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| Hi Sandor! I have been trying to perfect my method for making ferments. I'm a lazy fermenter & prefer the push-down method but I often forget & end up with lots of mold on my kraut. Pickles aren't so hard because I can throw a plate on top of them & weigh it down, but kraut creeps around it & requires more care. SO, what do you think of the air lock on something like the PickleMeister? It says that it lacto-ferments in 4-5 days. I'm a believer in the "good food takes a long time" theory, but if this works just as well, why not? Is there a benefit to having the ferments open to wild yeasts in the air? I do want the full health benefits of fermentation & don't want to compromise the final product for convenience. Thank you for your thoughts, Erin |
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| hi erin, in vegetable fermentation the cultures come from the vegetables and do not need air access. vessels along the lines of the pickle meister work fine. they don't speed things up, they just avoid the possibility of surface molds. the reason i don't use any of the engineered solutions to surface mold is that i like to smell and taste my ferments frequently. if you create a system that keeps air out to avoid surface molds, then each time you open it you defeat the purpose of it and let the air in, so you decide on an arbitrary time to leave it, in this case they advise 4-5 days. i would say it depends on the temperature, how much salt you use, and how sour you like it. but then i like to taste it every day and gauge the developing flavors. i'm content to scrape molds from the surface. but there is nothing wrong with using a product like this and no benefit lost by excluding air from the kraut. hope this helps clarify things. sandor Sandor Ellix Katz aka sandorkraut www.wildfermentation.com Author of The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements and Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods |
