repacking kraut - adding brine?

[JMJ]

When I make saurkraut, I pack it really tight, so tight that the cabbage juice is the only liquid that I need to cover it in liquid. Then, by the time I ferment it for months, there's not a whole lot of liquid left. When I repack it to put it in the fridge, it's hard to repack it so tightly and repack it every time I take some out so that it minimizes exposure to air. Is it possible to add some sort of brine in the repacking process? How would you go about doing that? Ratios? Would you ferment it in the brine for a bit to make the brine more probiotic?

[missmagoo]

I definitely would not add more brine after you've already fermented.  Are you really pounding the cabbage?  I only use what juice I get from the cabbage when I make kraut as well, and I generally get a lot of juice, but I only ferment on the counter for a week.  You could also try packing it into smaller jars.  When I buy locally made feremented kraut, the jars are pretty small, packed really tight, and have very little brine.  Obviously, the smaller the jar, the faster you'll go through it, minimizing the exposure to air.  My only other thought would be to make sure you really drain the kraut well when you take some out to eat it.  

[t2009]

I also would not recommend adding brine if you don't have to. I did it once during fermentation & it basically stopped fermenting on the 2nd day that I added the brine (I added it twice).

On a related note, I added brine because I thought that the cabbage needed to be covered in liquid during fermentation. If that's accurate you may need to add bride earlier in the process. I would think the liquid would be more important while its out on the counter & less so when you refrigerate.

Of course, if you want liquid during refrigeration, you can always drain & rinse if you're not happy with the result. I think you can do that in any case.

In any case, the ratio to use is about 1 teaspoon of salt for every cup of water, accoding to Sandor Katz: http://www.wildfermentation.com/making-sauerkraut-2/