Anthony Marc

Just thought I'd post an update. 35g of sugar was probably too much. Getting a lot of white sediment after 9 days. Probably a quarter this amount would have been better for a 2 week ferment, or half the amount for a 1 week ferment. They are very sour, but they're also sour in an acetic-acid kind of way.

Next time I will drop sugar by half for a 1 week ferment and leave out the lemon juice and see what happens. Cucumbers are crunchy, but also somewhat hollowed out. Definitely if I had left them for 2 weeks they'd likely become empty balloons.

Jan White wrote:I stick mainly to yoghurt, kefir and ginger bugs for my raw ferments.

First time I ever heard of 'ginger bugs', had to look it up to see what it was. What does it taste like? Do you have any good recipes? Any molding issues? I'm assuming that this is a bacteria ferment, not yeast based?

Awesome, thanks everyone for your kind help. I have just made a new batch of cucumbers (1.5L jar, holding 750g baby cucumbers), this time, I used 1.5% salt to total weight (equivalent to 3.4% salt to water weight) + 35g sugar + 1 Tbsp lemon juice (per litre) + 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (per litre).

I have boiled the water and allowed to cool in the refrigerator until cold before pouring the brine in. Regarding the salt amount, I am well aware that 5% salt to water weight (equivalent to 2.23% salt to total weight) is typical, however, my mum is very sensitive to salt, and so it was important for me to keep it at the same level that is in sauerkraut.

Let's see what happens in 2 weeks time!

If I get mold again, I'm buying a vacuum fermenting lid.

Thanks See Hes, that's very interesting. Do you think the 1 tablespoon of lemon juice will help prevent mold? Or is it just for the crunch?

Any other tricks to prevent mold other than Cucumber Doctor?

See Hes, when you say "pickling", do you mean pickling in salt-water? Or vinegar?

Not sure, I've heard of people saying that cutting the blossom end of cucumbers helps to prevent softening due to an enzyme.

I'm going to make another batch of cucumbers, but this time, I'm going to boil my water, add extra sugar, and also add some cayenne pepper into the brine and see what happens.

If I get mold again, I might have to purchase one of those vacuum pump fermenting lids such as "The Easy Fermenter". No idea if that will make any difference.

Thanks for your reply. No it wasn't yeast, it was fuzzy.

I find it really strange, that even if I use the exact same amount of salt (1.5%) to the total weight of what is in the jar, I've never had mold grow on the surface of my brine in any of my sauerkrauts, but seems to be very common when I do cucumbers. And this is all considering that I may ferment them at roughly the same time of the year, using the same type of jar, the same type of weight, fully submerged under brine, with a silicone airlock, never opened while fermenting to avoid oxygen getting in etc.

Is this because cucumbers naturally have more mold than cabbage? Or perhaps cabbage has anti-mold properties?

Or could it be because I am using filtered tap water that hasn't been boiled and cooled?

Or could it simply be that cucumbers have less sugar, meaning that the fermentation is too slow, and the lack of acidity is causing mold to grow?

I'd love to use 1.5% to total weight, and let it ferment in room temperature for 2 weeks and have a very sour ready to eat pickle, but it always creeps me out when I see fuzzy white jelly fish floating in my brine. So far in my experience, even 2 weeks isn't sour enough for me, I'd probably need to leave it for another week.

If it is due to lack of sugar, how much table sugar should I use as a percent of the total weight? My jars are about 1.5L each, meaning that I can fit either 1500g of cabbage, or 750g of cucumbers into them. 1500g of cabbage contains 48g of sugar, whereas 750g of cucumbers only contains 12.5g sugar. Does this mean that I should add 35.5g of sugar into my cucumbers to match the sugar of cabbage?

Otherwise, is there something I can add that will act as an anti-mold without affecting the lactic acid bacteria?

Thanks!

Thanks everyone for your kind advice.

The easiest, and closest thing to a starter that my local supermarket has is buttermilk, which I have previously tested for live cultures by fermenting milk and worked great. Do you think buttermilk could be used as a started for fermenting cooked/cooled starches?

Also, would I still need to add salt?

Hi all,
I'm trying to ferment cooked starches, but not sure how to do it, or if it is safe. For example, could I cook some beans, and then when they cool down, throw them into a mason jar, add salt water and ferment it? Is there a botulism risk? If so, what other simple ways could I use to ferment cooked starches?

Also, what about other cooked starches in mashy-form, like mashed potatoes or pureed beans. How to go about fermenting something like this safely?

I really want to maximise the bacteria, and the metabolites that feed off of the resistant starches.

Thanks in advance,
Alex.