T Melville

Christopher Weeks wrote:With regard to Kahm, I invented a way of removing it that I think is better than any of the usual suspects. Put your crock in the sink, and very slowly run cool water into it on one side... Allow it to fill and run over. The Kahm floats pretty well and runs out with the surplus water...

Reminds me of cleaning fermented tomato seeds. Might even be the same stuff I'm floating off.

Tereza Okava wrote:1) the white stuff is probably Kahm yeast. don't worry about it.

After posting this, I rewatched one of the videos above and was reminded of exactly this.

Tereza Okava wrote:2) do you have a weight? a river stone you've boiled, a plate, a clean plastic bag full of water. I often take a cabbage leaf and then throw any of those things on top of it. this will keep your stuff from floating and stop mold.

I have a clean jar with some water in it. I use that to weigh down a circle I cut from an ice cream bucket lid. So far, I've kept it too full of veggies for the jar lid to get in the brine. I read that it's best not to put metal in there. If adding veggies is ever not an option, I guess I'll take out some brine to keep the metal out of it.

A couple thoughts I forgot to mention:
1) Maybe coincidence, maybe a cause and effect relationship, the white scum usually seems to fully replenish within a day. After adding all those new vegetables and waiting 2 days, there seemed to be less of it than usually forms in a day. Is that stuff, by chance, dead bacteria? Did I slow down the scum by giving the Lactobacillus something else to do? Or am I just reading too much into a coincidence?
2) I had a thought about putting a layer of oil on top to automatically keep things anaerobic, and was going to ask the group for opinions. But observation showed me why we don't do it like that, at least without having to solve a new problem or 2. Most of the veggies float. I don't know if they'd float in oil, but if they breach it's surface at all, then my idea wouldn't work. You could weigh them down somehow to keep them below the surface, but that's the method we do use, and it doesn't need any oil. Thought I'd mention it here in case someone with a more suitable use-case hasn't thought of it yet.

Somewhere along the way I added a can of corn, along with it's salt. Doesn't seem to taste much different. I'm hoping to digest it better. It sinks and gets blocked by the other veggies, so I haven't eaten much at a time.

I had hoped that the wax wrap was helping me avoid the white scum that develops. No such luck. I think it DID help delay it, or maybe I was just wrong re: how quickly that forms. I thought that was supposed to become a problem around day 2 or 3, but it seems like it took more like a week. I found it to be a hassle to remove with paper towels or with a spoon. I found an old plastic sieve I'd stopped using when I got a metal one and liked it better. It had 2 little "ears" sticking out, which worked with the handle to keep it from falling into a container. They were in the way, so I cut them off. Now the white stuff is easy to skim.

The original veggies I put in are a little sour now, but seem to have kinda plateaued. They're tasty. I think they may be helping my gut, but it's early days, and my gut's been in bad shape for a long time, so we'll see. I try to eat some every day, or at least every 2. I noticed the crock was getting a lot less full, so when I went to town, I got stuff to add. Baby bokchois, ginger, and dried purple sweet potato from the asian market. The ginger is WAY too spicy for my palette, maybe it'll mellow out more. It doesn't seem to have hurt any of the other stuff. The lady who runs the place did not have high hopes for the sweet potato in there, and I gotta say she was right. (I only put a little to test, and I hope after it really transforms, to try roasting it with a little oil.) Some of the purple has leached out and made the onions a little pinkish, so that's kinda neat. I also went to Aldi's, and added broccoli and multicolored little tomatoes. (I don't know cherry from grape tomatoes.) I tried one at about 2 days, and it was NOT transformed enough! I don't like raw tomato flavor, I'm hoping they'll be good pickled.

I've been noticing the brine is sour. At first taste, the broccoli tasted fermented at day 2, because the flower holds a lot of brine. (You can tell it's not mature yet when you chew it.) The bokchoi is sliced pretty thin, and could fool an untrained palette like mine. How different is the brine from diluted vinegar? Is it Lactobacillus that makes vinegar? Or yeast? Or something else?

Two days in, opened up to check and to add two poblanos.

2 days in. Some bubbles, slight fermenty smell.

There were some bubbles and a slight fermenty smell. The carrots and onions are slightly softened and salty, and the onions no longer taste raw. Not much transformation yet, but it's still early. I sliced and added two poblanos.

Added 2 poblanos.

I sliced and weighed my veggies, did the math to figure out the salt (rounded up for safety), weighed out the salt.

Da Math!

Then I placed a layer of veggies in the crock and sprinkled with some of the salt, repeated until all the veggies were in.

Sliced Carrots and Onions

I no longer have the sauerkraut or kimchi, I got impatient and ate them. I did save the brine, that went in next. (Don't think it affected flavor, hopefully it boosts the ferment.) Then I filled a big jar with warm water and weighed it. I was going to use what I needed, weigh again and subtract to know what I used, then do the math and add additional salt for the water. It took all the water, so I added salt for all of it. Then I cut the lid of an ice cream bucket into a disk that just fit the crock. Weighed down the disk with the smallest canning jar I could find with hot water in it, leaving about an inch and a half of head space. Hopefully when the water cools and the air shrinks, it'll seal.

Plastic Submersion Disk and Jar Weight

I don't want bugs or dust or cats to get in it, so I covered it with a wax wrap. Neither my hands nor the crock were especially warm, so the wrap hung pretty loose. I daisy chained some rubber bands and put them around, passing the last one through the first and putting a nail in it to hold it. I may hit it a little with a hair dryer so it conforms and I don't need to rubber band it. I don't think I've made it air tight, but I'm open to loosening or removing the wax wrap if folks think it's a bad idea.

Keeping out bugs, dust, and cats with a wax wrap

I think I'm gonna get and add some poblano or sweet banana peppers for a little mild heat. How often should I do things like inspect, clean, taste? The crock is in my kitchen, which is about 70° right now. (It varies. The air conditioning is broken in this part of the house, but we cool rooms on both sides and use fans to move cool air in here. The main heat is actually in this part.

I decided to combine your ideas read, then half remembered Carla Burke's post above. I sprayed it with peroxide, let it sit a while and rinsed with water. After it dried, I poured a little vinegar in the bottom, saturated paper towels in it, and draped the sides and rim. Later I'll rinse it out again and consider it ready.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Do you know what the volume is? (The images don't have anything to provide a reference.)

I also used the vinegar jug for scale. I'm guessing it's about a gallon to a gallon and a half.

Sanitizing with vinegar

Measuring - Vinegar Jug for Scale

Christopher Weeks wrote:I wouldn't. An airlock is for situations where you're going to leave it alone for a long time and keeping the top of it blanketed in CO2 is a valuable mold preventative. The point of a perpetual crock is to take things out and add new things all the time. I'd try using a straight-sided crock and find a jar that almost fills it but allows you to weight the produce down to keep them under the brine.

I saw this in the garage about 25(ish) years ago and kept it in mind. As I recall, I didn't know what it was for until I saw one in an antique shop. This is the crock you mentioned, right?

What a crock!

Bottoms up!

Guess I should look into it.

I washed it, but the garage is open. This hasn't been rained on, but it's been exposed to heat and cold, dust, and anything blowing in the wind. I don't want to use anything harsh on it. Would it be prudent to put it in a big pot and boil it, or bake it in the oven to sanitize it? It feels glazed, but I don't know how porous it is. If I put it in the oven, should I use a heat below boiling for a while to get out any water so it doesn't explode? Or put it in the dehydrator for a day or two?

Once the crock is ready, I'm getting the impression I just need all the food to be below the surface of the brine. Is that right? Is the jar you mentioned just used as a weight? (On Good Eats, I saw Alton Brown do something similar when he fermented pickles, but with a gallon ziploc bag of brine. He said you could use water, but if the bag leaked, it would dilute the brine and salinity would go down. With brine in the bag, if it leaks, you just have more brine.)

I've done very little lactofermentation, but I'm hoping to start a perpetual jar for the sake of my gut health. I was planning to cut up some onions and carrots, put them in the jar first, cover with water, weigh, subtract the weight of the jar, and add salt equal to 2% of the weight. I was going to put in two cans of sauerkraut and a jar of kimchi  to bring some heat and flavor and to boost fermentation.

Of course I have some questions:
1) How is the plan so far? I can adjust for flavor down the line, but is this going to be safe and effective?
2) I know temperature affects speed. I even read that it's wise to add a little extra salt if it's hot. Should my jar be on the counter or in the fridge? If it's on the counter, how do I know when to put it in the fridge?
3) If it's on the counter, I plan to find and use my airlock. I don't trust my self discipline to loosen the lid and let it off-gas as frequently as I should. Since refrigerator fermentation is going to be a lot slower, should I use the airlock if it's in there, or will just opening it every day or two be enough?
4) The carrots and onions are what I have on hand right now that I think would be good for this. What would be good future additions? I know I'll have asparagus and garlic later. Sunchokes are probably available right now, if I cared to look for them. Waiting for them to grow out will make them easier to find. There may be cucumbers and or green beans later. What else do you folks recommend?
5) Is there any rule of thumb for knowing when each veggie is ready to eat, or is it just constant tasting and experimentation?
6) Searching online, I can ask a question and get any number of conflicting answers. I'd love to hear what resources you trust. I'm more likely to use websites, downloadable PDFs from colleges, free e-books, etc. But a hard copy book (though it's a fall-back position to me) could be helpful to someone reading this later, so let's hear about those too.

When I'm invited to install an app to use for something I can do on a web site, it has to pass through the filter of: "How would using this app improve my experience compared to using the website?" before I even consider installing. Most fail. What I'm usually offered is a broken browser. A browser that can only visit one website is broken, right?