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Fermentation Troubleshooting
Q & A
Email your questions (as well as answers that differ from mine) to sandorkraut@wildfermentation.com. I'll reply directly via email (it may take about a week) and post the questions and answers below. If you want to submit your question to an e-group of fermentation enthusiasts, visit http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Microbial_Nutrition/ or http://groups.google.com/group/Wild-Fermentation
Q: Do I need to boil water to make a brine?
Q: What is “seed miso” and where can I find it?
Q: Do I need to add hops to t'ej (Ethiopian-style honey wine)?
Q: Can kimchi be made without ginger?
Q: Can I make sauerkraut with red cabbage?
Q: Foam is gathering at the top of my sauerkraut. Is that normal? What do I do with the foam?
Q: What do you think is the minimum time at room temperature to get good sauerkraut?
Q: Do you have any recipes in your book for making sauerkraut without salt or dairy (whey)?
Q: I am concerned about the mold that you say may form at the top of the brine. My husband is pretty allergic to mold, and if he knew there was the mold on it, even if I tried to scrape it off, there is no way he would eat it. Also, I don't want to send him into an full-blown asthma attack or anaphylactic shock or anything. So, how does one not contaminate the sauerkraut with the mold on top of the brine, when removing the sauerkraut from the container? Or will any mold that gets mixed into the brine itself be inactivated?
Q: Do fermented dairy products require raw milk?
Q:
Can I grate beets with the cabbage and ferment them together?
Q: Do I need to boil water to make a brine?
A: Many books tell you to boil the water when you make brine, but my experience is that this is generally unnecessary. If you use coarser kosher salt you may need to boil water to dissolve salt, but I have never found this to be necessary with sea salt.
Q: What is “seed miso” and where can I find it?
A: Seed miso is simply live, unpasteurized, mature miso that is added to a fresh batch of miso to introduce lactobacilli and other wild microorganisms.
A:I haven't come across amarhewu, but I have come across references to "mahewu," described as a Bantu sour corn drink. It was written up in a great book: Keith Steinkraus, ed., Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1999). According to my notes, mix 1 lb. cornmeal with 1 gallon water and boil 1.5 hours; cool, then sprinkle with wheat flour and incubate 36 hours or until sour flavor develops. This recipe is very similar to corn ferments found throughout the Americas. In my book I have a recipe for gv-no-he-nv, the Cherokee version of this.
Q: I've just embarked on my first try at making sauerkraut. I'm wondering what the whole thing is supposed to look like and how salty is the brine supposed to taste?
A: Sauerkraut should taste decidedly salty, but not unpleasantly so. The brine will likely be cloudy, and more so over time. The solid volume will reduce and the liquid will rise a bit in the early days. You may see bubbling or even some foam. It is not uncommon for mold to develop on the surface of the kraut. Skim it off as best you can.
A: Many cheeses are fermented, with the exception of the freshest, plainest ones. Certainly strongly-flavored or aged cheeses are fermented. A whole chapter of my book is devoted to making cheese and other dairy ferments.
Q: Do I need to add hops to t'ej (Ethiopian-style honey wine)?
A: No. Hops adds a nice bitterness, and tends to be covered with yeast, which gets fermentation going, but it is not necessary. The original Ethiopian recipe I worked from called for an Ethiopian plant, gesho, also known as "woody hops", which I've never come across. Isubstituted hops, but have since discovered the process goes just fine without it. The yeast will come to the sweet honey-water on its own, or you can add fruit or edible flowers covered with yeast to jump-start the process.
Q: Can kimchi be made without ginger?
A: Yes. Kimchi is generally spiced with ginger, garlic, hot peppers, and onions (or leeks, shallots, or scallions). These flavors are what give kimchi its characteristic flavor. However, any of these spices can be omitted to suit your preferences.
Q: Can I make sauerkraut with red cabbage?
A: Yes. Mix red cabbage with green cabbage for an especially beautiful pink kraut, and add grated carrots for an orange element. Sauerkraut doesn't have to be monochromatic; fermentation can be art. The background of the logo at the top of this page is sauerkraut.
Q: I was making kefir without any problems and it was very good. But now kefir grains began floating after being in milk for some time. That creates a thick, very sour, and gasy layer on the top of milk and the rest of it is not being fermented. Please let me know what is wrong and what to do about it.
A: My observation from culturing kefir is that as it ferments longer it becomes more acidic, and increased acidity eventually curdles the milk. Up to a point you can still shake it into a homogenous consistency. The creamy stuff that accumulates at the top can also be gently skimmed or scooped off, to be enjoyed as quite delicious sour cream. (Of course, if it smells unappealing to you, don't eat it.) If some of your milk seems to not be fermenting at all, I'd suggest shaking or agitating the jar you're kefiring in more frequently. You may simply prefer kefir that's fermented just a bit but not too long; as it gets warmer, the culture speeds up, and you may need to leave grains in milk for shorter periods. If this isn't answering your question, I'd definitely recommend consulting one of the kefir links on the Fermentation & Food Internet Resources page.
Q: Foam is gathering at the top of my sauerkraut. Is that normal? What do I do with the foam?
A: Foaming is a normal part of the process, a sign of life and respiration. Leave it be, or skim it off if you prefer.
Q: What do you think is the minimum time at room temperature to get good sauerkraut?
A: My practice is to start tasting ferments when they are young and continue enjoying them as their flavors evolve. After about 3 days I can usually taste a distinctive sourness, that intensifies over weeks and sometimes months. Usually I like about 2-3 week old kraut best. Much depends upon what the room temperature is; higher temperatures speed the process, cooler temperatures slow it. Similarly the time of fermentation varies with salt levels; the saltier it is, the slower the process. Hope you enjoy the kraut! It's my favorite food.
Q: Lactic Acid Sodas: My current puzzle is the lacto-fermented home-brewed sodas I make, which have almost no alcohol. Originally I assumed the fermentation agent was a lactobacillus, but that is starting not to make sense. You see, I culture the starter "bug" from ginger, which as far as I've been able to find out, harbors Aspergillus fungus and several wild yeasts, especially Saccharomyces. Now as far as I know, in conventional Asian brewing of, say, sake, Aspergillus converts starches to glucose and then the S. takes over from there to produce alcohol. For some reason I've been getting a consistently (and deliciously) sour drink with the characteristic lactic acid flavor (definitely not acetic). Usually the sugar is not glucose, but rather sucrose and fructose (depending on what kind of drink I'm making). So I wonder what is going on? Is one of the microorganisms running through the pathway all the way to lactic acid and then for some reason failing to break that last carbon bond? Is the lactic acid inhibiting the conversion of the sugars to alcohol? It is all very confusing.
A: Though I've written a book about fermentation, I am not at all a technical or scientific expert. I've used a ginger starter, as described in Sally Fallon's book (I was honored that she wrote the forward to my book). The ginger bug seemed to be yeasty. Like a sourdough starter and anywhere yeast is not kept in isolation, yeast coexists with lactobacilli. So it does not surprise me that your sodas would have a lactic acidity as well as a small amount of alcohol. Many organisms can and generally do coexist, and changing conditions determine which ones dominate.
Questioner replies: Thanks to your comment that yeast is always accompanied by lactobacilli in nature, I have figured out the puzzle! The puzzle is why the same ginger-based culture makes alcohol in brewing sake and chang, but lactic acid in brewing soda.
The answer is that in making these rice-based alcoholic beverages, first the Apergillus from ginger converts starches into glucose, and then the yeasts turn glucose into alcohol. However, the medium I use has mostly sucrose, not glucose. Probably these particular yeast strains don't do so well with sucrose, but the bacteria love it, and soon they produce lactic acid which inhibits the yeast even more. I think this is the correct explanation, because when I use a high-fructose medium such as apple cider or grape juice, I do tend to get more alcohol.
Q: Do you have any recipes in your book for making sauerkraut without salt or dairy (whey)? I thought I saw some mention of seaweed instead of salt? We eat seaweed as part of our diet, but have never fermented with it and we wouldn't want the sauerkraut tasting too strong.
A: Yes, I have recipes in the book for three variations of saltless sauerkraut, one with seaweed, one with wine, and one with caraway, dill, and celery seeds. You need a fair amount of seaweed, so if you don't really like the taste of seaweed you might try one of the others. Also, all these variations taste better with some salt; unless you are absolute about no salt at all, I'd recommend adapting these as low-salt hybrids.
Q: I am concerned about the mold that you say may form at the top of the brine. My husband is pretty allergic to mold, and if he knew there was the mold on it, even if I tried to scrape it off, there is no way he would eat it. Also, I don't want to send him into an full-blown asthma attack or anaphylactic shock or anything. So, how does one not contaminate the sauerkraut with the mold on top of the brine, when removing the sauerkraut from the container? Or will any mold that gets mixed into the brine itself be inactivated?
A: Sauerkraut does not have to have any mold, especially if you can ferment it in a cool place, and for a relatively short time. If mold mixes into the brine it can't survive; whether the potential allergens are "inactivated" I cannot say. Try making a batch; mold is a common occurrence, but by no means inevitable, especially if you keep it cool and short.
Q: Although I really love sauerkraut, the smell during fermentation is almost overwhelming. Do you have any suggestions on how to control/alleviate this problem?
A: The only suggestion I have is to find an out-of-the way place: a porch, basement, garage. Fermenting sauerkraut has a distinctive smell.
Shawn Jorgenson <old_navy_king@hotmail.com> writes: "I have used a 3 gal. crock for fermenting cabbage and I slipped a 3 gal. "biobag" over the top of it and has drastically reduced and many times made undetectable the smell of the first stages of fermenting. The biobags are biodegradable bags used for compost."
Q: Do fermented dairy products require raw milk?
A:
No. Raw milk is tastier and far more nutritious than pasteurized milk,
and I recommend it strongly, if you can find it. Here's a link to the
Weston A. Price Foundation's Campaign
for Real Milk, which maintains a state-by-state database of raw milk
sources. Raw milk will spontaneously ferment with lactobaccili, unlike
pasteurized milk. But either pasteurized or raw milk may be used for culturing
purposes.
Q: Mold: I set out to make chang; what I did was boil some rice and then throw some brewers yeast on it, since I couldn't find marcha, the traditional starter used in Nepal. I then wrapped it in a plastic bag and set it in a cupboard. It smells like chang, but it's covered in mold. That doesn't seem like a good thing. Should I chuck this stuff? Is the mold bad for you? Is mold always/usually/ever a bad thing?
A: Mold sometimes appears on the surface of fermenting foods. Though it's hardly appealing or desirable, a little surface mold won't hurt you, especially, as in this case, if you're pouring boiling water over it. Mold is a fungus, as marcha and yeast are fungi. Some molds can be poisonous, but not the common white food mold, though some people have mold allergies. To avoid mold, try it when it's not so hot, or ferment it for a shorter time, or knead it every day or two so the surface shifts.
Q: Can I grate beets with the cabbage and ferment them together?
A:
Yes! Beets will give your kraut a gorgeous deep red color. The basic methods
of culturing vegetables can incorporate almost any vegetable.
Email your questions (as well as answers that differ from mine) to sandorkraut@wildfermentation.com. I'll reply directly via email and post the questions and answers.