice?

I usually drain the juice from sauerkraut/kimchi and just eat the actual cabbage. Am I losing a lot of the nutritional value by doing this?

3 Comments
2024/03/21
14:55 UTC

1

Bad or good?

First time having a ginger bug here, i recently made ginger beer and there was alot of ginger pieces left in my ginger bug. So i decided to remove majority of it and feed my bug. The next day this happened. What is this?

3 Comments
2024/03/21
09:58 UTC

0

Natto is the best ingredient for energy drink. What do you think?

5 Comments
2024/03/21
09:57 UTC

6

Noooooo!

My cat knocked over my scoby hotel. I haven’t used it for ages and it’s GROWN!!! Can I save it. This is the only liquid I have left and it’s really cloudy. Everything smells good though.

12 Comments
2024/03/21
09:23 UTC

7

Mango passion fruit hot sauce

3 Comments
2024/03/21
08:01 UTC

4

What veggies can I ferment in one jar?

12 Comments
2024/03/21
06:24 UTC

1

Suggestions for Lime ferments?

Our Lime trees have been producing quite a bit, we're absolutely loaded with them.
I'm looking for suggestions on ferments I could make with them, especially probiotic foods.

I was going to make Achar (Indian Pickles), but I found out that it's actually a genuine pickle and not fermented (it's pasteurized using sun exposure), so I'm looking for alternatives...

6 Comments
2024/03/21
04:56 UTC

2

Strawberry milk kefir

My wife recently brought home some strawberry milk boxes from school lunch, and I figured I'd try to make some kefir out of them. After less than 12 hours the milk had completly changed color, from pink to white, with a layer of pink at the top around the grains. Watching this change kind of turned me off from drinking it. But I did give it a taste. I removed the grains and pink mass at the top, and tasted the white kefir portion. It tasted just like strawberry kefir.

I'm just wondering what might have made this happen?

https://preview.redd.it/x0hzrbpttlpc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a25e9d67b6f4a8f0b70cbc8daf11fae660d689f

1 Comment
2024/03/21
03:11 UTC

27

Lacto fermented mushrooms, evil?

I once got gifted a mystery jar of mushrooms and I liked them very much.

I supposed they were pickled in some manner, so I grabbed some white button mushrooms and pickled them in 2% salt, with some chile flakes and minced garlic. They had a really funky smell after two days but i thought that was the garlic because it was a lot and it had this sulphur-y quality to it. Today, five days after the fact, I wanted to check how they were doing. But when i smelled the jar, it REEKED of evil, it awoke in me a deep ancestral panic. At first I wasn't completely repelled by it because I really couldn't place my finger on what that smell was, but after trying to pick one with the jar open in front of me, the smell became unbearable. I still don't know what to call that smell. Images of sewage, trash leachate, roadkill, blue cheese, dank water and lant crossed my mind but I couldn't figure it out. They weren't moldy, they didn't even have kahm yeast or nothing funny going on. I did notice the ziptop bag i put as a weight was tinted the same as the brine.

I ended up throwing them out, after almost throwing up.

I want to know if any of you have any idea of why this happened...

I checked the Noma Guide to Fermentation because I remembered clearly that they said white button mushrooms could be lacto-fermented, and they do say they can be lacto-fermented at 2%, but they give the curious instruction of freezing the mushrooms for 24 hours beforehand (recipe originally for ceps but they say button or cremini is possible albeit boring).

However freezing doesn't kill bacteria, it just inactivates it, so i'm not sure if this step would really affect the result I got.

HOW in the world did I summon an odor demon in my jar?

26 Comments
2024/03/21
00:57 UTC

11

Just another btach of 'kraut... and thumb. (darn mandoline!)

7 Comments
2024/03/20
23:03 UTC

1

KIMCHI: 3 days into fermenation, and the liquid keeps drying out on top.

So after the first day of fermenting kimchi, the jar began to overfill with liquid so I opened it up to de-gas the kimchi. A bunch of the red brine squirted all over my bathtub and I reasoned that I might have filled the container up too much.

So I removed a bit of cabbage to create more space in the jar, but then the kimchi began sucking up the moisture, and the top was no longer submerged. I then added some water to keep it submerged.

However, the water that I do add is then subsequently sucked back up and the kimchi is no longer submerged. Do I need to be continuously adding water or is that a bad idea? Should I simply do nothing?

I'm a rookie to this, so I'm sure that I'm asking a dumb question.

16 Comments
2024/03/20
21:46 UTC

1

Questions about a ginger bug.

Hiya guys,

I am new to fermentation and to start i decided to make a ginger beer using a bug, however i have a few questions about it. This is my second attempt at a bug, i threw the first one away because it smelt rancid in my opinion (my family disagreed, they could only smell ginger) and the bug was slimy and no g8nger settled to the bottom. Now ive startes the second bug and its tending towards the same direction as the first one, slightly slimey for now and smells like VERY concentrated yogurt which makes me think its a lactobascil that i managed to cultivate. Now ive tried both peeled and unpeeled ginger and different batches of ginger from different stores. I also live outside the US and from what i know they dont irradiate ginger where i live and Bio "Organic" ginger is near impossoble to find, but since the iradiation was the main issue i though it woupd be fine. Now i really want to get this ferment right and i dont particulary want to use brewers or fresh yeast. Any input in this would help, thanks a lot!

0 Comments
2024/03/20
20:53 UTC

3

Look difference in liquid

I am for the first time trying to make vinegar, I'd heard about pineapple vinegar and it sounded good, so figured why not. I have 2 jars, both have this going on, is it normal? Do I need to toss them??? They smell fine, they are in a cool dark spot, as the website I looked at said to place them in a cool place away from sunlight, and I check them daily (started Monday, it's Wednesday now, so day 2/3?). Just wanna know if I messed up 😂😅

4 Comments
2024/03/20
20:51 UTC

1

Tips for carbonating? And how often do you burp?

I'm making a first batch of ginger bug sodas. Just tried a few of them but I'm finding they are not very fizzy. So far, this batch has sat fermenting with the fruit/ginger for ~48hrs, then transferred to tightly sealed glass bottles and sat for ~16hrs before the taste test.

One, a raspberry soda, fizzed up and shot a mild jet of foam out the top after opening. However, it's not very carbonating aftertaste testing. I know it requires time and pressure to dissolve the CO2. Clearly its active, but I need tips on getting it properly carbonated, and I've seen a lot of conflicting advice.

How long should I leave it sealed to carbonate (and not risk an explosion)? Am I supposed to burp it (and how often) during the carbonation phase (seems like this would set me back to square one and lose any carbonation, but it could be dangerous if left too long)? Should I pop it into the fridge now that I've opened it, or at some point during the carbonation phase? Any advice is appreciated!

1 Comment
2024/03/20
20:19 UTC

19

I finally have a fermented soda success story!

The third time is the charm, apparently! I've successfully produced fermented soda with a ginger bug after so much trial and error. I was so excited to see bubbles in the bottle when I opened it this morning.

Here are some things I learned in the last three weeks about making fermented sodas:

  1. I don't know this for a fact, but if you want to add peppers high in capsaicin to your decoction (in my case, I made a habanero ginger beer), it seems the yeast either slows down or they just plain die if there's too much capsaicin in there. So, maybe don't throw three habaneros in when one will do. My dumb ass basically made liquid fire with no bubbles. If anybody wants to weigh in on this, I welcome comments and corrections.

  2. Never mix the ginger bug directly with citrus juices. Mix the juices into the cooled decoction instead. Turns out wild yeast definitely don't like all that citric acid. Go me.

  3. I use fermenting sugar to feed my ginger bug (60% granulated cane sugar, 40% coconut sugar... these two sugars mixed together produce the ideal ratio of pre- and probiotics that can't be achieved with one or the other sugar alone), but I highly recommend using just regular cane sugar when it's time to make the decoction.

  4. This should probably go without saying, but a mature ginger bug is going to do a much better job carbonating the soda than a younger culture. I recommend letting your culture develop for at least a couple of weeks at room temperature before using it for the first time.

  5. Now that my culture is more established, I keep my ginger bug in the fridge and feed it once a week. When it's time to use some of the culture to make a soda, let it sit on the counter for a bit and come up to room temperature first.

Also, is it just me or is fermented soda like the red-headed stepchild of fermentation? I feel like it isn't discussed very much in any of the fermentation subs. I'm not the only one doing this, right?

28 Comments
2024/03/20
17:06 UTC

2

Rotten egg smell coming from beet kvass

I made this a few days ago, just beets, water, salt and ground mustard seed. It sat in the sun in my kitchen window for about 3.5 days. It smells strongly of rotten eggs- is it safe to drink? Is this what it’s supposed to be like? Thanks!

11 Comments
2024/03/20
17:04 UTC

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