Home Fermentation - Kombucha, Kefir, Kimchi, Sourdough, Yoghurt, etc

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WhatInTheActualFuck said:
My current favorite is made mostly with habanero, frozen mango and carrot with a bit of shallot, but I spike it with a premade Carolina reaper mash and finish it with a bit of apple cider vinegar. Good heat, pleasant sweetness and a hint of oniony/garlicky notes from the shallots make for a sauce you can put on pretty much anything. Add just a little bit of xanthan gum to thicken and keep everything in suspension (seriously just a little - a half teaspoon is enough for a quart of hot sauce).
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Could you post a recipe, please? I will soon be coming into many habaneros, scorpions, and seven pots.
 
Bibendum said:
Could you post a recipe, please? I will soon be coming into many habaneros, scorpions, and seven pots.
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I wish I could say that I have an actual recipe, but I can share technique.

I wash and seed the peppers then place them in a food processor along with a roughly chopped shallot and a roughly chopped large carrot and pulse until they're finely chopped but not pureed. Can't remember the actual weight, but last time I damn near cleared the shelf of habaneros at my local Publix and it ended up being enough to come about a couple of inches from the top of a wide-mouthed half-gallon mason jar.

Speaking of which, sanitize the jar and weigh it. Add the peppers and just enough water to cover and weigh it again. Subtract the weight of the empty jar and calculate 5% of the difference and add that weight in kosher salt. Screw the regular lid on and shake the crap out of it until the salt is dissolved. Use a sanitized silicone spatula to scrape anything clinging to the sides above the waterline down below it.

Remove that lid and take a 6-8" square piece of parchment and place it on the surface of the peppers and water and up against the sides of the jar, then add a bit of water and salt on top to keep it weighed down on the surface - you want as little surface exposure to air as possible. At this point, place a sanitized airlock lid (I like these) on and place it someplace cool and dark to ferment for at least a week.

When you're ready to finish, check the pH of the mixture. If you're around 4, you're good to go - if not, give it some more time or just accept that it'll need to stay refrigerated. At this point, you can dump it along with any additives (I like the Reaper mash I mentioned earlier along with frozen mango and apple cider vinegar, but honey or sugar wouldn't be bad either if you want a bit more sweetness) into a large blender and puree the snot out of it. Taste and adjust and test pH again - it it's still around 4, it'll keep without refrigeration, otherwise you'll need to keep it cold. This is also a good time to add your xanthan gum - add 1/4 teaspoon at a time until it's the consistency you want - I find around a half teaspoon to a teaspoon is suitable for a batch that size.

I also like to pasteurize my hot sauces just to be extra sure (and it tends to bump up the sweetness a bit) by placing the jar(s) with an airlock cap on into a suitably sized vessel and running the sous-vide machine set to 180F for at least twelve hours. At this point, between good sanitization, the salt, the lactic acid and the long hot bath, anything that's still alive in that sauce has earned the right to make you sick.

Once you have the technique down, mix it up with serranos and tomatillo finished with lime juice, Thai bird peppers and lemon grass, or whatever combination sounds like it'd taste good.
 
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ALL I WANTED WAS SOME APPLE CIDER VINEGAR!
So I just fell down the ferment rabbit hole, and I'm not mad about it. I needed some ACV for a canning recipe and went to the store to purchase a gallon Holy shit, 18$ for a gallon of vinegar? Came home, googled making your own vinegar ( I use a lot of white vin for cleaning, canning, etc)

I like that the ACV can be made with peels, cores, basically scraps of apples. Bonus.
I also live around a lot of old homesteads with ancient apple orchards that while I wouldn't eat the apples (very wormy) they are great for deer food and I suppose after you avoid the worms, they are a great no pesticide source for ACV.

So Amazon just delivered a HomeBuddy Fermentation Crock(complete with weights, wood stick thingy, and small recipe book) and I am excited to begin making some vinegar.
Has anyone here made their own ACV, and do you have any tips?
 
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I mean I'm just saying said:
That third jar has been sitting for a few months now, so I guess I have the tools to answer my own question.
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WhatInTheActualFuck said:
The longer you go, the more sour and complex it gets, but you hit diminishing returns pretty fast past the first week or so.
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I finally processed that 4+ month old jalapeno ferment into hot sauce, and it's shockingly good. The difference between this batch and its underwhelming 1-week-fermented twin is drastic, and I think "sour and complex" is an apt description of what sets it apart. I imagine the vast majority of this improvement was present after 1 month, it's nice to know the upper limit is so high, if there is one at all.
 
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Currently doing a batch of wine with some secondhand equipment that I've fashioned into a decent carboy and airlock setup. I'll get a little in-depth on this, please excuse my 'tism:
1. Five-gallon water cooler used as a carboy. It's food-grade, I have a good no-brushes-involved cleaning and sanitizing method so I'm not concerned. I got the cooler from a neighbor.

2. Pizza jar turned into an airlock. I rammed a hole through the lid with a screwdriver and installed a metal washer to guide the tubing through. The washer is glued in place. I used one of my late mom's hot glue guns to do it. The lid has eight holes poked with a thumbtack in a circular fashion to let the CO2 out.

3. Oxygen tubing repurposed to carry CO2 to the airlock. Attached with hot glue gun to a metal washer and a mason jar lid that I punched a hole through with a screwdriver. The lid is held airtight to the carboy via lead weights. The tubing was to my late dad's breathing machine. The medical equipment rental place doesn't want disposable tubing back, even the packed, unused stuff I used for this.

Here's the recipe for the wine:
1. 24 cups of granulated sugar, ~200g of sugar per cup for ~4800g of sugar total.
2. One packet of Red Star Premier Cuvee wine yeast.
3. 3.5 gallons of Kroger grape juice.
4. ~1/10th of a cup of DAP. A 1/8th cup filled a little over two-thirds will get you near the mark.

12 cups of sugar into the must at the start, another 12 cups of sugar in after 3-5 days.

DAP goes into the must thirty minutes after the yeast goes in.

Will be finished after one to two weeks. Should yield five gallons of dry wine at or above 17% ABV.
Photo of setup, it's currently bubbling moderately hard:
IMG_20241008_121722.jpg
 
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I just started my first batch of saurkraut in a half gallon Mason jar topped with a cloth held down by the lid ring. If you keep the cabbage below the brine level are those special fermentation lids really necessary?
 
There She Glows said:
I just started my first batch of saurkraut in a half gallon Mason jar topped with a cloth held down by the lid ring. If you keep the cabbage below the brine level are those special fermentation lids really necessary?
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The fermentation lids are just airlocks - they keep stuff like bugs, mold spores and the like from getting in. Assuming you're using a pretty tightly woven cloth, you should be alright - I'd definitely want something more substantial than cheesecloth.
 
WhatInTheActualFuck said:
The fermentation lids are just airlocks - they keep stuff like bugs, mold spores and the like from getting in. Assuming you're using a pretty tightly woven cloth, you should be alright - I'd definitely want something more substantial than cheesecloth.
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Thanks. It's a microfiber cleaning cloth since i have a lot of extras around. Hopefully the weave will be tight enough.
 
I kept fucking up my pickles until I got one of those Chinese jars with a lip around the top to fill with water and seal. It bubbles and belches now and then, it lets gas out but no air in. I don't know what I was doing wrong before but it works for me now.
 
Anyone here grow koji? I just got some bags of koji spores and on the bag it says that it's mixed with cornstarch (this is just powdered koji spores not on grains of rice) and I'm wondering, are most/all koji spores made like this or does this mean I will have to add more of them to get the same result?
 
Joe Shmoe said:
Anyone here grow koji? I just got some bags of koji spores and on the bag it says that it's mixed with cornstarch (this is just powdered koji spores not on grains of rice) and I'm wondering, are most/all koji spores made like this or does this mean I will have to add more of them to get the same result?
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You'll be fine, ive made sake before and you might take longer than usual to start a culture, but just ferment warmer and you'll be fine
 
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Zhores Medvedev said:
You'll be fine, ive made sake before and you might take longer than usual to start a culture, but just ferment warmer and you'll be fine
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I'm wondering though if I do a higher temperature in my chamber won't that kill the koji? In the Noma guide to fermentation it says that too high of a temperature kills the koji. But the thing that I'm worried about is that due to the starch there will be too little koji spores for actually forming a mycelium. I guess I'll just try using more spores maybe, thanks for responding though.
 
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Joe Shmoe said:
I'm wondering though if I do a higher temperature in my chamber won't that kill the koji? In the Noma guide to fermentation it says that too high of a temperature kills the koji. But the thing that I'm worried about is that due to the starch there will be too little koji spores for actually forming a mycelium. I guess I'll just try using more spores maybe, thanks for responding though.
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I should have specified more, when meant warmer I like a consistent 80-85 f , that's what I when I made sake many years ago. I put my sheets of rice in the oven with the light on, and to keep moisture high I placed a basin hot water in the bottom of the oven. I wouldn't go any where above 95 but koji in my experience ferments really well in those conditions. I'm assuming you are fermenting rice and with rice you run the risk of mold. People always talk about "Fermentations going moldy". I have quite literally never had that happen, the degree of negligence you need to fuck up any fermentation (aside from the odd unfortunate event) is insane. How ever with rice that risk is much higher and of much greater concern.

The rice for koji must be wet and moist and of course those are the conditions for mold as well, however should you raise the temp the koji can out compete the mold easier. Adding more spores will probably will be fine, but if your fermentation temperature is too low, you still run the risk of mold messing up your day. I actually did my first batch of Sake at room temp roughly 60 degrees, and It took a very nerve racking 4 days to see signs of Koji spreading, where as the second batch I did, I as did as I described above and my rice was COVERED in 3 days
 
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MunsterCheeseJr said:
Something that I tried recently. The white part of the rind on normal watermelons that most people don't eat. Well asians will cook that up in stir fries. But you can also pickle them. I gave it a swing.

They are not good enough that you will smash through a jar of them like pickles. But they are good enough to have one or two as a garnish, or tossed in with your salad.
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Tried this, and you were dead right. Another tasty thing I tried is mock pineapple with zucchini pickled in pineapple juice. I'll post the recipe after I have it digitized.

>Be me, pacifist dweeb
>Be obsessed with homemade food and homesteading
>Null opens self-sufficiency forum
> hooray.jpg
>full of losers talking about guns
>mfw
1735875881024.png
 
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Soyjack Pinhead said:
Tried this, and you were dead right. Another tasty thing I tried is mock pineapple with zucchini pickled in pineapple juice. I'll post the recipe after I have it digitized.

>Be me, pacifist dweeb
>Be obsessed with homemade food and homesteading
>Null opens self-sufficiency forum
> hooray.jpg
>full of losers talking about guns
>mfw
View attachment 6815565
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There are some of us that like guns and the other stuff though. 🙂
 
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indomitable snowman said:
I have somehow managed to keep my Kefir grains alive for just over a year now. Hardy little buggers.
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Have you had any off flavors develop or is it still the same? I once kept a yogurt culture for 1 1/2 years and everything was fine until those last 6 months. Very slowly it started to develop this Bitter off flavor. No matter what I tried it just kept getting worse. What's your experience been?
 
I never drink it plain so I haven't noticed it being off.
 
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