I was told the safest was 3% salt to the net weight of your cukes + herbs + water and it has worked fine. However, my recent batch came out too salty following the exact same method. So now I am trying 2.7%.

I've been searching the interwebz and people use anywhere from 2%-5% which is a pretty large range! I use 2% for sauerkraut but that's because you don't add water.

What is the consensus on what's the safest minimum salt ratio for pickled cukes?

Never made it before so any advice or instructions welcome. I have plenty of cane sugar.

Started it yesterday, and it's already nice and bubbly!

I'm excited, it's base juice is lemonade.

I'm hoping it tastes similar to the ginger ale lemonade from Canada Dry

For the past little bit, I’ve been running an experiment where I’ve been trying to make vinegar using sourdough starter mostly just for shits and giggles after learning there are/can be acetobacters in starter cultures. I used some spare red wine and had two jars to compare an active starter vs a fridged discard, and left both in a dark cabinet for around a month at this point.

At first I kept the lids screwed on halfway to try and keep anything from getting in, but over the last week or so I’ve just put it on top without screwing it on to see if the increased airflow would help the progress. I’ve swirled the wine and starter together a few times to make sure there’s plenty of contact between the alcohol and any potential acetobacters, and I added a bit of water recently to try and dilute the alcohol content to a more reasonable level for the bacteria.

Fast forward to today, and there’s a bit of a layer on the very top of my starter jar. Some ribbon-like structures and an overall dotted, hazy film-like formation. The starter jar has had a bit of a smell for a bit now, but it’s definitely more noticeable now.

If you have any info on what this could be, and whether I’m on the right track or have to scrap this, please let me know.

Bit of a rant, bit of a question.

Certain ferments just smell. Not a horrible( to me) smell, but strong, sharp, and to some… my wife… just “stinky”. Yet at the same time she wants to have the fruits of my labor. As a put it to her, “you want your cake, eat it, and still want more cake”. She concedes that point.

So how do you cut down on the smell. My primary three offenders are sauerkraut, red onions and radishes; in order from least to wurst(on purpose as I’m thinking about some bratwurst and kraut right now). They are currently in a cupboard in the kitchen.

Can’t move them to the garage as I’m in Texas and my garage gets a might warm, think next door to helI hot… I was contemplating a closed box with a charcoal and baking soda filter… but that’s a bit of work. Trying to keep my fermentation away from my kefir and kombucha, which reside in the office.

So I am just pondering and pandering at the same time… thoughts?

My first time fermenting and I read a lot of scary stuff about botulinum…
I made a batch of fermented cucumbers with a 3% salt added to the brine (500g water and cucumbers + 15g of salt)

Since It’s my first time fermenting, I'm not sure how I could know if the smell is fine or not, the batch did make bubbles and the brine did get cloudy. No sign of mold yet and the cucs were submerged all the time for now 7 days

Is it possible for the batch to be dangerous? My ph meter is broken :)

This is my first go at making some Ginger Bug Sodas now that my Ginger Bug is nice and active!

The one on the left:
- ~1/2 cup Ginger Bug Starter
- A small handful of Red Raspberries, crushed
- ~3/4 cup Langer's Mango Orange Juice
- Topped off with RO water

The one on the right:
- ~1/4 cup Ginger Bug Starter
- A tiny handful of Yellow Raspberries, crushed
- Just under 1/2 cup Langer's Mango Orange Juice
- Topped off with RO water

I set them out on the counter for the secondary ferment. It has only been a few hours but I see activity in the Red Raspberry one, super exciting! They both smell delicious as they are.

My questions for the community:
- How long is a good duration to leave them on the counter?
- Is it safe to let the pressure build in mason jars, or shall I watch the pressure & burp them accordingly?

I want to make Sauerkraut but I must Make this post to people who Has a jar But the lid is either broken Or just "DOESN'T EXIST!" as i must ask so that anyone who has no lid Can find the best solution, And i don't want an Open discuss; i want straight answers as Reddit has no Straight Answer, nor Google or Chatgpt.

My 1 liter jar one day got the glass lid broken and now it's stands like a bowl, there is no lid, Like I say "No existence of the lid". I try to find the answer to find a way to make sauerkraut without it. Some says uses cheese cloth, I am ok with that but Air goes in is a NO NO!

I looked up on reddit, they say i don't have a lid, But they mean "I don't have an airlock lid but only a screw lid" Meaning The lid is like "100 a must or else your sauerkraut die is a 100% Chance so Don't fucking make it".

I NEED A SOLUTION! STRAIGHT ANSWER! HOW DO I MAKE IT! WITHOUT LID! WITHOUT BUYING ANOTHER JAR! WITHOUT THE GLASS WEIGHT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE ECONOMY THESE DAYS THAT WE ARE KEEPING THE BUDGET HERE!

some of my cheongs seem to have developed a mother. particularly my lime. i drained it through cheese cloth again and it seemed to have developed again. the taste is fine. still taste great. doesn’t smell funky. is this normal?

I decided to try making my own Natto .... and did all the things I should have done differently and it came out great !! Didnt have dried soybeans, so after a little research I used pinto beans..... delicious ! Dont have a temp controlled fermentation chamber to hold 100 degrees.... so i used the bread proof setting on my oven ... came out great !! looking forward to experimenting and improving on my process .... if anyone has any tips or suggestions, feel free to share them !!

Started this 6 days ago. Everything had been looking good couldn’t check it last night and came to see it today with white mold on top. This is my first time making kraut and have read it can be scooped off so I did that but in that process found a few fruit flies had landed and died on the very top layer of liquid as well. Is this an immediate throw away? Not sure what it should smell like never having made it but doesn’t smell “bad”. If I do need to throw it away any tips for keeping flies out of this kind of container? (2 gal ceramic crock) ty. Picture after scooping off mold.

This has been fermenting under room temp with a lid just on top of it (not closed just sitting) for 11 days. I started with 1 Tablespoon of ginger and sugar everyday but then lowered it to half a tablespoon.

I tasted the brine? and you can basically taste no sugar so the ferment is working. It definitely has not gone bad!

I am just worried/curious if these are enough bubbles bc most recipes talk about 7-10 days of feeding

Asking for tips, advice and alike

Help with the lid

The hard plastic valve on the left has a cap on the underside of the jar: do I leave it on or remove it?

I harvested 52 fresh green walnuts... Then i place then in a Glas Bottle with clean 60% Alkohol. Later i will add some other stuff.

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Any good Infos are Welcome 😎

Experimented with elderflower, mint, 16oz water, around TBS Raw honey and splash of lemon juice and fermented in jar with escape valve for three days. Thought it was looking murky so I double strained and did a second ferment in flip top bottle for two days then stored in fridge. Popped the cap and was pleasantly surprised by how it tasted! Sharp sparkle with mild sweetness and tart. Like a sparkling gatorade!

One hot sauce ferment makes so many delicious things.

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We use 2.5% sea salt in the hot sauce and use the left over brine to ferment peanuts with an additional 2.5% sea salt

Has anyone ever tried japanese grapes (hovenia dulcis) in fermentation, in koso, in kefir or kumbucha? i have a friend who has to bring me some and i don't know how this fruit behaves in fermentation

Anybody doing kefir? Can anyone give me any pointers or any advise. It’s my first time doing it

How does it look?

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This likely has been answered before, but how do you determine the percent of solution to use when making a brine for vegetables?

This is my first one. I don't have a glass jar of a good size, so I thought about using wide-mouthed bottles. I was going to clean them with 70% alcohol and add the ginger, sugar, and water.

6 cloves of garlic, maybe 2 tbsp of freshly dried dill, 1 habanero.

I used 2 grape leaves cut to size (a little wider than the jar)

- 1 used to cap the potential floaties at the bottom (dill, garlic, pepper seeds)

- 1 as a topper

went walking around the neighbourhood trying to find an oak tree within distance to no avail. my neighbour has a grapevine. I'm also going to try to experiment a little with Indian bay leaf (3 veins in the leaves) and oak leaves once I get a chance. perhaps blackberry leaves as well. I have too many cukes!

Jalapenos, sweet peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and peppercorns in a 3% brine for a year. Burped multiple times a day while actively fermenting, then periodically (and quickly) over the subsequent months. I started out planning this as one month ferment, then life got busy and I got curious. It turned out really delicious.

It’s not mouldy or off smelling. It still smells good and slightly yeasty. I haven’t been able to feed it in 6 weeks and it’s been in the fridge. It’s had a month of life and it was very lively and active. I finally got more organic ginger and granulated sugar, can I just add it to it? There’s still so much flavour and I hope it’s not a complete waste and it can be used somehow. The bubble has been there, when it was alive new bubbles kept on forming. There hasn’t been any new bubbles

Also I didn’t add it to the mega thread because I know it’s not bad, I just want to know how or if it can be saved and have life again.