Fermentation Notes
This is not my first go-round with fermentation. I’ve made beer for several years, and have made sauerkraut intermittently in a crock. I’ve never had good luck with it in a jar, the way that everyone the heck else seems to be able to, so I’m trying it again.
This time I feel like it was doomed from the get-go, but I’m soldiering on. The cabbage I used was slightly older (I’ve been planning this for a long time), and may not have had as much moisture to give up. I went through with it anyway, keeping it under the brine with more ease by adding water to the thing, which is what the sources i’m using (Jonathon Sawyer’s new book The Power of Sour, about which more in a moment, and Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation). So far it seems neither good nor bad, but it also doesn’t seem like it’s moving. I’ll keep an eye on it and the next time I write one of these fermentation updates there should be a consensus on what’s going on.
Also inspired by The Power of Sour, and the need to make Christmas presents, I have started vinegars. I have a bunch of them working, and I’ll go forward from these test batches. I have two different kinds of red wine vinegar* - a cabernet sauvignon and a tempranillo, because those two varietals are pretty far apart in terms of flavor, and I wanted to know what the final effect on the vinegar was of the varietal it started as.
There’s also three apple vinegars in process. Sawyer’s book suggests an apple wine vinegar, where clarified apple juice is fortified with some sugar to convert to wine, which then ferments further into a vinegar that he describes as being similar to champagne vinegar. I’m willing to try it. I also have hard cider vinegar working in the same way as the wine vinegars, and, since I’m an idiot and bought some soft apple cider instead of apple juice**, I threw some sugar into it and put it in there as well. Who knows how that’s going to turn out.
In a stranger turn of events, I started a cucumber vinegar, using vodka to fortify the cucumber juice. I presume that the vodka is there because the cucumber itself has very little acidity***, so it has a much higher chance of spoiling before it converts its sugars to alcohol. In any event, I am excited about the vinegar, and also excited to report that cucumber juice is quite tasty, and is a really attractive shade of green.
Inspired by these unfermented fruit vinegars (the apple juice and the cucumber, that is), I also realized that this would be a noble calling for some grapes I had lying around in huge quantities in the fridge. So I juiced them, and mixed them with some sugar (a bit more than the apple wine vinegar) to set them on their way. I don’t have anything riding on this one, I’m just curious about the idea of vinegaring all the fruits****.
And, since The Power of Sour is Jonathon Sawyer’s book, and the first vinegar I ever had from his hands was a craft beer vinegar, I also got some Edmund Fitzgerald (which is, now and always, my favorite beer) beer working into vinegar, and am excited about the results.
So it’s all in there now, happily becoming a much tastier thing (well, except for the apple cider and the Edmund Fitzgerald, both of which will be useful but not necessarily an improvement on their natural state), and I will keep this updated as to how it all goes, as well as some future fermentation projects, and some meat-curing experiments that are coming up.
* I’m not super-into white wine vinegar, pretty much limiting its use to times when red wine would discolor whatever I’m putting it into. Even then, distilled vinegar, rice vinegar and (my favorite) cane vinegar are all the same color, so I really never think about it. I also have some white balsamic vinegar, and have on occasion used champagne vinegar. This last has inspired me to try making a prosecco vinegar, since prosecco is basically my favorite wine.
** believe me when I tell you it was a genuine, bone-headed mistake.
*** as opposed to apples, say
**** And furthermore, if such a thing can be applied to, say, tomatoes. Doesn’t tomato vinegar seem like an amazing idea? Also: melon vinegar. I’m going to be vinegaring some things, is what I’m saying here.
