Lacto-Fermentation Foibles

Well, I've had some really great fermentation successes since I started, as well as some really awful fermentation messes! These dill pickle spears made with cukes from my garden turned out A+! And I showed you some kefirkraut success in a previous post. I began fermenting with mason jars, using the plastic baggy with water method to weight down the veggies. Recently, I fermented a few pickled veggies without a weight, and experienced some bad batches. Yes, this was careless of me. But I am living and learning with this probiotic food thing! I found a great blog post from Nourishing Treasures demonstrating the most reliable way to pickle safely. I also found some information about how to judge pickle safety when you experience unexpected outcomes.

After the last couple flops (shown below), I was really understanding the importance of knowing what you are doing with lacto-fermentation. It is obviously not good for someone with gut dysbiosis to be eating bad yeasts and bacteria that have contaminated their cultures! Convinced that safe fermentation is something that I need to learn, and learn well, for the rest of my life, I was ready to dish out the big bucks and invest in Pickl-It jars. I had read a glowing review of them on the Pickle Me Too! blog, and figured that I should just bite the bullet view it as a life-time investment in our health. However, the "Sauerkraut Survivor Final Report" from Nourishing Treasures saved my wallet from this financial catastrophe. I settled for simple Fido jars (for which I got free shipping!) and glass weights. I just received my weights today and am anxiously awaiting my jars. I hope to do a review of them before long with some kimchi.

Lemon dill pickles just getting started - so far, so good! They were so packed in there that the brine was covering them just fine to begin with.

What happened?! Yuck. Obviously some mold of various species (not good!!) and some kahm yeast (the white scum floating on the brine, which is said to be harmless). As the pickles fermented, the gasses from fermentation caused them to float to the surface and get exposed to the air. I get the stuffed jar method is not reliable after all...

White sediment at the bottom of the jar. This is also said to be harmless yeasts by my web sources, but I found that most of the pickles were slightly slimy, indicating that either there were some slime-producing bacteria present (again, not good!!). I had to throw this batch of precious home-grown garden veggies away. Boo-hoo!

This batch of kraut got some kahm growing on top, which wasn't ideal, but I was able to skim it off and still eat it. Turned out pretty good.