ferment projects

I started fermenting a couple new things this past week: a spiced ginger wine and sauerkraut. I've made wine a couple times with milk bottles and balloons and it worked okay and helped me understand how that works. The first was just a Welch's wine and the second was made out of the leaves of Agastache foeniculum immediately after reading Stephen Harrod Buhner's Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers. Anyway I found a couple cheap one gallon glass jugs sold with apple juice and decided to experiment a little more with small batch brewing. I even went to the brew store and bought rubber stoppers and airlocks, which are a big step up from the balloons.



I found this video of Sandor Katz (author of Wild Fermentation) talking about Frank Cook and herbal elixir meads which is something I would like to explore more eventually.



I also started some sauerkraut. This time I used a base of red cabbage and added a bunch of garden greens including collards, sorrel, chard, dandelion greens, and chives and winter savory for flavoring. Kraut is a really good way to preserve fresh vegetables and actually makes them more nutritious through better absorption and adds plenty of the good Lacto-bacteria that help keep us healthy. The process really is easy, simply chop, add some salt, and push down into a container until the juices cover the vegetables. It's okay to add a little water if needed. If the water falls below the fermenting plant matter there will likely be mold. Let it sit out for several days and you are good to go.